News whipped out the camera. Marketing, Layout, and Chief all ran forward to help, but we had nothing on these meatheads. They left off their attack on the family to corral us, and this wasn’t even hard for them. They squeezed us against a wall, elbows in our ribs, smashed News’s camera on the side of our building with a leer. The largest among them asked who the fuck we thought we were.

And then he saw the littlest among us. She might have glared at him or looked impatient or scared. She probably did nothing. Guys like that, they go for your weak point just because they can.

Copy had not signed up for this, she wasn’t political in any direction. We don’t think she’d ever said no to anybody, ever, at any point in her life — we can’t remember her saying it to us, anyway. She was our mitigating presence, a young woman of pronounced normalcy who for some reason liked us as people.

He hoisted her up in the air with a single hand around her neck, which was enough to trigger one of her asthma attacks. In itself, the attack wouldn’t have been a problem, she had them all the time, but the big guy wasn’t letting go of her. He was making it a lot worse. That was the issue.

Marketing and Chief were yelling, “Stop!”

“Her inhaler!” Layout pleaded.

“What is wrong with you people?” asked News. We weren’t sure at the time if she was talking to the square-jawed men surrounding us or the last few battered protestors who hadn’t fled. The latter group watched the murder from a safe distance — fifty yards or more, like they wouldn’t have dreamt of attempting a rescue.

Copy’s eyes bulged with alarm. She wheezed and sputtered and grabbed at the hands of the man crushing the life out of her, so he tightened his grip and told her to stop faking. She turned red, then purple, then she stuck out her tongue, but he seemed convinced she was just being dramatic. Rather than letting go, he gave her the impatient glare that parents reserve for tantruming children, and waited for her to stop struggling.

We were screaming, Arts belted out, “Let go of her! Let go of her! Let go!” But all this accomplished was three guys threw him to the ground and stomped down hard. He lived, but only just. A solid three weeks in the hospital, then another month at home, before he limped back into our office.