And here is the thing I was not prepared for, the thing that undid me a little more each visit.

Whoever she thought I was, whatever year she believed it to be, every single time, without fail, she would reach out and take my hand in her small frail fingers, and she would ask me if I was eating enough.

If I was sleeping enough.

If I was working too hard.

She worried about me.

This woman I had been hired to placate, whose son could not be bothered to hold her hand, spent our hours together fretting over whether a stranger she could not even reliably name was taking care of himself.

Nobody had asked me those questions in years.