Status Updates From Nervous System

Ella’s brother resents her. He knows about her lack of progress with her dissertation. It’s also revealed that Ella got money from their dad for school while her brother did not. She doesn’t outright say that to him, but he picks up on it. Getting close to the end!

Ella’s aunt dies of cancer, her father unable to assist earlier in ending her life due to the law. Ella’s stepmother had lost her hair in the shower and the maid “the lady” had thrown it away, but Ella wanted to keep it and made a wig out of it. Ella speaks of rats, and how she used them in the lab and tried to save them by putting them in her pockets. The stepmother poisoned the rats in her home.

Ella’s stepmother is dying of breast cancer. The twins have a very odd relationship. The stepmother admits to trying to kill the twins when they were younger, and almost killed them by injecting them with allergens. Ella thinks about her real mother, and the generational “curse” that has befell all of the women in her family.