"Last week," Dr. P said "I was invited to a doctors' meeting at the R. Hospital. In one of the rooms a patient, an old man, got up from his bed and moved slowly towards me. I could see that he hadn't long to live, but he came up to me and placed his right foot close to mine on the floor." "Frank!" I cried with surprise. He couldn't answer as I knew, but he tried to smile, all the time keeping his foot close to mine. My thoughts raced back more than thirty years--to the dark days of 1941, when I was a student in London. The scene was an air-raid shelter  , in which I and about a hundred other people slept every night. Among them were Mrs. West and her son Frank, who lived nearby. Sharing wartime problems, we got to know each other very well. Frank interested me because he was not normal  . He had never been normal, ever since he was born. His mother told me he was 37 then, but he had less of a mind than a baby has. Mrs. West, then about 75, was a strong, able woman, as she had to be of course, because Frank depended on her completely. He needed all the attention of a baby. One night a policeman came into our shelter and told Mrs. West that her house had been all destroyed. That wasn't quite true, because the West went on living there for quite some time. But they certainly lost nearly everything they owned. When that kind of thing happened, the rest of us helped the unlucky ones. So before we separated   that morning, I stood beside Frank and measured my right foot against his. They were about the same size. That night, then, I took a spare pair of shoes to the shelter for Frank. As soon as he saw me, he came running--and placed his right foot against mine. After that, he always greeted   me in the same way. Why did Dr P say that Mrs West had to be a strong, able woman?
She was over 75. She needed all the attention of a baby. She had to give care and thought to her son as to a baby. She lost nearly everything in the war.