Lawrence returned to the bedroom with his phone in his hand.
“We need to get ready,” he said.
I nodded and looked around for the things Constance might need.
A clean cardigan hung over the back of the chair.
Her slippers sat beneath the dresser, untouched.
On the shelf beside the wardrobe were several folded towels and a small box of tissues.
The ordinary objects made the room feel painfully familiar.
For four years, this had been the place where Constance spent most of her days.
We had entered it with groceries, clean laundry, and cups of tea.
We had asked whether she was comfortable.
We had accepted the answers Theodore gave us when she could not respond.
Now every familiar detail seemed to carry another question.
Lawrence opened the wardrobe and found the folder containing some of his mother's medical papers.
He looked through it carefully.
“I don't know whether these are current,” he said.
“Bring them anyway.”
He placed the papers in a bag with her identification and a clean change of clothes.
I checked the small drawer beside the bed for her glasses.
They were there, folded inside their case.
I put them in the bag.
The amber bottle remained on the nightstand.
I made sure not to disturb it.
Theodore watched us from the doorway.
“You're behaving as though something terrible has happened.”
I looked at Constance.
“Something has changed,” I replied. “That's why we're asking for help.”
“You don't know that.”
“Neither do you.”
His face hardened.
Lawrence lifted the bag.
“We'll explain the rest when we know more.”
Theodore stepped into the room again.
“Don't let them fill your heads with nonsense.”
I was surprised by the way he said it.
He was speaking to Lawrence, but his eyes kept moving toward the bed.
I had seen that look before, though I had never understood it.
It was the look of someone trying to hold a conversation in a particular direction.
I wondered how many times I had seen it and dismissed it as fatigue.
I did not ask him what he meant.
There was no time to begin another argument.
Lawrence and I prepared Constance as gently as we could.
We told her what we were doing before each movement.
I explained when I lifted the blanket.
Lawrence adjusted the pillow.
We took care not to put pressure on her abdomen.
Her breathing seemed shallow, and she appeared uncomfortable whenever we changed her position.
I watched her face for signs that we were hurting her.
She blinked slowly whenever I spoke.
When Lawrence asked whether she was ready, she looked at him and moved her fingers.
He swallowed hard.
“I'm right here, Mom.”
His voice cracked on the last word.
He turned away for a moment, pretending to check the bag.
I gave him the space to do it.
We had both been frightened since the previous night.
Neither of us had admitted how much.
Theodore finally moved out of the doorway.
I expected him to help.
Instead, he stood beside the wall with his arms folded.
“Be careful,” he said.
It was the first useful thing he had said all morning.
Lawrence looked at him.
“We will.”
We followed the medical guidance we had received and arranged for Constance to be assessed without further delay.
I stayed close to her throughout the preparations.
When we passed the nightstand, I glanced at the bottle one last time.
The three pale specks remained along its rim.
I could not tell whether they were powder, residue, or something else.
I reminded myself that a suspicion was not a conclusion.
The distinction mattered.
If we were going to understand what had happened, we needed facts.
We needed a professional assessment of Constance.
We needed to preserve what we had recorded.
And we needed to stop allowing arguments inside the family to take the place of answers.
Before we left the room, Lawrence turned toward his father.
“Don't move anything in here.”
Theodore stared at him.
“You don't give me orders in my own house.”
“I'm asking you to leave things where they are until we understand what's going on.”
“You think a camera makes you an investigator?”
“No. I think my mother needs help.”
For several seconds, the two men stood facing each other.
Then Lawrence looked away and returned to Constance.
I followed him.
The camera was still hidden in its place.
Its little lens had watched the room while we watched the screen.
I had imagined that seeing something on a recording would settle our uncertainty.
Instead, the footage had made us more cautious.
We could not turn a few frightening images into a complete explanation.
We could not decide what had happened simply because Theodore's behavior troubled us.
We could not use the camera as a substitute for medical care.
As we moved away from the bedroom, I heard Theodore behind us.
“Constance has been through enough.”
I stopped.
For a moment, I almost turned back to argue.
Then I looked at Lawrence.
He was concentrating on his mother, keeping his attention on her needs instead of his father's accusations.
I chose to do the same.
The hours ahead would be difficult.
There would be questions we could not answer immediately.
There would be people who might tell us that we had misunderstood what we saw.
There might be explanations we had not considered.
But none of those possibilities changed what we needed to do.
Constance needed care.
She needed someone to listen to her, even if listening meant paying attention to a movement of her hand or a change in her expression.
And she needed us to stop treating the peace of the household as more important than her condition.
Lawrence carried the bag.
I stayed beside Constance.
Behind us, Theodore remained in the house with the closed bedroom door.
I did not know what he was thinking.
I knew only that we had finally stopped waiting for him to decide what mattered.
Click here to continue reading: PART 11: Once We Stopped Treating Theodore’s Explanations as Final, We Had to Face How Much We Still Didn’t Know
I Thought My Mother-in-Law Was Simply Getting Worse Until I Saw What Was Happening Beneath Her Blanket
Part 10 of 12
