"Pop, you awake?"
"Yeah son, what's up?
"Can you call the nurse. I keep pushing my button thing but nothing is happening. I need some more morphine, please.
"Ok, hold on."
"Oh sh*t!"
"Pop, what's wrong! What's wrong!"
Gabriel's father died in the hospital bed next to him. A nurse never came. Another bomb had gone off just outside the hospital. All staff was called down to Emergency. The terrorists were waiting. The bodies of doctors and nurses and the injured lay littering the Emergency area of the hospital, inside and out. Citizens' senses had become sadly accepting, dulled to the thud and bump of explosions, most small but deadly. Some explosives brought by drone. Some left in parked vehicles. Many strapped to bellies, lethal passengers bound to an enraptured, expectant host.
Manny Stroud stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and warned them about killing other people's children. They booed and heckled him. He warned them that giddily and shamelessly killing other people's children would bring a terrible reckoning down on the country. They booed and heckled him. Gabriel's father, Representative from Dallas, Texas, booed and heckled Representative Manny Stroud. Gabriel's father died from the trauma of two amputated legs and an arm, complicated by diabetes. He heard the drone coming but could not save his wife and daughter.
Manny Stroud was a former Army Ranger. He contacted seven of his former Ranger buddies. They met at his home in rural Ohio. Manny had a large map of Washington D.C. taped to the wall of his den...." From "Train Up The Child, A Manny Stroud Chronicle" By Franklin Cincinnatus
