Changing Rooms

It was a random gathering, us detail representatives deciding to sing the night away after a day of coverage in the regional hospital. As medical representatives, we were always flexible, easy to adjust, so we chose the loftiest, literally the highest, floor of Coronado Loft, a gambling place made to look like a leisure spot.

I was in my company uniform, three-inch heels and a crisp blazer. We were all dressed in our own versions of expensive style, our stipends visible in what we chose to wear. We had grown used to each other over years of waiting in hospital corridors, outside clinics, holding folders for signatures. We already knew how to laugh together, how to talk in that witty, coded way sales reps do.

“We need this,” we chorused.

I believed it. I looked forward to the night like a child on Christmas Eve, expecting something: rest, release, friendship, a sense of belonging.

The big pharmaceutical companies, Glaxo, Pfizer, the international names, set the tone. Glasses went up as much for negotiation as for celebration. Pay differentials, off-the-record deals, pharmacy leverage, all of it surfaced between laughs. Conversation moved in a practiced sales rhythm: fast, agreeable, persuasive, always already halfway to a close.

We played drinking truth or dare. The laughter got louder, sinister, unsettling. The stories became more exaggerated as the night went on. Faces started to blur as smoke filled the room. I watched them, people trained to persuade, to present, to convince, and saw how easily truth could be bent for effect.

But no one complained. No one stopped how talking slowly turned into touching, and touching kept going like it was normal, like it was expected. The jokes came fast, practiced, landing easy; but something in them felt like laughter covering a crack. I felt the room asking me to keep up. How easy it was to just go along, to not question the next hand on a shoulder, the next tap on a lap.

I stayed in it. I smiled when I needed to, laughed at the right moments. But inside, something was tightening into something I couldn’t easily step out of. I tried to pace myself, but the glasses kept arriving already filled. Refusing felt like stepping out of formation, like drawing attention I didn’t want. So I drank. And drank.

By the time the room tilted, it was too late to recover.

The party ended without ceremony. One moment we were laughing, the next we were being ushered out. I don’t remember paying anything. Someone covered my bill, someone probably more drunk than I was. People drifted out in twos and threes. Some steady. Some leaning on someone. Like me.

Down in the lobby, then outside, the night air hit my face cold. It didn’t sober me up. It only made things feel more eerie, like a warning I couldn’t read clearly. Like I was still inside the room, just pulled into another scene.

I walked, but it felt like I had forgotten my script. I kept moving through my lines anyway, half-aware, like an adlib I didn’t fully own, heavy and somnolent, carried forward by habit more than will.

“How are you getting home?” I heard someone ask.

I checked my phone. No signal. Five percent battery. My head was heavy, my body slower than my thoughts. The ground beneath me didn’t feel stable.

“I’ll take her,” my colleague said.

I turned to him, trying to focus, trying to assess something, his voice, his posture, anything that could tell me I was safe. He smiled.

“Are you sure?” someone asked.

“Of course,” he said. “We live in the same direction.”

It wasn’t true. I knew it even then, somewhere under the alcohol, under the noise. But I didn’t correct it. I didn’t argue. My mouth stayed closed while my hand still held my phone, screen dimming on its own. I remember blinking too long, like I was trying to restart my thoughts.

My replies didn’t come. I only nodded when someone looked at me. I let the sentence stand.

I noticed small things, how he reached for my arm without asking, not grabbing, just already there, guiding me forward. How he signaled the others with a quick tilt of his head, like it was routine. How someone else opened the car door before I even reached it, then stepped back as if the position had been assigned. No one questioned it. No one paused. Laughter continued behind us, like nothing had shifted.

His car smelled faintly of perfume and something sour underneath, like old drinks left too long in heat. He fumbled with the keys longer than usual, metal scraping metal. When the engine finally started, the headlights cut hard into the dark, too bright, too sudden, swallowing everything in front of us.

“Seatbelt,” he said, leaning over, his hand already there, pulling it across me.

I let him.

For a while, we drove. Or something like driving. The road felt uneven, or maybe it was just me. I held onto the door handle, suddenly aware of how little control I had, of the car, of myself, of the situation I was in.

He braked too hard once, and we both lurched forward.

“Sorry,” he muttered, irritation slipping through.

I was suddenly afraid, the realization settling heavy in my chest: I had handed over control without meaning to.

“Are we okay?” I asked. My voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else.

“We’re fine,” he said. “Just… give me a second.”

But the seconds stretched. Nothing in his tone matched the word fine.

At the next turn, he hesitated too long, then missed it. The car drifted before he corrected it too sharply. My stomach dropped, not from alcohol, but from clarity coming in grave fragments.

“We should stop the car,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

Instead, he turned into a driveway too late, tires brushing the edge of the curb. A hotel rose ahead, its sign too bright against the dark.

“I can’t… drive anymore,” he said, hands still on the wheel.

Then the engine went quiet.

Inside the car, everything felt too close, the air, his breathing, the weight of silence pressing between us. Outside looked far away, unreachable, like it belonged to another version of the night. I felt cut off from it, isolated.

“We’ll just rest,” he said. “Just for a bit. I can’t drive any further.”

It sounded reasonable. Necessary.

But nothing in me settled. Why couldn’t I say no? Step back. Find another way.

I was tired. Drunk. My phone screen was already dimming, battery near empty. No signal. No exit. No one to call. The thought didn’t arrive as panic all at once, Just a slow narrowing, like doors I could have walked through quietly shutting one after another. Messages I could have sent and didn’t. Words I could have said but swallowed. Until only this was left, and I was already inside it.

We stepped out of the car, both of us unsteady. The ground shifted slightly under my feet, or maybe it was just me. The hotel doors slid open too easily, like they had been waiting. Inside, the lights were soft. The air-conditioning too cold, brushing skin without comfort. Even the silence felt loud, thick with something unspoken.

My fear stayed with me, burning through every gulp of alcohol, refusing to fade. It clung under my skin, constant and uneasy, giving me the creeps all through the night. (Bam Susie Chan)