Chapter 1 - The Call at 3:17
The phone call that shattered me came at 3:17 in the afternoon.
My six-year-old son had stopped breathing.
By the time I reached Lenox Hill Hospital, I was prepared for doctors, defibrillators, panic, and the possibility that I might lose the only person left in this world who still called me Dad. I was not prepared to find two security officers bleeding on the floor. And I definitely was not prepared to find a young janitor standing between my son and death with nothing but a broken mop handle in her hands.
My name is Colonel Gabriel Moretti.
For years, I have buried soldiers. I have stood beside flag-draped coffins while mothers collapsed into my arms. I have walked through cities where every open window could hide a rifle, and I have listened to men scream through radios while explosions swallowed their voices. Fear and I have known each other for a long time.
But nothing I had experienced in thirty-nine years of life compared to seeing Margaret’s name flash across my private phone.
Only four people had that number. Margaret was one of them. She had cared for Daniel since he was a baby.
I answered before the second ring.
“Margaret?”
For two seconds, there was only crying. Then she said the words that stripped every rank, every medal, every piece of military training away from me.
“Colonel... Daniel collapsed.”
I stood up so quickly my chair crashed backward. “What happened?”
“He couldn't breathe. He just fell down. His lips turned blue. I called 911. They took him to Lenox Hill Hospital.”
My hand tightened around the phone. “Is he breathing now?”
“They got him breathing again.”
Again. That word almost destroyed me.
Margaret kept talking, but I barely heard her. “They think it might be an allergic reaction or something with his lungs. I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”
“Margaret.”
She stopped.
“This is not your fault.”
May you like
I said it because she needed to hear it. But I was already moving. My wife, Sofia, died bringing Daniel into this world. A massive hemorrhage. Thirty-two minutes after my son took his first breath, my wife took her last. I had held Daniel against my chest that night while he slept, still wearing the hospital bracelet around his tiny wrist. I promised Sofia I would protect him. I promised her he would never grow up wondering whether somebody loved him.
And now he had stopped breathing while I was across the city.
