The House was absolutely silent. Then someone coughed. As two officers walked down the aisle, I heard what sounded like a sob. The officers stopped at Martha’s row. Several members stepped back to allow them to reach her. One of those officers put his hand on her elbow to guide her, but she angrily shook it off and glared at him. She said something inaudible to him. She was going on her own terms. She reached the aisle and without waiting for the officers turned to her right and walked to the top.

It was an act of courage equal to anything I had ever seen on the battlefield.

As she did, a spectator shouted from the gallery, “Cowards!” Everyone on the floor turned and looked up. Several members pointed at someone, eerily reminiscent of those men on the balcony with Martin Luther King pointing in the direction of the shooter. Then I heard what sounded like a brief scuffle and some shouting, although whatever was taking place was not shown.

The roll call resumed. There was one more nay vote before the stream wobbled, then abruptly ended. There was no way of knowing if it had been intentionally shut down or the streamer had been discovered. It disappeared without any explanation.

I spent the next hour searching the net for any believable reports, while enjoying a bologna sandwich I had defrosted in the microwave. The news sites were still reporting the details of the assassination attempt and the frantic search for whoever was responsible, the tragic backstories of the victims, and the “surprisingly widespread support” for the government’s temporary crackdown on dissidents. One effervescent young woman earnestly told a reporter, “We’re either going to be America or we’re not. This has to stop.”

All the sites repeatedly ran footage of staffers cheering the clearly shaken president as he returned to the White House.

I didn’t sleep. For some reason I started thinking about the last dog I’d owned, or who had owned me, depending on whose point of view you believed. Chuck Waggin’ was a mixed breed with a visible abundance of retriever. Old Chuck had been a loyal wing-dog through college and grad school, as well as after Fort Bragg, dying in my arms soon after we celebrated our fourteenth year together. I loved that dog. He’d been my anchor—the grinning, tail-wagging friend waiting for me at the front door whether I’d gone to the store or to the desert, making every place we stayed together our home. On nights like this one, when I was getting ready to hit the road, I was glad there was no Chuck. I wasn’t certain I would have been able to leave him behind, even knowing they were looking for me.

Jenny would understand. I opened my eyes and lay in the dark thinking about her. She knew those few possessions that mattered to me and would go to the apartment and pack them away. I desperately wanted to call her to find out how she was coping and what she knew about Martha, but I couldn’t do it from a stationary location. I’ll call her in the morning, I decided, soon as I got what I needed from Hack, when I was on the road.