The pill felt wrong in my fingers before I even looked at it closely. I’ve been doing home health care for eleven years. I know what Lisinopril feels like. It’s a small oval, slightly chalky, with a specific weight to it.

This one was rounder. Lighter. I set it on my palm and just stared at it for a second because I didn’t want to be right about what I was thinking.

Mrs. Garner is 84 years old and she is one of the sweetest people I have ever worked with. I’ve been with her five days a week for two years. She calls me her “Tuesday through Saturday girl” even though I’ve reminded her about a hundred times that I also come on Mondays. She laughs every time. She has this little ceramic rooster on her kitchen windowsill that she bought in Tennessee in 1987 and she tells me the story behind it at least twice a week. I don’t mind. I love that rooster. I love her.

Her medication has always been simple. Blood pressure pills, two every morning, right around eight o’clock. I’d fill a small glass with water, set it on the kitchen table next to her orange juice, and watch her take them. Not because I didn’t trust her, but because that’s the job. You make sure. That’s the whole job, honestly, making sure the person in your care is actually okay when no one else is watching.

So when the pills changed shape last month, I noticed. Same bottle. Same label. Same prescription sticker with her name on it. But the pill itself was different. Rounder. Lighter. Almost too white. I held one up near the window where the light comes in around nine in the morning and just looked at it.

I put it back down. I picked it back up. I said to myself, okay, maybe they changed manufacturers, that happens sometimes. Generic medications switch suppliers. I’ve seen it. But something just sat wrong with me and I couldn’t shake it.

I put one pill in a small plastic sandwich bag and I wrote the date on it with a marker. I told Mrs. Garner I’d be right back and I drove to the pharmacy on Clement Street on my lunch break. I know the pharmacist there, not personally really, but enough that he recognizes me. I handed him the bag and I said, “Can you tell me what this is?” He looked at it for maybe ten seconds. He said, “This is aspirin. Regular over-the-counter aspirin.” I said, “You’re sure?” He said, “Yeah. Where did this come from?”