The rescue squad was heading, fast, for the hospital with a patient on board. Needing help, they picked me up at my office en route.

It was a pleasant, warming spring day in the North Country. There was still plenty of snow in the mountains, but hikers were up there already. Some, from what we called “the flatlands,” wore sneakers. She shouldn’t have. She slipped. She fell.

The phone call came just as Dad and I had finished lunch and were about to enjoy some window-shopping at the mall. It was the nursing home informing us that Ma had again fallen out of bed and was again being taken by ambulance to a nearby emergency room.

It is 1959; it’s my first night on duty as a medical resident at a VA hospital. I am called to the ER.

I enter the ER where the nurse, appearing frightened and perplexed, is talking on the phone. She places her tremulous hand over the receiver and says to me, “It’s a Korean war veteran. He thinks he’s in action and is speaking to his command installation and is screaming for more back-up, more shelling. We are trying to trace the call.”

She hands me the phone.

My parents and I were rushing to D.C. to be by my grandmother’s side–I from Boston by plane, they from Pittsburgh by automobile. It was a cloudy morning.

Upon reaching Reagan National Airport, I switched my mobile out of airplane mode and saw a text from my sister: call mum right now. Despite being the older sibling, I always followed my sister’s instructions and obediently called our mum.