Story for the Week
I love the Museum of Science and Industry. Of all the museums in Chicago, it’s my favorite. But I kind of hate that I love it so much because it’s caused me a lot of anguish over the years. OK…I may or may not have caused my own anguish, but the other commonality is that particular museum.
A few weeks ago over Corinne’s winter break, we decided to go to the museum to see the Pompeii exhibit. We support the museum with an annual membership, so we weren’t planning to spend the entire day. Pompeii, the Christmas trees from around the world, probably YOU! The Experience since that’s one Corinne can see over and over and never get bored.
Our entry time for the Pompeii exhibit was about half an hour after our entry into the museum. We looked around a little bit when we arrived but pretty much went straight to the first of two galleries. The exhibit opened with a video simulating the time from just before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius to the complete coverage of the city under volcanic ash. The real draw, of course, was the 150+ artifacts uncovered and preserved—sculptures, jewelry, cooking tools, weapons, coins, and casts of victims, some of who clearly perished literally while they were in motion.
It was sobering and fascinating all at the same time, and we spent probably an hour or more walking through both galleries before we reached the gift shop. We browsed, we selected souvenirs, and then I realized I didn’t have my wallet or the drawstring bag my wallet should have been in.
When I tell you the instant panic that overcame me. ID, debit card, credit card, insurance information, car key…all of them were missing. And then it dawned on me. We got out of the car in the parking garage, and it was chilly, so I decided to put on the hoodie I brought. I put my bag on the hood of the car, put on my hoodie, grabbed my cane out of the back seat, locked the door (using the button on the door handle), and walked to the entrance. The panic turned into full freak out mode since then I envisioned that even the car would be gone.
Corinne moves faster than I do, so I sent her back to the garage while I headed for the lost and found in the hope that a good Samaritan would have turned in the bag. While I stood in line, I texted her and said “Please tell me the car is still there.” It was, in fact, still there, along with my bag and my wallet and everything else I had just casually left on the hood of my car.
Faith in humanity intact, we didn’t see any other exhibits that day. Once I calmed down, we decided to just head home and try again another day. Once I could laugh about it, we talked about the trauma I have from experiences at the museum because this was not the first time by a long shot.
When one of my oldest nephews was a toddler, my sister-in-law and I took him to the museum one family day, so it was packed. I don’t remember which happened first, but I lost my wallet, and we lost my nephew (for 10 seconds and not really lost but the panic was real). It’s possible we were looking for my wallet in the stroller when my nephew inched himself around a corner in the stairwell. We found my nephew right away, but any parent knows that the panic is instantaneous and very, very real. And someone had turned in the wallet to lost and found, so again, faith in humanity restored.
What might have been my first visit to the museum started my love/hate relationship. I was five, and I was a nose-on-the-glass kid and an introvert. It was (and still is) easy for me to block out what’s going on around me and focus on whatever I’m watching or doing. That’s important context.
One of the biggest draws at the museum has always been the chicks you can watch hatching in an incubator. I was enthralled, nose up against the glass, and clearly did not hear my parents tell me we were moving to a different gallery. When I looked up, my parents were gone, and I started to cry. A very nice man and woman asked me what was wrong as my parents reappeared. I’m certain is was a minute at most, but in my five-year-old brain, I was lost, abandoned, would never get home, would never see my family again.
Years later, a fully formed professional adult in my late 20s, I had a full-blown panic attack at the airport when my plane came in at an older terminal I didn’t remember well, my dad wasn’t there to meet me as expected, and my mom hadn’t heard from him. It was completely irrational. I had money and a credit card. I could have easily gotten a cab, but I felt stranded, and I couldn’t stop the panic or the tears.
This was early on in the cell phone era, and my parents didn’t have them. My dad worked at the airport and thought he had time to move his car from employee parking to short-term parking, but then he couldn’t find a space. We finally connected, and when I climbed into his car, still trying to calm down, I said, “It’s just like that time I got lost at the Museum of Science and Industry!”
And it clicked. There have only been a couple of times in my life when I’ve had that same feeling, but both of them included an overwhelming feeling of being stranded even though I knew I wasn’t. It was the same feeling I had at five, when I legitimately thought I was stranded because I was five. It started at the museum, and it was a traumatic and formative experience.
