an overweight, teenage girl named nessa watkins is on mumford's couch. she fidgets as she talks and can't decide whether to lie down or sit up and face him. she plays with an unlit cigarette and keeps taking out a lighter, then stuffing it back in her big, sloppy handbag.
mumford is listening to lionel, the arrogant lawyer who asked about him in the restaurant. lionel is lying on the couch, talking with enormous energy; he has a serious superiority complex. mumford can't stand him and the session seems to be lasting an eternity.
silence. nessa sits staring at mumford defiantly, an unlit cigarette in her mouth. mumford looks at the clock -- 3:00 -- and stands up, session over. nessa quickly lights her cigarette with the lighter concealed in her hand and stands up too. she exhales a huge cloud of smoke and walks quickly to the back door of the office, which mumford has opened for her, and goes out.
later. mr. cook is gone. sofie is sitting up on the couch, facing mumford. she looks like she might pass out at any moment, but her voice is stronger than you'd expect.
tight on computer screen. a health information "library" website has been called up on mumford's office computer. right now it's beginning to spew information about "chronic fatigue syndrome" -- definitions, signs and symptoms, diagnostic measures, etc.
close on computer screen. under the list of signs and symptoms: "sore throat."
follett sits up abruptly on the couch and twists toward mumford, agitated.
tight on rapid series of images on slick, glossy magazine pages: each change of image is punctuated by the amplified snap of the page being turned, like a gunshot. we're so close to the images we can't tell when the magazines change -- from glamour to vogue to us to mademoiselle to w to vanity fair. and it doesn't matter. whether the images are ads or fashion spreads or celebrity candids, the look is the same -- jaded, hip, disinterested, apathetic, either impossibly buff or anorexic, but always severely beautiful. the page turning starts at a fevered pitch and becomes even more intense. finally --
close on althea brockett.
nessa's on the couch, playing with her usual unlit cigarette. there's an uncharacteristic lightness to her.
extreme close-up of ernest delbanco. we can't tell where he is at first. as he speaks, we pull back to reveal him lying on mumford's couch -- a patient.