Beth Is The Girlfriend

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Oh, Jackie Peyton, RN, let me count the ways. (TS Eliot and St. Augustine? Somebody's been reading my eHarmony profile.) Profane, autonomous to a fault, hardcore, darkly humorous, and religious in the most compromised ways imaginable. She's also one of the best nurses I've ever seen on TV, and maybe one of the best people. Which is interesting due mostly to how many thousands of ways she is totally effed up: a number that gives Nancy Botwin and Celia Hodes' combined score a run for its money.

Jackie's first case is a bike messenger with a skull bleed, who dies on the table thanks to an arrogant doctor (Peter Facinelli, probably too worried about Jasper Hale to notice much else). She forges Bike Guy's signature on a donor card, but is flummoxed as to how best to help his young, pregnant girlfriend. Enter patients Two and Three: a hacked-up hooker and the Libyan attaché whose ear she cut off in the scuffle. Jackie steals an annoying doctor's Uggs and the attaché's wallet for Pregnant Girl, and flushes the jerk's ear down the toilet. This is Jackie justice, and it's beyond satisfying to watch.

Meanwhile, Jackie ditches annoying/adorable student nurse Zoey Brakow long enough to: have lunch and save a life with snarky doctor BFF Elenor, hang out in the hospital chapel with charming fellow nurse Mohammad, hook up with her boyfriend/pharmacist Eddie, try on some Blahniks, smartmouth indulgent hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus, and get her boob grabbed by Facinelli's Dr. Fitch Cooper, who acts out with inappropriate sexual touching when nervous. All of this is made easier by the self-prescribed painkillers she snorts throughout her double shift, which she parcels out grain by grain to the sound of the Valley Of The Dolls theme: "What do you call a nurse with a bad back? Unemployed!"

So is it good? Yes, it is very good. It's neither Weeds nor House, in tone or intention, but visually and in certain shallow ways it seems like it might suffer, if only by proximity and aesthetic concerns. But then, I'm partial to fucked-up genius drug addicts with religious issues (between Saving Grace and The Cleaner the summer was already like my favorite time of year), I like the literary echoes of lines and themes and images that draw the disparate parts of Jackie's compartmentalized life together, and I like the brutally honest, self-conscious way Jackie continually addresses her essential inability to reconcile Doing Good and Being Good. "I think you're a saint," Zoey tells her; one gets the feeling she just hasn't reached that on her to-do list just yet. It's fulfilling, in a human way, to see someone cite Augustine while following his lead: saving the world, one tiny ungrateful little piece at a time.

Falco is of course a joy to watch, with her harsh haircut and wise beauty, her terribly sad eyes; her various friends and coworkers are all interesting and complex in their own rights. Not sure of the arc just yet, but honestly I'd be happy to see the same basic structure every week: Jackie is tired, Jackie gets appalled by something, Jackie enacts vicious justice. It's incredibly promising to know that's not the case. But between clever Elenor, ebullient and zany Zoey, strong and tender Mo-Mo, and the begrudging respect between Jackie and Facinelli's complexly sweet/douchbaggy Coop, the show would still succeed. Such a richly imagined, realistic world is lucky to have people like this in it -- but not as lucky as we are. Highly recommended.

Discuss this episode in our Nurse Jackie forums, then check out the other shows premiering this summer!

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It is white, hard white. The sirens get louder and louder and there's crashing, terrible noise, and then there's something in the white, and everything's getting softer, and the theme from Valley Of The Dolls starts. It's like ducking your head under a wave. "Let us go then, you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table..."

Jackie Peyton's spread out on the floor, looking up at a white ceiling, thinking about TS Eliot, and about Catholic school, and St. Augustine; letting it wander. The nun who taught Jackie to recite Eliot also taught her that the people with the greatest capacity for good at the ones with the greatest capacity for evil. "Smart fucking nun," Jackie thinks. She's like Guido and Dante at the beginning of the poem, like "you and I" at the beginning of the poem: telling herself a story nobody ever needs to hear. I wouldn't be surprised if the Eliot came back at the end of the season. Who's she talking to? There's gum on the bottom of her shoe, and a bottle of pills in her hand. The gum's been worn very thin.

