A drama of dentures and sisterly love

I could swear that my eyesight started to go the moment I hit 40, just like mama said. Like clockwork. I suppose I can always blame it on the computer age: all of that staring and typing can't be good for the head or the hands. Either way, there's no stopping the effects of time or gravity. Both always win; sometimes, to tragicomic effect. Last Sunday my dear aunt Anya was having a bad day. A very bad day. She was vomiting for a better part of three hours, and was overall queasy. She lives across the street from Beverly Hospital in Montebello. When she felt too spent to make another trip to the bathroom, she called my mom. "Knarik" she whispered, "sorry to bother you, but can you please take me to the hospital?" "Knarik, I have to tell you something, I know you're going to think it's funny." Mama has a fairly wicked sense of humor, but couldn't imagine what would be amusing at this juncture. "While I was barfing my dentures fell out, and I accidentally flushed them down the toilet." Of course, I can only imagine my mom's laughter. She has an infectiously evil cackle that makes you laugh, too. So she chuckled with her toothless sister on the phone. "I'm coming." They got to the hospital and waited in the ER together. She was quickly seen at the triage point. They took her blood pressure, all was normal. My mom asked the nurse in her heavy Russian accent "Can you please check mine, too?" 185. Whew. She was nervous. It always shoots up when she's nervous. The doctors ran some tests and discovered nothing out of the ordinary. Anya was released and they drove back home at around 1 am. Later, when my mom was in my den retelling the story, my saintly sister-in-law interjected and said "Oh, you know the dentures are probably stuck down there. All you have to do is pull the toilet off..." We called Anya..."You know, it's possible to..." She would have none of it. "No," Anya said, "they're long gone." She couldn't bear the thought of putting the wayward dentures back into her mouth after all that. So she'd be waiting for the new set--a good five weeks of toothless misery. Uncharacteristically, she wouldn't be talking much. But she could always call Mama on the phone and mumble. Dentures lost to gravity. But in the end, lots of sisterly love.