I’m still spending a few minutes every few days going through old notebooks, the ones I always carry with me, transferring phone numbers and email addresses. This one contains an entry from the waiting room of a medical office. A neurology unit, the note says, so we would have gone there for one of my husband’s appointments, given his MS.

In the room with us were a father and son, the father a big middle-aged biker-looking guy with a granddaddy beard. The son wore low-riding baggy jeans and looked edgy, skinny, and he was eating fries with darting rabbit motions out of a Tim Horton’s box.

A nurse came in with a clipboard and a questionnaire to fill out. The father reached for it but the son got it first.

“What’s our address?” the son asked, and for privacy reasons, I’m going to change it.

“20970 Old Yonge Street,” the father said.

“Two oh.”

“Nine seven.”

“Nine seven.”

“Oh.”

“Oh.”

“Old Yonge Street.”

The father gave an apartment number and the son repeated it.

“That’s in North York,” the father said.

“Not King City?”

“North York.”

The son looked at the clipboard. “My occupation?”

The father paused.

“I’m gonna put cripple,” the son said.

“You put Nil.”

“I’m gonna put cripple.”

The son wrote it down, then read out a series of questions about family illnesses that his father answered. Heart disease? No. Diabetes? No. Mental illness? No.

The father was getting uncomfortable, looking conscious of the full waiting room.

“Give me that,” he said, reaching for the clipboard.

The son gave it to him, then stood looking at the wall.

“I am in perfect health,” he said. “But I am touched by the hand of God.”