Although I took this phone call in 2019, I remember it as clearly as if it happened just yesterday.

 

I was at my desk at work. Mother had been off that morning — she couldn't wear her pants – but we chalked it up to nothing, helping her into them, that it would just pass. 

 

At lunchtime, my phone rang – my mother's colleague. "Your mother is slurring," she said, voice grim. "She might be having a stroke, you need to take her to the hospital". Acting on instinct, I left everything at the office. I told her to stay put, saying, "I'll come soon."

 

Looking back, my immediate thought wasn't, "I need to get an ambulance to get mum professional medical attention as soon as possible." Instead, my instinct was to "drive home, pick Ma up, and go to Singapore General Hospital, because they're the best" — even though Changi General Hospital was half the distance away.

 

That's why the memory of that call is so vivid. If I had chosen the faster route, would the saved minutes have lessened the stroke? Would mother not have developed dementia? Or would things have stayed the same?

 

I know that no matter how many times I revisit that moment, I'll never get the answers.