Michelle comes to visit a week into her hospital stay. She shows up at lunch time, while Leela is one-handedly stabbing some jello with a spork.
"You look terrible," she says.
Leela would take it personally, but long exposure to Bender has left her immune to this kind of thing. Especially when she knows it's true. She does look like crap. At least Michelle is being honest, even if she could stand to sugar-coat her words a little.
But then, Michelle doesn't look so hot either.
She's balancing a bunch of purple hyacinths on her baby bump, but she looks pale and sleep-deprived. Her hair is flat and the skin is flaking on her lower lip, like she's been worrying at it. Stress, Leela guesses.
As Leela watches, Michelle squashes the flowers onto her bedside locker, crushing the ostentatious pink bouquet sent by Amy, and the white calla lilies Bender stole from the hospital chapel.
Her gaze tracks from Leela's bruised face down to her immobilized arm and back again.
"You look like they scraped you off the sidewalk."
"Pretty much."
"Amy says you quit your job."
"I did."
"Oh."
Maybe Michelle doesn't know what being captain meant to Leela, or maybe she just feels that she - a pregnant divorcée - is in no position to judge. Either way, she doesn't comment.
For the first time, Leela feels a wave of appreciation for Michelle. It's nice not to have to hear what a horrible mistake she's making all over again.
"What are you going to do?" Michelle asks, reasonably enough.
"I don't know," Leela admits. "Not package delivery. And not cryogenics."
Michelle nods.
"Good thinking. Most defrostees are freaks. I tried going to those support groups, back when I first unfroze. It was all rich assholes and religious weirdos." She rolls her eyes. "Wall-to-wall crazies. Even Fry thought they were creepy. You're better off out of it."
The conversation lapses. Leela doesn't mind it, but Michelle seems uneasy.
"I'm sorry I didn't visit sooner," she blurts out, all of a sudden. "I know I should have. You've been such a good friend to me, and it's not that I didn't care. I did. It's just . . ." She gives a little grimace. "I hate hospitals. I . . . my mom." She swallows. "Before I froze myself, she died. Breast cancer. She was in the hospital a lot, and I guess hearing you were in the ICU . . . it brought it all back."
"Oh."
Leela doesn't know what else to say.
Michelle plows on.
"I'm sorry. I know that's not an excuse and I know I must sound crazy. But it's - it's hard. To be here. I knew it would be, and the more I thought about it . . . the more I thought about coming here; those hospital lights and that hospital smell, you know . . . the more I built it up in my head, I guess. And now I'm here and it's bad, but I can stand it, and I feel like even more of a bitch for not showing up sooner. I'm so sorry."
Leela blinks.
"You're not a bitch. I understand. And I'm sorry about your mom," she says uncertainly. "I didn't know."
Michelle waves away her apology.
"Why would you know? I don't talk about it. Even Fry didn't know."
She fiddles with the rings on her fingers, and seems to force herself to keep talking.
"All the stuff with my mom, it happened after Fry disappeared. When I woke up here, he didn't know and I just . . . couldn't tell him. I liked that he didn't know. He didn't treat me differently. And he still thought of Mom the way she used to be, as a real person." Her mouth twists. "After she died, everyone else turned her into . . . I don't know. Cancer Mom. Instant sainthood. I hated it. But Fry just remembered her as my mom Beth, who was mean to him sometimes. He was the only other person on the planet who remembered her, and he talked about her so normally. He didn't put on that stupid pity face everyone else did. I know it sounds crazy. I know I was just living a lie to make me feel better. But . . . it did make me feel better. And I didn't want to give that up."
Leela settles down against her pillows, tiredness crashing over her again.
"That makes sense."
She thinks of Fry and his dancing holophonor snail. The hallucination her mind conjured at her lowest point, to make her feel less alone.
"Sometimes we all need a little fantasy to help us cope."
Michelle gives her a long look at this.
"Do we? I don't know," she says at last. "Maybe we do. Or maybe it's not healthy, and it's better to just face the truth."
Leela shrugs.
It's a question she can't answer.
"I hallucinated Fry, before the accident," she admits. "He was calling out to me. Leela, look out! It sounds crazy, but it probably saved my life."
Michelle nods.
"Then maybe crazy's not so bad."
"Maybe."
A half-smile tugs at Michelle's lips.
"You know what's funny? My mom hated Fry. That's the main reason I dated him: to annoy her. He was a slacker with no ambition and she hated that. Mom raised me on her own," she explains. "She was a waitress at Wendy's and my dad was married. When she got pregnant, I guess she found out the hard way. He didn't want to know. And my mom was pretty much all aboard the misandry train from that day on."
She gives a rueful laugh.
"I went in the opposite direction," she goes on. "Looking for attention from guys, to fill the void. I know, I'm such a cliché. Daddy issues. It's so embarrassing."
Leela suspects Michelle's daddy issues are a drop in the bucket compared to the psychological wounds inflicted on her by a childhood in the orphanarium. But she says nothing. That's not a can of worms she wants to open. Now, or ever.
Michelle seems to take her silence as agreement, and a green light to continue.
"My mom dying really did a number on me," she says quietly. "I spent my whole life trying to piss her off with my dating choices, and then when she wasn't there anymore, suddenly I wanted to make her proud. Prove her wrong, you know? In a good way. So I married Charles, who seemed like the perfect guy, and I poured everything into that. When he cheated on me I couldn't take it. I went into total meltdown. I wanted to reset my whole life and become someone else. So . . . I froze myself." She rolls her eyes. "Look how that turned out."
Leela frowns.
"You still hate the 31st Century that much? I thought you were adjusting."
"Not really." Michelle sighs. "I just don't fit here, Leela. Your time is too crazy for me. I tried clinging to Pauly to make myself feel better, but it just made it worse. You can't make one person your whole world, you know? Besides, I was always faking with him. He lived this glossy celebrity life. He never knew the real me. Not like Fry did."
A flashback intrudes: Fry, describing Michelle as "demanding and possessive" but in the same breath insisting she'd changed. Fry might have had more awareness of Michelle's flaws than most men, Leela thinks, but she could still manipulate him with ease, and Leela suspects that was his real appeal.
"Oh, please," she says drily, shutting her eye against the throbbing in her arm. "You played Fry like a cheap guitar."
Michelle blinks, taken aback by this glimpse of the old, matter-of-fact Leela. Then she relaxes and actually smiles, as if it's a relief to be called out on her behavior. To have someone see through her, for once.
"Maybe. Sometimes," she admits. "But it was his own fault! He liked bossy women, he just couldn't admit it. He'd complain about how I was smothering him and then he'd be right back on my doorstep, waiting for me to tell him what to do with his life. Some guys are just like that. They're like little lost puppies, and all they really want is to find a woman and follow her around forever. I mean, you know that."
Leela frowns.
Sean, her first serious boyfriend, couldn't have been less like that. He had basked in the glow of Leela's adulation, but the minute she turned her back he'd been in some other woman's bed. Alcazar had barely been able to contain his attention to five women at a time, and Adlai had treated her like vaguely interesting wallpaper. Zapp is obsessive, sure, but Leela has always interpreted his fixation with her more as a desperate hope of getting laid again than as anything romantic. He doesn't know the first thing about her as a person and has never bothered to learn. Her mind is not what Zapp's interested in. Which is fortunate, because the whole Zapp package repulses her.
But Michelle seems to be implying Leela has some long history of experience with this phenomenon. As if men hang on her coat tails all the time, longingly awaiting their shot.
Michelle is tracking her expression right now.
"Oh, come on," she says, incredulous. "You must have noticed. I know Fry. There's no way he was subtle about it."
Leela frowns again.
"You've got the wrong idea. Fry dated plenty of women. We were just friends."
Michelle laughs.
"Yeah, I bet they were real serious relationships."
"One of them was you," Leela points out, flinty, but to her surprise Michelle laughs again.
"Please! We barely lasted three weeks. And I hated it, because suddenly, it was like he didn't need me anymore. He was happy in this new life he'd made in the future, with you guys. With you. I had to keep telling him how much I needed him, to make him stay. I basically guilted him into freezing himself with me, and once we'd done it, we were broken up in a day."
"You and Fry were a terrible couple," Leela concedes. "That doesn't mean he was harboring secret feelings for me. I know you think he was -"
Michelle has implied this before, but the more Leela thinks about it, the less she can believe it. A drunken conversation about love is not the same as a confession of love. It's flattering to think Fry loved her, but the truth is, she's not sure his feelings ever ran that deep.
