INTRODUCTION

High Flier

I NOTICED HIS CAP EVEN BEFORE I SAW THE MAN SITTING BENEATH IT.

“332^nd Fighter Group,” the hat read, and I knew immediately what that meant. The man had to be one of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen who’d fought so valiantly in World War II for a military and a nation still divided by race.

He was old enough. He was African American. And now he was parked in a wheelchair, unattended, in a busy hallway at the decrepit VA hospital in lower Manhattan, while his couldn’t-be-bothered attendant was jabbering away on her cell phone.

Tuesday noticed him first. Tuesday often notices things before I do. He’s more intuitive—and, yes, far better trained. As soon as we made it past the elaborate security checkpoint at the hospital’s main entrance—always an ordeal with a service dog—Tuesday was tugging on his leash and signaling to me: Luis! Wait a second! That man needs something!

I’d read plenty about these flying aces, how they had trained in a tiny speck of dirt called Tuskegee, Alabama, and went on to complete 1,578 missions through heavy combat in North Africa and Italy. The Airmen flew hand-me-down Republic P-47 Thunderbolts and North American P-51 Mustangs with the tails and rudders painted bright red. That’s why the Airmen were often called “Red Tails” by other fliers in the Army Air Corps, the predecessor to our modern U.S. Air Force. The Airmen’s wartime accomplishments included destroying or damaging 409 enemy aircraft, 40 boats and barges, and 745 boxcars, rolling stock, and locomotives. Using only machine-gun fire, a Tuskegee Airman was credited with sinking the Giuseppe Missori, one of the fiercest destroyers in Mussolini’s Italian Navy. Long before the modern civil rights era, the Tuskegee Airmen taught a lesson to a nation not quite ready to learn it: Talent, bravery, and patriotism have nothing to do with skin color. But until that day in the hospital, I had never personally met one of these humble heroes.

The man in the wheelchair looked old, old in a way that old veterans sometimes do—gnarled and twisted, blank and glum, like he’d seen a lot and done a lot but couldn’t hide what the years had done to him. His spine was bent with scoliosis. His eyes were impossible to see behind Coke-bottle cataract glasses. He certainly didn’t appear eager for chitchat.

Tuesday and I had come to the hospital for one of our biweekly counseling sessions, the standard-issue treatment for an Iraq or Afghanistan War combat veteran who battled raging, full-blown PTSD. The truth was that Tuesday, my golden retriever service dog, had done far more to ease my symptoms than any human Department of Veterans Affairs employee ever had, helping me secure the control and the confidence I needed to leave my apartment, quit drinking so much, finish graduate school, write a bestselling book, rebuild my relationship with my family, and begin traveling around the country advocating for America’s battered and ignored military veterans, among others. But as good as Tuesday was at his job, talk therapy was important, too. I’d finally found a caring therapist at the VA. So here we were for another forty-five minute fuel stop on the long road to recovery.

All around us were sad-looking patients and overwhelmed or distracted staff. Veterans on crutches, veterans on walkers, veterans on canes, veterans in wheelchairs—the few who were walking without assistance shuffled along. Everyone else seemed to be waiting in lines that made the lines at the Department of Motor Vehicles look efficient and quick. There were lines to get prescriptions filled. Lines to see a doctor, a therapist, or a nurse. Lines to get a number to stand in another line. Old soldiers don’t die, it seemed. They just shuffle down the hallway or wait in endless lines at the VA.

No one seemed to be complaining. Most of the patients looked heavily drugged to me, like zombies more than warriors, though clearly they had all once been vigorous and young. Almost everyone seemed to have a cap, a patch, a T-shirt, or some other insignia connecting them to a branch of the service and a recent or ancient American war. “Marines.” “Airborne.” “Korea.” Many of them from an era when a patch or hat saying they’d served was enough to command instant respect. God bless ’em. They are my brother and sister veterans. They deserve so much better than this. But the disrespect they’ve gotten and the treatment they haven’t received leaves far too many of them in hallways like this one.

Could Tuesday tell the man was in physical pain? Did his canine Spidey Sense detect that the man was having a combat flashback? Was it just a vibe that here was someone who could really use a hug? It could have been any of that. Or all of it. Over the past five years, he had woken me from enough nightmares, also known as night terrors, for me to recognize the signs: Tuesday picks up on all kinds of things.

We had time before our appointment. Given the lines, we always arrive early at the VA. And I trust Tuesday enough that when he says, “Stop,” I say, “You bet! Right here!” It’s almost always because someone needs something, and Tuesday thinks he can help. Most of the time, that someone is me. But sometimes, it’s a total stranger.

I shot the inattentive attendant my stink eye, that powerful stare of negative energy, my sharpest nonverbal judgment of that’s-not-cool-ignoring-your-patient-like-that. On this occasion, the stink-eye effort produced exactly zero results. The woman was still prattling away on her phone, totally useless in her blue scrubs. As Tuesday prepared to step forward, I turned my attention from the careless caregiver. I got a closer look at the man in the wheelchair.

The man seemed almost catatonic. His only expression was blank. The attendant still hadn’t so much as glanced at him. I hated the idea that someone so uncaring might be taking care of my mom or my dad someday or one of America’s veteran heroes. Her inattentiveness was the opposite of everything I had learned as an army leader, where initiative-taking and selflessness and working to the bone were what kept my soldiers and me alive and allowed us to accomplish the mission, no matter how tough the mission was. We do our best to look out for each other in far-away battle zones. We don’t come home expecting to be treated like nearly invisible zombies shuffling down the hallways, pieces of meat rolled around in chairs. This man was someone who needed real attention, not the fake attention of a blue-scrubbed clock-puncher at the Manhattan VA.

