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Eddie springs a bracelet on Jackie for their one-year anniversary, which gesture she of course mangles terribly, and he ends up so hurt that he A) accuses her of not liking the bracelet because it's not made of Vicodin (oh yes he did) and B) gives it to Coop instead. So then Coop spends the day wearing the bracelet Eddie gave him, which is amazing.
After offering to pay for private school for Grace and Fiona, Eleanor finally shows a crack in the façade and pops a Xanax in front of Jackie. Classy as ever where drugs are concerned, Jackie steals half the bottle while breezily saying she's a lightweight. Then she returns the favor by inviting Eleanor to stay the night in Queens with the family, because of some kind of dastardly family doings we don't really hear all about. The morning, Eleanor unthinkingly steals the Peyton's electric bill to pay it, and Kevin -- who's already in total hate with her and her blowsy, insulting ways -- is horrified to the point of murderousness. It's sort of shocking.
Patients include Zak Orth (from Romeo + Juliet and Wet Hot American Summer and Boys + Girls and like Michael Showalter's entire life), who got stabbed by a girl's ex-husband on their first date; a mysterious baby that Gloria Akalitus carries around the entire episode feeding it paperclips; a pedo who gets his catheter pulled the hard way, much to Zoey's wonderment; and, um... God.
Amid about fifty other repeated themes and motifs in this highly literary outing, yes. God spends the entire time screaming down from the skies in a fringed jacket, telling everybody they're going to Hell. He tells Zoey she's balding, calls Mo-Mo's scrubs feminine, and repeatedly points out what a whore Jackie is. The only person God likes, predictably, is Elenor O'Hara.
Having had enough of God's highjinks for one episode, Jackie tells him to leave her and her nurses alone, or at least to go after criminals and Caucasian men for once. She then reminds him to take his meds, because all the guilt and shame aren't helping, and he snaps into sanity just long enough to thank her before heading off to do just that. In related-if-unsurprising news, I officially have a new favorite show.
Discuss this episode in our Nurse Jackie forums, then see how Jackie's bedside manner compares to Meredith Grey's in TV is the Answer!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!I still hate the theme song, at least the part where it turns into Oz, but oh, how it makes my heart leap when I hear it. I am so smitten with this show! It's like a real-life goddamn love story. Jackie sits outside All Saints with Eleanor while she smokes, watching a man across the street about six floors up, wearing a fringed jacket and screaming with long hair and a beard, talking about how he's a God, how the whores better run, how nobody hides from the Almighty. "It's 9:15 AM!" he screams. Jackie shakes her head. "God's off his meds again."
Eleanor's wearing a sleek black suit and a black ascot with white polka-dots, looking awesome as usual. "Careful," she smirks, "Or he'll unleash a swarm of locusts." But on the upside, it would be a great time to start smoking again. "Nah," Jackie says. "I got kids." It's always something, Eleanor laughs, and Jackie mentions how they're probably going to send Grace to Immaculate Virgin. "Immaculate Virgin. That's a bit redundant, don't you think?" Jackie looks at her. "Dirty Virgin?" Eleanor suggests, but Jackie's not interested in sacrilege right now; not with God watching. Grace is found in silence. Grace is always quiet.
"It's four grand if we join the Parish," Jackie sighs tiredly, "Seven if we don't." Eleanor points out -- all humility aside -- that she's "bulletproof," even in this economy, and before Jackie can protest, she asks to at least get the words out first: "If you like, I'll pay for the girls' school." Jackie thanks her, but points out in a very serious tone that Kevin would blow a gasket.
They stand up and Jackie points at Eleanor's feet: two very different, very expensive shoes. "Everything all right?" Eleanor laughs: "What, because my shoes don't match? Please." She remembers to thank Jackie for asking, and heads inside. Jackie watches her go. This is her whole job, locating trauma and doing triage. Her phone rings, throwing her off track: it's a text from Eddie. Got something 4 U.
"Hey! Hey, you! I am God! And you are an asshole!" She smiles and heads inside: she already knew that. "Go in peace! You pieces of shit!"