So as much as I love the Museum of Science and Industry, I kind of hate it at the same time. 🤣 It really does show how things that happen to you as a child impact you as an adult, and the more traumatic, the more impactful. And I know where the feeling of being stranded comes from. I deal with it a whole lot better now…and I always carry my cell phone. 😏
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐½
3.5 Stars for The Clinic by Cate Quinn
444 pages
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Publication Date: January 23, 2024
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark.
Publisher’s Description
Meg works for a casino in LA, catching cheaters and popping a few too many pain pills to cope, following a far different path than her sister Haley, a famous actress. But suddenly reports surface of Haley dying at the remote rehab facility where she had been forced to go to get her addictions under control.
There are whispers of suicide, but Meg can’t believe it. She decides that the best way to find out what happened to her sister is to check in herself—to investigate what really happened from the inside.
Battling her own addictions and figuring out the truth will be much more difficult than she imagined, far away from friends, family—and anyone who could help her.
************
Main Characters:
- Meg – works undercover at casinos catching cheaters
- Cara – manager of an upscale rehab center for the wealthy called The Clinic, former manager for Beaumont Hotel Group
- Max – award-winning psychologist, therapist at The Clinic
- Dr. Lutz – designer and founder of The Clinic
- Jade – an up-and-coming English actress, in rehab so she won’t lose custody of her child
- Madeline – actress famous in particular for a Diet Coke commercial
- Sierra – famous lead singer of a girl band
- Dex – famous front man to a rock band
- Tom – legendary Hollywood actor
Trigger warnings: suicide, substance abuse
Talk about an unreliable narrator and a myriad of suspects….
The Clinic revolves around the death of famous singer Haley Banks while she’s in rehab, and the book shifts perspectives between Meg and Cara. While The Clinic reports Haley’s death as a suicide, Haley’s estranged sister Meg refuses to believe that Haley would inject heroin (although we never find out why) and thinks Haley has been murdered. Under the pretense of getting clean herself, Meg checks herself in to The Clinic to investigate Haley’s death. What she discovers are unorthodox treatments focused on past trauma that, in Meg’s case, she does not want to relive.
An addict and alcoholic herself, Meg knows she won’t be able to drink, but she sneaks in oxycodone in her bra. I felt like this was a bit of a plot hole. I find it more than a little unbelievable that a rehab clinic wouldn’t completely search patients because, as is referenced several times in the book, addicts tend to be untrustworthy when it comes to talking about their drug use.
It also didn’t ring true that Meg was able to sneak in powdered urine for the drug tests she knew she would have to take. Even if The Clinic doesn’t search the person, I would expect them to search the bags for contraband. Finally, the other patients at one point mention that Meg didn’t seem to go through the physical symptoms of withdrawal like they all did, but the staff didn’t seem to notice. Wouldn’t that be suspect enough to really look into what Meg brought with her when she checked in?
On the flip side, we have Cara, recently recruited by Dr. Lutz after an adulterous scandal resulted in her leaving the Beaumont Hotel Group. Cara waffles between believing everything Max tells her about what a great person Dr. Lutz is (to be fair, he seems a bit of a whack job) and being suspicious of what The Clinic is doing because of what she is or is not able to see in the patient files. In one moment, she seems ok with being kept in the dark about how The Clinic is run (even though she’s the manager), and in the next moment, she snoops into files that she’s told she doesn’t need access to and questions everything.
Cara gets a lot of information from Max throughout the book, and I was a little confused about their relationship. Actually, I think I was just most confused about Max. Sometimes he acted cold and a bit suspicious, sometimes forthcoming, and he was always a bit awkward. I wasn’t sure if he was a good guy or a bad guy. There are books where that uncertainty works, but I didn’t find it effective here.
Everyone is a suspect, with the exception of Meg. I figured out a couple of things early on, but there are definitely surprises I didn’t expect and appreciated. I went with 3.5 stars on this one because I felt it was a little bit more than “just ok” but not anything I would call a great read.
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