In between

She sat hunched, ghostlike, eyes glazed and spirit absent. I stared, disbelieving, feeling hollow inside, as if grieving a death but not quite. I took her fragile hand and instructed her, as I would a child, to get up and move her feet forward, one at a time. The physician in me needed to take charge; the daughter in me felt bereft.

My mind flew to earlier images, from the shadow next to me to the memories of the fierceness that had been my mother. Although she used to occupy endless space-or at least the 400 miles from her house to mine-she had gradually become almost skeletal. Still, I thought, she would snap out of this. The changes in medication that I had discussed with her neurologist …