Hailey's War

That had been too bad, really. Not just for me, but for Shay. If only I’d found the stuff I’d gone back there for, I could have let his betrayal slide. As it was, I’d had to pay him a visit.

Christmas night was a good time for a break-in: quiet and dark, half the houses on any given street standing empty, police patrols few and far between because of skeleton-crew staffing. I’d taken my time with a crowbar on Shay’s back door.

The crowbar had also helped Shay to be cooperative and forthcoming when he’d come in around eleven from wherever he’d had Christmas dinner. Conveniently, he’d been alone, or at least he’d thought he was alone until he flipped on the lights.

Nothing he had to say had surprised me much. They’d paid him fifteen thousand dollars to give me up. Shay insisted that Babyface had told him I’d walk away from the situation; that I’d owed a lot of money, and they were just going to slap me around some.

“Bullshit,” I’d said. “You cleaned out my room. You knew I was never coming back.”

I’d heard it before but never really believed it, that there were people like Shay in the world, who looked good and acted normal but had necrotic tissue where their conscience should have been. I understood Babyface and his crew; what they had done to me was their job, and I was nobody to them. Shay was different. He’d known me, even if we hadn’t been close, and I’d certainly done nothing to earn anything like animosity from him. Shay had simply wanted the money and he would have believed anything they’d told him to get it.

It wasn’t really a hell of a lot of money, not for a human life. “Frankly,” I’d told him last night, “I would have held out for more.”

I didn’t very often have an opportunity to give full rein, without remorse, to the rage that sometimes seized me. Last night had been a rare exception.

Blood makes the grass grow.

He was fine, he’d heal. Me, I hadn’t left empty-handed. Shay had kept my cadet sword; no one throws something like that in a Dumpster. And the balance of the Skouras money, a little more than thirteen thousand dollars, had been stashed in a flour canister in the pantry.

Already, ten thousand was on its way to CJ, the repayment of my debt. The rest was starting-over money, already covering the inexpensive Powell Street motel room I was staying in, and the Greyhound ticket I’d bought.

Tomorrow I was going home. I would spend New Year’s Eve in L.A., probably with CJ.

My cell rang and, for once, I answered it without even looking to see who was calling.

“Hailey Cain,” I said.

“Hailey, good morning.”

“Tess,” I said. “What’s up?”

“You sound like you’re somewhere outdoors.”

“I’m on the Golden Gate Bridge.”

“What are you doing up there?” she asked.

“Just making some plans.”

“And what have you concluded?”

“I’m going home.”

“I thought San Francisco was your home,” she said.

“No,” I said. “L.A. is.”

“I see,” she said. Then: “Hailey, there are very good doctors up here.”

When she said it, I had two conflicting thoughts at once. First, that I couldn’t have heard her properly; second, that I knew I had.

She said, “I found out why you left West Point. It puts a great deal of your behavior in context.”

“Reading Jonah might have done the same thing,” I said.

“I did that, too,” she said. “Jonah inexplicably fails to feel fear when it’s clearly called for. His actions show no regard for consequences.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s behavior very consistent with having a tumor in the amygdala region of the brain, the center of fear, rage, and aggression. Patients sometimes go off into unexplained fits of anger. Others aren’t afraid even when the situation calls for it.”

“Yeah.”

“And it would make a person, even one otherwise in the bloom of physical health, unfit to serve as an officer in the United States Army.”

“Yes, it would,” I agreed.

It was so funny, looking back… In my yearling and cow years, and into my final year, I had been so proud of my reputation for being hard to scare. In the boxing ring, jumping out of planes… other cadets used to ask me, Why aren’t you scared? They’d thought it was because I was brave. I had been content to believe that, too. No one saw it as a problem.

That I even got diagnosed was a fluke. The tumor was so small yet that I was nearly asymptomatic. But one day, in my firstie year, I was helping plebes learn to rappel. They were going down a bluff, and I was too close to the edge, sitting on my heels, and my ankle turned the wrong way and I fell. That was it.

The only injury I had from it was a broken wrist, but they checked me out pretty thoroughly, including an MRI for head injury. When the results came back, my company tactical officer came in with the doctor. My TAC said, There’s nothing from the fall, you’re going to be fine out of that. There’d been an unusual tone to his voice.

Out of that, sir?

The doc saw something else he’d like to biopsy.

All right. When?

The doctor and my TAC had exchanged glances, and the doctor said, You do understand that when I say biopsy, I mean we’re looking for cancer, right?

I guess so, yeah, I’d said.

My TAC gave the doctor a hell of a look, and the doc said, That’s fairly typical for this region, the amygdala. Patients understand that something frightening is going on, but there’s no emotional weight attached to it. He’d seemed a little excited, like he was seeing something rare.

It was so goddammed stupid. I could have stood in Michie Stadium with my graduating class. I could have been a second lieutenant for a brief time, at least, if only I hadn’t been diagnosed. Meaning if I hadn’t fallen, meaning if I hadn’t been so close to the edge of that bluff. Which I wouldn’t have been if my fear hadn’t been suppressed. It was like the goddamned tumor wanted to be found, had pushed me into unmasking it.

That was the thing Serena and I did at the Beverly Center, the thing the rest of the world wouldn’t have understood: We had bought our funeral dresses. Me because of the tumor, her because of la vida. She’d chosen a white silk sheath, making up for the wedding she was already sure she’d never have. I’d chosen a scarlet party dress, to spite Julianne, who’d always told me that red lit up my birthmark.

“Hailey? Are you there?” Tess said.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m here.”

“It’s inoperable, I take it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not just location, but proximity to blood vessels and other such things… I tuned out after hearing the word inoperable. I said, Doc, I’ll take your word for it.”

“What’s your prognosis?” Tess asked.

“It could be years, and I could be healthy for most of those. Tumors aren’t necessarily a day bigger with every day that passes. The tumor could stay at its size for a while, then one day it’ll get curious: ‘I wonder what it’s like in that region of the brain? I think I’ll spread on over there and find out.’”

“And it’s never occurred to you to walk into UCSF Medical Center and see what they might be able to do for you? They have an excellent neurology department.”

“So does UCLA.”

“But there might be a much higher class of work for you up here,” Tess said. “I’m leaning toward taking over my father’s businesses rather than selling. I could use a lieutenant who never knew my father and his ways of doing things, a lieutenant who I know can respect a woman, and who is, for all intents and purposes, fearless.”