"All right, I got one for ya. What do you call a nurse with a bad back? Unemployed!" She shakes the bottle; there's a single Percocet left. You could get the feeling she's very alone but she's not; she's got awesome friends in this place. Right now she's alone. She blinks up at the sky, like a patient on the table; she is beautiful, smiling. "Sixteen grains," she says, as they rain in slow motion down in the white light: bright red, falling from the capsule. "No more no less." A real addict would pop the capsule, not count the grains. "Just a little bump to get me up and running." She scrapes them together with her hospital badge, and snorts them, and it hits like lightning.

Then it's later, she's walking a bloody patient on a gurney, and then it's later, she's staring down at a patient. Peter Michael Donovan, very young, very cute; a bike messenger. She's worried about him. Dr. Fitch Cooper MD -- Peter Facinelli, who tragically seems to be hiding a case of Benjamin Button disease and not very well -- comes in, douchebagging it up on his BT about St. Barts and absentmindedly sanitizing and absentmindedly shoving her out of the way with his hip. She tells him what's going on with the kid, and he palpates something and Jackie tries to get in there to do it instead; she talks to him like a person. He ignores her, trying to get the alpha's attention, talking about iPhones and whatever. She checks Peter's pupils while Dr. Cooper plays with his phone.

Jackie takes Dr. Cooper aside: there's blood in Pete's urine and this means certain medical things that I don't necessarily know about, but Nurse Jackie obviously does and I assume Dr. Cooper ought, and he laughs at her. Right in her face: "Jesus, Bossy!" Cooper wants to do Leg Medicine on Peter, but she knows he's bleeding in his head. "Knock knock," Cooper says, louder, and the kid responds. Cooper squeezes her arm and takes off, tells the kid he's going to fix him up "real good," calls him "Chief." There's a moment where she could get more forceful, take it up with somebody else, but we don't see it. The world is too soft. The edges are fuzzy and time doesn't work right.

Peter is flatlining; Jackie stares down at him, dead, and takes his glove, putting it in her pocket. It was a bleed, "acute subdural hematoma," just like she said. "Brain puffs up," she explains, and you bleed to death right inside your skull. It gets dark; the whole world constricts itself to his face. Just him right now. Then it's later and she's forging his name on a donor card, screaming at the transplant people on the phone while she blows on it, so his name will dry. "You should not have died, Peter Michael Donavan." She nods to him, somewhere else. "It may have been a shame, but it will not be a waste. That I promise."

Peter's mother sits between his two great big brothers, civil servants of some large and beefy kind; she's getting smaller by the minute. The boys aren't impressed by the organ donor card, and they smack each other irritably over their mother's head; they hate Peter's girlfriend Beth. Mom seems neutral about her ("Beth is the girlfriend"); in any case, the Donovans as a group aren't too interested in Beth's wellbeing. The one on the left doesn't really get it, and keeps asking about the bicycle -- Peter was a bike messenger -- which offends the one on the right, who is brusque and coarse but at least gets it.

I'm thinking the smaller but still huge mean one on the left is a cop, and the slightly more heroic but still scary and butch one on the right is a fireman. But that's only because I get most of my knowledge about things from pornography, and this is how they would behave. I guess a normal person could decipher this from their uniforms, but when I look at that stuff I just feel hatred for authority rather than individual, like, patches and insignia? Anyway, fuck Beth, Fireman -- let's check the credits and yes, I am correct, I think, so score one more for porno -- can't believe they made it through 9/11 without a scratch, while Peter rode a bike and died of it. Jackie tries to be real with them, but they suck and yell a lot, and finally they're sad for a second before Cop starts in with the bike again, and Fireman punches him in the head for real.

Dr. Cooper is washing, I guess, blood out of his shirt when she comes into the washroom. "Jackeeeeee!" he douchebags. "Chocolate milk!" Ah. She addresses him as Dr. Cooper, and he fratguys out "Coop! Call me Coop!" She again addresses him as Dr. Cooper, emphasis on the doc, and he sighs and grins like she's being weird: "Nurse Jackie?"

