I wait, masked as they wheel her out. Six feet away, also masked, a shrunken white thing. In clothes I've never seen before. I tell her my name. She repeats it, as a question. She had a stroke, they said. Maybe more than one. I tell her all my news, to fill up the twenty minutes allowed. I say other names: her sister still living, her husband long dead. No response. Then our eyes meet. No one else has my mom's eyes. So cold, so savage. They say: Who is this person? I'm thinking the same thing. That hasn't changed.
Ian is a self-employed engineer who writes for the fun of it, mostly about self-propelled travel and Vikings. His first book, called "Riding the Big One," has both.