The Stranger

Outside, on the other side of the window, the late August rain came down in a steady northwest mist. The gray day was cold and damp. Inside, the warm air rising from the radiator vent smelled of dust. I had been in treatment for two weeks and increasingly felt I had made a mistake in committing myself to the hospital. It seemed to me that I was very different from the twenty-five other veterans with whom I was being treated for alcohol and drug addiction.