“Are you using an exter­nal camera?”

            “I’m not.” Maureen grits her teeth. She clicks things and jabs keys. God, whyyy? She checked last night and the camera was working fine. She thinks it was. She could see herself! Her sigh is so heavy she is nearly over­come by the scent of her own coffee breath.

            “Any apps open that might be using your camera? Skype? Face­Time?” Jasper squints at the screen.

Jasper is one of three can­di­dates being inter­viewed this morning for the “illus­tri­ous role” of Aca­d­e­m­ic Success Advisor at Freedom Gospel Uni­ver­si­ty. Their inter­view­er, Dr. Michael David­son, is running late—according to his assis­tant, who let them into the meeting but is staying off camera, muted, and not exactly swoop­ing in to offer aid.

And then there’s Jasper, her rival, who is trying to help.

            Maureen pauses to study him. Jasper has curly, red hair, a rather large pair of tor­toise­shell glasses, and is wearing some kind of sweater vest, super preppy, all black except for a mys­te­ri­ous tiger-striped P on the left, near his shoul­der. Early thir­ties, she esti­mates. Men­tal­ly, the cal­cu­la­tions begin, the ones she never did before and that are now bor­der­line obses­sive. If Jasper’s thirty-two, that makes him, what—only fifteen years younger? 

            Fifteen years!

Maureen’s heart pounds like a toddler banging a drum, and to remedy that, she takes another swig of coffee. “No. No other apps open.”

            “Alrighty,” Jasper says with a sigh. Then, “Try logging out. God! I should’ve told you that first.” He palms his fore­head. His camera works so effec­tive­ly, Maureen can actu­al­ly see the tips of his ears redden to match his hair. Fur­ther­more, she thinks that he bites his lip unnec­es­sar­i­ly hard. 

            Seeing this grounds her. She was a teacher in the Houston School Dis­trict for over a decade, seventh graders who far too often hadn’t eaten break­fast and whose folks, even working two or three jobs, still didn’t have enough money for school sup­plies. Jasper may not have grown up so poor that teach­ers like Maureen stepped in to pay for his lunch ticket. Yet the look on his face, the awful self-berat­ing, well, that’s a look her stu­dents taught her to recognize.

            “No problem, Jasper,” she says, gently. “I didn’t think of it either. I’m going to try that and hope­ful­ly, in a second here, we’ll have a proper intro­duc­tion.” Oth­er­wise, Maureen thinks, he might suspect she’s delib­er­ate­ly dis­abled her camera. He’ll wonder if she has some­thing to hide. A ter­ri­ble some­thing that will instant­ly dis­qual­i­fy her from this posi­tion. He’ll try to imagine what it is. And pos­si­bly try to use it against her in the interview.

            Her mind is getting away from her again but she can’t help it. She’s had way too many fruit­less inter­views, each tick of the clock is another high heel click to the grave, and her savings are endan­gered, swiftly going extinct.

            Maureen tugs at her blouse, which, though light and airy when she put it on this morning, now feels like it’s choking her. She checks the time while she waits to reenter the meeting.

            Two minutes to nine.

            She pops back in at the same time as someone else.

            Rita—the third candidate.

            Maureen’s camera remains non­func­tion­al, so she eval­u­ates the newly arrived rival.

            She can’t be more than twenty-five. How is she even qual­i­fied? Maureen takes in the young woman’s long and sleek black hair, parted per­fect­ly in the middle, her unim­peach­able makeup, and red blazer. Why didn’t Maureen think to wear red? Red is a power color! 

            “Welcome, Rita!” she cries, con­ge­nial despite the acid rising in her throat. “I’m Maureen. You can’t see me.”

             “Nice,” Rita says. “Did you put ‘invis­i­ble’ on your resumé?”

            Jasper laughs, and Maureen’s mouth pinches. She knew a group inter­view for the same posi­tion couldn’t lead to any­thing good. Nev­er­the­less, she wills herself to be the bigger person. “I should, Rita. I absolute­ly should. Nowa­days, invis­i­bil­i­ty is my superpower.”

