May 1, 1992

Morgan, you son of a bitch, Roland thought as the automatic hospital doors opened. The weeks of paperwork in his office are minuscule compared to the problem at hand. The call he received in his office felt like a bigger nightmare come to life than the damned riots. How did it come to this?

Pedestrians were seated throughout the lobby, like sardines filling every space of floor against a wall, doing their best to stay off the streets as the L.A. police tried to bring stability to the already crumbling city. All it needed was a push, and it’d be on its knees, begging for an opportunity to turn things around. Only to put itself in the same position in a matter of years. Los Angeles and the state of California would never learn.

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As Roland stepped toward the receptionist's desk, he noticed she and the other people in the lobby fixated on the monitor displaying the heinous acts documented in the riot. I imagine this is what it was like in the states while stationed in Saigon. Those damn Commies are small-time compared to this. So is this Rodney King shit. The closer he moved towards the desk, tension rose in his body; he always feared the day would come, something inevitable. How did we get to this?

The receptionist turned and finally saw him before he could ring the bell on the counter. She questioned his visit. “Abbott,” he firmly said, only to repeat the name several times as she browsed through the patient census in a cubby hole behind her. Once she found the paperwork for Abbott’s room number, she informed Roland to take a seat. He followed her orders and thought to himself. Focus. Remain calm. It’s never as bad as it seems. It doesn’t matter; it still happened. He should have listened. Morgan, you hard headed bastard, you should have listened. You knew better than this; we knew better than this. We let it spiral out of control. But when did the vortex begin? How did we get to this?