And I understood, kneeling next to her, calling for help with one hand and holding hers with the other, that the cruelest thing I could do would be to make it a big deal, to fuss, to confirm with my alarm that she was now The Kind Of Person This Happens To.

So I didn’t.

I made my voice ordinary.

I said, “Well, this is a nuisance, we’ll get you up,” in something close to her own register, and I saw her grab onto the ordinariness of it like a rope, grateful I was not going to make her be pitied on top of everything else.

That is a thing I learned from Enid and gave back to her in the worst moment of her year: that dignity is a kindness you can extend to a person even flat on the floor, simply by refusing to treat their bad hour as their whole truth.

But those five days scared me, and they scared her, and unfortunately they also scared Sherry, and fear, in families, has a way of reaching for the largest available solution.