Levi exhaled hard. “That Sylvie is really something, isn’t she? You better stay on the straight and narrow, dude, ’cause she’ll know if you step over any lines.”

I press tented fingers against the hospital room’s cold glass window. Did Sylvie see that tattoo? A jet from the nearby airport climbs steeply into the sky then disappears behind the clouds. Here one minute, gone the next. It’s not magic, it’s science, engineering, know-how.

“You came,” Mom says, her voice hoarse.

I slide a metal chair close to the bed. Her eyes are still the same shade of indigo, but now red veins spider across a cloudy surface. “Hey, Mom.”

She sniffs. “Thank you for being here.”

We sound like strangers. “Sure.” She fumbles for the glasses that rest on a side table and knocks them to the floor. When I retrieve them, our fingers make contact. Her knuckles are swollen, the skin chapped. She used to get manicures, pink polish, but now her nails are yellowed, ridged. She slides the round black frames on. When did she start wearing glasses?

Mom inspects me, her eyes magnified behind the lenses. “You look tired, and you need a haircut.”

I joke, “I’m not the one who just got a new hip. How’s it feel?”

“Like I got kicked by a mule.” Her rusty laugh devolves into a cough. I pour water from the plastic pitcher into a cup and guide the straw to her lips. It’s a strangely intimate moment and uncomfortable. Mom was never overly affectionate, and our last contact, a brief hug, was years ago.

“The doctors said your surgery went well. You won’t have to stay here for long, but you’ll spend a week or two in a care facility. When you’re ready to go home, I could come for a few days to help with things?” Why did I just offer that?

“No need. My friend, Bernie, can look in on me and pick up anything I need.”

It takes a second to identify the twist of my gut as disappointment. Did I actually want to take care of her? Or did I just want her to want me to do it? “Bernie?”

“Next-door neighbor. His wife died a few years ago. We spend time together. Dinners, dominoes, and Netflix series—my picks are better but I try to be fair. He’s the one who found me on the floor. Such an old lady cliché, I’ve fallen and can’t get up. Humiliating, but we had a laugh about it while we waited for the ambulance.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a boyfriend,” I joke.

Mom actually blushes. “He’d like that, but your dad is the only man in my life.”

He’s been dead over twenty years. A memory of my parents dancing in the kitchen rises to the surface. They loved to dance together, jitterbug mostly. Mom would laugh as Dad twirled her around. When he died, the music in our home died, too.

There’s a knock on the door. Sylvie, balancing sandwiches and Starbucks coffees, stands in shadow, just outside the threshold. “Thought you might want this now,” she says and holds out a sandwich. “I’ll wait in the lounge.”