London is pressing buttons on her phone, and Kate wonders for a moment if she should tell her to call her mother, just to let her know where they are. But even Kate knows that to do that would be to break this tenuous bond between her and her granddaughter, a bond that is the only thing tethering her to reality at this moment. She doesn’t want to lose London’s trust. So she just continues to drive.

TWENTY-THREE

Looking back on her day, there are quite a few things that Finn would have done differently, if given the chance. Like not get out of bed. The sunroom might have been hot and stuffy, her eyes might continuously water from all the dust in the old duvet, her 70s-era hide-a-bed might have a metal rollbar that dug into her back, but at least it would have been peaceful. Calm. One hundred percent less of a clusterfuck than the rest of the day.

Even now, thinking about the hospital staff on the case of her missing mother – a crack team consisting of three nurses, two doctors, two security guards, several orderlies, and one very grumpy chief of staff – makes Finn want to punch a wall. They assured the Parker family that Kate must still be on the premises, that there was no way she would be able to leave without someone noticing, that her pain would be too great, that the staff were too engaged, that she didn’t even have a car or a change of clothing, other than the pyjamas she was wearing. She had to be holed up in another room, or in a bathroom somewhere, an empty waiting room, the cafeteria. There were too many dark, unpopulated corners in the hospital on a quiet Sunday night – it would take some time to search all of them. They would call as soon as they found her, they promised. It was slick, smooth, well rehearsed – almost as though they lost coma patients all the time.

Even worse, Finn and Nicki and Shawn and Walter just accepted the idea that Kate was hiding out somewhere in the hospital. But they were tired, Finn tells herself. They were distracted. And in that moment, standing in the hospital room with one empty bed and the weight of the past three days pressing down on them from above, the four of them looked at each other, then down at the floor, and said, “Okay,” and felt the relief of letting someone else take care of things for once.

There is nothing we can do anyway.

We might as well just go home and let the hospital staff do their jobs.

Kate is a grown woman, she can handle herself.

It’s all probably a misunderstanding.

Everything is going to be okay.