The second document was worse—When Elderly Parents Become a Burden: Making Difficult Decisions About Care—and in the margins, in Nyla’s neat handwriting, were notes about cost, “legal steps if labeled incompetent,” and timing.
The third document was about medication interactions in older patients: accidental overdoses and prevention. Sections about certain mixes of sleep aids and calming medicines affecting breathing and brain function were underlined. In the margins, she’d written little calculations, timing references, questions about what could be blamed on natural causes.
It wasn’t a how-to manual, not exactly. But it might as well have been.
I swallowed hard.
“Where did your mother get the medicine?” I asked quietly.
“Different places,” Damian said. “Some from doctors, when she told them she couldn’t sleep. Some from websites where you can buy stuff and have it sent. And some from next door. From Mrs. Henderson.”
My head snapped up.
Mrs. Henderson had lived next door to me for twelve years. She was in her seventies, lived alone with three spoiled cats, and had recently had a hip replacement. I’d brought her casseroles after her surgery.
“How?” I asked.
“Mom volunteers to pick up her prescriptions sometimes,” Damian said. “Mrs. Henderson has really strong medicine after her surgery. Pain pills and stuff to help her sleep. Mom says it’s hard for her to get to the pharmacy, so she offers to help.”
I pictured Nyla at the pharmacy counter with concerned smiles, signing for medication that wasn’t hers.
“There’s more,” Damian added, reaching back into the folder.
He pulled out a single sheet of lined notebook paper, edges torn rough.
Across the top, in Nyla’s tidy script: L.M. Progress Notes.
My initials.
Beneath that were dates stretching across nearly two years. Short observations about my reactions, my “confusion,” when to increase, when to decrease so I wouldn’t get checked by a doctor.
Toward the bottom, the notes changed.
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