how are you? miranda doesn't answer. her mind elsewhere. namely back at the barn and how it connects to rachel.
i needed to see you, but i'm not sure where to begin. i don't know you well, i certainly have nothing but fond feelings for you. phil always keeps me posted on his colleagues and his work and -- in any case, i have always thought of you as a very bright, very perceptive doctor. even though i don't know you well. she pauses here. miranda looks up now. her face hollow and exhausted. bags under her eyes. a person who has seen too much. wondering where the hell this is going.
my point is, my point being -- when rachel died i had, um, i suffered through these spells, these recurring dreams.
and eventually, once i came to terms with her death, they went away. losing a child is the hardest, most inconceivable event a mother can -- she drifts off. takes a beat to collect herself and resume:
the past few days i have been having the same dream. a nightmare. miranda can't help but smile to herself at that.
this nightmare involves rachel but it also involves you. in the nightmare rachel holds a box in her left hand. a small box. and she repeats a series of numbers. now, rachel never spoke, from the time she was born -- she had a condition -- i often asked god why he punished this child in such a way -- she couldn't speak, but she was extremely bright. she wasn't autistic as the doctors claimed -- dorothy parsons starts to cry. a moment passes like this. it seems she won't recover enough to continue her tale.
every night the same box in her hand and the same numbers. i wrote them down.
it's a message. it's a code for something. i don't know what. but she wants you to have it. miranda studies it. studies this woman, who quite frankly seems to have completely lost her mind. then she looks back at the numbers and is slowly hit with a realization.
i'm not doing it for miranda, i'm doing this for rachel.
what do i sound like, phil? like one of your patients? well, it's probably because that's exactly how you treat me. and i've had enough of this deafening silence between us, this exemplary mourning in front of the community, tiptoeing around our lives with you pretending rachel never existed. bank customers walk around the argument, pretending not to hear. phil is mortified. but dorothy doesn't care:
i'm losing my mind. our daughter is gone and i miss her and i'm angry.