“What time is it, dear? You young people always know the time because you have phones. My time is kept in here.” She taps her forehead with one long, spiny, red-nailed finger.
Taylor checks. “Ten fifteen.”
“Thank you, doll. You run along now, enjoy your day.”
Taylor tries to do what Anna said, enjoy her day. But as she combs through the racks at a consignment store, she can’t find anything she likes. The shirts are ill-fitting, the trousers unflattering, the dresses too plain and ordinary. She still tries, bringing garment after garment into the dressing room. She’s reminded, briefly, of childhood trips to the department store with her mom—how her mother would carry armfuls of clothes into the dressing room while Taylor hid in the stacks, waiting for her absence to finally register.
Staring now at her naked body, Taylor suddenly feels overwhelmed. She quickly gets dressed, steps over the pile of clothes, and then simply walks out. She’s never done that before, made a mess like that and just left.
It occurs to her that the last time she liked her image in the mirror was that glorious day in Vivian’s apartment, wheneverythingshe slipped onto her body was Midas gold.
Vivian
Present Day
Christ. Her headhurts.
She’s still floating—on the rotating bed, on the stupid lily pad. She alternates between realities. But further, beyond it all, there seems to be a shift in her location. Something she senses, something she feels. Something shefears.
There’s too much silence.
Where is that nurse, Taylor? Or the nurse who loudly chews gum? The nursing student? The doctors, making their rounds?
Where is everyone?
Vivian feels vulnerable, exposed. What if someone is there, next to her, but choosing not to speak? She wills her eyes to open, but they stubbornly disobey. She dislikes how people must be able to see her but she can’t see them.
Vainly, she thinks of her one chin hair. The pesky one that has sprouted up in the past couple of years. She plucked it recently, thank goodness. But what is recently? She got her bikini line hair lasered off years ago, but what about her legs and underher armpits? She can’t remember the last time she shaved. Two days ago, perhaps? But two days fromwhen?
She doesn’t think Rachel and Xavier have visited—she can’t recall them doing so—but then again, who the hell knows.
Wait—Peter. Where has he been?
Why hasn’t he come to visit?
Taylor
Taylor messes up at work again—this time, for something really stupid: She gives a patient Advil from her own stash, because it takes too long for the resident to write the order. She knows the doctor is going to eventually get around to it, so she figures, no harm no foul.
But then the patient asks the nurse manager, who happens to be walking by, for another Advil “from the personal bottle of that nice nurse.”
On the day Taylor receives the formal disciplinary write-up, she also receives something else: an old photo of her mom, in the mail.
“I totally forgot about it,” her dad says. “I was going through some old documents and came across it. It’s the only picture she ever sent from Boston.”
In the photo, her mom is at a bar, wearing a smart cream jacket over a short silver dress. She’s holding a drink in her hand and smiling at someone to the side, off camera. She’s flanked by two men, both of whom have their faces tilted adoringly at her. Taylor looks closer at the background, for clues to where itwas taken, but it could be anywhere with those nondescript backlit liquor shelves. She notes, with a pang, how her beautiful mom is holding the attention of at least four people in the room: the two men on either side, the person off camera, and the photographer.
The chasm between Taylor’s sophisticated mother and her own shitty existence in Boston is simply too much. It’s always too much, but on this particular day, it’s everything.
It’s hard to put this into words to Aunt Gigi, who insists on meeting in person after being cc’d on the resignation email Taylor sends to Jan.
“It’s not anything specific…I think it’s justme,” Taylor offers.
The Saturday morning sun shines like a prism through the blossoms on the nearby cherry tree, creating light fragments across the city park bench upon which they are sitting. The burgeoning spring should, in theory, make Taylor feel hopeful. Yet she feels anything but.
“Sounds like the ER wasn’t the right environment,” Aunt Gigi replies. “Too much of a pressure cooker. How about we switch you to a nice orthopedic floor, like the patients you took care of back home?”
Taylor decides not to remind her about her Bumblefuck comment. “No, thanks.”
