It was an extraordinary moment for me, a powerful moment, and a beautiful one.

She came up to me, and her eyes were full of tears, and she said she needed to speak to me; she said she had something important to tell me that she had never told anyone.

She said she wanted more than anything to read, but she has not been able to. She wanted help. Her husband had encouraged her to talk to me.

She is a nurse’s aide, in her mid-40’s I guess, married with two daughters, one 14, one nine.  She changes sheets, cleans up, helps surgical patients dress and get to the bathroom, and locks up their clothes.

She was exceptionally kind and empathetic.

I met her during the preparations for a surgical procedure in the late Autumn. We were easy with each other, laughed at each other joke’s and became friends.

It was okay to be anxious around her, she understood and didn’t assure me everything would be all right.

She had googled me and found out that I was a writer.

She told me she had always wanted to read but never found the time, always got distracted, was too restless. But she seemed uncomfortable talking about it.

She is literate and can read signs and newspaper headlines. She just couldn’t manage to absorb or follow a storyline or sit down and read a book.

She loved stories, she said; she loved to hear them and tell them.

She didn’t know why she couldn’t read books, she always wanted to.

Her husband was an avid reader, she said, he encouraged her to keep trying to read.

This caught my attention and stirred me up; this, I thought, is what I do. She was in some pain about it, and I felt for her.

After I got home, I ordered four books from the local bookstore, novels that were successful and highly regarded, all books Maria and I had read and could vouch for.

When I next saw her, during a post-surgical check-up, I asked her how the book reading went, and she just shook her head and look embarrassed, and said, “I’m sorry, I just haven’t found the time yet.”

Somehow, I believed there was more to the story than that.

Today, I had to go back to the hospital for a final post-surgical check. As I was leaving, checking out, She was coming out of an examining room.

We were face to face, so I asked her one more time (then I’d drop it) about how she had fared with the books. She hesitated, seemed unsure, then made a decision.

“Can I speak to you for a second?” she asked, gesturing to an empty examining room. I followed her in. I saw her eyes were filling up with tears.

“My husband made me promise to speak to you if we met again,” she said. “He insisted I tell you….” She stopped. My first thought was that the husband would send a message telling me to mind my own business and stay away from his wife.

She covered her mask with her hands and spoke into the mask, trying not to look me in the eye.

“I just couldn’t follow any of it,” she said. “I couldn’t understand it. I can’t understand what I read. My husband said I should tell you that; he says, “you’re not stupid.” If this man thought enough of you to give you – a stranger – these books, then he will try to help you.”

She was sobbing by now, grabbed my arm, and said she has always wanted to read but never could follow a story, what we call a narrative.

“My father and my teachers all thought I was stupid,” she said. “My husband says I’m not stupid…I’ve never talked to anybody about this, and I want so badly to read. We can do that together.”

One of the doctors walked by the room, puzzled and confused, and then I held up my hand, and she moved quickly away.

“Listen,” I said, “God bless your husband; he is a good man. I am Dyslexic, and I was a literary tutor in New Jersey for five years; I had a night class for people with language or other reading problems. There is help for this.”

She was absolutely shocked to hear this was a problem that other people had and that could be helped.

I asked her to read aloud the letters on one of the examining room signs. She read perfectly well; she just couldn’t follow the text in a book and comprehend it.

The odd thing was that I’d had that problem myself, and I’d seen that problem; it was why I was tested for learning disorders and learned about my Dyslexia.

I know what it means to be treated as if I were stupid, people are quick to talk about my typos and odd grammar. A doctor told me I’d never be able to write a blog every day, and it will always be a struggle in some ways.

But I know there is help for this person.

“It’ s a disorder,” I said, not a question of intelligence.

“Everybody thought I was stupid too, and so did I for the longest time.”

I told her about the tests doctors and neurologists gave for learning disorders, the medicines that were sometimes used, the tools and techniques for learning how to read books with different colors and fonts, to build up to reading regular books and magazines.

It could be done, I said. I did it; lots of other people do it. It’s common; I will help. By now, we both were crying, and I rushed out to the car. I called Maria and told her about this extraordinary thing that had happened.

In a flash, she was crying too.

I called my local bookstore and also a bookstore in New York City I once visited often. I asked them to find me a half dozen books that help people who struggle with reading to start over again and use some new techniques for comprehension.

The students start slowly with short lines, small paragraphs, different colors.

Tomorrow I’ll call my primary care doctors and get the name of a reading disorder specialist or a neurologist, someone who can test her for learning disorders if she needs that.

I’ll also bring some beginning reader books to her, if she can grasp those stories, she’s on her way. The rest is technique.

I turned off the engine, got out of the car, and came running back into the doctor’s office and found her again. It was a gloomy snowy and icy day, but it felt like the sky had opened and the sun was shining right on me.

“We can deal with this,” I said. “We’ve come a long way since I was made to feel stupid, or you were. I’ve been there. I know you can read if you want to.  Kiss your husband for me. Thank him for me and tell him help is on the way. I want to meet him and shake his hand.”

“I shouldn’t be hugging you because of Covid-19,” she said,  but she gave me a big hug and thanked me again and again. I was getting sloppy myself, so I just left,” but I was excited and very happy.

This is what it is about; this is the path for human beings. I’m grateful she came to me for help.