661: But That's What Happened
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
So Lily, you're here to tell me a story? Yes. And I should say you are Lily Sullivan, you're one of the producers of our show. Mm-hmm. I am. So what's the story? Okay. So this is a story that I heard growing up. It was kind of, it was one of those things that was told, it's like a scary story when you're a kid, like an urban legend. And then I've been thinking about a lot recently because I read a book recently that I really loved. It's called Her Body and Other Parties by this writer, Carmen Maria Machado. It's a finalist for the National Book Award and she retells the story in one of the short stories in her book. And it's kind of, it just stuck in my head and it's just something that I've been thinking about a lot recently. And so what happens? Has it go? Okay. So a girl and her mom are on vacation in Paris and they're just traveling and they've been there for a few days and the mom, she gets sick. And so the girl gets a doctor and the doctor comes to the hotel. He spends a while examining her and he's like, "She's really sick. We need to deal with this immediately." And he tells the daughter, "You need to go across the city. I have medicine. It can save her. It'll save her while I tend to her." It sends her downstairs and the guy at the front desk, the hotel manager, takes her out and he puts her in a cab and he goes to the taxi driver and in French tells him directions to where she's supposed to go. And it's on the other side of the city. So the girl is in the back of the cab and it's kind of, it's just taking forever. The taxi driver is making all these loops and getting lost and she's kind of frantic in the back needing to get back. But she finally gets there. She gets the pills. She jumps back in the cab and they drive back to the hotel. She runs into the building and she's running past the hotel manager and he stops her and he says, "Miss, can I help you?" And she says, "Yeah, I found the medicine. I'm just going back up." He's like, "I'm sorry, I've never seen you before." And she's like, "No, you just put me in a cab. I'm staying here with my mother. She's upstairs and she's sick and the doctor's with her." And he's like, "We don't have any guests staying here right now." And so she runs past him, she runs upstairs. She goes to their room and she opens the door and the room where her mother was, it's empty.
Transcription truncated.