Wing Chun: Not! Line.
Sars: WHY IS SHE STILL HERE?
Wing Chun: Oh, I know. Leave already.
Sars: I can't take much more of -- oh, it's back on.

Back from commercial and into the homestretch. Carol goes out into the hall to find Frank reading Goodnight, Moon to the O'Brien girls, and she tells them their mother is ready to see them. Looking scared, the older daughter doesn't move, so Carol gestures with her chin for Frank to take the younger daughter in, and she sits down beside Older Daughter: "Don't you want to see your mom?" OD, taking a page from The Big Book Of Plaintive Overenunciation: "She's going to die, isn't she?" Carol: "Yeah." OD: "It's not fair." Carol shakes her head sadly: "No, it's not." On a red rock ledge high, high above my apartment, Wile E. Coyote shoves an Acme-brand anvil into place; OD, barely audible over the scraping of iron against sandstone: "I don't wanna only have a dad. I want to be a family, like we used to be." Meep-meep! Pachoooooo screeeeeeee BLAM! I get flattened by a half-ton of corrugated iron, and Carol adopts a mien of mild parallel-plot panic -- or perhaps she's just puzzled by the "ding!" freeze-frame of an anvil sitting in a Manhattan studio, with two size nines sticking out from underneath and an italicized legend reading "recapperus pancakus" -- and says, "Come on, we should go, okay?" and leads OD towards Mrs. O's room with her hand on OD's back as The Piano Of Pointed Poignancy plays (say that five times fast). The two of them stop at the door; I shove the anvil off of me and pop back into three dimensions as Carol asks, "You ready?" OD nods. They go in. OD goes to her father and says, "Hi Mommy," and she takes her mother's hand. Mrs. O has woken up, and she asks, "How's my girl?" Carol sets her face impassively and takes in the tableau of the family, the whole family, a mother and a father and two daughters, all of them together, in one place, as a family, gathered around the bed. Maybe I just have a concussion or something but I don't know if I get it. Oh wait, I do. I get it.

Mark walks into a darkened exam room to find Carter huddled at a desk. Carter comes out of it and tells Mark he's "gathering [his] thoughts"; Mark leans against the desk and leads the witness by observing that "Haleh says you've been in here for awhile." Carter wanted "a quiet place to hang out" and asks if that's a problem. Mark quickly says no, and after a short pause tells Carter that "some of us are just a little worried about you." Carter says softly that they "don't need to be." "How are you?" Mark asks evenly, and Carter quickly responds, "Fine." Mark asks if he's seeing anybody, like a therapist, and Carter shakes his head and leans back against the wall, looking bone-tired as he sighs, "No." Mark asks if he needs a referral, and surprisingly, Carter says, "Sure," and Mark is surprised too: "Yeah? Because Nadio [the Sugar Ray guy who wound up on the cutting-room floor] gave me some names." He fumbles some pieces of paper out of his pocket. Carter says flatly that "that'd be great" and takes the notepaper from Mark, who says that "it might help." Carter doesn't seem inclined to say more, and Mark sort of bobs his head awkwardly for a moment before saying, "Okay," and making for the door. He leaves Carter slumped against the wall, the shadowy stripes from the blinds cutting across him.