A play about the desperation and occasional cruelty of well-meaning people who can't quite hack all that’s expected of them. A play about how we look.

3m, 4f; unit set. A mid-size U.S. city. The present.

Mitra, a hard-working designer and mother of two, finds herself spread far too thin. Her husband, Dr. Rob, tries to keep up with the demands of a young family, but doesn't really get it. As a kind of hail-Mary pass, Mitra kicks Rob out of the house, thinking it will make life simpler, only to find that he will do anything to keep his family together. After a late-night show-down with a passive-aggressive, weirdly omniscient check-out clerk, Mitra lights upon a preposterous plan for checking herself out for a while.

Shana, a young woman badly scarred from a fire in her childhood, volunteers at the same hospital where Rob works and Mitra recuperates. Shana finds herself the unexpected object of attention from drop-dead-gorgeous cafeteria worker Derek. Although she knows he is out of her league and suspects he just wants to convince himself he's a decent guy by spending time with her, Shana begins to fall for Derek. When she asks him to kiss her, their most volatile insecurities drive them apart.

Rob, lonely and baffled at Mitra's abandonment, finds himself taking advice over the intercom from Mitra's unseen secretary. His cynical colleague Casey, who's got her hands full with kids, a job, and the complications of keeping Mitra's secrets, finds herself taking hefty doses of stimulants just to keep up--at least until she finds herself a low-stress job waiting tables in the afterlife.

As the threads converge, everyone tries not to scream, not to scare each other, not to stare--always weighing the benefits of the struggle against the possibility of surrender.