Chapter 54
As Maggie throws her a death glare and wishes Cassie a safe place to write, Ingrid’s reminded of a movie she once thought of making about a complete stranger who comes into this woman’s life and everyone in the woman’s life starts liking the stranger better than her.
The stranger starts mimicking the woman, copying her mannerisms, style, and even her speech, infiltrating every part of her life until the woman can’t convince anyone else that she’s the original.
“Sit down,” Ingrid snaps at Maggie. “You’re not leaving here until you produce something good.”
With a shaking hand, Maggie reaches for the chair. Unfortunately, her body goes crashing onto the floor. Ingrid screams.
“What the hell!” Ingrid yelps. “Did she just faint?”
“Maggie!” Teresa yells, dropping the needles in her hand. She scrambles to the floor, trying to revive Maggie. She takes her pulse.
Kyle and Dolores come running in. “What happened?” Kyle asks.
“I don’t know! She just fainted!” Ingrid says.
“Her pulse is weak,” Teresa reports, sitting beside her. She tries to lift Maggie’s head up. “Maggie? Can you hear us?” No response.
Was it me? Did I push the girl too hard? Ingrid reaches over and puts her computer to sleep so no one can see the script she was making Maggie write.
Kyle, meanwhile, scoops Maggie off the floor like he’s David Corenswet auditioning for Superman.
He deposits her on the armchair by the wall, and Teresa fans her face.
In the bright sunlight, Ingrid sees Maggie’s glistening gray strands.
The sunken skin under her eyes. The girl looks old.
Not that it matters to Kyle. She watches in sick fascination as her husband leans in close to her face, speaking to Maggie with such doting affection.
“Maggie? Can you hear me, sweetheart?” he asks.
Here Ingrid thought she could cheat fate by making herself younger.
Instead, her husband’s cozying up to a wrinkled hack.
When Maggie doesn’t respond, Teresa dials Dr. Hayes.
“Hi, we had a little incident. I’m at Ingrid’s. Maggie just fainted. No, we didn’t complete the transfusion. They were in the middle, and a wire got disconnected,” she says. She checks Maggie’s pulse and tells it to him.
“Maggie?” Ingrid asks, shaking her. The guilt mushrooms in her gut. She suddenly feels awful for making Maggie write in front of her.
The girl stirs, opens her eyes, then closes them again. Teresa reports this to Dr. Hayes.
“Should we take her to the hospital?” Kyle asks.
Ingrid makes an are you serious face. “And what would we say?” Ingrid demands. Her eyes go immediately over to the transfusion machine. What does he propose they tell the doctors and nurses who ask about what they were doing?
“The truth!” Kyle says.
“She’s just tired. She needs sleep,” Ingrid tells him.
“Wait, Teresa said something about your computer. Why were you guys at your computer?”
Her face grows hot. “Nothing. I was just showing her something!”
As Kyle and Ingrid bicker, Teresa gets off the phone with Dr. Hayes. She tells them that Dr. Hayes says Maggie should lie down. Once again, Kyle picks Maggie up like Superman. Maggie stirs as they’re walking into the living room.
“What’s going on?” Maggie asks.
Ingrid puts a hand to her chest. “Thank God, she’s conscious again!” she exclaims. To her husband, she adds sharply, “You can put her down now!”
“I’m not putting her down.”
Kyle continues holding her in his arms, taking his time as he walks slowly over to the other side of the living room, before setting her gently on the couch. Teresa kneels next to her. “Maggie, how you feeling, hon?” she asks.
“A little dizzy…” Maggie says. Kyle immediately reaches for a couch cushion and puts it behind her neck. He’s about to reach for a blanket when Ingrid snaps, “Let me.”
As Ingrid drapes a blanket over Maggie, the girl glances up at her. Her whole body seems to wilt. Then her eyelids drop and she’s out again.
Teresa takes Maggie’s pulse and her blood pressure before nodding to them. “Let’s just keep her here.” She adds some pillows under her legs, then turns to Ingrid. “I don’t think we can finish the transfusion today.”
“Wait, but what does that mean?” Ingrid asks. “We’re on a schedule.”
Kyle cuts in, “Well, you’re going to have to wait.”
Ingrid is mortified at the way her husband just snapped at her.
What happened to the Kyle who cared about her health?
Who told her he would do anything for her?
She swallows the hurt and tells Teresa that’s fine.
“I’ve got to go to an event anyway.” She glances at her watch, then at Maggie and Kyle.
“We’ll be just fine,” Kyle answers.
Ingrid studies Kyle. For a second, she’s tempted to call off her event just so she can stay and see whatever’s going on between the two of them. Something is obviously going on.
But she’s late.