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have room to stand in front of the door.
    â€œYeah,” she spoke hurriedly, “Lilly.” Then she saw that Mrs. Loflin was hanging upside down on the side of her bed. “Lord, Lucy, what have you done this time?” She ran across the hall before I could ask another question.
    Mrs. Loflin had not gotten the help she wanted, so she had decided she could get out of the bed by herself. What she hadn’t taken into account was the thick band of cloth tying her right arm tightly to the side rail. She had managed to undo the left restraint, but the other one was a bit too knotted for her to pull apart. She had fallen over on her head trying to release herself. I stood in the hallway while Karen managed to get her back into bed.
    The only visitors I know who came to call on O.T. were Maude when she happened to be on that side of town, his youngest brother and his new wife, Beatrice,once every other week, the preacher from the Baptist Church because he visited everybody, and an occasional friend from the Rotary Club where O.T. had served as president and been a member since 1958.
    No other women had ever visited my husband. We just weren’t close to any. We didn’t have a lot of friends. There were no nieces within a hundred miles; and even if one of them did come by they would certainly contact me since I can’t believe they would be able to find this place on their own. The women I worked with and considered acquaintances were as old as I was, and most of them were taking care of their own husbands. I didn’t think any of them would have time to visit, and even if they did, none of them was young enough to be my child.
    I was absolutely puzzled, and I stood there in the hall waiting for Mrs. Loflin to get turned right side up so that I could find out who my daughter was. It was like trying to chase down a real person to talk to when you call the phone company. Karen went from Mrs. Loflin to Mr. Trabor, who was urinating in the corner of the hall, to a new physical therapy assistant who had put the walking belt backward on Charles Foust and was about to drop him by the linen chute. Then she hurried to the nurses’ station to answer a phone call and explain why the Alzheimer’s patient on the other hall needed to be moved to another room. She would keep trying to talk to me,but the interruptions were fast and furious. And I followed her around like a child.
    Finally, it seemed things slowed just enough for her to stop and catch her breath. She seemed surprised to see me. “Mrs. Witherspoon, what’s the matter? Does your husband need something?”
    I shook my head no and saw her focusing around me at a commotion near the door of the dining room. I stood up taller, trying to block her view. “The woman you said who’s been visiting O.T.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Karen, we don’t have any children.”
    She seemed confused. “Miss Thomas, quit pushing Aunt Babe,” she yelled to the women behind me. Then she turned to me. “She’s been coming about three months now. Said her name was Lilly, from somewhere east of here, not too far, I think.”
    She sighed because Aunt Babe was starting to cry. “Every day,” she added, “about the time I get here.” Then she was gone. Miss Thomas had started pulling hair.
    I stood there in the hallway, a crazy world spinning around me. Clouds building up on the horizon, practically bursting at the seams. People screaming for help, others moaning like they were facing death head-on, nurses and staff trying to create some semblance of order, and the news that a woman, a daughter named Lilly, had discovered my husband and was visiting him.
    More than eleven weeks she had been coming. Three months. Almost ninety days. Somebody who believed herself to be family had sat near O.T. and watched him, learned him, maybe even cared for him. There had been a flood of unexplained emotions, a storm blowing