Part 3 — Mama Wakes Up
I ran across the front yard and through the unlocked door. The person standing beside Mama bed was Mrs. Odom, her neighbor across the street, a retired nurse with forty years on the night shift. She had a flashlight in one hand and three pill bottles lined up on the dresser.
“Joanne, your mother is breathing fine,” she whispered. “But somebody has been giving her double her sleeping medicine. I counted this bottle three times.”
Mama blinked awake and looked at me. She was clear-eyed for the first time in months. “Jo?” she said. “Is it Christmas?”
We drove her to the emergency room. The doctor confirmed the sedative level was far too high and held the pills right away. By breakfast Mama was sipping broth and asking for the crossword.
The rest came together quickly. Craig, Tammy boyfriend, had told her that doubling the sleeping pill would keep Mama quiet so she could rest. In March, Tammy had also swapped Mama real heart prescription for a cheaper pack and pocketed the difference. The “six more weeks” was the date of an appointment with a lawyer, where Tammy planned to get Mama to sign the house over.
Real care is measured at the bedside, not on Facebook.
Adult Protective Services visited the next morning. I handed them the doorbell clip. Tammy gave a statement, and she admitted she had been drowning in debt. She was charged with neglect and financial exploitation of an elder and accepted a plea. The judge ordered probation, restitution of $14,200, and counseling, and she was barred from acting as caregiver or power of attorney.
Craig cooperated fully, and the pharmacy corrected the records. Mama went back on the right medicine, and within a month she was out in the garden in her sun hat.
Tammy wrote Mama a long letter. Mama read it twice and tucked it into her Bible. She has not decided what to say yet, and nobody is rushing her.
I moved into the spare room for the winter, and Mrs. Odom brought casseroles every Thursday. We replanted the rosebush that Tammy had once burned with her cigarette.
On Sunday, Mama walked into church on my arm, in her good hat, and the whole choir turned around to wave.