Silence.

Well, how would they get the joke? They can’t see her after all. Even if they could, they wouldn’t get it. They aren’t Silver Gazelles—the silly name of the Meetup group Maureen joined last year. Toni, the orga­niz­er, claimed that “silver fox” was clichéd and gazelles were equally beau­ti­ful animals. Plus, they didn’t steal chick­ens. True, Maureen had rejoined, they’re just rou­tine­ly taken down by jackals and lions. No one had laughed then either, though the sym­bol­ism was astute. Toni insist­ed that they keep the vibe around aging “empow­er­ing.” 

“Sooo—it’s five past nine,” Rita says. “Where’s boss man?” She leans in, peers into the screen as if Dr. David­son might be hiding in the nooks and cran­nies of Teams. Her eyes! Almond shaped. Not brown, not green—an amber color. Maureen has to take a breath and remind herself: They aren’t hiring gor­geous eyes. But who is she kidding? Maureen’s been a woman in this world long enough to know that good looks can walk in a room and land the job before a single word gets spoken. The oppo­site, losing the job the moment they lay eyes on you, she’s learned is equally true.

It hurts to think this but—it’s prob­a­bly a good thing her camera doesn’t work.

On cue, Jasper pipes up, “Hey Maureen. Did you set up your camera using the Microsoft Teams app?”

Maureen’s mind turns in circles, trips over itself. Did she? With totally man­u­fac­tured con­fi­dence she replies, “Why, yes, Jasper, I did.”

“Did you update your camera drivers?”

“All updated.”

“Did you update your computer’s oper­at­ing system?”

“Sure did.”

“What about rein­stalling Microsoft Teams?”

“Totally rein­stalled.” She takes a little sip of coffee, dancing her shoulders. 

Jasper claws a hand through his hair. “Why isn’t it fucking working!”

Maureen gri­maces. He’d better hope that assis­tant is out getting bagels. That kind of lan­guage won’t win friends and influ­ence people here at Freedom Gospel. Poor Jasper. He already looks like he’s been through three rounds in the ring thanks to Maureen and her I Love Lucy moments. Jeannie, her older sister, had thus chris­tened Maureen’s pen­chant for bad luck and blunders.

I Love Lucy moments. Leave it to her sister to reframe the sit­u­a­tion so that Maureen felt quirky and love­able, instead of like a loser.

Maureen raises her eyes, over­tak­en by a sudden weird wish to say to Jasper, Hey, take it easy, kiddo, give your­self some grace, as if to one of her erst­while seventh graders. She stops herself from com­mit­ting this hor­rif­ic embar­rass­ment by speak­ing a dif­fer­ent off-kilter thing she prob­a­bly shouldn’t. “Don’t you all find it bizarre? A group inter­view for the same position?”

“Why would we?” Rita is engrossed in her phone, texting, her face taut, all corners and edges. A digital spat, Maureen infers. But not with a sig­nif­i­cant other. Pos­si­bly a parent. Some­thing in Rita’s mouth, a spe­cif­ic kind of trem­bling vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in her lower lip. Maureen, like all teach­ers, has become skilled at inter­pret­ing the subtle nuances of texting-face.

 “Well, I don’t know.” Maureen does, in fact, know. She dis­likes having her rivals uncloaked. She prefers to imagine that her com­pe­ti­tion suffers incur­able and pro­found cases of garlic breath with, addi­tion­al­ly, a roiling mess of earth­worms for hair.  But she’s not going to say that. “What if we copy each other’s responses?”

Rita drops her phone with a small thud. “What?”

“I was a teacher. If I’d told my stu­dents only one of them could get an A, then put them in a group to deter­mine which one—they’d be at each other’s throats.”

“That’s the point,” Rita says.

“Excuse me?”

 “They want us at each other’s throats.”

“They do?” 

Jasper click-taps on the key­board. “Hey, Maureen. Do you have any secu­ri­ty soft­ware running? Some­times secu­ri­ty soft­ware can con­flict with Teams—”

Rita inter­jects, “Listen, you don’t have to stress. This job is mine. There, now you can breathe.” She leans back, picks up her phone again. “Ten after nine!”

