Lucky there comes another infusion nurse to the rescue. A guy, big, soft-bellied. Andy, his badge says. Weird, male nurses! But some of them are pretty good.

Clumsy-seeming Andy, but he’s guiding the needle slantwise into Mom’s arm at the elbow. Just a pinch, ma’am. Sor-ry. But Andy gets a vein on the first try, which is pretty damn impressive.

By this time my heart is beating so hard, it’s an adrenaline rush without vaping.

When I return to the infusion room two hours later, the oncology doctor is waiting for me. Seems that Mom is in discomfort. Face white, wizened.

It’s explained to me: your mother’s blood pressure is dangerously low. Her blood work is showing abnormally high white blood cells.

Oxygen intake abnormally low—eighty-three.

Christ!—eighty-three out of one hundred?

Also, Mom has been complaining of lower right abdominal pain. So the oncology doctor is saying he is going to call the ER, prepare for Mom’s being brought to the ER, which he recommends immediately. Don’t go home first, go to the ER, and the office here will fax over the blood work, vitals, infusion record, etc., but Mom is pleading no, please no, she does not want to go to the ER. She is just agitated, she says. Gets high blood pressure in the infusion room, she says. Her pulse is high, she doesn’t breathe correctly in the infusion room. Once she gets outside in the fresh air, she’ll be okay. Mom pleads.

Yes, but there’re markers in the blood work. Renal failure? Creatinine level high.

How high?—I’m asking.

Three point something. Shit—that is high.

Mom refuses an ambulance. Mom walks leaning on me, then on the walker, swerving and skidding through the plate-glass automatic doors like a drunk woman.

Just take me home, Mom says. No ER!

So I’m saying okay, Mom, but first you need to get checked out at the ER, then if it’s okay we can go home. So I’m able to get her over to the medical center, checked in at the ER, start the process going. Turns out Mom’s blood work is pretty bad. Anemia, plus other shit. Chronic abdominal pain—the oncology doc has recommended a scan.

While Mom is being examined by a (young, Asian-looking) doctor in one of the cubicles, I’m starting to feel really anxious. Maybe it’s withdrawal—(already?)

What I’d resolved was not to Juul for, like, twelve hours.

Problem is, when you’re high, you forget what it’s like to be not-high.

When you’re high, no thought in the world for dickheads that crash.

Don’t ever smoke, Jacey. Promise me.

Yah okay, Mom. I promise.