"Honey, could you close that drawer back?" Mom asks, gesturing to the nightstand, which I'd left open after taking out that night's round of insulin and pills for her for bedtime dosages.
"Sure, just one second," I said, positioning her knees across the grooved wedge pillow I had ordered on Amazon to elevate her feet and reduce the edema in her legs that was getting worse every day.
"Ed's friends had this daughter," she continues.
"Uh huh," I say absent-mindedly, unspooling the compression bandages I was using to wrap her legs with before she went to sleep.
"47 years old."
"ok," I said.
"She left her dresser drawer open one night?" she adds, almost as if it's a question I'm supposed to know the answer to.
"Uh huh," I respond.
"Tripped over it in the dark."
"Oh yeah?" I ask, my voice muffled from my position speaking into her mattress from the floor, halfway under the bed, looking for one of the bandages I've evidently misplaced.
"Killed her dead," she says, without a trace of drama.
"Uh huh," I grunt in response, crawling back out, so I can reach the hot pink aluminum flashlight she keeps on the dresser.
"Brain bleed," she concludes matter-of-factly.
"Ah!" I say, locating the now illuminated missing bandage. I retrieve it, dust myself off, and take the two steps back to her nightstand, where I close the drawer."
"Thank you honey," she says.