Fear.

So mum has had a fall. She's broken her hip, it seems. She fell at one in the morning and lay on the floor unable to move until nine thirty A.M. when my brother, Barry, discovered her. Barry was alerted by her cleaner who told him that mum wasn't responding to her calls. Eight hours she lay there in the cold and in pain, not knowing when she would be found. She was lucky. She fell in the early hours of Thursday morning and the cleaner always comes on a Thursday morning. If it had been a different day...well, it doesn't bear thinking about. So she was lucky but eight hours of shivering fear and pain is a long, long time. The ambulance men shot her full of morphine in order to move her and she has an operation scheduled for tomorrow. Barry doesn't know whether it will be a hip replacement or a simple pin, but given the state of her papery bones it will probably be the former. There's even some speculation that the break might have been spontaneous - her osteoed hip breaking of its own volition, no impact necessary.

I don't what's going to happen. I'm sat by Whatsapp waiting for the latest updates. She's very old to be having operations. She's very old to be living on her own. She's very old to be learning to walk again.