I felt the floor slide out from under me.

They ran blood tests.

They did an ultrasound.

And then the young doctor ordered a CT scan, and the calm way he ordered it — too calm, the deliberate calm of a professional who does not want to frighten you and is therefore frightening you very much — told me that whatever was happening to my mother was not old age, and was not nothing, and had never been an act.

Chapter 6 — The Calls

I waited in the hallway with my hands gone ice-cold, and my phone began to buzz in my pocket.