The EP was basically like, Nah, we’re good.
MAY 19TH—MY final day at the anchor desk. While I’m not a huge fan of the sound of a door closing, it was a relief to be putting CBS behind me. In a demure black dress （a fitting bookend, perhaps, given all the crap I got for wearing white on my first broadcast）， I teed up a highlights reel that was pretty darn chockablock, if I do say so myself. I had the team edit the end of the montage to “In My Life” by the Beatles—one last poke at CBS’s stuffy style. We broke news, won awards, and held our heads high amid frequent indifference and flat-out resistance.
After the broadcast, the staff gathered in the newsroom. I thanked everyone, including my holy trinity of news writers, Jarod, Joe, and Jerry; cribbing from Dorothy, I told Jerry, “I think I’ll miss you most of all.” And as I reflected on the incredible experiences I’d had at CBS—interviewing Defense Secretary Bob Gates in a Humvee in Afghanistan; covering the barrier-breaking election of Barack Obama; gripping the hand of a wailing, badly wounded Haitian boy in a makeshift hospital tent in Port-au-Prince after the earthquake; shaking in a bathroom in a Tahrir Square hotel during the Arab Spring, terrified that the protesters below would storm the building; confronting the Holocaust-denying Iranian president Ahmadinejad with a photo of mangled bodies in a mass grave in Auschwitz; hitting the ground running at Virginia Tech on the heels of a massacre—I couldn’t help but note the disconnect between the work we’d done and the fact that I never really belonged there. The body had rejected the organ early on, and no amount of immunosuppressants （or hand-wringing or course-correcting or belated ingratiating） was ever going to change that.
After the broadcast, a bunch of us pre-gamed at Nicolla’s with champagne and martinis; someone had made up T-shirts bearing the Survivor logo. We toasted ourselves while listening to the playlist Nicolla had put together, which included “Take This Job and Shove It,” “That’s It, I Quit, I’m Movin’ On,” and “I Will Survive.” I don’t know how I would have gotten through those five years without my loyal, talented team.
Then we headed out to the nightclub Butter, where we colonized several couches and enjoyed the bottle service. It was an intense, bittersweet affair.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one feeling that way. When Susan Zirinsky, the EP of 48 Hours and future president of CBS News, showed up, she confessed to my friend Charlie, “I let her down. I should have done more.”
Yes, Z （as everyone called her） could have been a more vocal advocate. We had delivered some kick-ass hours together, including a tribute to the late Ted Kennedy and a glittery pre-Grammy special. But the truth is, it would have been risky. I was radioactive, and anyone who valued her position at CBS—like Z, the only woman who’d made it to the leadership ranks—knew better than to go to bat for me. And I’m not sure there was anything she or anyone else could have done.
A few weeks after I exited the dairy barn for the last time, I was at Reagan National following a visit with my dad. He was very sick, and I was bereft, knowing he didn’t have much time left. A hospital bed had been set up in the living room. I showed him how he could play Scrabble on an iPad, and I read to him from Laura Hillenbrand’s book Unbroken （word games and military valor—two of my dad’s favorite things）。 He commented that the main character seemed slightly “braggadocious,” which made me smile.
For a while now, my father had been too overwhelmed with illness to sustain a tactical conversation about my troubles at CBS. And the last thing I wanted to do was burden him. But I also think I was embarrassed. I felt like I’d let him down.
I pictured my parents taking their seats at the kitchen table at 6:30 to watch me on their portable TV with rabbit ears. I thought about how hard it was some nights to keep it together behind the anchor desk and wondered if they were falling for my everything’s-going-great routine. I wondered how aware they were of the beating I’d taken in the press. They had kept meticulous scrapbooks from every chapter of my career—up until CBS. Maybe there just weren’t enough positive pieces to fill one.
My heart was heavy as I headed to the airport. And just as I was about to get out of the taxi at the terminal, I spotted Jeff Fager 30 feet ahead of me, bounding out of a town car with the new president of CBS News, David Rhodes, both looking particularly pleased with themselves. The contrast between my father and these two self-satisfied schmucks couldn’t have been sharper. I slumped in the back seat, taking my time fishing out my cab fare, giving thanks for my Fager-free future.