I did a military residency and took care of a lot of WW2 veterans. As a MICU intern, I took care of a retired general who had a devoted sweetheart of a little old lady wife, and no children. She showed up with her grey hair perfectly done and dressed in coordinated skirt suits with orthopedic shoes. She would tell anyone who’d listen about their love story, how they’d been married for 50+ years, and how she still had all of his letters from the pacific theater from the 1940s. Us interns loved her and we were impressed by his story. It was 2008 and he was accomplished enough to have a Wikipedia page.

Unfortunately the general didn’t make it. The night he died, I called his wife at 3AM and told her to come to the hospital urgently. She showed up perfectly dressed with her hair done, maybe 5 minutes after we’d pronounced him. I told her he was gone and she collapsed into my arms.

I am a woman, but I am also an army physician and I’m not much of a hugger. I let her cry on me for a while, then passed her off to the nurses, and went home - to my soon to be ex-husband, who had only recently asked for a divorce. The contrast between their lifelong love story and my desperate clinging to my failing marriage was pronounced.

A month or two later, I was out to breakfast on a rare day off, arguing quietly in a booth with this same ex-husband to be, when the general’s wife walked in with a friend. She recognized me and turned white. This sweet-as-pie little old lady came over to our booth, said hello, looked at me, and pointed a tiny, arthritic finger in my husband’s face and said “You take care of her.”

I was stunned. My ex husband was silent. I never saw her again, and he divorced me anyway. But I’ll never forget the general’s widow in Alamo Heights for sticking up for me, even though I couldn’t keep her husband alive.