Chapter 1

I got the call from Nick, and there was no question that I had to go. He once took a bullet for me. That is to say he was stupid enough to save my life and get himself shot in the process.

The simple fact that we were from the same -smallish- town, prompted us to become buddy's in boot camp. We got drunk together a few times on leave, the few we got before Saddam Hussan decided to pick on the Kuwaitis. Of course our unit got called up. Yup folks, we won ourselves a luxury vacation to the middle East. Our unit had the honor of being among the first ground troops to go into Kuwait. Now I kind of know what a duck decoy feels like.

Just after sunrise that first day in I was out on Recon, the C.O. said to check out this little band of merry gentlemen clustered by a wall in this little Iraqi outpost. So I'm doing my best to communicate with this bunch of jabbering idiots when -behind me- one of those Shiite guys took offense to my translation abilities or some such thing. He decided he would draw down a bead on the head of little, innocent Mikey Irvin -that's me- with his side arm. He was just starting to squeeze the trigger when old dipshit Nick Ainsely comes out of nowhere in a flying tackle.

Nick hit him and they both went down in a mighty OOF! The Shiite cause Nick's full weight with battle pack had landed on him, Nick from the new hole punched -not so neatly- in his shoulder from the point blank discharge from the side arm. As Nick was no longer much in control of the situation, I managed to empty a full clip from my M-16 into the aforementioned Shiite before he could squeeze off another round.

Actually, I tell people I was aiming at Nick for being such a dipshit and not popping the yo-yo from a distance himself, but my aim isn't very good so I got the Shiite instead. Anyway, Nick saved my life.

I spent the rest of my tour in Kuwait breathing stinky, black smoke from damn big oil fires, making certain that none of the locals came by to offer a light to the guys trying to put them out. Nick spent the rest of his in a hospital bed stateside.

Once back from my Middle East vacation, I stopped by to see how old buddy Nick was doing. He was doing alright at the time. His shoulder now fairly well healed, leaving a battle scar he could talk about around the pool at his apartment complex.

Now as to what prompted old Nicky to enlist in Uncle Sugars boy scouts, I have no clue. Especially when he was married with an infant daughter, who was much less an infant when he got back. He neglected to tell me all this when we were in boot and then the Middle East, not that we had much time for conversation over there. So I didn't know it until I went to visit him.

I met Nick's wife -Sally- and young daughter -Calley- at a pool side barbecue. I was with my girlfriend, I think it was Nancy at the time, but I'm not certain. I recall we got pretty drunk at the barbecue. Nick told the party all about how he had saved my butt (actually, it was my head). I told the party how I emptied a whole clip into the Shiite trying to hit Nick for being such a dipshit. In terms of points scored, I lost. I actually saved his life too, as the Shiite had taken an exception to being tackled in that manner, thoughtlessly interrupting him in the process of blowing my head off. So this guy was bringing the sidearm around toward Nick's noggin to register his displeasure when I casually stitched him with lead while avoiding the dipshit. Nick saved my life first, so it didn't count with the pool side babes.

Life goes on. I went back to my mechanics job while Nick took university classes on Uncle Sugar's tab because of his injury. We saw each other a couple of times a week for a beer. That was before we both got too busy to keep in touch very often. Nick was at the university taking classes and I was working days in an auto shop, going to school nights (learning to talk to computers) and finishing out my tour of duty on the weekends.

Still, I got to know Nick's family pretty well. Sally always had a smile for me when I came over to visit and Calley called me Uncle Mike ( I called her short stuff, which she hated, but giggled over). During one of Sally's attempts to put a little structure into their family life, I happily consented to be Calley's godfather.

With both Nick and I in school, our visits got farther apart again. When I graduated, I got a pretty good job offer in another city a thousand miles away. Finding I could transfer my remaining time with Uncle Sam to the new town, I accepted the job. This was heavily influenced by the fact there weren't any computers smart enough to talk to in our home town. Anyway, the distant job cut my visits back to once a year, supplemented by phone calls a couple of times a month, then once a month, then every few months.

I got a call from Nick a few years later telling me that Sally had the misfortune to step in front of city bus traveling at a fair clip. She hardly knew what hit her. I made the trip to attend her funeral and go through a ritual drunk with Nick. At the time, Sally's mother was watching over Calley, so I hardly got to see much of her. I was sort of glad of that, as she was pretty broke up about losing her mom.

After that, I didn't get to see Nick and Calley very much. When I did, things seemed to be working out okay for them, so I didn't worry too much about them. I'd talk to them from time to time or scoot a letter off to them. As we were both busy as hell and so far apart, our contacts got fewer and fewer again until finally I hadn't heard from them again for almost five years. I'd finished my time with Uncle Sam and my career was going very well.

