The man in the photograph is your father.
I stopped.
I read the sentence again.
Then a third time.
My father had been dead for eleven years.
He had been married to my mother for thirty-seven years. He had raised me, taught me to drive, helped me buy my first car, and attended every important event in my life he could manage.
He was the man who called every Sunday, even when we had nothing to discuss.
How could he have known Eleanor?
I continued reading.
In 1982, I was a young nurse working at a small hospital. One winter night, a man named Joseph was brought in after a terrible car accident.
He was twenty-four years old. He was frightened, stubborn, and far too proud to admit how much pain he was in.
When I told him he needed to rest, he said he would recover faster if I stopped giving him orders.
