To the unnamed officer in a Mint Hill hospital

We've stopped talking about the frontline, but I've never forgotten him

An excerpt from my memoir, “Passenger Season”

I met him on the worst day of my life.

Well, one of the worst. If there was a worst-day-of-your-life Olympics, this was getting one of the medals. We didn’t really meet you might think of “meeting” with a handshake or a hello. Instead, he towered over me. I looked at him, a pillar and he, at me, a mouse, as the nurses wheeled my bed past him. Earlier, the nurses took my clothes, my wedding ring, and cell phone, in exchange for flimsy blue hospital scrubs and yellow rubber-stopper socks.

Much of him is a blur. My memory of him reflects my two-month insomnia brain, only recalling a few physical features. He was tall, middle-aged, sturdy, with brown hair, white. He was, of course, in uniform. And our first encounter was him watching me, there to restrain me if I ran. Another officer stood beside him.

I couldn’t run even if I tried. I could barely walk. The neurological deterioration, constant spinning vertigo sensation, and fatigue from COVID suc…