Book excerpt: Everyone has a COVID pandemic story to tell. Dr. Andrew Duxbury has many: stories of a veteran geriatric physician caring for the most fragile patients in a university health system and in rural homes in the Deep South; stories of his concern for family, friends, fellow practitioners, and the state of our healthcare system nationwide; stories of his own isolation, of the loss of simple pleasures and passionate pastimes; stories of policies and politics that contributed to tens of thousands of needless deaths as well-known preventative measures were actively discouraged by state and local governments and exacerbated by cultural divides. This is a rare account of a rare time in American history, a contemporaneous record from the end of "normal", and the anxiety and despair felt by all, to the beginning of fragile hope for a better future.