I blinked back tears.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated over and over. As if her weakness were something she needed to apologize for.

“Ssh, it’s okay. Don’t move,” I told her.

Stupid thing to say. She arched and writhed, trying to escape the pain.

I covered her with my sweater, moistened her face with a diaper wipe from my giant bag, but it didn’t seem to help. Nothing helped. She lay where she fell until the paramedics showed up.

I couldn’t ride with her in the ambulance. I loaded my babies into their car seats and followed the blinking lights, watching from the drop-off lane as the paramedics unloaded Mom’s gurney. As they wheeled her away through the sliding doors of the hospital, she said something that made one of them laugh. The ache in my chest intensified.

When I returned from parking the car, the receptionist would not let me back to see her.

“She’s in triage now. As soon as she’s settled in a cubicle, someone will be out to bring you back.” Her round, dark face was vaguely familiar. Her gaze dropped to the stroller. “Do you have someone to watch the children?”

“What?”

“Patients in the emergency department are only allowed two visitors at a time. And we discourage children under twelve.”

“But they’re with me.”

“I’m sorry. Hospital policy. Of course, if your mother is admitted, I can take you up to her room.” Her dark eyes were sympathetic.

I wondered if she knew my mother. If she recognized her. From church, maybe, or the farmers’ market or the checkout line at the grocery store. Bunyan was a small town. Our mother ran errands for our neighbors when they were sick, took meals to mothers of new babies, volunteered in all our classrooms. “Do all the good you can, in all the places you can, to all the people you can,” our father liked to preach, quoting John Wesley. Everyone admired our father. Nobody praised our mother. Her goodness was the quieter sort. She just was there. Always.

“What’s wrong with her?”

But nobody would discuss Mom’s condition with me.

“I brought her in,” I protested.

“Are you her designated care partner?” one of the nurses asked.

“I’m her daughter,” I said.

“I know. I’m sorry. But HIPAA rules . . .”

I had already spoken to Dr. Bangs’s office. Nothing to do now but wait. I retreated with the stroller to the row of scratchy chairs and sat, holding my mother’s purse like a talisman in my lap. DJ rubbed the satiny edge of his blanket against his face, a sure sign he was tired. Daisy struggled against the stroller strap.

“Up, Mommy,” she insisted. “Want up.”

I lifted her from the stroller, reassured by her wriggly warmth, her solid weight in my lap. Which meant DJ wanted up, too. I wedged him beside me.

A mother and daughter sat in the chairs opposite mine, the little girl in shin guards and a ponytail, her wrist at an awkward angle. An elderly woman held her husband’s spotted hand. There was a dog-eared copy of Arthritis Today on the table beside me, along with a stack of medical pamphlets and a five-month-old issue of People. Nothing to distract tired two-year-olds. I rummaged in my bag for board books. For juice boxes.