“Go say ‘hi,’ Tuesday,” I told him. “Go say ‘hi.’”

Tuesday approached slowly.

He put his head gently on the man’s left thigh just above the knee.

The man didn’t seem to notice.

He burrowed his nose into the crease beneath the man’s leg, playfully smooshing around down there.

I figured I’d better say something. Without a word of invitation, my loyal service dog had just entered this stranger’s personal space. Now Tuesday had his snout resting on the old man’s lap.

“This is my service dog, Tuesday,” I said, trying to sound upbeat. “He needed to say ‘hello’ to you.”

Was the man going to respond? Did he understand what was happening? Was he even awake?

Ten seconds passed. It seemed like ten minutes.

It was like Tuesday was pulling the choke starter on an ancient lawn mower, struggling with all he had to get the old clunker to start. This could take a few pulls, I thought to myself.

Finally, the old guy lifted his chin.

“Tuesday?” he sputtered. “What kind of name is that?”

No hi. No smile. No nice-to-meet-you. I guess I was just glad he reacted at all.

Tuesday’s eyebrows started dancing. His eyes darted back and forth. His tail began to wag. His snout brightened into a warm, welcoming smile.

“You’re right,” I said. “That’s an unusual name for a dog. I didn’t name him. Tuesday is the name he came with. No one really knows what it means.”

The old man kept staring. At least now I could tell he was awake.

“He’s my dog,” I said. “And my best friend.”

“I know he’s a dog,” the man answered.

This was hard. But a little grumpiness wasn’t going to deter Tuesday. He was determined to turn this man’s day around. So we stuck with it. Tuesday just needed a little verbal help from his wingman.

“Well, my dog saw you,” I continued. “And he wanted to say hello.”

That was all it took.

Tuesday pressed his furry golden coat against the man’s spindly legs and let out a few affectionate doggie murmurs. The man’s mood suddenly lifted. The tone in his voice softened, too. In those few seconds, he’d gone from catatonic to curmudgeon to grandpa. Believe me, that doesn’t happen by accident.

To the casual observer, Tuesday was just saying hi. But I knew better. I knew he was also taking the old veteran’s pulse, one of many things he learned to do in his two years of intense training as a service dog. He was listening to the man’s respiration. He was smelling whether the stranger was experiencing pain. Here Tuesday was, inside this huge and depressing veterans’ hospital, staffed with hundreds of trained doctors, nurses, and cell-phone addicted aides. And the golden retriever was the one triaging the patient, checking this old man’s vital signs—and making a new friend at the same time.

Dogs are amazing, aren’t they?

With a little groan from the effort, the man’s left hand came over Tuesday’s head and started gently stroking. The man rested his right hand in the soft fur behind Tuesday’s neck. This was exactly what Tuesday was reaching for, not because he wanted to be petted, though when he isn’t working he does love that. Tuesday wanted the man to feel better. He wanted the man to smile. He wanted to shine some affection on someone who clearly needed attention. He wanted to deliver relief. Smack in the middle of this bustling VA hallway, he recognized that this man looked all alone and decided to remedy that.

I am used to this sort of thing.

Tuesday and I have been together for eight years now, and I am still amazed at how he can pierce these situations in ways humans can’t. It no longer surprises me, but I am still in awe. As we travel the country, Tuesday keeps radiating that warm, loving light of his. And people are almost always unable to resist the power of that glow.

This time, Tuesday’s life force started one man’s engine and suddenly he was humming along. The difference was sufficiently striking that even the inattentive attendant couldn’t help but notice. Suddenly, she was smiling. “I have to go,” I heard her say into the phone, and then she too was bending over, petting Tuesday.

We’ve had thousands of encounters like that over the past eight years. Big ones. Small ones. Some I’ve totally forgotten. Others I never can. In connecting with Tuesday, countless lives have been changed.

The man’s weathered face transformed as he smiled broadly. Behind the Coke-bottle glasses, I still couldn’t see his eyes, but I’ll bet they were sparkling. Unfortunately, it was time for our appointment and we had to go.

“It’s been a real pleasure to meet you, Tuesday,” the veteran announced, now speaking in a voice that hinted at the confident warrior he had once been. “My name’s Harold. Most people call me Harry. You can call me whichever you like.”

The man turned and looked up at me with pride, slowly straightening his frame until he sat taller in the chair. “I was a pilot in the Second World War. I flew with the 332^nd Fighter Group. They called us the Tuskegee Airmen. We were something special, we were.”

Just then, a nicely dressed woman walked up with a little girl who must have been seven or eight years old.

“There you are,” the woman said to Harry, and then to me: “I’m his granddaughter. This is his great-granddaughter, Ella.”

The little girl craned her neck to look up and told me, “Grampa Harry lives with us.”

“So nice to meet you both,” I said. “This great man was just saying hello to Tuesday, my service dog.”

Harry took his eyes off Tuesday long enough to glance up at me. “What a wonderful dog you have,” he said. “I am so glad the two of you decided to say hello.”

I didn’t have to utter another word.

A “Red Wing” was taking flight again. Lifted by the spirit of a special golden retriever, the man soared.