They called her from the hospital. She drove there in the van, still wearing her work apron. The key machine grease was still on her hands.
At the nurses’ station she signed forms. The ink smeared where her fingers touched the paper. She apologized and the nurse said it was fine, they’d seen worse, and handed her another copy.
Her mother was in the bed by the window. The machines made sounds that reminded her of the shop — rhythmic, mechanical, monitoring something she couldn’t see. She pulled the chair close and sat down and didn’t know what to do with her hands.
All day she made copies. People brought her their keys and she clamped the original, ran the blank against the cutter, checked the notches with her thumb. If the copy was right, you couldn’t tell it from the original. If it was wrong, the lock wouldn’t turn. There was no almost. A key worked or it didn’t.
Her mother’s hand was on the blanket. She picked it up. It was lighter than she expected, the way a blank is lighter than a cut key — all the material still there, nothing yet removed, but somehow less. She held it and tried to think of something to say. She was good with her hands. She had always been good with her hands.
The nurse came in and changed a bag on the IV pole. She asked if there was anything she needed. Her mother’s hand was still in hers, warm, unmarked, and she said no, thank you, we’re fine, and the grease on her fingers left no print on her mother’s skin because her mother’s skin didn’t take prints anymore, and she held on anyway, both hands, the way you hold a key you can’t copy, knowing there’s no blank for this, there was never a blank for this, and the machine by the bed kept its rhythm like a cutter with nothing clamped in it, cutting air.