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When Dr. O'Hara saves a young boy's twin brother, he develops a hero-worship connection to her that means ruined stockings, crude crayon drawings, and that most hellish of her nightmares: hugs from a little kid. An elderly woman with a DNR and a crush on Dr. Cooper ends up being Zoey's first death, which she handles with a grace and compassion that impress Jackie, and us, far beyond expectations.
The comatose twin has a powerful effect on Mo-Mo, whose own twin brother died when he was a year old. It's really Mo-Mo's show this week: from a moving, spare speech about loneliness delivered to Zoey (the loneliest person on earth) to his quiet, episode-ending song, the performance is melancholy and minimalist, turning Mo-Mo from a kind ear/BFF into an intriguing man, with depths in his own right.
And then Jackie, whose own awkwardness and vulnerability outside the hospital milieu are becoming readily apparent. A couple indiscreet texts from Eddie motivate her to buy a second cell phone, which carries its own complications. Jackie and her husband visit the school for a conference about Grace's increasing anxiety, and she goes off on her eponymous counterpart even though she knows damn well it's getting worse.
All in all, it's a slight story: A few emotional moments and several funny lines, but somehow shorter-seeming and less dense or affecting than episodes. Probably this is due to the lack of Thor, who rocks the hizzy. It's worth noting, though, that the ensemble feels incomplete when Coop's represented merely by a rocketing, white-coated blur.
week: More Grace, more Kevin & Eddie, more stress, more Thor, a little more death. If you need to catch up, there's going to be a marathon on Saturday. I highly recommend it. This show is fucking astounding.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see why vlogger Sean Crespo thinks he and Jackie have a lot in common in No Prior Knowledge.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!"You spend enough time in one place," Jackie voiceovers at the nurse station, "and you know the answers to questions that you never even asked." She watches everybody walk by: "Why are Manny's scrubs wrinkled? He is dressing out of the hamper, cycling off his antidepressants." She sighs and thinks to herself: "It's not like I want to know this stuff. I just do. And it's not always bad: This will be O'Hara, and that coffee? Is for me." This last, as Eleanor walks briskly through the crowd, with a sweet satisfaction.
A kid comes in having fallen off some playground equipment, and Jackie and Mo-Mo get him into a bed. His mom and twin brother stand by, terrified, while Mo-Mo bitches about how in Central Park even the ground is soft, but the Alphabets gets monkey bars and concrete. Eleanor appears, shining and proud, and Zoey takes the mom and brother out. "Please wait behind the yellow line," she says, promising the physicians will give them all the knowledge they can, when they have it. Out on the floor, Dr. Cooper appears, cheering: "I've got a gunshot, I've got a gunshot!" Zoey jumps between the mother and Coop, trying to explain: "He's just happy..." The mom's kind of horrified, so she tries again: "Wait, no. He's interest... He's excited... He's interested to experience the, um... the challenge... of a bullet wound." Giving up on mom, she hunkers down and grins at the kid: "There's waffles? In the cafeteria today?"
Eleanor listens to the boy's chest while Jackie and Mo-Mo work around her, without speaking. She and Eleanor work well together, complimentary as usual. Eleanor drains his collapsed lung smoothly, and they grin. "I've been around the block, too, you know. In a nicer car, of course." Mo-Mo and Jackie wink about her, and Mo-Mo takes the boy's hand. "Hang in there, little man."
In the hall, Zoey's reassuring them when Eleanor appears, and there are introductions. Justin's the healthy twin; Jackie guesses correctly that he is the eldest son, by eight minutes. She and Zoey agree that he looks older. The boy in the bed just looks small. Eleanor explains the case to them -- collapsed lung, now stabilized -- and that he's now going for a CAT scan, to rule out a litany of horrors, each one taking a little chunk out of her. "Brain damage, spinal cord injury, internal bleeding, that sort of thing." She leaves as Jackie mouths, It's not that bad, and once she's gone Jackie promises them that O'Hara's the best. She leaves them with Zoey, and at the nurse's station speaks silently again, to Zoey: Give them a hug. Hug them. She does, wrapping her arms around them both.
Then it's later, and Kevin's calling about some school conference that is apparently a bigger deal than they thought. She pushes her chair back, sighing, and gets ready to leave. In the restroom, she lays out foundation on a mirror, and applies it to her face, getting ready for the bomb to drop. How often does she do this, put on real-world makeup like this? A face to meet the faces that you meet; Eleanor does it every day. She puts a cardigan over her scrubs and tries not to think about what they're going to say: that her daughter is unraveling and they can't believe she hasn't noticed. But if she noticed, they'd all go down. So she puts makeup on her face and a cardigan over her scrubs. She doesn't change out of her scrubs, because they represent a kind of power. She combs her hair ever more starkly and heads out again.
