In the mist of memories that flit across the mind from time to time, I recall a man's voice, so compelling that the sound of it instantly caught my attention. I was leaving a medical office in Saratoga, for reasons I can't remember, the office on the corner across from the hospital. It must have been about a dozen years ago, in the time when age wasn't so all-encompassing. I'd checked out and was in the process of leaving when I heard a voice, coming from the area behind the check-out station, or so it seemed. In conversation with the personnel behind the desk, he sounded so friendly and confident I assumed he was a professional, a representative of some kind, but no, he was also leaving the building, just behind me, and I saw he was in a wheelchair, unaccompanied but mobile.
I think he might have asked me to hold the door,or maybe I did it on my own. I know we had a brief conversation, and as he propelled himself out of the parking lot, and down along the lengthy sidewalk, I remembered that he had said, as he thanked me for my help, "It wasn't that long ago that I was walking around just like everybody else." The sound of his voice lingered, and as he wheeled himself away, I'd wished
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