Daily Dialogue — September 9, 2011

Doctor Arrington: She failed to respond. Her heart stopped and unfortunately, she did die.

Mitch Emhoff: Right.

Doctor Arrington: I’m sorry, Mr. Emhoff.

Social Worker: I know this is hard to accept.

Mitch Emhoff: Okay. Can I go talk to her.

Doctor Arrington: Mr. Emhoff, I’m sorry, your wife is dead.

Mitch Emhoff: I just saw her, we were just at home.

Doctor Arrington: Is there somebody we should call, somebody who should be with you?

Mitch Emhoff: We had dinner, we had pizza, she said she was jet lagged.

Doctor Arrington: Some people get a disease and live, some get sick and die. Now we’re going to have to notify the medical examiner, and they may request an autopsy, but I can’t guarantee it’s going to tell you any more than I can. My best guess is this was either meningitis or encephalitis, but with encephalitis we’re in the dark most of the time. If it were summer, you might say a bug bite, west Nile. Herpes can cause encephalitis.

Mitch Emhoff: She didn’t have herpes. What are you talking about?

— Doctor Arrington (Stef Tovar), Mitch Emhoff (Matt Damon), Social Worker (Mary Jo Faraci), Contagion (2011), written by Scott Z. Burns

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is delivering bad news, suggested by Saint716. Contagion suggested by Atlanta.

Trivia: Consultant Dr. Lipkin, Ian — director of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health — said the virus in the film is one he created based on some traits of the Nipah virus from Malaysia in the late 1990s which spread from pigs to farmers.

Dialogue On Dialogue: “Okay. Can I go talk to her?” And there it is, often the first reaction to bad news: Denial. A character hears the words, but doesn’t ‘hear’ the bad news. A shock to the system.