It had seemed like a good idea at the time. But as his brother, Cooper, always said, “No good deed goes unpunished”. Blaine used to laugh at that, thinking Coop had it all wrong, but he was rethinking that as he drove way past the speed limit to get to the bridge in time. He'd only been north of Lima to the little town of Ottawa once, so he put the Old Mill Stream Scenic Byway bridge into his GPS and took off, speeding the twenty minutes it took to get down the highway to Ottawa. The wind was freezing and gusting pretty hard tonight, blowing the snow all over the road in this freak spring blizzard.

Nearing the bridge, he could hear the water churning by. It was spring runoff and while the river was calm most times of the year, a glance out over the river by his headlights showed swirling white water that had chunks of ice floating in it. He shuddered just thinking about it.

<><><><><><><><><><><>

It had all started a month ago when he and several of his friends were kicking around the idea of what to put on their college applications next year, and Jeff suggested they do some volunteer work. All agreed and after some suggestions Nick had mentioned something he'd read about: The Trevor Project. It was an organization that helped troubled Lesbian, Gay, Bi, and Transgender kids when life overwhelmed them. Everyone in the Warblers, along with a lot of the other boys at Dalton, jumped on the chance to set up their own small help center.

Blaine had been on the steering committee and did some planning and organizing, arranging for a small office, the telephone system to handle the calls, and getting some professional counselors to do the training classes. These were real lives they were dealing with and teenagers were not equipped to handle it on their own.

The teen volunteers would each work with a professional person, but the Warblers thought that the initial peer counseling might be valuable in getting trust started, if the caller just needed a friendly non-judgmental ear to listen. More urgent cases would be forwarded to the therapists or counselors.

The kids had set up the desks and brought in the boxes of supplies that evening and Blaine was helping a volunteer from the telephone company to get the phones set up so the peer counselors could forward the urgent calls to the right desk. Everything looked ready for the next day's start. Trent and Wes had been out stapling flyers all over town, at the high schools, the community college, the shopping malls. Blaine was supposed to meet them for dinner in an hour.

Everyone had gone home, tired after the busy day of moving and organizing, and Blaine was just putting on his coat to lock up and go home when a phone at one of the desks rang. He thought that was kind of random – they weren't open yet, but maybe it was the telephone guy checking on the lines one last time.

“Warbler Volunteer Helpline, this is Blaine, how can I help you?” he said in his most professional voice.

“Ah..is this the suicide line?” a soft voice said.

Blaine felt his skin crawl with nerves. He was alone, no therapists to hand the call off to, hell~ they hadn't even opened yet and he hadn't had the peer training yet.

“Well, yes...but we aren't operational until tomorrow. Can I take a message?” Blaine asked.

There was a snide, nasty laugh on the other end of the phone. “Wouldn't you know it? Here I finally decide there might be some reason not to be standing on this bridge in the freezing sleet looking down at the Ottawa - and I get put on fucking hold until fucking tomorrow. How is that for irony?”

“Oh, no...I wouldn't put you on hold! No, I'm here for you. Right here. Tell me what's wrong, what can I do?” Blaine said.

“Really? I'll give you three guesses why I'm standing here calling a gay helpline about to take a bath in the freezing river. Wow, how did you get this job, anyway?”

“I...ah...volunteered?” Blaine said, not having a clue what else to say. He was trying to dial Wes or Nick or anybody, but it was hard to dial when he was trying not to send this poor guy over the edge with his incompetence.

“Oh. Let me guess. You needed something to put on your precious college application and you're no good at pounding nails to build houses?” the voice said, dripping with angry sarcasm.

“Tell me where you are, I can send someone to come get you, and I'll stay on the line with you so you won't be alone,” Blaine said in what he hoped was a helpful and pleasant voice.

“No.”

“No to telling me or no to me staying on the line with you?”

“No to you'd 'be with me'. You won't be with me, you're in some snug office twenty minutes south of here and I'm standing on a patch of slippery ice in the sleet. In the freezing fucking wind in the fucking dark. So, no, you won't be waiting “with” me, will you?” he said.