Jackie doesn't even see Eddie walking past until he grabs her. "Hey you," he says, in the voice of every boy who doesn't know if he's your boyfriend yet. She lies and says she's going to the dentist, and he offers to take her several times -- he's gotten an extra helmet for his bike, just in case he is her boyfriend; he hopes she doesn't think that's why -- but she puts him off. If he can't give her a ride, then what? "Are you in pain?" Her eyebrows rise; she considers it before she even notices she's doing so. "Dentist's only gonna give you ibuprofen, I got the good stuff..." She declines. "See you, tough guy," he says, and she grins, and puts on her wedding ring as he's passing between a nun and a giant Virgin Mary. It's pathetic only insofar as, only by comparison to, the things we've never done to be loved. Or the things we've not yet done.
Mo-Mo watches the mom and Justin, talking about things. Zoey appears with more of her unanswerables. "You think it's true what they say about twins? That they can read each other's minds? Feel each other's pain?" He does, and he knows. "I'm a twin." He corrects: "I was a twin." She throws herself on him in instant compassion, in floppy Zoey mercy, and he shoves her away lightly. "Chica, never do that. Never think you should feel sorry for me. I get the aww thing and immediately I want to eat three sleeves of Oreos." That, she gets.
"He died when we were a year old," Mo-Mo offers, and she frowns sadly. "See, now I want to say I'm sorry again." He gets it, but keeps watching the family. "Do you remember him?" He reflects. "You know, I do. I remember being with someone, you know? Like I came into the world with someone. I didn't come here alone, so. You know. Being alone-alone is hard for me. It doesn't feel bad, it just feels... wrong." It should feel like Thor, you idiot.
And does he ever think about his twin now, what he would be like? Every day, he does, because every day he is exactly the same amount of alone. She makes an aggressively sad face and he changes the subject to her hair. "...No, that's worse," he finally says, and stops playing with it, and walks away.
In the school hallway, they discuss the fridge -- fixed, by Kevin -- and how if it breaks down again they'll have to move into the bar and eat beef jerky. Jackie distractedly needles him for pitying the jerky vendor, continuing to buy from him. "Kevin, you are such a softy." He misses her; he wraps his arms around her with a "great comeback to that." It's cute, and she laughs while peeling him away. "We are in a school! Please!" They are so easy together, it's so nice. Darn that Vicodin. She remembers the socks she bought him -- Gold Toes, his favorite just like my Dad's, and his Dad before him -- and pulls them out of her purse. He kisses her again, and behind his back a text comes in: Me so horny -- Eddie. Barf. She rolls her eyes but when he asks what's wrong, she just says she lost a patient.
They head into Grace's classroom, grab-assing all the while, and when they sit down it's sobering: three professionals lined up, staring at them in their child-sized desks like a play's about to start, or a test. It is. Both are. "Her grades are good," the teacher begins, "But we're a little concerned about some of her creative work. I've asked Connie, our school nurse, and district psychologist Skip Nennerine to weigh in." Kevin smiles at Kip, who's clearly uncomfortable about everything always, and asks how he's doing. "I have bursitis," he replies. "I believe your daughter Grace is experiencing signs of generalized anxiety disorder." Jackie jumps five notches to Bewildered, skipping over Confused and Dismissive, too eager to prove she doesn't know anything about this because there's nothing to know about.
Fiona appears at the door, waving toothlessly, and continues on down the hall. Grace exits the bathroom, looking terrified and tense as usual, and Fiona grins. "Mom and Dad are here." Grace jumps. "In your classroom, talking to your teacher." Joyfully, she sings it out: "You're in trouble!" Fiona is a dangerous lunatic. Grace loses it some more, if that's like even possible.
Thor stands with Eleanor while she gives Mom the update, but he doesn't say anything or do much. The kid is stable, no spinal damage or injury beyond the lung. Mom is effusive, so Eleanor sends her in to see her son, but that leaves her alone with Justin, who without warning throws his arms around her midsection and turns to stone. "Whoa!" she says, to no effect. She stands there with him for a bit, in her tights and her heels, and finally just calls Jackie's name into the silence, like they always do. "Someone? Anyone?" Another doctor laughs as he walks by. "Christ," Eleanor mutters, and walks the kid scarecrow style toward his mother's hopefully strong hands. "Okay, let's keep moving, mate. Come on. You're a heavy little bugger, aren't you?"
