We were both born in the same hospital.
Nineteen twenty one.
Seven days apart.
In the same hospital.
We both grew up one block away from each other.
We both lived in tenements.
On the lower east side.
On Delancey Street.
My family moved to the Bronx when I was ten.
He lived on Fordham Road.
Hers moved when she was eleven.
I lived on a hundred and eighty third Street.
For six years she worked on the fifteenth floor as a nurse where I had a practice on the fourteenth floor in the very same building.
I worked for a very prominent neurologist. We never met.
Never met.
Can you imagine that?
You know where we met? In an elevator. In the Ambassador Hotel, in Chicago, Illinois.
I was visiting family. He was on the third floor I was on the twelve.
I rode up nine extra floors just to keep talking to her.
Nine extra floors.
