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happening to patient care. It just keeps getting worse and worse. We're not going to be able to tell NYD from here. And what they do to parents of children with handicaps! The bastards. They are so cruel. They are soooo God awful cruel." Shannon was straying, and too self perturbed to recenter. "They nit pick and weasel out of every single and reasonable obligation. I spend all my time trying to undo their damage - to kids - to crippled kids - and their families." She paused in a silence that she created. "Here comes the Clinton pitch," a groaning murmur was heard. Instead she gazed off into the distance and slowly, wishfully, "No.... Reason no longer prevails. It's like reason in Northern Ireland. It doesn't work. It can't without just process. The law, our law, is to the high bidder." Her long pause was capped with "We need a hero." A quiet followed. People were actually chewing. Marcus Macaluso, almost catatonic in his quietness through all of this, through this table thumping exchange, was not ignoring. He just wasn't participating. His listening volume was turned down to nil but not his reception. Staring blankly into space, he wasn't hearing this. He wasn't, but his beast was, an inner beast that was, somehow, not him. That beast blurted through his lips, in a chilling menacing voice, "You're not done yet!" Shannon, startled with the others, "I'm not?" Just the intonation was enough to run ice up your back. Mac startled at his own apparent uttering. All eyes were fixed on him. "Not you, Shannon, them," circling his hand in a confusing gesture, the beast took over as his body rose a bit from his slump. "Heroes are not always heroic... acting... or looking... hard to know a hero, really.