I arranged everything before I left.
I wrote out the medication schedule on a laminated card.
I put it on the refrigerator.
I also put it on the small table in the guest room.
I put the dates and times of the upcoming chemo appointments on the calendar on the refrigerator and also texted them to Gabriel.
I stocked the refrigerator with the foods my mother could keep down, which after three weeks of chemo I understood well, the specific small foods that were not repulsive to a system that found most things repulsive.
Plain crackers.
Ginger tea.
Rice.
Broth.
Applesauce.
I made a pot of rice before I left.
I showed Gabriel where the ginger tea was.
I said: she needs to take the anti-nausea medication at eight in the morning and eight in the evening.
He said: I know.
I said: the card is on the refrigerator.
He said: I know, Sara.
I said: she might not ask for help. She won’t ask for help. You need to check on her.
He said: I’ll check on her.
I said: Gabriel.
He said: Sara. I’ve got it.
I said: call me if anything changes.
He said: nothing is going to change. Go to your meetings.
I went to my meetings.
The meetings were in Seattle and they were the specific kind of meetings that required full attention, the kind where you could not be somewhere else mentally, where the clients were paying for your presence and the presence had to be actual rather than performed.
I was present.
I texted my mother every evening.
She texted back in the brief way of someone who found texting effortful but who understood it as a form of care.
She texted: fine. Eating a little.
She texted: slept okay.
She texted: took the medication.
The texts were reassuring.
On the fourth day, the morning meeting ended at noon instead of four.
The client had another obligation.
My flight was booked for that evening.
I changed it.
I got on an earlier flight.
I did not tell Gabriel I was coming home early.
I intended to call him from the car.
I landed at seven in the evening.
