In the summer of 2017, Diana’s mother signed her retirement papers then flew to Salt Lake City for a meeting. The next day Diana arrived at the hospital to find the woman who was healthy 24 hours prior with a drain pumping fluid from her skull, speaking in syllables. She had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke—the kind that normally kills. For several exhausting weeks, Diana, driven to help her beloved mother recover, remained in Salt Lake through the trials of critical care and rehabilitation. Over a decade earlier, it was Diana who was under her mother’s watchful eye—after Diana’s tendonitis required a surgery and recuperation that ultimately derailed her career as a violinist. The messy intimacies of caring for an injured loved one are the heart of this work, as the multimodal memoir moves between the threads of Diana’s own harmed body and her mother’s. Despite their best efforts, both women struggle to help each other due to the labyrinth that is the modern healthcare system, which is built to benefit so few. THIS ABSOLUTE SPLIT illustrates the ways in which a crisis strengthens the fierce connection between mother and daughter, and caregiving becomes an expression of love when all else fails.