A billion nurses and doctors go running past Thor, so he assumes there's cake. But instead of cake, there's multiple stab wounds and difficulty breathing. "I can imagine," says Eleanor grimly. "Oh. Ew," says Thor, and leaves. A woman enters the ER and tells Eleanor the guy is 33, she thinks. He's a big guy; there's a steak knife sticking out of his chest and blood all over. "We work nights. He took me for breakfast... It was going so good..." Zoey nods sagely: "So you stabbed him." Um, no, you lunatic. "My ex did! He followed us. I had a restraining order..." Zoey shakes her head: her cousin had one of those. "They don't always work." Jackie ushers her out of the room, weirded out as usual.
"I can catch you if you faint," Coop says, reverting to type, and Zoey of course doesn't even respond to the autopilot flirtation buried in there: "No thanks, I'm good!" She asks Jackie if she can pull the knife out, and Jackie gets serious. "Never remove a foreign object protruding from a patient," she says, explaining that's for doctors. "Do you understand?" Zoey nods, and whispers hilariously, "But it's so tempting!"
Jackie sighs. Then it's later and she's heading into the Harmacy, where Eddie has been texting her nonstop since last night. "You don't answer your phone," he explains, "And you don't come over. So this is all I've got. It takes me ten minutes to write four words, I'm using my thumbs here!" Jackie grins and assures him that's not all he's got. "And I got you a little something extra today, above the standard fare." He hands over a jewelry box, causing her throat to close up with terror.
"Eddie. No..." Eddie tells her to just open it up, and it's a bracelet. We can't see it, but her eyes say she's not shitting when she says it's nice. "Happy Anniversary, babe," he says, and without thinking she goes, "What? It's not March." He's confused, and rather than explaining she was thinking of her wedding anniversary -- which would be a messy way to clean up the mistake -- just shrugs, "March, did I say March? Jesus Christ! That's how tired I am." They laugh, because this is her answer to everything, and he bobs on his heels, waiting for a response.
"Eddie, I'm sorry," Jackie says after a minute. "I'm not good at this... stuff." He says he's not either, nobody is, just put the bracelet on. Instead, she snaps the box closed with a sigh, and his pride goeth on a long hard fall. "Yeah. No. I get it." He takes it back. "Stupid fucking bracelet from the guy you're banging. Right?" Angrier now, pushing the line too far: "Too bad it's not made out of Vicodin..." The whole pressure drops like a record skritching. You can actually hear his balls retract. Too close. Jackie gets angry, and scared, and scared because she knows getting angry lends it credence, and angry because she's scared: "Sorry?"
Eddie proceeds merrily down the road to Hell he just opened up. "You heard me." He talks about how it's always the chronic pain, the back, the tooth, and then sort of brilliantly brings it back around to the larger (he thinks) issue of their relationship, and a true thing to boot: "Everything's on your terms, Jackie." He tells her to forget it, and she tells him to forget it, as in the Big It, as in keep your fucking bracelet and keep your fucking pills, because she doesn't need any of it.
Because Jackie is a brave little soul, you see, and is willing to prove that he means so much more to her than the pills that it's easy to say fuck it to both. Because Jackie is a smart little addict, and knows that this point will stick in his head just a bit longer than his anger, and when he comes crawling back with pills in hand, because he is in love with her, she knows that somewhere in his head he'll know that it's not because of the pills that she takes him back.
And somewhere else in both their heads, they'll wonder if that's true, but we live wherever it feels nicest, so he'll be able to overlook this question, like he's been doing for the past year, and for her this question will stay locked up in a room so far away from where she lives you can't even find it with a map, and she'll focus on whatever is in front of her instead of looking for it. Like she's been doing for a long, long time.
A repeat sex offender comes in, having passed out in police custody. "His nuts were like..." the cop says, hands gone huge and balloony. Zoey tells her they ordered a Foley cath, but now she can't get it out. Jackie nods. This is going to be awesome! Jackie Justice! Repeat sex offender (1) with something stuck in his dick (2) plus Jackie still being pissed off from a second ago (3)? Man alive.
Zoey smiles and he stares back at them, screaming over and over, "Get this thing out of my dick!" Over in the corner, putting on her gloves, Jackie asks lightly -- terrifying, if you know Jackie at all, which he doesn't -- if Zoey deflated the little balloon at the tip of the thing. Well, she tried, but maybe it didn't work. The guy's still screaming about his dick, which causes the cop to get aggro with him, and Jackie ushers the cop away before telling Mo-Mo to hold the guy's shoulder. He pats him lightly and holds him down as Jackie warns him that he'll feel some "pressure," then untapes the catheter from his thigh, taking her time, looks down angrily at the offending organ... And in the graceful quiet, she plants her feet and lets it RIP.
"There ya go," she says lightly, sort of on fire from God right now, and appalled Mo-Mo yanks her, almost screaming, past a stressing Zoey and out of the hospital altogether. "He's a fucking pedophile, Mo-Mo!" Jackie shouts, and he's like, "Yes, but you cannot do that shit." He explains that the man is a patient in the hospital, and abusing their genitals might get her in trouble. She admits that she's frustrated, having just fought with "A man. Guy. Friend. Guy friend." He grabs her arm with a gay gasp: "Boyfriend?" She rolls the word around in her mouth: "Yes. I had a fight with my... boyfriend."
Mo-Mo's thrilled, but also feeling left out that he didn't even know -- and girl, you don't know the half of it, so pace yourself -- and Jackie says lovingly, "Honey, you do all the talking." His jaw drops, but he realizes she's right; above them, God rains down shrieks and epithets. Mo-Mo wants deets, but Jackie's like, "It's nobody from work, just leave it alone?" Not a chance.
Mo-Mo changes the subject of the interrogation to the subject of their fight, and she shrugs. "I didn't realize it was our anniversary, and that makes me a terrible person," she says snottily, playing a little game inside her head, because that's not what makes her a terrible person, but being frustrated about the small thing eclipsing the big thing is a great way to feel no accountability whatsoever. "...Wait, anniversary?" Jackie admits it's been a year, and Mo-Mo breathes because he had no idea, and her voice is sad as she looks him in the eye: "Neither did I." It's been a year, a year of pills, a year is how long she's been hearing that voice, the one that calls her a whore; God screams.
"Now! Now! Now! To me, you slaves and sluts! Go ahead, eat! Eat! Eat God's shit!"
It's lunchtime. Coop's in the Harmacy, chowing down on a pastry and goggling eyes at Eddie's pill collection. "Did you get a visit from a morphine rep or something?" Not exactly. Coop starts yelling excitedly about how they should go to Atlantic City for the weekend, he's got a free room yadda yadda, boy stuff, and Eddie begs off. "It doesn't have to be Thursday," Coop fakes bravely. "I was just throwing it out there..."
Cooper picks up the jewelry box and Eddie says he can open it if he wants. "Whoa. That's nice! It's unisex, right?" Oh, Coop. Eddie's not sure. Coop plays with the bracelet and tells an awesome story: "I bought a Cartier watch when I graduated med school? I got robbed at gunpoint two days later, I was like, Really?"
I don't know why, but that little speech is my favorite part of the episode. I was like, really? I know it feeds into the whole God vs. Caucasian Men thing at the end of the episode, but the way he says it is so delightful. So Big Pharma agrees that people suck, and Coop shakes the bracelet in his face, asking who it's for. "I've had a pretty bad day," Eddie starts out meanly, putting on his Mean Old Man voice like he did last week with Zoey, "So I don't feel like talking about Cartier, or fucking bracelets, or fucking Trump Marina, if that's okay with you."
Coop pulls a little Zoey move of his own, jumping right over the hostility and pretty severe indictment inherent in that speech, and just nods. "Sure!" He hands it back over and asks Eddie what's up, offhandedly. Eddie, feeling bad about being mean to the overactive Labrador Retriever that is Fitch Coop, even if he doesn't really know how mean he was, and knowing this is how you deal with a Coop (or an Eleanor), offers him the bracelet. "Don't get robbed," he says, but a severe sunshine attack has just taken over Coop's face, shouting "AWESOME!" and shoving the pastry into his face some more. Man, I love Fitch Cooper. (Do I lose what little cred I have if I admit that my first thought was, "This is where Emmett Cullen gets it"?)
God's still screaming; you can even hear him best in the chapel hall, where it's usually quiet. Eleanor passes Jackie, distracted, and Jackie grabs her to ask where the "muffiny things" went. She admits she gave them to Coop -- which means he was eating Eleanor's love for Jackie at the same time he was putting on Eddie's, which bodes well for none of the above -- and doesn't even engage in banter about it, just sends Jackie, with a certain professional edge in her voice, to check on the Steak Knife people. She says something about her lipstick fading and her ass, but I listened a million times and couldn't suss it out. I'm sure it was good, but not her best.
Jackie shrugs and tends to the lady, who asks hysterically if the guy is dead, but Jackie puts her at ease. She calls him "the greatest guy," like a "pearl in the dirt," and Jackie nods while she weeps. "I never get the nice ones. I'm like a creep magnet!" She says it's like God said, "Okay, that's enough assholes, Laurie," and sent her Zach. Grace is quiet, you have to look for it. Jackie promises guys like him bounce back every day, but she's not entirely comforted. "It was our first date." Beat. "He's not going to call me again, is he?" Jackie stares, because try and get my sympathy for not having enough men in your life, today of all days.
Gloria wanders the hospital with the baby in her arms, looking for its owner, past Mo-Mo counseling a tearful Zoey about something. Bet it's something nutty! Jackie rolls her eyes past some nuns and asks what it is this time. Zoey wipes her tears and shushes Mo-Mo, but he explains that God told her her hair was thinning. "He said I had a bald spot!" At wit's end, Jackie seriously goes, "Zoey, look at me. Stop going outside." I'm sure there was more to that thought, but just then she spots the bracelet on Coop's wrist and is horrified. She completely forgets that Zoey and Mo-Mo are there, and goes into a serious confusion fugue. "Daddy's gonna fix this," Mo-Mo says, and storms away from the still-weeping Zoey, who shrieks, "Mo-Mo, don't! God's mean!"
God isn't mean. God just tells you what time it is. The rest is mental illness, which is also not mean. It's a fact. God says, "At the tone, you will be an addict." Or, "At the tone, you will still hate yourself." "At the tone, your death will still be coming closer." "At the tone you will still feel guilty, for things you never could have controlled." "At the tone, you will still believe that you have failed your children." "At the tone, you will continue to call yourself a whore." "At the tone, you will still think drugs are the way out of the hole drugs put you in." That's what time it is, and that's all you get. Grace is pretty quiet when it comes. God doesn't tell you what to do with that information. He just hopes, and loves, and keeps counting.
Eleanor's in her office, begging someone not to hang up the phone, but they do. Jackie knocks on her door, and Eleanor quickly pulls it together. "Got a minute?" asks Jackie, and Eleanor throws her head back. "I've got millions." Jackie sits down, stressed: "I fucked up." Eleanor nods with a gambit well-played: "You certainly did! Those muffiny things were brilliant. Coop loved them." Yeah, and now he's got her bracelet too, bizarrely enough. Jackie explains.
"Eddie gave Coop a bracelet that he got for me," she explains, and Eleanor is relieved to have dirt. "The plot thickens! He's buying you things, nicely played." Jackie says that "apparently" they've been hooking up for a year, which freaked her out. "I didn't handle it well." Eleanor nods. "And now Coop's flitting about in your jewelry," she says. Sometimes kindness is loud, sometimes grace is quiet. But while there's a lot in this episode about who carries whose burdens, who does all the talking, we already know for sure but could have guessed that this, whining about her adultery, is the kindest thing Jackie could be doing right now, and Eleanor is beyond grateful.
Eleanor pulls out a bottle of pills from her desk: "Xanax. My life's a shambles." She pops one in her mouth. "That's a secret, by the way." Um, Jackie stopped thinking, much less caring, the second she saw a bottle, but point taken. Finally she asks Eleanor what's going on, and Eleanor shakes her head. "It would take a bucket of scotch to get it out of me." Jackie leans closer, playing friend.
"Does that help?" Days like this, yes. "Want one?" Jackie shivers with anticipation, as though she's thinking it over. "...I think I do, yeah. Is that bad?" Eleanor shrugs. She has no time for good and bad. Jackie giggles tightly that she's kind of a lightweight, and Eleanor tells her to take half. And Jackie does. Half the bottle pouring them quickly into her hand before passing one pill and the bottle back to Eleanor, who cracks it in half with like a chopstick. "Bottoms up?"
Eleanor watches her take it with a secret smile, as though she's leading Jackie just a bit astray, just a little naughtiness, a secret between us girls. It makes me sad. Like she knows what time it is. "Now, go clean up your mess." Jackie nods at this good advice, and leaves Eleanor staring into space, in the quiet.
Jackie walks past more nuns, as God screams, and she pops more Xanax and looks askance at the giant Jesus statue in its niche: "What are you looking at?" He's looking at the time. Jackie mouths her apologies to Eddie at his window, not hungry for drugs: sobered by them. Quieted. He shrugs, depressed, and she comes inside, smiling. "Can we go back to where you said it's been a year? And this time I'd like to say, 'Wow! Time flies when you're having fun!'" She searches his face: this part is delicate. "Because we are having fun, aren't we?" He admits he just feels like an asshole, a little bit, and it's not a big fucking deal. Eddie is a good guy. Can you imagine just saying that, when something happened? At the tone, I feel like an asshole, and that's what time it is.
"Why, because you remembered it's been a year and I didn't? Eddie. Time for me is how long it's been since I changed an IV. Other than I'm pretty useless." He says this is strong, mirroring back her reassurance from the beginning of the episode. "For the record? It's not that I didn't like it. I just don't want to wear it at work." She teases that somehow Coop's pulling it off, and Eddie is unable to explain the unexplainable moment when he gave Coop the bracelet, so he asks if she still wants it. She doesn't. She smiles. "Sure."
Coop's bumbling around in a hallways somewhere with a Ho-Ho sticking out of his face, and Eddie puts him up against the wall, mugging him: "Give me all your jewelry." Coop's face falls and he protests ("Oh no! Dude, come on!"), but Eddie just shakes his head. I can't believe a month ago with that old lady telling Coop and Mo-Mo to kiss and it was like Really? Because now, it seems like his moms have trained him out of that boy bullshit so well that he'd probably just have shrugged and done it. And props to Mo-Mo, even though I'm staunchly Team Thor, had that happened. Coop sadly offers his wrist and Eddie tenderly apologizes as he takes it back.
"How did it go with God?" Jackie asks, as Mo-Mo returns looking the worse for wear. "This is not a woman's top," he shouts. At the tone, you'll still feel insecure about your masculinity, your lifestyle and your occupation. "Isn't that awful?" gushes Zoey. At the tone, you'll know you can never be beautiful. Gloria comes by with the baby, now crying, shaking a paperclip caddy in his face. "Come on, people! This is somebody's baby!" Jackie stares at the horrible sight, and comes closer to look at the adorable baby. She reaches down, and produces a paper clip: "Things like this? Stay out of the baby's mouth." Gloria is astounded and flabbergasted, but Jackie's just like, "Hey, whose baby is this?" Gloria hustles off, screaming at the nobody who owns the baby that he's going in her office and she's calling social services.
Jackie checks in on Steak Knife Zach, who is high on morphine and not making a hell of a lot of sense, which in TV is code for everything he says is the secret truth. Jackie mentions that Laurie's pacing a hole in the floor for him, and he whines, remembering that it was her husband that stabbed him. "Her ex-husband. And he's not the one you're dating." Because what Jackie needs right now is a little less triangulation in her relationships. To be neither steak knife nor stabbist; to use her friends and lovers less and to love them more.
Zach points out that there are dangerous people in the world, and Jackie says she hardly thinks Laurie is one. "By association, though," he says, indicting everyone who loves Jackie in one fell swoop, even as their cracks and the dangers they represent are looming ever larger. "...Anyway," she says, "She's worried sick." Zach yells about how he's not dating any more married people, no more people with problems. "I want someone with a clean slate. Like a grad student."
Jackie adjusts his drip to shut him up, until he chokes on truth and sleeps. She watches it pour out, falling in slow motion; he nearly passes out, in pure bliss. She thinks of Paula. Just for a moment, just for a split second until he starts talking again, she allows herself to think of Paula: That empty room, everything all packed up. If one pill feels good, and two feels great? They agree that Laurie's pretty, and so nice.
"Maybe this is a test," Jackie says. Somewhere God is screaming.
"Maybe if you can move on from here, everything else will be a piece of cake." Maybe we can move on from hurting each other and being hurt. Maybe we can forget the ironies and coincidences that bring us out of alignment with each other. At the tone, God says, you will stop feeling guilty because of somebody else's mistake, or someone else's rage, and look at the person in front of you. She pulls out the bracelet. "I found it on the subway, it looks brand new." She puts it in his hand, and he's touched. He won't remember it. She's sad to see it go; it's just another steak knife. He won't remember this. "Maybe everything happens for a reason, right?"
