Answer:
On the first day of every month, Nadine gets a letter from her mother asking her to call her parents. This month the letter updates her on her father’s “unreliable” health and stresses how much they long to hear their daughter’s voice. Three weeks later, Nadine still hasn’t called, although she reads the letter every day while eating lunch in the hospital cafeteria. In re-reading it over and over, she hopes to find a note of “sympathy,” but she cannot. Her colleague comes over and greets her warmly.
Nadine’s parents appear to be extending a gesture of love toward her, but her reaction indicates that it is not the way she wants to be loved. She is clearly in some way troubled or even tormented by the gesture, which is why she repeatedly reads the letter without responding.
Jo tells Nadine that Ms. Hinds is back from the ICU, and is so distressed that she had to be sedated. Both women work in the Ear, Nose, and Throat ward, and often encounter patients who wake up from surgery horrified by the fact that they can’t speak. Like Nadine, Jo is Haitian. She came to the US as an infant. Nadine lives in a one-bedroom apartment in where she keeps the TV on all day because she likes having “voices in […] her life that required neither reaction nor response.” She has given up on other activities that require a substantial amount of social interaction.
Step-by-step explanation: