The End of the Runway: Chapter 6

STACY AWOKE FEELING dizzy and swollen under a glazed white ceiling strung down the middle with glaring white orbs of florescent light. She closed her eyes to combat the strain but rings of light still trailed in the darkness. The back of her head throbbed acutely in a spot she couldn't quite pinpoint.

Stacy was pretty sure she had to have been dreaming. It must have been a nightmare. She jerked her body up. She was fine, really, she thought—as fine as you can be with a swimming head and a pounding headache, which, to be fair, was only technically painful every other second.



She blinked a few times to clear her eyes and drew the white curtains next to her bed. Her throat was dry and she felt out of it, like she had been drugged. Obviously, she was in some type of infirmary, which means she probably did throw up and pass out on Red Linton. A wave of paranoia crawled up her body and flushed her face, and a faint whimper escaped from her cordoned-off cubby.

The first person she saw was Unla standing legs apart wearing her patented Teutonic scowl . Without thinking she threw back the curtain and flopped down on the bed. She pulled the sheets high to her chin making a pocket of air between the hands at her face and her rigid body.





As Stacy waited for Unla to approach, her eyes clenched shut, she slid in and out of consciousness and into a series of terrifying fever dreams that intensified as her anticipation mounted. As she faded out, she watched herself pitted against a series of dark shapes Stacy knew by instinct—Unla, Red Linton, Anya Tom, and, in one rapturous whirl of reverie, her science teacher back in Hoboken, Mr. Frist who was taking turns scolding her with Wolf from the show and her 4th grade girl scout troop leader Ms. Patland, who had made her cry once when she accused Stacy of killing the troop's gerbil Fuzzley after Stacy went to the shore for a weekend and forgot to feed him. "You obviously haven't learned yet how to care for anyone but yourself." Her words enveloped Stacy and bit into her like a molar—dull and crushing, tearing at the back of her eyes where it hurt the most.





Suddenly she flicked her eyes open and was relieved to find a nurse standing over her, smiling. That was the first smile she had seen since Irene had shot her a glance of pathetic sympathy before the show. Before Stacy ruined everything.

The nurse began speaking to her in French. Stacy closed her eyes and listened to the words whirring through her ears like a pack of motorcycles on the freeway. Her head hurt a bit less now. Stacy caught something about a visitor and "une amie."





Unla? Stacy's eyes bulged and she considered shaking her head and protesting, or pretending to be asleep. But then she figured that would only delay the inevitable and at least this way she would have an excuse for seeming flustered and disoriented. Stacy never did well on the spot no matter how she felt.

Under the covers, Stacy crossed her arms on her chest and lay perfectly still, eyes closed. "Like a dead queen," she thought. Better to receive bad news in a regal, dignified position—well, as dignified a position as she could muster for having just vomited and tripped over the stage while walking in a straight line.

Stacy was flooded with relief when she heard "Salut!" from a small voice on her right hand side. It was Irene! Stacy sent a silent prayer of thanks to the heavens.

"I don't know if you remember me. But I brought you some magazines," Irene said, sidling up to Stacy's bed.





"Irene! What are you doing here ?" Stacy exclaimed through a parched throat. She knew this probably wasn't the best way to convey her thanks. "I—I'm so happy to see you! Where am I?"

"Oh, the agency sent me to check in on you. You're in hospital. They took you here after you collapsed," Irene said simply.

"...On Red Linton," said Stacy, staring down the elephant in the room.

"Yes, on Red Linton," parroted Irene. It was the first time Stacy had heard it said out loud. It stung a little to discover this was all really happening.

"But, Unla?" Stacy asked reflexively.

"Oh she went to the hotel," Irene said. "She'll be back later."

"I don't know what happened," Stacy said staring at her hands folded in her lap.

"I wasn't feeling good. I should have told someone. Is everyone very mad?"

Irene withered Stacy with a nonchalant arch of her eyebrow. Right. Of course they were.

Maybe Irene was too, Stacy thought. She had only met her, briefly that one time. Who knew what her intentions were and why she was here. Stacy wanted to ask, but Irene sidetracked her a with question of her own.

"Well, what's wrong with you?" Irene asked.





"I don't know. I haven't seen anyone," Stacy said obliquely. She really hadn't, but of course she didn't exactly need a team of G.I. specialists to tell her she just drank too much and threw up. Not that Irene needed to know that.

"Can I look at your chart?" Irene asked.

"My chart? Uh, I don't think hospitals have charts anymore," Stacy said, picturing quaint '80s sitcoms where private medical information was always an arm's length away.

But when she glanced over at Irene she was already flipping through a wooden clipboard tethered to the foot of the bed. Amazing. Was this for real?

"Oh, interessant," Irene said. "Are you by any chance bulimic?"

"Oh my god, no!" Stacy exclaimed. She had always been naturally thin but she really did love to eat. And while there had been a few days of SlimFast shakes and laxatives before her agency Connekt Us took the measurements for her very first comp card, she hardly considered that an eating disorder.

"Oh, I see," Irene said, finishing up with the chart. "It says here 'ipecac ingestion' suspected.' That's a, how do you say, vomitif, non? It would force you to throw up."

"Oh?" Stacy replied. She was still a little out of it.

Irene finished connecting the dots. "It means you probably ingested something you didn't mean to."