“I may not be physically with you, but I can still talk to you, offer you comfort maybe?” Blaine pleaded. “How about you stay on the phone and I can send someone to meet you.” Blaine thought if he could just get the guy to calm down he might be able to get some help to him. If he would tell him where he was, anyway.”

“Unless you have some gas for my Navigator, that won't be possible. I ran out a ways back and I've been walking in my Doc Martins for a while. My feet are so fucking cold. Hey, maybe you could bring me a pair of wool socks so I could warm my feet before I take the ol' plunge,” the boy laughed that nasty laugh, but instead of cold sarcasm it was beginning to sound sad and desperate.

“Maybe I can get someone on the phone for you? Do you have somebody I can call?” Blaine was grasping at straws, praying he could think of something to keep this kid on the phone long enough to contact somebody in authority.

“Nope. If I had someone, why would I be standing here shivering? Damn, it is fucking cold here. This damn cashmere doesn't really hold the heat like wool.”

“Want to tell me why you're feeling so bad? I can listen, I do care,” Blaine said.

“Yeah, right. How can you care when you don't even know me? Oh, I know – you don't want it to look bad on the application that your pet volunteer project ended in a casualty on your first day on the job, eh? Sorry, I'm not buying the whole 'I care' bullshit. If my so-called friends don't care, why should a perfect stranger?”

“But I do. I'm not just doing this for my application to college. I want to help,” Blaine said, suddenly defensive.

“Oh, so I am right about the college ap. Well, nice to know I've helped someone out,” he said and the sarcasm was back. “You know, maybe I'll take you up on your offer to talk to somebody. You are obviously no help, so I'll let you go home to watch Dancing With The Stars or something and you put my call over to someone with more experience. Okay?”

“I can do that. I wish I could have helped you..ah...”

“Kurt.”

“Kurt. Okay, hold just a second and I'll patch this call over to the 911 operator. Is that what you want?” he asked.

“Yeah. Maybe. Go ahead, but – Blaine?- will you come back after you call them and say goodbye to me?” Kurt asked in a very soft voice.

“Of course I will. I will stay on the line with you until they get there.” Blaine said in his most reassuring voice. “Just stay on the line, I'll be right back.”

Blaine breathed a sigh of relief. He would call the 911 operator and then go back and tell Kurt they would come. Oh, he hadn't gotten the address where Kurt was. He clicked the phone back to that line.

But it was dead. He had hung up on the desperate kid, just when Blaine though he might be helping. Blaine thought he would just look at the caller ID and call him right back. But the lines had more work to be done in the morning and the caller ID wasn't hooked up. There was no way to see Kurt's number. Maybe he would call back? Maybe, but Blaine just had the sinking feeling he wouldn't. To have the suicide help line hang up on you was probably the straw that broke the camel's back. And Blaine was responsible. He had to fix this.

What could he do? Call the police? If he had no idea the last name of the kid, or even if Kurt was his real name, or where he was, or what exactly his situation was...he basically had no clue what to do. There had been several logical, rational things for him to do, but Blaine was so upset at possibly causing more hopelessness for Kurt – hanging up on a suicidal person, he wasn't thinking clearly. Which might explain how he left his cell phone on the desk and ran out to his car, getting in and taking off to find a needle in a haystack in the freezing sleet on a cold Ohio night in March.

Sitting in the car, Blaine began to think about what he actually knew about Kurt. Lucky for him, he had a good memory and had been co-captain of the Dalton Debating Team for two years. He was used to thinking on his feet and analyzing facts on the fly. Kurt said he was on a bridge, and it was slick. That let out a covered bridge. He said it was twenty minutes north -Ottawa was the town then. Oh, and he said he was driving a Navigator, well, you didn't see those every day. The only bridge he knew in Ottawa over a deep part of the river was the one on Old Mill Stream Scenic Byway. Okay, he would go there and start looking.