Laurie's covered in Cheeto dust when Jackie finds her; she cleans her off with a wipe and Laurie nearly weeps with gratitude before heading to his bedside; Eleanor passes her in the doorway. "Jacks?" She closes the door and smiles, nervously. Her face tries to do several things it's never done before. "Okay, here's the thing. Not an easy day. For either of us."
Jackie's face jumps. If this is the you stole my pills talk, if this is the we're not friends talk, if this is the first time she gets caught... "And you're going home to a cozy... Something or other... With your husband, and your children. They're going to light up when they see you. And I'm going to be trying to remember what my tipping policy is when I pick up my dinner and go back to my room." Jackie asks if she wants to come over.
After a long pause, Eleanor geeks out in a picture-perfect Zoey, and Jackie stammers. "Or, or not, it's just an idea, you could stay in Fiona's room, you know..." Eleanor summons a bit of strength from somewhere and her back goes straight and she remembers who she is. "Actually, I'd prefer Grace's." Whew! That was the scariest six seconds of this entire series.
Eleanor leads Jackie to her towncar, outside the hospital; their shared language brings a laugh when Jackie calls it a "carriage," because only by acknowledging the differences can they possibly negotiate them, which is something they have in common, which is a reason they're friends. "You! Yes, you!" shouts God, and something about burning, and they look up. Jackie shakes her head: what is with the apparently homeless guy having an apartment? That's playing against type. "All day with this shit," she grumbles. "Never underestimate the stamina of a psychotic episode," Eleanor says cheerily.
"And who have you fornicated with today, darling?" asks God.
"Wow," Jackie mutters. "Wouldn't You like to know?" she shouts up, close to having had enough. Zoey and Mo-Mo slide by with a hushed goodbye, moving so quickly they're only blurs. "Goodnight, Baldy!" That'll do.
Jackie can handle it, Mo-Mo can basically handle it. But God's already put enough on Zoey's plate without the insults.
"And stop picking on my nurses, all right? Pick on criminals! Pick on white guys!" Eleanor rejoices: Jackie, telling God to behave Himself! Her Jacks, getting into fights with madmen on a street corner! "Fucking fantastic," she giggles, and God takes notice. "Who is your friend with the heels?" She waves up at Him. "Now that's a woman," He says, because if it's not clear already, God prefers the Eleanors and Fitches of the world. "And what's she doing with an old whore like you?"
Eleanor laughs, and Jackie stares up as He cackles.
"All right, listen to me. Put down the cat food, and get back on your meds. You're not doing anybody any good up there right now, all right? Do you hear me?" He stares down, shocked into lucidity. "I apologize," He says softly, and she nods.
"It's 7:23 PM!" He shouts, hopefully, and she smiles as she gets into the car. He stares after them, as they go. Under the beard, and the hair and the jacket, under the madness, He is beautiful.
Then it's later, and Kevin and Jackie watch as Eleanor downs a bucket of scotch and wipes at her makeup. She's told them the story; Kevin bristles at whatever it is. "He's a fucking criminal," he growls, and Jackie holds up a hand. "I had to say it!" Kevin says, also in his cups, angry about whatever it is. "He's her father," Jackie says, and corrects herself. "Stepfather." Eleanor sniffles and says Kevin's right. She points at him, and nods through her tears, and picks up her drink. She is ashamed. Cheers. "Total waste of plasma, that one. My sister's gonna be destroyed..."
"What about you?" Jackie asks, and Eleanor snorts. "I'm getting blasted in Queens. Consider me already destroyed." This puts Kevin's hackles up, and Eleanor shivers. "Rats. That came out wrong, didn't it?" Kevin heads upstairs, pointedly making it clear he's heard this particular area of Eleanor's bullshit more than once before, and kisses Jackie goodnight. Eleanor waves to him guiltily, and asks if she hurt his feelings. "Kevin? Nooo." Jackie puts her at ease, and watches her. She looks 15 years older: just smoking, sad and broken. Jackie watches her pour another glass.
Then it's morning, 10:10 AM to be exact, and Fiona and Eleanor watch the coffee dripping into the carafe like morphine. "You can pour now," Eleanor grunts, and Fiona smiles to herself. "It's still going!" Eleanor shakes her head indulgently. "You're a tiny, cruel little creature." Fiona nods, with a sparkling smile. "I know!" Eleanor loves it. Me, too.
Fiona finally pours the coffee, while Eleanor notices a pile of open bills on the table. Fiona hands over the mug, and Eleanor shrieks when she tastes it: "AUGH! What the hell is this?" Fiona giggles, like chimes. "What you trying to do, poison me?" While Fiona laughs her ass off, Eleanor spits the coffee back out: "Pah! Hideous!" She asks if Fiona got it from the gutter, and sends her to the fridge for milk, "to dilute this catastrophe!"
The bill on top of the pile is for about a hundred bucks. She pops it into her purse faster than a half-bottle of Xanax, thinking they won't notice. She never does, and anyway, that's nothing. She's not a good friend, she thinks. Not a good person, not like Jackie. She says the most terrible things, and has no family, nobody who loves her. There's not much she can give but money; no other way to deal with problems than to throw money at them. This is a problem, then, to be solved: how to even the score. How to make Jackie happy, without giving up anything of herself.
"All right, what are you two doing?" Jackie comes in with a fake suspicious look, adjusting a watch around her wrist. Maybe Kevin gave it to her. Maybe for their anniversary, last March. Maybe it wasn't from Cartier, maybe it didn't cost very much. Maybe she needs it on her wrist, today. "She's trying to kill me with your antique coffee!" Eleanor shouts, to Fiona's delight, and Kevin enters, still with the black cloud over his head, and asks how she slept. "As if sedated," she yawns. "Nothing forces me to embrace my life like a night on polyblend sheets." Jackie grins, because that's the Eleanor she loves, but for Kevin every word is a knife.
Grace enters, wearing her uniform, for the first day at Immaculate Virgin. They cheer for her, but Eleanor says false-firmly that her ensemble is missing something. Grace goes stiff as a board, terrified, New School fear on top of Grace Fear on top of Eleanor O'Hara being naturally intimidating, and Kevin watches them carefully, ready to jump in. "A French braid! Classic component of any Catholic school uniform. Luckily for you, I'm a master," she says, pulling a chair close. Kevin finds new ways to be unimpressed with her.
"I guarantee you'll she'll be the most glamorous girl at Immaculate Virgin..." Eleanor babbles, and Kevin sees his bills sticking out of her purse. He grimaces hatefully at Jackie, who apologizes and begs him not to say anything. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she mouths, and as Fiona's asking why it's called a French braid, he slaps the bills back onto the table, where they belong.
"Well," Eleanor says, "Because it's mysterious and alluring," she says, every word and every touch on Grace's head a bit more comfort, a bit more strength, a bit more armor to take into her day. Eleanor knows more about where Grace is coming from, I think, than Jackie or Kevin do; Eleanor knows more about fear than either of them ever will, and what it takes to be defeated. This is conjecture, but: She's offered her guardianship, she's offered to pay for her school, she chose to sleep in her room. All specifically Grace, even though by every measure Fiona is the awesome one. Eleanor has an interest in Grace, and I think has to do with this balance between wanting to take care of Jackie in some way, and in recognizing the darkness in what Grace is all about, and the ways she'll need to skate on the surface if she's going to survive. No wonder Kevin hates her so much.
Fiona asks where she learned to French-braid, and the answer is joyful and matter-of-fact: "In France!" Kevin rolls his eyes, and Jackie tells Grace how great she looks. But she's still nervous, and why? "Daddy bought the wrong color bike shorts," Grace admits, after a long pause. Eleanor goes yikes but not as yikes as she should. "Oh, honey. I... Nobody can see them," Jackie promises, but Grace points out that God can. At the tone, you will be wearing the wrong color shorts under your skirt.
Eleanor O'Hara sits in the middle of the Peyton kitchen, with fierce little Fiona and strong little Grace, with Kevin's glare boring holds in the back of her head, happy with a child in her arms, at rest for the first time in a long time, looking at her best friend and feeling like a squatter in her own life. She doesn't see the glance Jackie returns to her husband, the embarrassment, the work-friends/friend-friends awkwardness she's trying to portray. She just watches Jackie say the words.
God's not mean. God just tells you what time it is. God doesn't tell you what to do with the information, He doesn't announce himself: He hopes, and loves, and keeps counting.
"He will know that you meant well. Okay?"
Grace is quiet.
Discuss this episode in our Nurse Jackie forums, then see how Jackie's bedside manner compares to Meredith Grey's in TV is the Answer!