Fry's idea of romance was a lava lamp and a bottle of cheap champagne. Maybe it makes her feel better to imagine him as some great romantic, but if she's being honest -
"He was." Michelle interrupts. "He was in love with you. He told me he was."
"I . . . what?" Leela's well-worn thought pattern derails abruptly. "You said he was crazy over me."
"No, I didn't. I said he was crazy about you."
Michelle has turned pale. She looks tense, as if she said more than she meant to. She squirms a little under Leela's stare.
"I told you. I met him over the summer, when things were bad with Pauly. I was crying about how marriage never works out and love is a lie, and we were drinking, and . . . I don't know, I guess I hit a nerve. He started pouring his heart out, with all this stuff about you. I can't remember most of what he said, but he was crazy about you, anyone could tell. He told me he was learning some instrument you liked in secret, to impress you. The recorder or something. And how you were the only person he could imagine being married to." Her voice turns bitter, over-the-top dopey in imitation of Fry. "Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about her and I don't know why."
Michelle fiddles with the flowers, making adjustments they don't need. Leela suspects it's a way to hide her face, for what she admits next.
"I was . . . I was jealous, okay?" she says in a rush. "I wanted Fry to make me feel better. I wanted to think I could snap my fingers and have him back if I felt like it. He was the one guy I could always do that with, no matter what. But then I found him and all he could think about was you. I hated it. I hated you. I'm sorry, but I didn't know you then and I wanted everyone to feel as miserable as I did, so I . . ." She swallows. "I told him he should let it go. I told him you obviously didn't love him and he was an idiot for thinking you did, and if he had any self-respect he'd stop chasing you."
Her hand starts to shake, snapping one of the hyacinths in half. Her face has turned red.
"He was convinced you felt the same as him," she surges on. "And you just needed . . . a moment or something, like he had, to wake up and see what was really there. He told me about all these times when it seemed like you were jealous, or when he thought maybe you loved him too and . . ." Her voice cracks as she swallows back tears. "And he was right. I knew he was right. I didn't know if you were in denial or the timing was wrong, or what it was, but I knew he was right and I . . . I told him he was wrong."
Leela stares at her. Her own voice, when it emerges, is strangely flat.
"What?"
"I told him it was all in his head. I told him he was crazy and he should let it go. I'm sorry, Leela. It was petty and jealous, I know it was. I've been feeling so guilty about it, because you obviously loved him so much more than me and I was just . . . mad, that he wouldn't boost my ego when I needed it. That he moved on to someone else when I treated him like dirt. I wanted to get back at him and back at you for - for stealing him away from me -"
"So you interfered," Leela says tightly.
The blood is rushing in her ears. Deep down she knows she's being unreasonable, but suddenly all she can hear is Fry's voice, telling Michelle things he never told her.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about her and I don't know why.
It's obvious why Michelle quoted it with such bitterness. In a way, it's worse than Bender's revelation about the holophonor.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about her and I don't know why.
It would have been kinder if Michelle had just slapped her in the face.
"You - you have every right to be mad at me," Michelle says, hands agitating over her stomach. "I kept telling myself it didn't matter, that he wouldn't even remember it, he was so drunk -"
"I think you should go."
"I know you won't believe me but I did feel bad about it, I really did! Everything changed when Fry died. I realized what I did was wrong. I'd do anything to take it back. Your friendship is so important to me, Leela. I can't lose you too. You have to believe me -"
"I need some time alone," Leela says coldly.
"Okay."
Michelle presses her quivering lips together, obviously trying not to cry. Her face is blotchy red and white.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, as she backs out of the door.
She collides with someone in the corridor and there is a clatter of dropped implements, raised voices . . . Michelle sobbing in apology.
Leela hears none of it.
She grabs Michelle's flowers and hurls them against the opposite wall, then pulls the pillow down over her face and screams into it. She comes up spitting feathers.
Wishing for Bender, and a knock-out dose of morphine, and an end to the loop of Fry's voice playing in her head.
"Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about her and I don't know why."
"Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night -"
"- thinking about her and I don't -"
"- know why."
