The Insulin They Sent Her Home Without

What I checked in the car

I tested my mother’s sugar again at ten past seven, in the car, with the dome light on. It was down to 241.

Quentin Sandberg had walked out behind us, carrying nothing, because we had nothing to carry, and stood at the edge of the lot with his hands in his jacket pockets until I had the car started. I think he wanted to be sure we got out all right. He lifted two fingers off his pocket, the way men lift a hand from a steering wheel on a county road, and went to his truck.

Ginny Kowalski had gone back inside. I learned later that she stayed until the line cleared, for no reason that she could name to me, and bought her cranberry sauce.

At bedtime I dialed my mother’s dose myself, twenty-four units, standing at the kitchen counter under the lamp. Before I did it I picked up the pen and held it to the light and turned it once, slowly, and looked at it.

She watched me.

“You do it the same way,” my mother said.

I had not meant to. I had watched my father do it for years without once asking why.

Mike came in at 11:20, mud to the fenders, his hat in his hand. I told him in about four sentences. He stood outside my mother’s bedroom door a minute, listening to her sleep, and then came back and sat down at the kitchen table across from me.

“I should have had my phone,” he said.

“You were three hours off.”

“I’d have driven it in two.”

That was all he said about it, and I was glad.

The week after

On Monday I called my mother’s insurance company and sat on hold for fifty minutes with a pencil, and asked them to put Dr. Shaw’s name and the new brand on file in writing, which they did. I called the phone company and kept Arnold’s line, but I had them send its texts to my number as well, and I took the phone out of the kitchen drawer, charged and buzzing, and put it in my purse.

On Tuesday I drove into Hazel Fork to ask the pharmacy to merge the two profiles. It was Amber at the counter, and she did it while I stood there, with a pharmacist’s signature from Craig, who came out of the back and did not look surprised to see me.

“There was somebody here Monday,” Amber said, while it went through. “A woman from district, from Bowling Green. She walked in at nine with a folder, and she and Craig went in the back for about an hour.”

“Is he all right?”