one of the nurses said, huddling with her coworkers, surveying the sudden change in the diminutive woman, who’d tried to cover up the emotional storm she’d weathered with ill-applied cosmetics. The thick makeup theatrically laid over the white face did little to hide the puffy eyes; in fact, it lent her a Gothic quality, as though she’d come to work straight from a Transylvanian ball of horrors. Moreover, the smeared eye shadow, the clumped mascara, and the cementlike layer of concealer made it all too clear that the woman had sobbed for hours and, judging by the state of her concealment efforts, the tears were still flowing when she began to work on her face. “She looks terrible,” one of the nurses whispered. “I think she’s sick,” another said. “She must’ve been through some kind of treatment during this past week,” a third surmised. “And it failed,” a fourth concluded.
