Aha.Because this Knox member, Oliver, apparently slept with Jerry’s sister.
“Fuck you!” Jerry lunges at Oliver, but Michael has seen it coming and grips Jerry from behind.
Oliver just laughs, and it’s one of those empty laughs that makes everyone around feel worse.
“Men! Please!” Peter says, striding over. His color is normal, and Vivian wonders if she imagined what she’d seen just moments earlier, perhaps even projected her own fears onto him. “We have a lady here. Why don’t we move this upstairs?”
“I don’t need nothin’ else. I’m done here,” Jerry says. He doesn’t give Vivian a second glance as he slinks out of Michael’s arm and stalks out of the room.
Michael rubs his wrists, and the tension in the air suddenly lessens.
Meanwhile, Oliver seems to have noticed Vivian for the first time. “Well, hello there,” he says with a pasty grin.
He looks her up and down, making Vivian’s skin prickle. Oliver stumbles as he takes a step in her direction, and Peter movesin between them, like a blockade. She must have been imagining Peter’s earlier cowardice.
“A lady,” Oliver says. “Now that is a—”
“Oliver, your father wants a word,” Peter interrupts. “He was looking for you.”
Michael appears at Vivian’s side, takes her elbow, and his touch is not entirely unpleasant. “C’mon,” he whispers, and when she looks at Peter, he nods.
Vivian follows Michael out the door, feeling Oliver’s eyes on her back.
Taylor
When Taylor finds Vivian’s hospital room empty, the day feels suddenly drained of color.
At the nearest computer, she quickly logs into Epic and pulls up the ICU unit manager. It’s a way to see the floor census at a glance without breaching anyone’s medical records. No Vivian. Maybe she transferred to another unit? Taylor frantically starts pulling up the unit manager for other possible floors where Vivian, given her injury, may have been moved.
No luck.
Taylor hunts down an ICU nurse, and, in a trembling voice, asks about Vivian.
“I have no idea,” says the nurse. “I haven’t been here in a couple of days.”
“Did she…Did she expire?” Taylor manages, the words like brittle toast lodged in her throat.
“I said I have no idea,” the nurse repeats, but then softens at Taylor’s obvious distress. “Look, last I heard, she was extubated. So I doubt it.”
They wouldn’t have removed Vivian’s breathing tube if shewasn’t improving. Taylor allows herself a little hope as she scoots back downstairs to continue her ER shift.
She can’t stop thinking of Vivian—her glossy brown hair, her olive-green eyes, the Chanel N°5, the luxury clothes, the fancy penthouse apartment.
And then other, more troubling, things start to pile on:
The mismatch between the paramedic’s report about Vivian’s drinking and the negligible blood alcohol level.
The lack of visitors.
The top hat symbol.
The warning on the note:“Please stay away.”
The fact that Vivian’s records suddenly became restricted, and now she seems to have vanished from the hospital.
Where are you, Vivian?
Taylor feels a little desperate, like when she was a little girl and waiting each day for her mother to send word from Boston.
