two years and she felt well enough. Sure, she got tired, but who didn't? Her job and volunteer work kept her busy.
First thing in the morning she'd call for the appointment. For now she was just going to work the beginning of Bill's shift at the suicide hotline.
As the anxiety backed off a little, she took a deep breath. The next twenty-four hours were going to be an endurance test, with her nerves turning her body into a trampoline and her mind into a whirlpool. The trick was waiting through the panic phases and then shoring up her strength when the fear lightened up.
She parked the Civic in an open lot on Tenth Street and walked quickly toward a worn-out six-story building. This was the dingy part of town, the residue of an effort back in the seventies to professionalize a nine-square-block area of what was then a “bad neighborhood.” The optimism hadn't worked, and now boarded-up office space mixed with low-rent housing.
She paused at the entrance and waved to the two cops passing by in a patrol car.
The headquarters of the Suicide Prevention Hotline were on the second floor in the front, and she glanced up at the glowing windows. Her first contact with the nonprofit had been as a caller. Three years later, she manned a phone every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. She also covered holidays and relieved people when they needed it.
No one knew she'd ever dialed in. No one knew she'd had leukemia. And if she had to go back to war with her blood, she was going to keep that to herself as well.
Having watched her mother die, she didn't want anyone standing over her bed weeping. She already knew the impotent rage that came when saving grace didn't heel on command. She had no interest in a replay of the theatrics while she was fighting for breath and swimming in a sea of failing organs.
Okay . Nerves were back.
Mary heard a shuffle over to the left and caught a flash of movement, as if someone had ducked out of sight behind the building. Snapping to attention, she punched a code into a lock, went inside, and climbed the stairs. When she got to the second floor, she buzzed the intercom for entrance into the hotline's offices.
As she walked past the reception desk, she waved to the executive director, Rhonda Knute, who was on the phone. Then she nodded to Nan, Stuart, and Lola, who were on deck tonight, and settled into a vacant cubicle. After making sure she had plenty of intake forms, a couple of pens, and the hotline's intervention reference book, she took a bottle of water out of her purse.
Almost immediately one of her phone lines rang, and she checked the screen for caller ID. She knew the number. And the police had told her it was a pay phone. Downtown.
It was her caller.
The phone rang a second time and she picked up, following the hotline's script “Suicide Prevention Hotline, this is Mary. How may I help you?”
Silence. Not even breathing.
Dimly, she heard the hum of a car engine flare and then fade in the background. According to the police's audit of incoming calls, the person always phoned from the street and varied his location so he couldn't be traced.
“This is Mary. How may I help you?” She dropped her voice and broke protocol. “I know it's you, and I'm glad you're reaching out tonight again. But please, can't you tell me your name or what's wrong?”
She waited. The phone went dead.
“Another one of yours?” Rhonda asked, taking a sip from a mug of herbal tea.
Mary hung up. “How did you know?”
The woman nodded across her shoulder. “I heard a lot of rings out there, but no one got farther than the greeting. Then all of a sudden you were hunched over your phone.”
“Yeah, well—”
“Listen, the cops got back to me today. There's nothing they can do short of assigning details to every pay phone in town, and they're not willing to go that far at this point.”
“I told you. I don't feel like I'm in danger.”
“You don't know that you're not.”
“Come on, Rhonda, this has been going on for nine months now, right? If they were going to jump me, they would have already. And I really want to help—”
“That's another thing I'm concerned about. You clearly feel like protecting whoever the caller is. You're getting too personal.”
“No, I'm not. They're calling here for a reason, and I know