Jackie looks at the picture: four grey Peytons under a steely sky, outside Kevin's bar, holding hands, kids in the middle keeping them together, expressions somewhere between bored and terrified. "I dunno," she says. "Looks pretty good to me. She's always drawing my hair longer, she hates this haircut." (I love this haircut. I don't think Edie Falco's ever been as beautiful as she is right now in 2009, and the haircut strips everything else away.) Kevin tosses a nod to the brickwork in the drawing: "Pretty phenomenal. That's my bar." Beat. "That I own, not where I drink. I mean..."
Jackie and Kevin share a moment of pride about the art. It's not great, and the pride isn't real, but it's important that they team up right now, that they show support for their daughter, their daughter of many talents and qualities. "Right," the teacher squeaks, "But please, try to focus on what's lacking in the scene." Skip helps them out: "Her pictures are consistently devoid of color." Jackie shrugs, an elaborately unrehearsed shrug that would have come out no matter what. He could say "Her pictures consistently feature mice stuck in each other's vaginas," Jackie would shrug just like this, and say, "Um, yeah?" Just like this.
"She never draws a sun in any of her skies," Skip continues, and school nurse Connie picks up the ball: "Sometimes that can be a sign." Of what, exactly? The pretty young slip of a teacher opens her eyes wide: "Children tend to draw optimistically. Trees are huge, skies are blue. It's how they see the world." Jackie won't give them a fucking inch, of course, so she has to actually say the words out loud. "Are there any problems at home?" Not at home. Kevin and Jackie put on more of the elaborate Peyton Show, ducking their heads and crawling over each other to lovingly say to both each other and the three adults across from them, simultaneously, that they have no problems at all, Grace has no problems at home or anywhere else, they are a perfect family, what is the deal.
The teacher finally gets a little firm on them, having had enough nicey-nice. "She circles her desk. Three times, before she sits down." It floats in the air. "She told me it's so the planes don't fall out of the sky," Connie says, once it's sunk in. "Okay, you know what?" Jackie starts, scared to death, and Kevin jumps in, putting himself between her and them: "How do you think we should address this problem? I mean, if it is a problem?" Skip offers a list of therapists, to their horror, and Connie suggests their eventual course of treatment in the happiest, chirpiest voice she can manage while still stuck in a room with the rabid wolverine Jackie is becoming right before their eyes: "An age-appropriate, low-dose anti-anxiety medicine..." Jackie levels mean, bloody New Yorker eyes at poor Connie: "-- That's enough outta you."
Now clearly approaching Threat Level Midnight, Kevin gathers his shit and stands up in a commanding way, ending the interview. Jackie can't help herself. The makeup didn't help. "Thanks for your time. It's amazing to me, you think a kid has a problem, you just make him take a pill? That's nice work."
Jackie Peyton is a woman who carries the world on her back, and takes pills so it'll be easier, so it will hurt less. So that she can continue to save the world and keep the planes in the sky. And it scares her to death, and it makes her do gross things. It makes her break promises to herself, over and over. And the reason for this, she knows, is her own weakness. If she could be more superhuman, if she could grit through the pain the way those patients do every day in the ER -- she's seen them -- she wouldn't need the pills. It shouldn't be that easy. You don't just feed it with a pill. Not if you love the person you're feeding. And so there is not a problem here, because she's smarter than everybody on earth, which is great until you're in a place where it means she's smarter than you. And then she's all alone, with the complete-absence-of-a-problem that's managing to kill her daughter, despite not existing, anyway.
Grace appears at the door, wondering which plane's coming down this time, and Jackie tries her best to put on a new, sweet face. "Mrs. Vogel says that you have good grades!" Kevin nods, touching her: "We're proud of you, monkey." Connie's beeper goes off, and she silently thanks Jesus, running at a fair clip before Jackie can take her down like a gazelle in the field. But not fast enough.
Jackie runs after her, apologizing for getting rattled. "It's hard to listen to a bunch of strangers criticizing my kid..." Connie spreads her arms wide; you're a nurse, you know this by heart: "Nobody was criticizing. We're here to help." She knows, she didn't mean that either. "Look, we are both nurses. And I really want to understand this. You don't think they're going a little bit overboard in there? There's no sun in the pictures? Please." Trying the nurse game, the We Know Better game, that works so well at All Saints. "Okay, so she circles the desk, I don't know, maybe it could be..." Connie crosses her arms.
