Margaret Thornton is a ninety-year-old woman I’m seeing just once, as a favor for her regular nurse. She needs a vital-signs check, evaluation of the ankle edema she’s started to develop, and administration of some antibiotic drops for an ear infection.

Margaret lives in a retirement hotel where each resident has a bedroom, a bathroom, a small kitchen, and a sitting room. “How do you like living here?” I ask, after I’ve finished our visit and am packing up my bag.

“Oh,” she says, looking around as though she too is seeing it for the first time. “Your own home is always better. But after a while, I just couldn’t keep up with it. The stairs, you know. It’s all right here, but for God’s sake, how often can you play bingo? Yesterday, I applied for a job in a bookstore.”

I laugh. “Really?”

“Really. I volunteer at the library twenty-five hours a week. But I need some cash—I haven’t bought an article of clothing in years. And besides, I just … Well, to tell you the truth, the people here are just plain hard to be with sometimes.”

“I can imagine.” I zip my bag, head for the door.

Margaret walks along with me, continues talking. “For meals, I sit at the same table with the same people every day. There’s one woman, Catherine, she’s ninety-three, and I can go and have a cup of coffee with her—you know. But there’s another woman with Alzheimer’s and I’ve seen it progress so fast over the last year. I … well, I feed her, now. I mean, I literally feed her. It’s so sad, I go and get something to cover her up, and then I just sit there with the spoon … I know the staff would feed her, but they’re not very careful. I think she deserves more than that.”

I know exactly what she’s saying. The baby bird tenderness you feel for someone when you feed them. The regret. The way you attempt to give them back some dignity: small bites, so the mashed potatoes don’t fall out, a precise dabbing at the corner of their mouths after the slow, slow sip of coffee.