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.

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.

We entered the kitchen. Inside, the house looked like the home of a lonely man—clean, but sloppy. A pot on the stove, a dishtowel on the back of a chair, a radio playing quietly in the background. On the table were a newspaper and an ashtray.