he wasn’t related to Bubby.
“More than memory changes?” Ally asked rather than get into his personal life.
Jake sighed again. “There’s been an all-round slip in her mental state. She gets disoriented, confused. Bubby has been with her twice now when your mother has forgotten the way back from the senior center. Two other friends found her at the mall unable to find her car in the lot—they had to have security drive them up and down the rows until her friends spotted Estelle’s car, then one of them drove her home. We’ve been waiting—and hoping—that you would notice something and step in…but that’s never happened.”
That last part had a tinge of the previous evening’s criticism in it. But since he was allowing her to get her side of the story in, she said, “My mother and I talk on the phone once a week—every Sunday except this last one. But the fact that she doesn’t remember what I’ve told her from one week to the next isn’t unusual. She’s never been interested enough in what I tell her to make any kind of mental note about it. I’ve always had to remind her again and again that I’m referring to something I told her. I haven’t noticed that being any different.”
“Do you ask how she is? Did she tell you about the mall fiasco? You haven’t seen or heard anything that seems out of the ordinary?”
Ally thought about it, but she honestly could not come up with a single instance in which Estelle had seemed like anything but herself.
“No, nothing,” she said, even though she knew this man was going to take it as a strike against her. “Every week I ask how she is and she says she’s fine—never anything else. When I try to question her about what she’s doing, if she’s getting out of the house, what might be going on with her friends or at the senior center, she will only say that she’s keeping busy, and she gets peeved if I press her for any kind of details, as if I’m prying. Then she cuts me off and that’s it for that week’s call.”
“Maybe she doesn’t think you’re interested.”
So it’s still my fault… Ally was getting mad. “Look, Dr. Fox. Things between us just aren’t…touchy-feely. On either of our parts. She had gallbladder surgery a few years ago and she only told me about that begrudgingly because she said her doctor was going to make her go into some kind of care facility afterward if she didn’t have help at home. As soon as I knew, I rearranged my schedule so I could be here and I’d planned to stay longer but after two days she told me she was well enough to take care of herself and that she wanted me to go home.”
“Estelle is proud of how independent she is. If she felt as if she was infringing on you or on your time—”
Again it’s my fault…
Ally stopped him before he could go any further. “So, were some memory lapses the reason you called me the way you did yesterday?” she asked.
“No,” he said simply. “As I said, the ladies and I do a walk every weekday morning. If someone can’t make it, they either tell us ahead of time or call one of the group to let us know so no one worries. Yesterday Estelle just didn’t show up. I sent the ladies on without me and went to your mother’s house. I found her front door wide open, a burner on her stove blazing hot with nothing on it and no Estelle. After searching the place and calling for her, I spotted her from an upstairs window—she was nearly at the other end of the block, wandering down the middle of the street in her nightgown.”
That knocked some of the wind out of Ally again.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. I went after her, got her back home and she was in such a daze she didn’t understand why I was upset. She said she’d just gone out to get her newspaper, as if that was all there was to it. I got her some breakfast, but I still didn’t want her to be alone. Sylvia—I don’t suppose you know her?”
Ally shook her head.
“Well, she’s one of your mom’s friends, and kindly agreed to stay with her. But by early last night Estelle insisted that she felt fine, that I’d made a big deal out of nothing, and she convinced Sylvia to leave her alone—”
“I must have called the house two dozen times last night and there was never an answer.”
“Sylvia had left by the time I talked to you. Who knows why Estelle didn’t answer the phone—but that’s the point, left to her own devices we don’t know what she’s doing.”
“If all of this was yesterday, how did she end up here today?”
“When she didn’t show up for our walk again today the ladies and I all went over there. We can only assume from the way it looked that she’d tripped over a throw rug in the entryway. She’d hit her head, hurt her wrist and she was nearly incoherent.”
“And that was when you called the ambulance.”
“It was impossible to tell exactly how badly she might have been hurt, so yes, I called the ambulance. She’s been examined, and beyond some bumps and bruises, her wrist is the primary concern for the moment—that’s why she’s in X-ray now. But there’s a bigger picture here.”
Ally was trying to absorb everything. “I didn’t know,” she said.
“You don’t know what’s happening because you’re nowhere around,” he countered as if he couldn’t contain it any longer.
“No, I’m not. I don’t live here.” The explanation sounded feeble even to her, but it was the best Ally could come up with.
“As people age, as their physical and mental abilities decline, they need help. If they’re lucky enough to have family, it’s that family that should provide the help.”
That was a tidy lecture that once again made Ally feel as if he was passing judgment on her. He was just so convinced that he knew the right way. The only way.
“Well, now that I am here, what do you suggest?” she said, challenging his attitude.
In a more reasonable tone, he said, “I’ve been trying to get your mother to go to her primary-care physician for a physical but she’s flat-out refused. I’ve tried to get her to let me order a brain CT or an MRI, to order blood tests to see if we can tell what’s behind the memory lapses, but again, she just won’t do it. As her daughter, it’s your job to intervene.”
“You want me to force my mother to get medical treatment?” Ally said, her own voice taking the opposite turn and becoming louder than it had been.
“Look,” he said, as if he felt the need to impress upon her the importance of what he was saying, “Some of what Estelle is showing could be considered indications of Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t know what your relationship has been in the past, but like I’ve said already, your mother is in trouble and you’re the only family she has.”
He had no idea what he was asking of her.
The nurse who had been in before reappeared in the doorway now. “Excuse me, Dr. Fox, but your secretary just called to remind you that you have a patient and the patient’s family waiting in your office. There’s some volatility…”
Ally looked on as Jake checked his watch. “I completely forgot.
