To the editor:

Interesting day… we spent several hours in the Butterworth ER (everyone is fine, Bill gave us a scare by falling at South Pavillon and they just wanted to check him out).

The point of this is to say I have NEVER seen anything like the ER today, and believe me I have spent a lot of time in them over the past years. When I got there, the line of people waiting to get in stretched all the way down the hall at the entry and it was just as bad when we left five hours later.

Don’t know how much may have been COVID related, but you couldn’t have paid me to take off my mask! Even alone in the room we had, I did NOT take it off. The hospital had very strict rules, even for me as a spouse. I could go in to be with him, but if I left they would not allow me back in and absolutely no one else could be allowed in.

No exceptions to masks, either, as far as I could tell and, holy cow, there were a lot of security officers around! Scary place to spend any amount of time.

Glad to be safely back in our home!

Mary Howard, retired Hopkins Elementary principal