The idea of dad being alone in the hospital was incomprehensible to me, so I logged 12-hour days in uncomfortable plastic chairs apparently designed to deter lengthy visitation. But in the next bed lay an elderly man with lung cancer and a horrific cough who had family stop by for 10 minutes a day, if at all. "I love you," they called out as they left. Then why don't you stay long enough to take off your coat? I wondered. On his side of the curtain, my father proudly announced to anyone who would listen, "She flew in from New York to be with me." "You're a good daughter," they all told me -- people at the hospital, friends, the clerk at the front desk of the apartment building. I didn't know what to make of the statements. Isn't this what kids are supposed to do for their parents? Isn't this what my family did for me?

In the evenings, long after visiting hours ended, I drove myself wearily back to his apartment. This was the part I'd been most terrified about. While my friends had been rushing to get their licenses at 16, I'd pushed it off for years -- and then I failed my road test three times. I'm rarely behind a wheel, but now I was forced by circumstance to chauffeur myself around an unfamiliar place. I avoided alluding to my driving phobia that week because I didn't want to worry my dad. But in true fatherly form, even chained to a hospital bed by an IV stand, he fired up his laptop to Google non-highway directions to the apartment, researched which route would be the fastest and most direct, and carefully wrote everything down on the back of a tea-stained hospital menu. Then he painstakingly explained the area to me, referenced various landmarks I'd pass along the way, told me where the nearest grocery stores and restaurants were, and sent me off.

I surprised myself. Not only did I never get lost that week (how could I, when he had so thoughtfully included reverse directions), but I was impressed by how comfortable I became behind the wheel. I perfected the art of parking within the lines; when cleaning snow off the car, I deduced by trial and error that it's best to push ice away from you (not onto you); I marveled as the defogger actually did what it was supposed to; I learned you should drive slowly when it's snowing -- things most people discover when they're half my age.

"I feel like I've aged 20 years in one week," I texted a friend one night. Suddenly I was living in the suburbs, driving myself around, caring for an ailing parent, and gushing over unfathomably cheap groceries. For the first time in my life I was responsible for the well-being of someone other than myself, and the magnitude of that fact was staggering. One night I sat alone in the apartment -- which was still scattered with used coffee mugs and recently laundered undershirts, signs of his pseudo-bachelor lifestyle -- and wept. It finally dawned on me that I really wasn't a kid anymore. This illness may not have been too severe, but as my parents advanced in age, who knew what lay ahead? Would I ever be able to care for them as selflessly as they had cared for me? Was anything ever going to be the same?