The daughter was here again today. 

She’s here most days, and sometimes I wonder if she goes home, trudging in the January snow, just to come back the next day. Normally, I like to make the rounds in the morning and come back again after lunch to administer medicine, check in with visitors, the usual. And normally, Lisa is asleep by then. So I had to pause when I saw that Marcia was still there, spooning broth to her mother, wiping any drippings with a tender care that can only be reflected in a child’s touch. Marcia’s not much of a child, really, and by comparison, I’m the child in the room, the young nurse beside the one-hundred-year-old mother and daughter I’d guess to be seventy-eight, maybe eighty. But something about the way Marcia’s hands moved, rhythmically replacing each empty spoonful with a brush on the cheek and a pat on the hand, made me stop by the plastered door frame to watch. It was as if I was seeing their stories play out, the ones Lisa had repeated to me over and over again. I wasn’t there then, but I’ve heard their lives so many times I can tell about them as well as Lisa used to. Marcia wiping away her mama’s tears after her brother’s wedding, the family dog burial in Great-Granny’s yard, how the two used to run an antique shop together. It is my job to form connections with the patient and the family, so they trust me when I insert the catheter, tell them it’s my turn to brush their parent’s hair or change a set of sheets. It’s my job to bridge the outside world to our little, indoor one, and to keep the families from doing what they pay to have done for them. But today I watched as a ghost in the doorway, allowing Marcia to sit at the foot of the bed she insisted on making. Her hands had been shaky then, just as now with the broth, as her words had explained that this is how Mama, Lisa, used to do it, with the corners double folded. 

“There, Mama,” Marcia whispered. “You’re going to like dinner tonight, I just promise.”

Lisa’s heavy-lidded eyes stayed focused on the bowl, occasionally moving to the photo of Herb on her nightstand. It was impossible to know if she remembered him, or even knew that he had been her husband. I remember meeting Herb the day he left Lisa in our care. He had been the kind of man you knew would never retire, no matter his age, and who loved the art of humor as much as he loved the gratification of making people laugh. We were surprised Herb didn’t have sicknesses of his own, but he might as well have lived at the home, with the frequency he cared for Lisa. Against the wishes of his children, who were getting old enough to be taking their own advice, he had been driving. In the end it was the rain that took him, the hydroplaning into a white oak on the bend of Route 30. 

I remember a Thursday in the rain, the first of many rainy days, when Lisa had whispered Herb’s name. I had left her a cup of water by the bedside, and she must have seen the watch next to it, the only salvageable item after Herb’s accident. It still kept ticking, and yet it seemed to be keeping track of nothing. It had forgotten that Herb was dead as easily as Lisa. 

About a year ago it rained, and I was waiting for Lisa to ask where Herb went, why he hadn’t come yet that day. I was waiting to tell her that he would come by tomorrow, that she needed to rest now. But she never asked. It wasn’t the absence of words that told me her speech had finally gone, but the way she had turned her head, looking as knowingly as a younger self at the watch. No words.

“And Mama, I promise I am taking care of all your great-grandkids. Lucy and Cece and Piper and Will and Luke and Riley,” Marcia said. “Sometimes they tell me to sit down too much, but I always say if my Mama could cook all of Thanksgiving dinner on her own at age eighty, then so should I! But you know, Mama—Mama, you’ve spilled, let me get that—you know, Mama, the cooking’s not the same without you. Do you remember that night in ‘62, when you and I cooked my entire rehearsal dinner? I still have that silver serving spoon, the one we used for cornish hen pie. I wish I could say I knew where your veil is now, maybe Lucy wore it, or Cece? One of those girls has it now, and she wore it for her wedding, just like I wore it for mine and you for yours. I wish you’d have been there Mama. It was one of those weddings we used to dream about, the kind we’d laugh over never being able to afford. But if I could have it all, I’d still choose your Ham Delights and cranberry sauce over anything.” 

Marcia continued spooning broth, catching the drippings of her unsteady hands with the bowl beneath Lisa’s chin. There was no longer steam rising from the clear, fat-free stock, but I don’t think Lisa could have known the difference between hot and cold at that point. In the absence of death is the waiting for red to become gray, hot to become lukewarm. Marcia’s hands went back and forth, bowl to mouth, while Herb stood stoically beside them, his own waiting period eternal. 

“Marcia, it’s 2:30. You can come back tonight,” I said, leaning in. “There’s someone waiting to drive you home.” 

“Just a little longer,” she said. She didn’t turn her feeble body to look at me until she said it again. Her pink shawl dropped to her elbows and it was then that I noticed her hair was as white as her mother’s. 

“Please, just a little longer.”