What chemotherapy regimen was she currently on?

When had her last blood panel been done?

Who was her primary oncologist?

What was the date of her bowel resection?

To almost every question, I had to force out the same three words. I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I don’t know. And every single one landed on me like a physical blow, because every single one was a thing a daughter who had been paying attention would have known, and I had not been paying attention, and now, in the worst possible moment, my ignorance was being read back to me one clinical question at a time.

At three in the morning, the attending physician came out to the waiting room and explained, gently, what was happening inside my mother’s body: a severe partial bowel obstruction, an infection around the site of her stoma, and a large accumulation of fluid in her abdominal cavity.