I don’t repeat to her that I’m her son. I say my name instead, and her mouth and tongue move as if I’d taught her an unpronounceable word, like isthmus or Worcestershire. But she tries to say it again and again and again, failing each time. Then she gives up and starts to whisper to herself. “I need better . . . I need to get better.” It’s her first coherent sentence.

The ambulance arrives. Seven EMTs. They ask my mother questions. She cannot answer them, and in that she’s truthful.

They put my mother on the gurney and pull her to the front door. Not one of them tells me where they’re taking her. They don’t know I’m her son; even my mother doesn’t know I’m her son. When I try to follow them out the front door, an EMT with thin lips puts his hand up, tells me to stop, says I’m not clear to leave. He thinks I belong here. By a dirty white van—double doors open—the exterminator cleans the black boxes. I can’t tell if he watches.

I pretend the EMT’s right, and I wait for them to leave. Through the closed front doors, the EMTs load the gurney with Mom into the ambulance, and the doors slam shut.

The woman with the small head is shaking when she asks if I am okay. I tell her I am. Then she says they took my mother to St. Vincent’s.

The puddle is still on the floor. It’s flowing down and away from the table. A river. Or an ocean. Both packs of cigarettes I bought my mother are gone, and I look through the window out back at the gazebo and Meryl is outside with the others, smoking.

In the parking lot of the crisis stabilization unit, I lean for a while on the green car I borrowed from a friend. Eventually Mom calls my cell from the ER. She says she had a seizure.

“I know,” I tell her. I kick dirt and roll black earth under my foot. “I was there.”

“What?” she says. “I thought . . . I thought you left.”

I tell her I was getting ready to leave, that Meryl wanted me to get cigarettes for her. I tell her almost everything. How it all happened. But I don’t tell her that I thought she was dying. I don’t tell her how much my legs shook, how my voice quivered when I said, “Mumma, mumma, mumma.” I don’t tell her how little and alone I felt. I don’t tell her how I’ll always bring her cigarettes, how I’ll watch that movie for sure.