... The next morning, I was found lying in a snowbank a good distance from the house, with tears and the other residue of long weeping frozen to my face — so close to death, I was told, I was not even shivering. After they brought me back, I have since learned, I lay a long time in the infirmary, alternating between fiery delirium and moveless stupor, which spared me a great deal pain. I lost the end of my nose, the tops of both ears, and the outer digits of my feet and hands. If I ever walk again, it will be with the greatest difficulty, and I am having to learn to feed myself (and to write!) from the other side.

Yesterday, a person claiming to be an old friend was led into my room near the infirmary wing. He was unbearably familiar with me, and I was only able to get rid of him by being rude. I was still fuming about how this insufferable intrusion had been permitted, when my personal care attendant "reminded" me that I surely must recognize the man who had sat with me so often for so long during my convalescence.

I remember no such person. My attendant suggested, in his patronizing way, that the severity of my "accident", as he called it, may have interfered with my memory. I dismissed the idea at once, but I am beginning to think that I need to take an inventory of what I *do* recall. Unbelievably, it has never before this moment struck me that I have no idea *how* I came to be lying in a snowbank a mile from the house, nearly frozen to death!