Hailey's War Read Free

hungry, and I’ve got enough money to buy two breakfasts. If you’re hungry, too.”
    And then, at the worst time, my cell phone began to ring. I reallyshould shut it off when I’m up here. I knew who it was: work. Someone had called in sick, or just hadn’t shown up. I was needed. And normally I’d have answered, except that right now the guy in front of me was about to make a life-or-death decision and I couldn’t just say,
Hold that thought, I have to take this
.
    The man in front of me was curious: “Don’t you want to answer that?”
    â€œNot really,” I said, and it stopped ringing, going into voice mail. I persisted: “What do you say? Breakfast? And you leave the bridge alone at least one more day?”
    He nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, okay.”
    I’d like to tell you that Todd’s story—that was his name—was original and fascinating. It wasn’t. I’d heard it before: A good and happy life in an average way, until the onset of a chronic illness, exacerbated by drink. He went on disability until the money ran out. His marriage failed. He was unable to pay child support, so his wife saw no reason for him to know where she’d moved with their two kids. He’d stayed with a buddy until the buddy’s wife wouldn’t have it anymore. That left no one to care that he was standing on the bridge, ready to jump.
    Todd and I made a plan for him that involved having only one drink and going to the VA to look up the brother he hadn’t seen in twenty years, but who just might take him in. To level the playing field a bit, I told Todd part of my story—the part about going east to school and why I came back. Without that, the potential jumpers usually looked at me like some idealist who’d read a few too many inspirational books. Like if I weren’t doing this, I’d be at the mission feeding the homeless, or in Africa doing medical work.
    In someone else, what I did on the bridge would be philanthropy. For me it wasn’t. A shrink would probably have a field day with it, trying to put the pieces together, how it fit with the reason I cameback from the East Coast, and the reason I had to leave L.A. Those are two different stories, by the way. I’m getting to that.
    I hadn’t left Todd behind at the diner for more than three minutes when my cell rang again, and with a stab of guilt, remembering the call I’d ignored on the bridge, I immediately brought the Motobecane to a stop.
    â€œIt’s me.” Shay Clements was the owner of Aries Courier. “Fabian just radioed in. His crank’s busted, he’s stranded on Market Street. Can you go meet him, pick up his packages, and make his drops?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œLike, right now?”
    Shay wasn’t being pushy. A courier service stood or failed on its on-time performance, and that in itself gave me a twinge of confusion: The hour that had passed between the phone call on the bridge and this one was far too much time for Shay to wait. But there wasn’t time to wonder about that. “I’m on it right now,” I said. “I’m literally standing over my bike.”
    â€œThanks,” Shay said after giving me the intersection where I was to meet Fabian.
    â€œIt’s no problem,” I said.
    And it wasn’t. This was my work now, and I did it with the great humility life has taught me since I washed out of the United States Military Academy at West Point, just two months before I would have graduated and become a second lieutenant in the United States Army.

two
    My name is Hailey Cain. I’m twenty-three and have one of the most popular first names for girls of my generation. Every year in school there were half a dozen Hailies or Haleys or Haileys in my class.
    I’m Californian in a way that a lot of people are Californian: I was born somewhere else. My father was Texan, my mother