Chapter 22
Emma arranged the big bunch of flowers in the vase on the table beside her mother’s wheelchair: tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and Dutch iris – blooms that could leave no doubt that spring had arrived. Emma would have preferred a native bouquet of waratahs and leatherwood, but Mum was a traditionalist.
Eileen managed a lop-sided smile. Six years since the stroke, and her mother had made tremendous progress. Therapists at Dr Dennisdeen’s New Town Rehabilitation Hospital had worked with her as an inpatient at first, and later as an outpatient. Mum had painstakingly remastered the alphabet and could read simple texts. Using playing cards and numbered blocks, she’d learned how to count again. Emma was proud of how hard she tried with her daily memory exercises, along with her muscle
