Louise is given steroids to keep the swelling of her brain down. They are making her psychotic. Warner cannot handle seeing his daughter talk to walls and laugh at chairs. Elizabeth sits beside her bed, begging her to eat a baby carrot. Louise thinks she is a supermodel, and that her stepmother is trying to sabotage her diet. Elizabeth tells Louise the carrot has zero calories, and Louise eats half. Warner reminds himself that it is all about numbers, levels, and that Louise’s episodes are normal. The professionals know what they are doing. He says this again and again to himself. It does not help. He paces up and down the hallway. He hears Louise scream that her bikini line is already waxed.
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Days later, a doctor they have never seen injects a numbing agent into Louise’s left eyeball. He needs to sew a corner of it shut to prevent the cornea from drying out, he says. The eyelid, and the entire left side of Louise’s face, is paralyzed—the result of disturbing the seventh cranial nerve in the surgery. Not surprising, the doctor says. They went in pretty deep. There are always bound to be a few unpredicted debilitations. Louise cries out from the eyeball shot and so does Janet, in her chair across the room.