(I am sort of in love with Fitch Cooper MD, I will tell you that right now, I sort of wish that he were real. Because nobody who puts that many airquotes around their entire life is remotely like the person they're handing you. So it stands to reason that while douchebaggery is part of Fitch Cooper's makeup, the opposite truth about Fitch Cooper is actually what's important, and clearly he is a fraud in some deeply personal way. Same as Nurse Jackie's pretty much been acting like a junkie and sort of a bitch this entire time, and has no intention of stopping, and is still obviously awesome. I submit to you that complicated people often show you a not-so-great side at first, but that perseverance also is a great virtue when it comes to people and their sides.)

So he "laughs" and "plays it her way" and "checks his teeth" and asks what he can "do" for her, and she's like, "What you can do for me is stay the fuck out of my way, that's what you can do." He's confused and thinks she means the sink, like maybe she also needs to wash out some adorable chocolate milk stains, but that's not in fact what she means. She means that he needs to understand that she is onto him, that she knows who he is. He shivers immediately when she begins, and it only gets worse as she tells him exactly who he is. That she's seen "hundreds of you jerkoffs blow through these doors," in her time.

That he is a Top 5-10% student at some great med school with test scores through the roof, but a "total fucking retard" when it comes to actual patients. He swallows. "I know you." He starts to shiver, in case she does. Her voice starts to shake too: she had to look Peter's mother in the eye and "tell her we did everything we could, you dumb shit." Jackie explains to Dr. Cooper -- Coop! -- that time, he orders the goddamn scan when she tells him to: "That kid died, and it's all on you."

Which of course it isn't, entirely, which is why she's flipping out right now. But it's important in a whole other way for him to understand this basic shit, so she's just using the anger anyway. Which is why it's so surprising when -- lip quivering with fear and shame, like a little boy; arms hanging limp and petulant -- his right hand reaches out and places itself softly and implacably on Jackie's left breast. His hand holds it, almost tenderly. Nurse Jackie, without really changing her vocal tone in any way, displays remarkable adaptability in the face of being angry, sexually harassed, and on drugs.

"Oh. Um. Is this happening? Not happening? I can't even... tell." He hands her this whole song and dance about how he's got some kind of Tourette's issue where when he gets nervous, he acts out with "inappropriate sexual touches." Which is what? A) self-consciously quirky, B) a total fucking nasty power-playing lie, C) true, or D) some mix of all the above. She blows it off, planning no doubt some horrific consequence for him in the future, but he shivers and pleads with his eyes: "I'm practically uninsurable! Seriously, Jackie, it's involuntary. I'm not attracted to you at all!"

(It's not about sex either way, it's about power -- keep an eye on when it acts up, because "nervous" is really imprecise -- and like how "crazy" is it that a white male in a position of authority with a compulsion in reaction to being powerless is impossible to discern from what men in positions of authority have been doing forever in conscious reaction to feeling powerless. Hmm.) This catches the ear of a passing Dr. Elenor O'Hara, who is like a surgeon or something, very British and very self-absorbed and very wonderful, with a whole set of airquotes of her own, and Jackie just sort of blinks in horror while Elenor laughs at Cooper, "Charming as ever!" and warns Jackie that the Wicked Witch is looking for her. "Apparently you dropped a house on her sister?" (More than anything, really, I enjoy jokes I've heard one thousand times before, because they're more relevant to my frame of reference, which results in my feeling both smart and pampered.)

Jackie continues to open and close her mouth like a guppy and wander into the hallway, wondering what else people are going to do to her; she sees Mrs. Akalitus, played by awesome Anna Deveare Smith (National Security Advisor McNally from The West Wing, also a really wonderful writer besides) in a red dress and runs toward the hospital chapel. But then a homosexual appears out of nowhere holding a nursing student in childlike scrubs between his fingers like a mother cat with kittens: "Don't be mad, lady." This is Mohammed De La Cruz, apparently of the Vin Diesel Nation, and Jackie's best nursing friend.

The little person in his clutches is Zoey Brakow, a first year nursing student at Queens Community College, and right out the gate you can tell she is supermegaweird. This actress Merritt Wever, the more I watch her the more I think about what it felt like the first time you saw Jonah Hill or Jack McBrayer, or when you started taking Anna Faris seriously. She's got something, and it is weird, and it is complete, and it's not really ganked from anywhere. It's like, turn Michael Cera's fruity clueless smartness into one of those girls who was into horses as a teen, teach her ASL, throw some Twihard in there, multiply by Kenneth Parcell's chilling, superhuman unsinkability and you're... almost there. So that's Zoey.

She screams multiple hellos at Jackie as though auditioning for the part of Blanche DuBois in an outpatient rehab production, who stares at Mo-Mo, who explains that he took the last three students. "Fuck off, Mohammed. No offense," she says carelessly to Zoey, who still seems like if you looked at the floor her toes would just barely be brushing it. But then Mo-Mo's off, making the sign of the cross at Mrs. Akalitus as he jumps sideways into the shadows.

Akalitus yells at Jackie about her 80-hour work weeks, speaking in the Corporate We about how "All Saints Hospital & Its Myriad Subsidiaries" can't endorse this shit, and Jackie's like, "Mrs. Akalitus, please. Please. I am with a student." Her way with Akalitus is very funny, like they're having tea; Mrs. Akalitus's way with Jackie is very funny, like they are playing chess for the power over life and death, but still friendly. Akalitus tells her that after 12 and a half hours, nurses are three times likelier to fuck up. "Lies, Mrs. Akalitus!" Jackie booms, like the maiden aunt from an Oscar Wilde play. "Lies!"

Jackie tries to make off with the student again, and Akalitus bullet-points two more issues. The first is whether Jackie took Dr. Ekebwe's pen (yes, and as we shall see for good reason) and whether she can work a double shift on Monday (also yes). I think it is a good idea to be afraid of Mrs. Akalitus in the abstract, but you have to admire an administrator that starts a convo yelling about overtime and ends up asking you to take a double. That's the kind of irony on which our best bureaucracies thrive, but if you do it with a smile, your people will follow you anywhere. Akalitus does it with a smile that says she damn well knew the answer to both questions before she ever chased Jackie across the hospital.

They walk. "Good, you're quiet. I like 'em quiet." Then it's later, and Zoey's babbling incessantly of course, about how much she admires Jackie and being with Jackie and Jackie's dedication -- "You live the job and that's totally me, totally" -- and finally Jackie begs her pardon for a quick question: "Shut up." Zoey grins -- grins! -- because where you and I have feelings that can sometimes bruise, she just has more goddamn pluck. "I don't do chatty. I like quiet. Quiet and mean: those are my people." She nods and they walk on, and Zoey mime-zips her lips excitedly, as though she's auditioning for a Grapevining-Whilst-Lip-Zipping show off-Broadway.

The hospital pharmacist Eddie is played by Paul Schulze, who also played Carmela's priest on The Sopranos, whom she desperately wanted to bone for a long while. I found him creepy -- which is saying a lot, with that show -- but he's a lot more likeable here. Even out of his priesting costume or whatever. He's fussing over medications for a bit before asking Jackie how her "friend" here would feel about wheeling a cart of chemo meds up to oncology. Jackie quirks an eyebrow: why not ask her? "OH MY GOD I would love to," Zoey shouts, throwing out her arms before tucking both fists under her chin like she's auditioning for the role of a not-yet-broken-down orphan in Annie. Jackie grins at Eddie because Zoey is amazing, but that's not all: we transition from her jostling cart full of Red Devil to a whole 'nother kind of jostling back at the lab.

Eddie and Jackie fuck for awhile, but her back eventually goes out or gets worse or something, and just like sometimes happens in real life he, um, coasts to a complete stop rather than hitting the brakes immediately. It's endearing and shitty at the same time. He tries to help her crawl to the cot -- with his pants around his ankles, aww -- and she eventually goes palms-down, Ekebwe's pen flopping out of her scrubs, like in Downward Dog, and it's just awful. Get up, it hurts to see you hurting!

He lies down behind her, awkwardly spooning on the cot, and they cuddle. She has five minutes: "Gonna set my watch." She takes his hand and places it softly, and implacably, on her left breast. It's not about sex and it's not about power: it's about touching. He holds her, tenderly, and offers her "a little something" for her back. "That's sweet. I'm okay." She blinks and smiles sadly at herself, the way her heart leapt and grinned at her when he said that. It takes almost five seconds to turn it around.

"You know what, maybe a little oxy?" She's unimpressed with herself; closes her eyes. Then it's later: major trauma coming in over the PA; she snorts the oxycontin and then it's later, a woman on a gurney covered in blood. There's a guy, cutting up hookers in the back of a limo. "Why'd he have to cut me so bad?" the lady asks, and Jackie gently puts the oxygen mask back over her mouth and nose. The paramedic tells her to be on the lookout for Vincent Van Gogh, as the woman drowsily holds a hand up toward Jackie's face; at first she wants to brush it away but then it opens like a flower: perched on the woman's palm is an ear, just like St. Peter in Gethsemene. "Good girl," Jackie nearly shouts, handing it off to Zoey as they gurney thunders toward Trauma.

Zoey stands in the middle of the hallway, vibrating silently with a monster's ear in her hand, just long enough for another nurse in passing to see it -- "Nice!" -- before Jackie calls back over her shoulder: "Puke away from the ear, Zoey!" She does her best, delicately holding it out behind her in a barfing arabesque à la hauteur just past the proscenium of the nurse's station. God, she's adorable.

Nuns! Drink. Jackie sits on a bench in the chapel wing with Elenor, who profanes Manolo Blahnik. Jackie tries Elenor's shoes on, standing up and laughing when Elenor says what size they're meant to be: that's the size Jackie usually wears. She sits down again, with her pounding feet and her friend in the hall, and a woman goes by on a gurney, screaming wildly. When she's gone, they realize they're famished, and set out for lunch.

"Dr. Cooper grabbed my tit today," Jackie says over their meal. "Did your tit make the first move?" Elenor suggests in the sophisticated, blasé way she does everything. They laugh about the Tourette's excuse, and Jackie starts in about how he's incompetent, dangerous, killed a bike messenger... Elenor laughs at Jackie, calling her a tattletale, and orders more bread. "What do you doctors have against healing people, for Christ's sake?" Elenor doesn't skip a beat: "Yeah, see that, that right there: healing, helping, fixing. Fantastic. That's why you're a nurse. When I was a little girl, I took a butter knife and opened up a dead bunny to see how it worked. That's why I'm a doctor."

Jackie smirks at her, tells her they care the same amount, secretly, but Elenor assures her she does not. I think -- and I think Elenor thinks -- that this is one of the best things about Jackie. She judges people by her own standards, which are incredibly high but incredibly human. Of course everybody in that hospital cares as much as she does. Of course. "Yeah, no. No, I don't." She smiles, gnawing at her bread, and tells Jackie she's the only sane person there: "It's a fucking asylum. I tell you Jacks, if I didn't have this -- and of course, you -- I couldn't stand it there." I love Elenor because I love people who treat me functionally in this way, because I enjoy being evaluated and judged, and if they say that shit to you, that means you're useful, and since they're soulless anyway you can just kind of take it as a compliment and not worry about it: "You're so... dedicated." That's one of the things Elenor loves about Jackie: her dedication. To Elenor, too.

A woman begins choking, at another table framed between them, as they discuss Jackie's dedication to the saving of lives, and finally stop pretending they don't notice. That they didn't notice before you did. "I am off the clock," Jackie moans; so's Elenor. "Four minutes 'til brain damage," Jackie notes glumly; "Two, 'til she passes out," nods Elenor. Finally she rolls her eyes and puts down the roll, but Jackie stands up -- "You're buying lunch" -- and heimlichs the old woman immediately clearing her airway, pats her functionally but not unkindly on the back, and returns to her meal. Boom, saved a life, this salad is delicious: Today I awarded myself hero points for, like, nodding in agreement with this lady at a barbecue place that San Antonio is a prime vacation spot. If only she had choked on something.

O'Hara says something unnecessary to another patron, but I'm more stuck on what life was like before comic books. Instead of superheroes what did you have? Saints wandering around, magic powers, Bible guys wrestling angels and stuff. I guess there were always superheroes. I guess the main difference between saints and superheroes is that you're expected not to be a dick on your day off, when you're a saint, and the perfection bar is a lot higher. So maybe Jackie Peyton is just a superhero. Which I think is probably best.

Walking Zoey to the thing, and she's all apologetic about puking, promises she won't do it again. Jackie knows better; her back's hurting, but she still has secret smiles to spare on the subject of Zoey. Only where she can't see it, of course. I really only like people that either A) don't give a fuck or B) give way too much of a fuck. And the reason I'm committed to Jackie Peyton is that she is both at once, amped to eleven. Then it's later, and the guy thought it would be a good idea to shoot a roman candle out of his ass. Yeah. There are "third degree burns on his scrotum and perirectal area," which if you are not a guy probably you don't understand what that physically does to a guy, to hear that. It's physical. It's gritty. Cooper tells somebody to put him in some unused gyn stirrups and then just sort of leans back his head and hollers for Jackie, like she'll appear out of nowhere. And, of course, she does.

Roman Candle tells Cooper and Jackie they can laugh if they want; she calls him "honey" and assures him nobody's laughing. Cooper rulebooks the guy about how the first objective is to get him out of pain, and Jackie laughs. "He's totally loaded," she says: objective accomplished. Zoey stares at him in stark horror while Cooper asks what he took; he giggles wildly that he can't remember. "Hennessey and Hypnotiq? Been smoking a little kush?" The guy laughs uproariously, asking Jackie and then Cooper how she knew.

And Jackie doesn't notice it, but Cooper proves for the second scene in a row that, boob-grabbing aside, he was listening to every word. "She's seen a hundred of you jerkoffs blow through these doors," he says with a smirk toward her. She's not listening, she doesn't hear how abruptly he's flipped on the topic of Nurse Jackie and how she's wonderful, but it's a nice moment anyhow. Somewhere it's registering, but maybe just as another piece of evidence that she's back in control.

Jackie tells the guy she used to drink a lot, and doesn't anymore -- "I like to have a clear head" -- and that's how she knows. Nuns (drink!) gaggle by, laughing at the boy in the stirrups, and Coop -- taking his lead from Jackie once again -- barks at Zoey to shut the door. Zoey does so, and then asks the patient if she can take a picture with her phone. "My stupid little brother's a bong hit away from launching fireworks out of his asscheeks. He might think twice?" The kid laughs. "Cautionary tale. Enjoy." He makes an automatic Facebook face, even though she's not aiming at his face: "Holla!" A few minutes later, he goes slack with fear: it's starting to hurt. "I know, honey," she says, patting his arm, working quickly and silently. "I know." Mo-Mo appears, weirded out and staring at the ruined ass, and asks Jackie for a moment.

Then it's later, and he's got Beth. Beth is the girlfriend, of the bike messenger. She wants to talk to Jackie; Jackie asks for the social worker to take care of it, but Mo-Mo shakes his head. "Still mad at us for the Christmas party." At which, Jackie points out, it was Mohammed who "tongued" said social worker's husband "after Yuletide karaoke." Apparently Jackie doesn't evade the rage, though, considering she was the one that put Mo-Mo up to it. She grumbles and heads toward Beth, saying he owes her; "I owe everybody," he sasses, and vanishes again.

Then it's later and she's walking with Beth. Who is pregnant for real, which makes the Donovan Clan even bigger asses than we thought. She's weirded out about the organ-donation thing, but Jackie points out that train's already left the station. Beth doesn't answer, and Jackie breathes. "Don't listen to me, honey." She acknowledges that she can apologize all day, and will, for the death, but can't and wouldn't dream of trying to imagine what is going on with Beth right now. "But he's a hero now. His body is going to save lives," Jackie tries to say brightly. Beth's eyes are raccooned with mascara from crying. Not a cartoony amount, but a real amount.

"Fine. Can I have his heart? What about a kidney?" She could sell it on the black market, she thinks. "Twenty thousand bucks for a kidney? Don't you think he owes me that for getting himself killed on that goddamn bike? She sits down, exhausted and freaked out and sort of disgusted by all this, and Jackie watches her. "What the fuck am I supposed to do? I can't even pay for a cab home." She rubs her tummy. "Fucking Peter." Jackie stands with her, and holds the girl's head to her stomach. "He made me pancakes this morning," Beth offers, and sobs. Jackie holds her like a mother would, in the chapel hall. Then it's later, and she's snorting more Percocet grains. No kidding.