Worst part of the job, getting through this roadblock, trying to get as much authority in your voice as possible. Like an intervention, which is what this is: "It's a big deal." Jackie isn't hearing it. She circles around it three times, because she has to. "Look, you know how quickly kids change? Developmentally? Just when you think you know them, suddenly they're into something else. In six months she could be a completely different kid, in which case this meeting becomes totally irrelevant."
Connie's not used to this, she's used to having the upper hand, to having parents worship her the way all nurses are worshipped by those in need, or in pain. Just like Jackie is. The fact that they both speak the same language means they can't ever talk. "Your daughter has serious issues," she says, and Jackie loses the pleading tone, gets mad again: "Issues? What 'issues,' she has a personality. You guys! The minute they show even the slightest sign of being a little bit different, you want to write them a prescription."
Connie, absolutely at a loss and getting annoyed, is once again saved by the bell: a little boy appears, with a note and a fever. "Yeah, you better get him started on Prozac," Jackie bitches, and Connie flees, with a pissed-off "Have a nice day." To her retreating back, Jackie shouts, "I left a hemorrhaging ulcer to listen to your bullshit!" Another little boy, leaning against the wall, slowly turns his head to look at her, and she pulls it together impressively: "I can say that, you cannot."
Outside, she's ranting. "Buncha fucking idiots! That Nennerine guy... What the hell was that? I guarantee he's a hoarder." I don't know why, but that's the funniest thing. Like of all the things you diagnose a d-bag like that with, she immediately goes there. Hell, she's probably right. It is Jackie, after all. Kevin starts to explain that Skip's not the problem, and she jumps him: "So we have a problem? Do you think Grace should be on drugs?" This is who they are: she has the fire, and he keeps her safe and calm. "Jackie, they gave us their opinions. But we're the parents, we're gonna decide what's best for her." Jackie is stubborn and steadfast that there's nothing to decide, because there's not a problem; they both know better.
"Honestly, I'm not thrilled with the idea that she thinks planes are gonna fall from the sky if she doesn't do that thing around her desk." Jackie blows that one off, getting meaner, issuing instructions like it's the ER, as though that's the only place emergencies occur: "She watches too much news. You cannot let her sit at the bar all day and watch the TV..." He coughs. "Who was snoring last night while our daughter was watching World's Scariest Shit On Fire?"
HA! And not to mention, Jackie never turned the crock pot on, so when he was doing daytime daddy duty he had to deal with "a very stinky piece of pot roast." She sighs, he's done his job, she's thinking again. Maybe private school? Although the question there is, does she think the school is stressing Grace out, or is it that the school stresses her out? Private schools are great, because you can pay them to lie.
"That might be extreme," Kevin worries. "And expensive." So they tighten their belts, she suggests, which somehow makes him hungry. She nods, over it, ready to go back to work. These are the things any of us worry about, which makes them comforting. "Can you make us tacos tonight?" He nods, and kisses her goodbye, relieved it's blown over, and her phone rings again: Me STILL so horny... Ugh.
Jackie kisses Kevin goodbye and proceeds directly to a cell phone store, tossing the box and all evidence in the garbage, before returning to the Harmacy, calling Eddie on the way so he'll have the new number. Closing the door behind her, she lets Eddie in on the universal fact that "Me So Horny" tends to have the opposite effect on its recipient: "Makes me Not So Much," she says, and he hums like that's dubious or unusual in some way, and then as an apology -- as a token, as an overture, as a reminder, as a promise, as a pledge, an apology, they count for so much between them -- Eddie hands her a blister-strip of pills. "For the pain," he says, but what he means is, "So I can keep believing I'm your boyfriend, and so you will let me." She kisses him goodbye and pops a pill before the door's shut itself behind her.
Mo-Mo fills Zoey in on this week's other patient, a Lucille Marinovich, who comes in every couple weeks from a skilled nursing facility with end-stage COPD, which is bronchitis and emphysema together, which is terrifying and which means she -- like Justin's twin brother with the collapsed lung, like Grace under a steel-grey sky -- can't ever breathe, and it's killing her.
