My brother took my mother to the countryside for August – “let her have a break from the apartment building.” On Thursday, my mother called from a neighbor’s phone: she had run out of blood pressure medication, and “Wojtek couldn’t be bothered because he was angry.” I dropped the medication off on Friday. My mother was waiting at the gate with a bag.

“Lucynka, would you take me? For a week?” she asked, not looking at me.

My throat felt tight.

Continued on next page:“Oh, you arrived,” he said. No surprise, no joy. A statement of fact.

– I came with medicine for my mother.

“What medications? I told you I’d get them.”

Mom remained silent. She stood next to the bag and looked away, at the field beyond the fence, as if this conversation had nothing to do with her.

– Wojtek, my mom called and said she ran out of amlodipine.

“Well, it’s over. But I was supposed to go to town on Monday. What’s the problem? It would have lasted four days.”

Four days without blood pressure medication. For a seventy-eight-year-old woman. Four days.

I didn’t say it out loud. I knew Wojtek would say I was exaggerating. That Mom was being dramatic. That he worked hard here, and he also had to keep track of his pills.