The world goes soft again, and bright. Then it's later, and she makes her way through the soft world, grabs a cop: who's the bleeding guy? The shitbird who sliced up that prostitute in the limo. And why isn't he cuffed? Oh, because he's the executive secretary to the fucking Libyan ambassador, and has diplomatic immunity. Jackie's eyes get wider and wider. He's only here to get his ear put back on; nothing else is going to happen without the embassy's consent.

Then it's later, and the shitbird is asking how long it's going to take to clean him up. "That woman you cut took 287 stitches and ten pints of blood," Jackie answers. He says it was all her idea, she liked to cut herself: "American women are very adventurous," he says blackly. Picking up his jacket and money clip from the floor, Jackie nods hatefully, keeping it out of her voice. "She probably did it for attention?" He wonders how far to take it. "What do you do for attention?" Like today's not hard enough without getting fucked-up threats from an earless attaché. "I'll be right back," she says.

In the bathroom, she holds the man's ear close to her mouth. "Fuck You," she says clearly and firmly into the ear. Fuck you for cutting up girls and getting away with it, fuck you for coming into my hospital and bending my arms back, fuck you for saying you'd do the same to me. She flushes the ear, disgusted, and the world goes white.

Then it's later, and she's lying in a pew in the chapel, staring up at St. John the Baptist's head -- grown slightly bald -- brought in on Salome's silver platter, chatting with Mo-Mo on the pew over. "What does one offer for a side dish, with John's head on a silver platter?" She considers it: cole slaw, mac and cheese... "No, potato salad." Mo-Mo purrs. "And rum and cokes!" She grins. "You like rum and cokes with anything!" He purrs again. They lay silently together. "I could have saved that boy. Messenger kid. I knew he had a bleed, I felt it." Mo-Mo doesn't respond; she tells him now's the time to say she did everything she could. He takes her hand. "You want me to say that?" She asks if he would believe it, if he did; she admits she doesn't believe it herself. It's hard. He sits up, changing the subject with a firm hand.

"There would be some definite advantages to dating a man without a torso," he points out, and they list them: you could carry him in your purse, he'd never leave, you could put him in the oven when he talks back. "Or throw his stupid head overboard when you catch him fucking a poolboy on a cruise to celebrate your six month anniversary that you had to pay for because he is such a narcissistic fucking asshole," Mo-Mo says, just for another e.g. Their timing is good, these two. "How is Randy?" she asks, and he props his head on the pew with a sweet smile, falsely bright: "Oh, he's good!"

(No, no Randy. You need like a big, huge, fiercely devoted blonde beardy cabaret singer, something along those lines.) Then it's later and Zoey's spinning madly on a chair while Jackie puts together IV bags, ruminating on pain: whether there's a finite amount of pain the world, and if by healing it that pain just pops up somewhere else. "Yes," Jackie says distractedly, "That's why there's drugs." Zoey follows her to a patient's bed while she's hooks it up on a stand. It's getting late, late in the day. Twelve and half hours and the boundless energy of Zoey Brakow is a lot to deal with, much less the problem of suffering. Without suffering, none of us would be here.

"Maybe God said, here, I want this much suffering to exist in the world. And you people can split it up any way you want, but I want exactly this much suffering." Jackie tells her this is all very interesting, but that it would obviously make God "kind of a prick"; Zoey covers the patient's feet and Jackie tells her to go home and turn her brain off for a bit. "I think you're a saint," Zoey says brightly, nothing but light in her eyes. "Just so you know." She walks away; she seems like she has a lot of secrets. Jackie almost smiles. The people with the greatest capacity for good at the ones with the greatest capacity for evil.

The patient's machine begins to beep; her body reacts before her brain, unhooking the bags she's just hooked up, like a hot potato. Her heart, her breath. The word gets hard, and cold, and bright again, and she pulls herself back into it. "Goddamn it," she whispers, "I almost killed you." Louder and louder, nearly crying, exhausted, hurting again, scared to shit. "I almost killed you!" she whisper-yells at the man. He goes on sleeping; she pats his arm but it's not enough. She leans over and kisses his forehead, desperately. Afraid and ashamed and hurting. The song starts up again.

