“Yes. Yes, it’s Thursday. I’m here. I’ve got you.”
“I’ve been waiting,” she said. “I knew you’d come on Thursday.”
I called 911 with my hands shaking so badly I dropped the phone twice. I got a towel from the rack, one of the plain gray ones, the ones for her, and I folded it under her head. I got the
blanket from her bed and covered her with it. Her hands were ice cold. I held them between mine and rubbed them and talked to her the whole time, about anything, about the weather, about Willa, about the bird’s nest in the attic window,
The paramedics came in eleven minutes. It felt like eleven hours.
She had fallen getting out of the bath on Tuesday night. She had broken her hip. She couldn’t get up. She couldn’t reach the phone, which was on the nightstand in the bedroom. She had been lying
