But Sunday was not a day of rest for everyone. A bleary-eyed Ray del Valle led a caravan of half a dozen journalist-laden vehicles on a drive across the prairie, headed for the patch of Forest Service grazing land where the Ramirez children had played their last game of soccer. The reason that Ray was bleary-eyed, even though the caravan departed at the civilized hour often a.m., was that he had spent the entire night driving from Denver to the site and back. On his drive out to the site, his car had been full of used toys and house-wares, which he had purchased for a few dollars at Goodwill. On his drive back to Denver, the car had been empty.
When the caravan of journalists arrived at the site in mid-afternoon they were treated to the blindingly photogenic sight of cattle grazing over the remains of a hastily evacuated migrant settlement. Remains of human tragedy were strewn everywhere: Raggedy Andy dolls, overturned cooking pots, baby clothes, a battered, well-loved Malibu Barbie or two.
None of it had been there the day before; the migrant workers had had plenty of time to pick up their things before they'd evacuated the site, and were not so wasteful as to leave perfectly good pots and toys strewn around. But it looked great, especially when the handsome, pony-tailed Ray del Valle squatted down in the grass to ponder an abandoned soccer ball as fat cattle emblazoned with the Lazy Z brand grazed contentedly nearby. So it was no big surprise when a photograph along those lines took up most of the front page of the next morning's tabloid, accompanied by the headline:
"WYATT: 'THROW 'EM OUT!'"
It would be an understatement to say that Sam Wyatt, his very close friends in Senator Marshall's offices, and most of the Denver medical establishment were, so far, not amused by the way the Ramirez situation had been covered in the media. And although Ray del Valle had begun the new week with a crushing sucker punch, afterward it became the Week of the Backlash. The "THROW 'EM OUT!" headline had been on the newsstands for less than six hours when two cars full of INS agents pulled up in front of the home of Pilar de la Cruz, nee Ramirez, and came to the door with the intention of arresting Carlos and Anna Ramirez, who both happened to be illegal aliens. If these agents had been reading their tabloids, they would not even have stopped; they would have known that Carlos and Anna were not there by the fact that the TRUCK OF DEATH was not parked in the driveway. But they made the mistake of going to the door anyway. Pilar, alerted to the fact that Immigration was after her sister and brother-in-law, telephoned Arapahoe Highlands Medical Centre, where they were visiting Bianca, and warned them. They cut their visit short, jumped into the Truck of Death, and vanished from the face of the earth.
"MOMMY HAS TO GO, BIANCA!"
graced the newsstands the next morning, accompanied by a photo of the tearful Anna bidding farewell to her daughter, who was bottled up inside the giant pressurized chamber where she had been receiving her treatment. A photographer had been present in the room when Anna and Carlos received the warning from Pilar and had snapped pictures of them bidding a hasty farewell.
None of which made the Powers That Be look especially good to the public. Which is why social workers from Health and Human services started paying very close attention to Bianca at the same time, and a motion was filed in court for the state of Colorado to become Bianca's legal guardian. The gist of this legal document was that Carlos and Anna Ramirez, by driving their kids around in a truck full of lethal gases and killing three of them, had clearly demonstrated their unfitness as parents and should not be allowed to take care of Bianca anymore. The district attorney let it be known that his staff was actually investigating the possibility of filing charges against the Ramirezes and that, with every fibre of his being, he was refraining himself from issuing an arrest warrant for Carlos and Anna. It was all well and good to put public service announcements on TV begging people not to drive their kids around in the back of pickup trucks, but what would really put a stop to this sort of thing was punitive legal action against parents who did it. So the headline for Wednesday morning was
"STATE: BIANCA IS OURS!"
But all of this legal squalor was obscuring an interesting medical story. When Bianca arrived in the hyperbaric chamber she had been in a deep coma and totally unresponsive. But in the photo accompanying the "BIANCA IS OURS" story, a state social worker stood outside the hyperbaric chamber, smiling and waving through its thick pressure-proof window at the unseen Bianca inside. And there wasn't much point smiling and waving to a vegetable. It seemed that Bianca had staged a miraculous recovery. She was far from being back to normal, but she was awake, alert, responsive to verbal communication, and mumbling a few words.
This gave Arapahoe Highlands Medical Centre's new PR Director the ammunition he needed to thunder into the media fray. His predecessor and former boss had been sacked with astonishing dispatch as soon as "LET HER DIE!" had hit the streets. The new man had spent the first few days just trying to get on his feet. By the time Wednesday rolled around, he was ready. He brought in a select troop of journalists to videotape and photograph Bianca through the window of the chamber; she obliged by smiling and waving to them. Since she had all but been written off as a vegetable a few days earlier, this was certainly going to have an electrifying effect on the public.
There followed a news conference in a hospital meeting room, where all of Bianca's doctors, nurses, therapists, and court-appointed guardians stepped up to the microphone to deliver a few bright, upbeat sound bites praising Bianca's plucky nature and emphasising the incredible nature of her recovery. A few cynical journalists tried to spoil the day by asking difficult questions, e.g.: "Does Bianca know that the INS is trying to deport her parents?" But the new PR Director was standing by the mike at all times, trying to anticipate any line of questioning that might lead to another headline along the lines of "LET HER DIE!," and whenever these issues came up he would do something about protecting the patient's privacy and then point to some other journalist with a less acute critical facility. In general, the PR Director was finding that bald, middle-aged print journalists with nicotine stains on their fingers were troublesome, and beautiful twenty-five-year-old TV journalists who had arrived at the hospital carrying stuffed bunnies for Bianca were good people to call on. So the headline for Thursday morning was:
"BIANCA: MIRACLE GIRL!"
accompanied by a picture of her smiling her gap-toothed kid's grin through the window of the chamber, cuddling a bunny to her chest.
Anyone who bothered to read the complete news story about Bianca, all the way to the end, could find out that her treatment in the chamber was essentially complete, and that Arapahoe Highlands Medical Centre was going to release her the following day, on Friday.
Which meant that by the time the "MIRACLE GIRL" headline began to circulate on Thursday morning, all of the participants of the Ramirez affair, from Denver to the Lazy Z Ranch to Washington, D.C., were gearing up for the end-game.
Most of Friday would be taken up with logistics: getting all the players to the hospital on time and keeping in touch with everyone on the phone. So Thursday was the last day for actually making moves. Ray del Valle kicked off the final round by arranging a press conference, in a "safe house" somewhere in greater Denver, in which Carlos and Anna Ramirez stepped before the court of Public Opinion to defend themselves from charges that they were illegal aliens and bad parents.