Out of the blue, I get a call from Nick, saying he needed to see me real bad. I had some vacation time accrued, so I told the boss I was taking it and made the journey back home.

It was only when I got there that I discovered the real reason for the call. Nick was in a hospital bed in pretty bad shape. The reason he needed to see me, was because he was dying. He was calling in my debt to him for saving my life. The price; Taking over guardianship of one fully grown fourteen year old girl, my god daughter, Calley.

After the initial shock and denial wore off a bit, I took the time to access the situation realistically; Sally's mother had just kicked off herself a short time before, her father a long time before that. Nick's parents were also deceased. Sally had been an only child, so was Nick, who was genuinely fucked up with a bad liver.

Apparently I should have been worrying about Nick and Calley a lot more than I had in the interim. In college Nick had gotten himself hooked real good on drugs. I guess he got into them partially from the pain killers first given to him because of his shoulder injury. He hid it from everybody pretty well for quite a while. Before he kicked them, he had the misfortune to share a needle with some twerp who had hepatitis-A. That slowly ate his liver away. He aggravated it in later years by drinking heavily after he was already too ill to work. When I finally saw him in the hospital, it was a noticeable bulge on him.

So Calley had no other living relatives. She didn't have too many options for foster parents in our smallish home town. Teenagers seldom get adopted anyway, even if they do get straight "A's" on their report cards. Everybody prone to adoption wants a cute little baby. So it was me, an orphanage or a long string of short term foster homes. Calley was a good kid and didn't deserve that. Nick had it all worked out with his lawyers and a kindly judge before I ever got there. I didn't have much time to think about it, as he was going fast. There was also the major fact that I owed him big time for saving my life. I did the right thing and agreed to take Calley.

The judge and child welfare people didn't make much fuss about things. They had Nick's sworn statement and endorsement about my good character. I'd had a steady, good-paying job for years. Years before I had been legally established as Calley's godfather. While not married, I had been engaged to the same woman for a couple of years. I didn't have any criminal record. I had a nice home -that I co-owed with the bank- in a nice area of the town I lived in.

I think the clincher was Calley clinging to my side in the courtroom. Mostly in fear of the other places the judge might have sent her. I was appointed Calley's legal guardian until age eighteen, when she was officially on her own. Calley had tears in her eyes as she politely thanked the judge for his decision.

Basically this kept Calley from being a problem for the county in the meantime. I didn't consider Calley to be a problem. She was a good kid. She got good grades. Over the past few years -as Nick deteriorated- she had shown herself to be quite self sufficient. Getting herself off to school as well as tending to his needs when she got home.

I had been amazed when she had recognized me right off when I first walked into the hospital. She called me Uncle Mike and came running up and gave me a giant hug. I thought it might have been Nick telling her that I was coming, but I was to later learn that she honestly remembered me. I was also amazed at what a sweet young lady she had turned into.

At the moment, we didn't have much time to get to know each other again. It seemed that the legal documents were barely signed when Nick checked out. Then it was dealing with funeral arrangements The VA covered it.

There weren't a lot of people at Nick's funeral. I felt sorry for Calley. It wasn't fair for such a sweet kid to have been dealt the hand she had been; losing her mom before she out of grade school and then her father before she was out of Junior High. She hadn't had much of a social life taking care of her father as she had.

After the funeral, Calley and I went through another round of dealings while I sorted through the mess over their home and possessions.

Surprisingly, Nick had a life insurance policy that was in force and listed Calley as sole beneficiary. I say surprisingly, as many -even most- insurance companies would have disallowed the cause of death as a self inflicted injury. But it turned out that Nick had been under recurrent care of the VA when he contracted the hepatitis. By shear coincidence, the VA had a sloppy intern on staff at the time -no longer- who had taken blood samples from Nick. He had reused needles and the hospital ended up with several cases of hepatitis-A, or serum hepatitis, which is generally only passed through sharing a needle with someone who has it.

The hospital assumed responsibility for Nick's hepatitis. He had privately told me the truth before he died. But the status was that through some deal between the hospital and Nick's insurance company, the insurance paid off on the death benefits in exchange for the hospital eating all the medical costs. Calley also got a death benefit from the government and somehow from Social security.

The upshot of all that, was that Calley would be fairly well off when she finally turned eighteen. In the meantime, it was put into trust. That was okay, I was doing fairly well in my career. There was also the matter of the equity Nick had built up in his house, which it turned out the bank had an eager buyer for. Calley didn't seem forlorn about the idea of selling the house. When I asked her about keeping it as an investment she made a face and told me to sell it. So that would pretty much provide for the expenses of raising Calley for the next four years at least. This was at her suggestion, not mine. She said I deserved something for suddenly being forced into being a parent. I finally agreed to accept it, but once alone with the lawyer I arranged for it to be added to her trust with a contingent rider releasing it in case it was needed for emergencies.