I followed them up.

I want to record that, because it is the moment the whole ordeal turned from a case into a rescue, and it is the moment I hold onto when the rest of it grows dark in memory.

I followed the paramedics up the basement stairs, my hand resting lightly on the edge of the stretcher, and I watched my mother emerge, inch by inch, out of the dark stairwell and into the ordinary light of the kitchen, the kitchen of the house I had bought her, where sunlight was coming through the window over the sink.

She was still unconscious.