Jasper stops typing, and glares. “Were you hired behind the scenes? Do you already work there? Is David­son related to you?”

Rita waves. “No, none of that. I’ve simply assessed my competition.”

Maureen thinks, I was right! Mean girl vibes.  

“So you think it’s an easy win, eh?”

“She can’t get her camera to work, and you can’t trou­bleshoot. Does that scream Aca­d­e­m­ic Success Advisor?”

 Jasper smiles a slow smile while touch­ing the mys­te­ri­ous, tiger striped letter on the top right corner of his vest. “What do you think this P stands for?”

Rita punches at her phone. “Pitiful.” 

Maureen reaches for her coffee, shakes the last drops into her mouth.

“Ha! Try Prince­ton,” Jasper says.

Maureen’s coffee cup slips from her grasp and she does a wild-eyed, three-second jug­gling act to keep it from hitting the floor.

“Vale­dic­to­ri­an, class of ’15.” Jasper drives it home.

Rita looks up from her phone. She narrows her eyes. Then, she shrugs. “Princeton’s nice. The campus is beau­ti­ful. The Japan­ese flow­er­ing cherry trees in front of Henry Hall almost got me. But you don’t turn down Harvard Medical School for cherry trees.” Her laugh twin­kles, like a little bell.

Maureen presses her fingers to her temples. She should bow out now. It would be so easy. No one can see her anyway!

“Hold up.” Jasper squints. “Shouldn’t you be in some fancy res­i­den­cy? Why are you here, inter­view­ing for this—”

“I haven’t started yet!” Rita cries. “Haven’t you ever heard of a gap year?”

“You’re going to work during a gap year?”

“That’s what Harvard stu­dents do.”

Maureen brings her hands down on the desk. “So! What church do you all attend?”

That quiet that falls is total. And telling. She smirks. She sus­pect­ed as much.

Freedom Gospel Uni­ver­si­ty, accord­ing to their website, has a mission to educate  “Cru­saders for Christ”—a men­ac­ing term, Maureen thinks, con­sid­er­ing the church’s history. Their library is named after Jim Bakker! Wasn’t that slimy nar­cis­sis­tic char­la­tan living in dis­grace in a hut in the woods, too ashamed to show his face? Oh, no, Maureen’s research revealed—he was still on the air, hosting The Jim Bakker Show in Blue Eye, Mis­souri. During the Pan­dem­ic, he tried to sell what he called the “Silver Solu­tion,” a Covid “miracle cure.” He had to plead with his fans to send checks when credit card com­pa­nies, wisely, refused to allow sales. The man’s still going strong!

Nonethe­less, Maureen wants this job. It’s teach­ing adja­cent, remote, the salary is solid, with no papers to grade. And if she doesn’t gen­er­ate some income soon, she’ll start rabidly biting people. Admit­ted­ly, she’s had a rough go, trying to imagine herself direct­ing stu­dents to The Jim Bakker Library. She’d even rehearsed saying it aloud, and gagged, like a lethal fish bone was lodged in her throat.

Rita, chin in the air, says, “My parents were missionaries.”

Jasper says, “I’m a missionary.”

“You are not.” 

“I’ve mem­o­rized the Bible.”

“Get a life!”

She should kick them both out into the hallway, but instead Maureen darts jovial­ly into the fisticuffs, exclaim­ing, “Oh, I just love mis­sion­ar­ies! I’m actu­al­ly in charge of the youth mis­sion­ary program at my church, City Church of Houston?” 

They both look abashed. As they should. Mis­sion­ar­ies. They may be Ivy Lea­guers but they’re egre­gious actors. Maureen, on the other hand, was the star of the drama club through­out high school.

As though called into action, her camera spon­ta­neous­ly pops on.

“Whoa,” Jasper says. “It’s the Holy Spirit.”

Maureen waves. “My friends just call me Mo.”

The joke falls, splat, life­less as a spaghet­ti noodle.

The way Jasper and Rita stare, even online—it’s unnerv­ing. She knows exactly what they’re looking at. Can’t hide them, even on camera.

Those damn Silver Gazelles!

They’d finally talked her into ditch­ing the dye. Peer pres­sured by Toni, the self-appoint­ed aging guru, they were all “embrac­ing the gray.” Maureen has emphat­i­cal­ly not embraced the gray. She’s at war with it! Letting it conquer at Toni’s urging, yes, but furious and bitter every step of the way. Job inter­views are the worst. Her silvers enter the room first, with a blast through the melanin mega­phone, “HI, I’M AGING!”

How do you befriend gray hairs when they talk right over your edu­ca­tion and accomplishments? 

Think­ing all this, a famil­iar agi­ta­tion swells in Maureen’s gut. A painful wave of prick­ling heat crawls up her sternum, her throat, her face. She grabs the sides of her desk like she’s on an air­plane with bad tur­bu­lence. Here we go.

Menopause is a disease, Maureen believes, and hot flashes are one of the most ignored, mis­un­der­stood, and flat-out min­i­mized symp­toms in medical history. It’s a social injus­tice, the way no one tells the truth about the relent­less, brutal ass-kicking women are in for as they age!

One night, The Silver Gazelles had taken turns coming up with cre­ative hot flash descrip­tions every doctor should be trained to recite:

A hot flash will turn your body into a burning build­ing with no fire escape.

Imagine the worst period-cramp pain—only as heat. 

It will build like an orgasm except you will climax in sweaty anguish, praying to die.    

Maureen closes her eyes, tries to breathe, though none of that Zen shit helps. And she knows by now, in a pro­fes­sion­al sit­u­a­tion, you’re absolute­ly, abysmal­ly stuck. You can’t rip off your clothes and attempt to stuff your­self into the fridge like a Thanks­giv­ing turkey.

“Maureen, are you okay? You are seri­ous­ly flushed right now. And sweat­ing.” Rita is not only watch­ing, she’s set her phone down.

 “Don’t fret about me. I’m just—” Maureen shakes her head, grabs a dish towel from her desk, one she keeps there all the time now, and mops her face and neck with it.

Rita’s face goes instant­ly serious. “Maureen, do you have any tight­ness or heav­i­ness in the chest?”

 “It’s not—”

“What about short­ness of breath? Pain in the arm, jaw, shoul­der, or neck? Women can expe­ri­ence dif­fer­ent symp­toms than men. Weak­ness, light­head­ed­ness, and nausea. Give me the word. I will call an ambu­lance immediately.”

Rita isn’t joking. Her hand is on her phone. The muscle in her jaw twitches.

Maureen’s good and spooked. She checks in with her body. The hot flash has left her deplet­ed and drenched, but otherwise—“I’m fairly certain I’m not dying,” Maureen says at the precise moment Dr. Michael David­son finally arrives.

“What’s that? You’ve just been dying to meet me?” He claps his hands togeth­er, breaks into an enor­mous, white-toothed grin.

Maureen, Rita, and Jasper, like sol­diers when the drill sergeant shows up, instant­ly straight­en. In spite of the hard­core switch to inter­view mode, Rita’s face is still creased with the rem­nants of worry.

“Sorry I’m late, all, I had a—” Dr. David­son scrunch­es his brow. “Maureen? You there? I think we’ve lost you.”

Oh, for crying out loud. Her camera’s off again. “I’m here,” she says, waving non­sen­si­cal­ly. “I can see you. You just can’t see me.”

“No bueno! Are you using an exter­nal camera? Can you try logging out? Or restart your computer?”

She catches Jasper’s smirk. “Sure. I’ll try.” But she does no such thing. Instead, she flips on her ceiling fan, rips off her blouse, down to a tank top, scoops her hair up into a Silver Gazelle tail, tied up with a scrunchie. 

Oh my God, that air on her neck! Caress­ing her face! Ven­ti­lat­ing her cleavage!

And some people think sex is the highest form of phys­i­cal ecstasy.

 “All right, all, without further ado, here at Freedom Gospel Uni­ver­si­ty, Chris­t­ian values are top pri­or­i­ty, no matter the job role. Rita, let’s start with you. Talk to me about your faith.”

“I would love to, Dr. Davidson.”

Frantic, Maureen brings up City Church Houston on her phone. She’d prac­ti­cal­ly mem­o­rized the church’s web page the night before, however, she knows by now, hot flashes recon­fig­ure the brain in ways that don’t work in one’s favor.

She scrolls, finding the youth mis­sion­ary trip orga­niz­er, a big-haired woman named Darlene Harlow.

Maureen and Jeannie were brought up as church-goers. Jeannie, the eldest sister, was first to drive and to date. And she was the first to unfriend God. Maureen remem­bers exactly when. They were at the cancer hos­pi­tal, walking down a hallway, past a line of chil­dren in wheel­chairs. All of them bald, wearing the same blue-check­ered hos­pi­tal gowns, with the translu­cent Snow White com­plex­ions her sister called “chemo skin.” Were they all waiting for treat­ment? Maureen had no idea. She just remem­bers how Jeannie had turned to her, her sor­row­ful hiss. “This is why I don’t believe in God anymore.”

Maureen def­i­nite­ly won’t be telling that story.

Instead, when David­son asks her to share her faith history, she reads almost word for word from Darlene Harlow’s bio, the sheer joy and life affirm­ing purpose she’s found, orga­niz­ing mission trips that will save souls world­wide, and so on. She makes it sound natural, of course, with pauses, inflec­tions, feeling. And she must pull it off because—

“Amen, Maureen!” Dr. David­son throws a fist in the air while taking notes. “Jasper, you’re up next. You ready for this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How does your back­ground and expe­ri­ence equip you to be a better Aca­d­e­m­ic Success Advisor than your fellow candidates?”

Maureen is not sur­prised when Jasper imme­di­ate­ly points out the P on his sweater vest. He then describes how his “rig­or­ous” Ivy League edu­ca­tion fos­tered an “unas­sail­able” work ethic. He’s hap­pi­est when he’s working at least fifty hours a week, and that’s the kind of “single-minded, unstop­pable quest for great­ness” that won him Vale­dic­to­ri­an, Class of 2015. This, com­bined with a “rich back­ground” in super­vi­so­ry and men­tor­ship roles, “per­fect­ly posi­tions” him to lead, guide, and inspire the stu­dents at Freedom Gospel. 

“Prince­ton!” Dr. David­son whis­tles under his breath. “That’s hard to beat. What you got for me, Rita?”

Rita wears the steel jaw deter­mi­na­tion of a swimmer at the Olympics about to break a record. “Dr. David­son, I grad­u­at­ed top of my class premed while engag­ing in a robust aca­d­e­m­ic course load that led me straight to Harvard …”

Maureen has the urge to clap her hands over her ears. All this resumé lan­guage! All this shame­less show­boat­ing! Why are these Ivy Lea­guers even here? Shouldn’t they be off making scads of money at—wherever the cool young people with mile-high cre­den­tials work these days? Maureen doesn’t even know. She knows nothing. Only that this exor­bi­tant, pre­pos­ter­ous, self-con­grat­u­la­to­ry bragging—

“Maureen, what can you bring to this ques­tion that your fellow can­di­dates haven’t?”

And off she goes. “Well, Dr. David­son, I’ve earned two Master’s degrees, one in edu­ca­tion and one in psy­chol­o­gy. However, I attend­ed a state school, not an Ivy. I knew I needed to save my money. I knew I’d need it. You see, I was hired to teach seventh grade lan­guage arts at Baxter Middle School.”

“Oh, wow.” Dr. David­son nods. “I know Baxter. We’ve done some out­reach in that community.”