Time to go. It's time to say goodnight. She sees Beth the Girlfriend asleep on a couch, without even cab fare; in the locker room she notices Dr. Ekebwe's taken a chart folder and spread it across her locker, with writing both nasty and passive-aggressive: "SERIOUSLY Do not touch my stuff." Well, that explains why she stole the bitch's pen. And why she's stealing her Uggs, now. She creeps into the Libyan's room, retrieving his money clip, and drops them both off with Beth, just like St. Nicholas, as the music swells. The settling of accounts.

Her back hurts dreadfully, coming down the steps in the rain; Eddie the Pharmacist is standing there, with another umbrella, grinning until she begs off with a huge smile. "Brought you something for your back," he says. He hands her a Dr Pepper and she smiles, confused. He pulls something else out of his pocket; it seems to take forever, as the pain arcs through her back like lightning. It's a Moon Pie. Worthless. She smiles ever faker, impressed, and grins. "I was thinking more along the lines of Vicodin..." He hands her a blister pack. "I'm not an idiot." She smiles and says she loves him.

I don't think she's lying, I just think it's a very small word that doesn't actually mean anything by itself. It's a container that means what you put in it. We love each other for a million reasons. Elenor loves her because she's smart, and mean, and because she's always available for lunch. She's useful, and dedicated. Zoey loves her because they are both shithouse crazy, and because they represent each other's pasts and futures. Mo-Mo loves her because she's naughty, like him. Starting today, Coop loves her because she knows how worthless he is and still gives him the time of day. And Eddie loves her because she is remarkable.

And because when she says she loves him, there's nothing but affection in her eyes. The people with the greatest capacity for good are the ones with the greatest capacity for evil. But Augustine also said, "Do you wish to be great? Then begin by being. Do you desire to construct a vast and lofty fabric? Think first about the foundations of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation." There's nothing stronger or more beautiful than giving the work of your hands to your people. Until it breaks you, if that's how it's going to go down. Whether or not you believe in God -- and I firmly do not -- every foot you wash, every pain in that woman's back, is a sacrament to something bigger than she is. There's not a saint or tzadik that ever asked for it; they were too busy saving the world.

Then it's later and it's not raining anymore; she stops at a crosswalk to a bike messenger. "Be careful," she says, checking out his rig, and without missing a beat he says, "Fuck you." Her eyebrows go up, up, and before she notices she's done it, almost, she's stabbed a hole in his front tire. Good girl.

"If I were a saint -- which maybe I want to be, maybe I don't -- I would be like Augustine. He knew there was good in him, and he knew there was not-so-good. And he wasn't going to give up his earthly pleasures before he was good and ready." She forces herself up the stairs to her house. "Make me good, God... But not yet. Right?"

Inside it's warm, bright, cozy. Quite large. Two adorable little girls, not in fact twins after all, are playing on the couch. The younger one, Fiona, is playing with a pink feather boa while they read together. She's funny, with jacked-up little kid teeth and her mother's wacky sense of humor and justice. The elder is Grace; she carries the world on her back, just like her mother.

The song swells as Jackie enters, and the girls look up at her. "Hello, my loves!" Fiona jumps on her, and her back strains as she picks her up. Fiona runs back to the couch with Eddie's Moon Pie, and Jackie -- barely able to move, at this point -- heads down the hall. She stops, just in the darkness of the hall, and removes a wedding ring from her pocket.

"I made pancakes for dinner," he says. "How great is that?" He's beautiful, a little hard and a little tired, like Jackie, but a good egg. He made pancakes for dinner, 12 hours after Peter Michael Donovan got hit by something he didn't know was coming right at him. And Beth thought to herself, as she wolfed them down, how good it was that the nausea was gone, because when your man makes you pancakes it means he was thinking of you, when you weren't even there. It was something special. She woke up to pancakes, and the world was rushing toward them, between them, and neither of them knew. This morning, when Beth was the girlfriend.

From the dark Jackie smiles at her husband, in their home; she steps forward into the light, toward him.

"It bears repeating: make me good, God. But not yet."

She steps back out of the light and into the dark again. They're not so far apart.

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