Her skin looked thin and purple, like it needed to molt and come back better. I didn’t want to overreact but dialed 911 anyway, relayed the story. My voice was full of excuses, guilty like a killer.

“I just know there’s something wrong with her,” I said.

“Has the patient taken any drugs?” the operator asked. I told her what I gave.

“Anything you might not know about?” she said.

“Mom,” I said, “did you take anything?” She drifted. I yelled, “Mom, did you take anything?”

“No,” she said. “Let me sleep.”

“She says no,” I said into the phone, and heard the start of my own suspicion.

The ambulance would be right there. I should stay on the line. But I hung up. “I should never have left these here,” I said, and gathered up the bottles. I took them to the kitchen and dumped them in a plastic shopping bag like I might need to bring her medication to the hospital. I didn’t want the paramedics to see how careless I’d been with it, was the truth.

“I WAS CAREFUL,” I told the team of men when they barged in with a stretcher. Outside, red and blue lights moved in circles. “Naloxone,” someone said and then, “temperature 104, she’s not ODing,”

“Ma’am,” they yelled. I stood in the doorframe, craned to see them work. “Heart rate 93.” They were broad or they were tall. One on either side of her, and the transfer from bed to stretcher was seamless. “Should I ride with you?” I asked and no one answered. I took her purse, my phone, her keys. I followed the men out the door.

24.

“You can’t be here,” a nurse said. My mother was on a gurney, chaos in rings around her. A new IV, wires clipped to her fingertips, her pulse in frantic beeps. The nurse walked me to a narrow room.

It was not a room for waiting, no other people, no television or magazines, no window, just chairs. I sat, looked at my Instagram: bodies in postures of surprise, love, comfort; bodies sharing discount codes, bodies selling shapewear and period panties, skin routines, name necklaces, magnetic eyelashes, lip plumper, bronzer, the perfect all-purpose skillet. People are so shitty, I thought, and imagined posting a video of the airless room, just me inside, a performance of the empty rooms inside us all. Or posting a video of the room like the most basic bitch, talking to the camera, pleading for sympathy, while her mother fought for life. I imagined telling followers how I’d peeled the patch, applied it to her skin. “I killed her,” I would say and go viral, the world rushing to punish or console.