She’s got him now. Right in the palm of her hand. Maureen sinks into a flow state, talking about her stu­dents and the genuine con­nec­tion they devel­oped with each other over time. The look on Dr. Davidson’s face, moved and cap­ti­vat­ed, gives her a dopamine high, makes her feel like she’s winning. So she drops in her “sixty-to-eighty hour work weeks” and adds a pinch of “unpar­al­leled devotion.”

Dr. David­son removes his glasses, rubs his eyes. “The Lord has sure thrown me a chal­lenge today. This is a supe­ri­or crop of can­di­dates.” He gives his head a shake. “Can I hire you all?”

They laugh, but not really.

“Maureen, if you don’t mind, I’m going to call on you again.” 

“Bring it!”

He smiles. “Your teach­ing story inspires. Why’d you leave?” 

A hit to the gut. Imagine if she told the truth?

In the dream she’d had, she and her sister sat shoul­der-to-shoul­der on a park bench in some opaque location.

There were trees, or at least, the feeling of trees, and for most of the dream, she and her sister sat togeth­er quietly, the way they would some­times after one of Jeannie’s treatments.

Jeannie turned to her with sad eyes. She said, “Work can be another way of ending your life.”

Maureen had bolted upright in bed, breath­ing funny, totally freaked.

She swore she could even smell her sister in the room—the sweet, fresh scent that was her, her skin!

In the grip of a panic attack, Maureen had called her doctor, booked a blood test, heart test, and of course a mam­mo­gram. The big, bad “Breast Test,” as Jeannie called it, came back clear.

But oof, her blood pres­sure was off the charts. 

In the days that fol­lowed, Maureen found herself stalked by her sister’s words. Of course, once her imag­i­na­tive frenzy faded, she real­ized it prob­a­bly wasn’t actu­al­ly her sister, she no longer believed in heaven or souls. More than likely, it was Maureen’s own sub­con­scious, showing up with a hard but nec­es­sary truth—like a big sister would.

Why was she working evenings, week­ends, even over hol­i­days? Did her stu­dents need her to work like that? The admin­is­tra­tors sure did. They loaded her up with tasks, many of them super­flu­ous, burying her alive while clap­ping for her and calling her hero. But ulti­mate­ly it was Maureen who accept­ed the addi­tion­al work, growing a stellar rep­u­ta­tion in the dis­trict, while becom­ing an equally stellar can­di­date for heart disease.

Work can be another way of ending your life.

The darkest ques­tion she posed to herself: Did she want to die?

She quit teach­ing, just to give herself space to con­sid­er that ques­tion. Sitting alone in her garden, staring at the big, bouncy leaves of the banana plants, shim­mery with misting rain, she had looked past the plants, into herself, at the despair thick­en­ing between her ribs. Sure enough, she believed that all the good stuff was over. What did it matter if she left the world now?

This, Maureen thinks, is why no one’s honest in an interview.

The har­row­ing truth of human life that hides between the bullet points.

It alarms people. Par­tic­u­lar­ly super­vi­sors who prefer to pretend that the employ­ees they hire aren’t the griev­ing, self-destruc­tive, rapidly aging, des­per­ate, and ter­ri­fied messes that com­prise most of humanity.

In response to his ques­tion, Maureen deliv­ers a com­fort­ing, reli­able trope.  “Well, Dr. David­son. I thrive on chal­lenges and after over a decade at Baxter, I was ready to grow—and give—in a new opportunity.”

Dr. David­son nods and smiles, writing this down.

Maureen wonders what it would be like if one of these inter­view­ers, just once, were to ask some­thing a little daring, a little risky. Some­thing that mat­tered to a real human being. Some­thing like: What has been your most com­pelling rela­tion­ship on this planet and why?

 She would say: My sister and I were raised by our grand­moth­er. Our parents were addicts. They walked out. But me and Jeannie, I’m telling you the truth, we had every­thing. We had it all. We just lived in laugh­ter. Boy, the two of us could really get going. We’d be at the dinner table laugh­ing so hard, we’d fart. Our grand­moth­er was a proper lady and she’d throw down her napkin, send us to our rooms.

Or, What’s been the most impor­tant work of your life that didn’t pay?

