One yellowed page removed from a novel. In my hand, it flapped in a sudden breeze that rose up that November morning. One page. Torn from a book. Something I’d never read before. At the time I couldn’t know that this page would change my life forever.My own spidery scrawl leapt up at me from the snowy paper of the envelope: Dr. Mark Hinton, followed by my post office box at the medical school. As a new doctor about to finish my residency, I had sent out a stack of SASEs to medical groups around the country who were looking for physicians in my specialty. Though I’d already accepted a position to practice with a prestigious local group, I’d been curious to know what was in the envelope. It was odd, though. I thought I’d got the last of them back months ago.The fragment came from pages 307 and 308 of some unidentified book. The top of the sheet had been torn so that I could not see the title of the work. I read it, front and back. The style of writing was old-fashioned, as if from a classic.