Dr. Cooper's not around because he had a gunshot to deal with. "Was it exciting?" Jackie asks, and Zoey's face goes resentful, not that either of them notice: "I don't know. I wasn't there." Mo-Mo tells Jackie, not Zoey, that she didn't miss much; Tuesday's GSW was worse. When he's gone, Zoey puts on a whole new, weirdly firm face, and utters in a darkly hilarious, professionalish voice, "I have been consistently shut out of all of the interesting cases today. And I'm not at all pleased." Jackie is too tired, and too fond of her, to laugh, but she raises her eyebrows high: "You are scary when you're mad!" Zoey, of course, wants to roll over for tummy-rubs at that, but stays hardcore, staring Jackie down, until Jackie gives her Mrs. Marinovich and leaves.
Then it's later, and Zoey's looking at the patient's chart: She has a DNR. Jackie nods, tells her what to do, and she heads off; Jackie calls out softly: "Oh, and she's gonna hate the mask, keep it on her." That kind of thing, you know? The contingencies; already knowing nine out of ten how they're going to react in every situation. That's what makes her great at this, but it's also what makes it so hard to get through: She's smarter than everybody on earth, which is great until you're in a place where it means she's smarter than you.
"Hey, Lucille, you feeling crummy?" Cooper looks down at her lovingly, indulgently, and she draws a painful breath, moaning in embarrassment. Jackie watches, carefully. "Don't look at me, Dr. Cooper!" Lucille wheezes. "I didn't get a chance to put my eyebrows on..." He holds her hand, and smiles warmly down. "You're beautiful." He asks her to put the mask on, so she can get her treatment and go home, but that will mean he goes away.
The only good thing about Lucille Marinovich's illness, which is her whole life now, which is to say the only good thing about her life, is Fitch Cooper twice a week. (Which is twice what we get, at best, so shut it, Lucille.) She changes the subject, hoping her advanced age and inability to breathe will cover such an obvious maneuver: "We... had orange roughy for dinner last night." You can almost feel her toes curling: WTF's she even talking about, orange roughy, seriously, anything to keep him where she can see him, get his agreement or his indulgence or whatever, to communicate. He nods, making approving noises. "...It's a mild fish."
Coop agrees easily -- orange roughy is a mild fish -- fixing her wig without thinking, pushing locks beneath it, a face to meet the faces that you meet, and she moans again. "Now you know I wear a wig!" she whisper-shouts in horror, and he bucktooths a smile at her, stumbling: "But I... didn't know till just this minute?" He bops her nose for good measure. It wouldn't matter. It's not about getting close to them, that's not why Jackie watches this so intently, and prays Zoey's paying attention: it's not about getting close to them, it's about making sure they don't feel alone. It's about balancing your real life, your in-the-head life, your responsibilities, with this very simple need. The more distracted he feels and doesn't show her, that's what Jackie's looking for. He passes, and well. He promises to come back, and mock-orders her to put the mask on, and Jackie heads up to the cubes, asking if Zoey's good. "I'm good," she says, sounding both grateful and competent.
"Shit, Jacks, you go missing in action and I'm left dealing with some sticky little tot," Eleanor whines, working at her computer. "I needed your hugs and warm nursey eyes to deflect his hero worship." Jackie stands in a nearby cubical, doing paperwork. "You had to be nice? I can't believe I missed it!" Eleanor, as usual, doesn't hear the irony: indeed, it was a nightmare. "Yeah! And his mucky little fingers ruined a pair of 80-dollar tights." Jackie doesn't spare a laugh, because they're not looking at each other, but there's a smile in her voice: "Remind me why you don't have kids." Additionally, she's seen Eleanor throw better than 80-dollar tights in the trash, of course, but Eleanor waves it off. "I would have preferred those tights to have been ripped off of me in the heat of something remarkable, as opposed to being destroyed by... sullied midget digits." Jackie allows as how she'd see that band.
"Oh, I bought us two napoleons from Le Cirque," Eleanor says. "They're in the insulin fridge." (I can't believe I had to watch the episode three times before I got that joke: of course they're in the insulin fridge, that's where they'd be, to stay chilled, but that's also where they belong.) Jackie fairly stomps her feet: "I want mine right now. Seriously, right now." Justin's mom brings him toward Eleanor's desk, with trepidation. Eleanor's fake smile is more intimidating, and just plain scarier, than if she came at you with a knife. Designed, like some evolutionary adaptation, to make you feel inhuman, grotesque, filthy in a way you can't wash off. Nighmarish, especially since it's not like that entirely on purpose. She honestly thinks what she's doing is smiling, to the degree that smiling at these particular people, at this particular moment, is relevant.