 She would say: Sitting with my sister as she strug­gled to die. Not leaving her and not looking away. The last thing Jeannie did was give me heart fingers. It was her ritual. Growing up, if we were ever sep­a­rat­ed in a crowded place, as soon as she’d catch sight of me, she’d hold her hands above her head, and make heart fingers. Jeannie’s heart fingers were my own per­son­al light­house. In the end, it tore me up, watch­ing her strug­gle to give me our sign one last time. And then I held onto her hands and I did not let go, even when every­thing in me was begging for escape, retreat, relief. I was with her, really with her. No job or work has ever required half as much courage—or love.

Maureen smiles, and then, oh boy, oh boy, here they come. She blinks and blinks. These days, when she cries, she never knows for certain if it’s joy or anguish. These days, she can’t find a sure line between them. They mix.

Dr. David­son is address­ing Jasper. “Tell me about a time you helped someone who was having an issue at work. What did you do to support them?” 

This time, rather than fran­ti­cal­ly prepare her own response, Maureen tunes into Jasper and really pays attention.

Jasper with his Prince­ton vest that makes him feel like Some­body. But also, that flam­boy­ant, loaded P makes it more a vise than a vest, just squeez­ing the life out of him. Maybe things hadn’t turned out for Jasper quite the way he’d hoped. Maybe he’d strug­gled all through school with severe anxiety. Jasper’s vest insists that he be smart and com­pe­tent every single second. Prince­ton Vale­dic­to­ri­an Jasper had better have the answer! All it takes is a sand grain of failure, and the whole castle crumbles.

Jasper, what lights you up and makes your skin feel like a good home?

Maureen’s atten­tion moves to Rita.

Good­ness, she sits up so straight! This entire time. A spine that’s trained to perform like a circus animal. And her smile, too; it’s relent­less. Maureen knows, it hurts to smile like that. Well, she thinks, it’s suf­fer­ing to be invis­i­ble, and equally so to be hypervisible. Rita’s red blazer demands that she live up to it—perhaps like her parents, or whoever has severe­ly agi­tat­ed and reduced her nearly to tears while texting this morning. The blazer ques­tions her char­ac­ter when she doesn’t meet stan­dards. It harass­es her. Why can’t she hack medical school? Why has she let herself down? Why is she here, break­ing a sweat over a job she thinks is lame ? The red blazer won’t leave her alone.

Rita, what do you love so pro­found­ly that it makes your heart whole?

Dr. David­son now speaks to Maureen, asking the same ques­tion about a time she sup­port­ed a co-worker.

Maureen says, “Dr. David­son, that’s a good ques­tion. How do you take care of someone in dis­tress? Can I be real with you?”

“Go right ahead.” 

“This morning, Jasper helped me with my camera. I’m admit­ted­ly not the most tech-savvy indi­vid­ual. Jasper saw my frus­tra­tion and he took it upon himself to gen­er­ate pos­si­ble solu­tions. I really appre­ci­at­ed that. And my camera did work, briefly! Rita then … she saw me have a bit of an issue. Well …”

Should she say it?

Why the hell not.

She has to live the rest of her life without her sister. No more shared cup­cakes or heart fingers or fart-laughs. There is lit­er­al­ly nothing left to lose that matters as much.

“I had a hot flash on camera. A very severe one. And Rita noticed! She was serious about helping me. One day, if she chooses, she’ll make an excel­lent doctor. God knows we need them. Espe­cial­ly women.”

“Well, that’s—” Dr. Davidson’s eye­brows leap. He looks around. Where’s that script?

He might as well throw his hands up, walk off the stage.

Maureen says, “Jasper and Rita, no camera was nec­es­sary. You both made me feel seen.”

When Jasper smiles, he looks so happy, so open, just like a kid. 

And Rita—Maureen blinks. She can’t believe her eyes.

Rita holds up her hands.

Rita makes heart fingers. 

No one can see, and it doesn’t matter. Maureen makes heart fingers back.

There, alone at her desk, she is so tender that—much like after a good laugh—

It hurts to breathe.