Changing Scene

It was a random gathering, us detail representatives deciding to sing the night away after a full day of hospital coverage. As med reps, we were used to these spontaneous drink-meets, nights that gave us a brief escape from quotas, commissions, and the underlying competition of detailing. This time, we chose the topmost floor of Coronado Loft, a gambling den advertised as a leisure spot.

I was in my company uniform, three-inch heels, and blazer. Most were dressed in their versions of expensive styles, their stipends visible in what they're wearing. Since we had grown used to each other over years of waiting in hospital corridors, outside clinics, holding folders for signatures, we knew how to laugh together, how to talk in that witty, coded way sales reps do.

“Let's do this,” we chorused. I looked forward to the night like a child on Christmas Eve, expecting something: rest, release, friendship, a sense of belonging.

Top hustlers of pharmaceutical companies, Glaxo, Pfizer, the international mergers, set the tone. Glasses went up as much for negotiation as for celebration. Pay differentials, off-the-record deals, pharmacy leverage slipped easily between laughs. Conversation loosened from the usual sales rhythm into easy chatter, quick, open-ended, with sly pranks passed around the table.

We played drinking truth or dare. Laughter got louder, more sinister, unsettling. Stories became more exaggerated. Faces blurred in smoke, and I watched them, trained to persuade slip into performance, bending even here, where nothing was at stake but the need to seem interesting.

Talking slowly turned into touching, and touching kept going like it was expected. Nobody seemed to mind, drunk noise encroaching as lights flickered in smoke you couldn’t step out of. The room had already given up its rules of etiquette. How easy it was to just go along, to not question the next hand on a shoulder, the next tap on a lap.

Why I stayed, smiling at the right moments, even as my stomach tightened with refusal. Stepping out felt like breaking formation, getting singled out, exposed. I wanted to belong more than I wanted out. So I drank. And drank

The party ended without fuss. One moment we were cavorting in laughter, the next we were being ushered out. Someone covered the whole bill, 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 bit my face cold. It didn’t sober me, just felt eerie, like a warning I couldn’t read. I was still inside the room somehow, and this next scene arrived without transition, I had forgotten my script. I moved through the lines half-aware, my adlib unfit, heavy, and somnolent,

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

I had no signal on my phone. Five percent battery. My head was heavy; I felt out of my body, the ground seeming to whirl beneath me.

“I’ll take her,” he said.

Turning to him, I could sense only a generic voice, posture, smile. I couldn't focus on anything solid, couldn't tell if he's a real knight or knave.

“Are you sure?” someone asked.

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

Somewhere under the alcohol, I knew this wasn’t true. But my mouth stayed closed, my hand still moving over the dimming screen of my phone. It blinked once, then went dark, taking my thoughts with it, unable to restart.

I leaned on him, he probably guided me forward, and into the car. His car smelled of perfume and something sour, like spoiled drinks left too long in the heat. He fumbled with the keys, metal scraping metal. When the engine 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.

For a while, I snoozed. Later, the car lurched, the road uneven beneath us. I woke gripping the door handle, suddenly aware I wasn’t in control, and didn’t know where we were

He braked too hard once. “Sorry,” he muttered, irritation slipping through.

Suddenly, I was afraid, my heart beat fast.

“Are we okay?” I asked. I sounded like my voice belonged to someone else.

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

But nothing in his tone matched the word fine.

Seconds stretched. He stayed on the wheel too long, missing each turn, hesitating, then pushing forward anyway. The car finally stopped, too sharply at a corner.

He turned into a driveway, tires brushing the curb. A hotel rose ahead, its sign too bright against the dark. Inside the car, everything felt too close, air, breathing, the weight of silence between us. Outside looked distant, belonging to another version of the night. I felt cut off from it. I got out and vomited, alcohol forcing clarity out of the day’s fragments.

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

It sounded reasonable. Necessary.

I was in a panic, but it looked as if i was merely tired and drunk. Was there a door I could have walked out of quietly early on, was there a message I could have heeded? The ground shifted slightly under my feet when the hotel doors slid open. Inside, the lights were soft. The air-conditioning too cold, brushing skin without comfort. The silence felt too loud.

My fear was too large to show. It sat under my skin, heavy, crawling, extending the night. (Bam Susie Chan)