Eleanor stands: Justin's got something for her. Eighty bucks? she whispers to Jackie as she comes to them, staring down at him like an insect, still with that troubling smile plastered across her face like she's about to throw up and doesn't want to embarrass you with having seen it happen. Justin produces a picture he drew for her -- which pulls Jackie right out of wherever she just was -- and she thanks him.
Nobody moves, so obviously there's something more required here. "Now, you be a good boy? And always remember to... Help ladies on with their coats...?"
Nobody moves -- beyond a WTF twitch in the mom's eyes -- so obviously there's something more required here. Eleanor's eyes light up: She snaps off a bit of tape with one manicured hand, and affixes the picture to her desk, where she can look at it all day if she likes. He giggles winsomely, and she capers with toothy exaggeration: "PERFECT!" Mom thanks her, clearly understanding all the different levels of what just happened, and they take off.
Eleanor stands between the twins, who are dancing, with a sun and nine rays above her head. Their smiles -- mom, Justin, Eleanor, the sick kid -- are so strong, so joyful, they arc beyond the faces themselves. Relief bigger than your face can even show. Eleanor's arms are thrown wide, so that her doctor's coat is open, revealing a plum dress underneath. She is as tall as the hospital; she looks like a priest at Advent, or Lent. She looks like a saint. "Doesn't look anything like me," she says, and breezes away.
But Jackie doesn't move; she's been staring at the picture since Justin produced it. Just look at it: the vibrant colors, the sunshine. The family: dancing, smiling. (Spend enough time in one place, and you know the answers to questions you never even asked: "It's not like I want to know this stuff. I just do.")
A flatline beep goes up, and Jackie immediately sighs, knowing who it is and what has happened. She breathes a moment, and heads in to see if Zoey's okay.
She stands as at a funeral, crying quietly and softly. Jackie considers her from the curtain, not wanting to startle her: "Everybody has a first. It's never easy." That is self-evident, not the kicker. Here's the kicker: "And if it does become easy, it's time to quit."
Zoey swallows. "Yeah. But Gunshot Guy's alive. Collapsed Lung Boy's alive. Mine's dead..." she says, as if presenting the last bit of evidence: "Mine's dead, so you see, ladies and gentlemen of the jury..." Jackie nods. "I hear you." After a moment, her phone starts to ring. She doesn't want to answer it, even as Zoey waves her to go for it, but then the second phone rings, too. She makes the yee face and finally turns away for a moment, answering both at once and hanging up both at once: "Can't talk. Love ya."
Zoey and Jackie look at Lucille, giving her a moment of peace, and before they can move Coop comes screaming onto the floor outside, yelling at everybody and nobody: "I just had the most awesome gunshot today! Guy's totally stabilized! Coop 1, Death 0! Booyah!" Jackie tells her let him have this one, and they begin to clean her up. Zoey is halting, her speech even more stilted than usual, as they start to work on the body.
Is this the right thing, the Jackie thing, the less-alone thing? Or is it softness, weakness, the too-close thing? What will Jackie think? If she laughs, Zoey will die. She'll turn those giant eyes on Zoey and she'll feel as big as a gnat and she'll pin her to the wall with some withering comment. But Zoey knows what she has to do. "I... want to do her eyebrows," she finally says, and Jackie nods. "Right. I have a makeup pencil in my purse," she says tenderly. Zoey fixes her wig, pushing locks beneath it. A face to meet the faces that you meet.
Mo-Mo sings to the little boy in Arabic, all susurrations and sibilance, encouraging cadences; it's beautiful, and mournful. The room is dark. It fills the room; it fills the floor. He hasn't let go of the boy's hand yet, not for a moment. Wherever he is, he shouldn't be alone.
Jackie finally takes Grace's picture out of her purse and unfolds it, looking for a moment at its grey sky, the emotionless faces as they drift apart, before taking out a yellow highlighter. Jackie uncaps the marker and gives her daughter a sun as big as the world, as warm and bright as chicken soup. "There," she bites. "Was that so hard?"
It is, and she knows it. Grace can't depend on anything for her sunshine, not like Mommy. There must be something else she can do, there must be a way she can be stronger, because Grace deserves more, and better. We come into the world alone. We don't deserve to stay that way.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see why vlogger Sean Crespo thinks he and Jackie have a lot in common in No Prior Knowledge.