A doctor learns to accept the loss of her mother when she helps her non-binary trans patient regain their ability to dance.
Kayla Thompson knows her patients and their struggles by heart. She transcends the limits of the medical system by offering them everyday acts of kindness and thorough medical care – even if it means spending 3 hours in the room when she only has 20 minutes. But that same determination to get the results she wants for her patients makes it difficult to accept that her own mom is ready to die. When her brother insists that it is time to take her mother off of life support, Kayla is a hard ‘no.’
But then Kayla meets her next patient – a trans person marked in the file as “V” – and no matter what she asks, “V” replies, “OK.” After a few rounds, Kayla recognizes that her new patient has expressive aphasia – a condition that can result after multiple strokes and can limit available speech to even a single word – “OK.” While Kayla makes a treatment plan, “V” plays a video of their recent drag performance. V insists that they need treatment for their hip so they can dance and feel joy again – in themself, in their body, and in life. “Okay?”
Kayla spends the next three hours taking V through HIV-specific stretches and rehabilitating their hip. They bond in affirming vulnerability as Kayla helps V reclaim their spirit she is able to surrender. When V waltzes out of the clinic barely using their cane, Kayla is finally ready to say the one word she couldn’t – “Okay.”
Carrie Schrader is an award-winning writer-director of short films, commercials, and feature-length films. She co-directed the short film “Don’t Mess With Texas” with Tricia Cooke and Ethen Coen (Coen brothers) and directed the Netflix commercial “Batdad: Battle For Bedtime” (Peacock, Amazon). She currently earns her living from multiple write-for-hire contracts specializing in adapting real-life stories into film and television. Her latest is with A Really Good Home Pictures, which just debuted “Unstoppable,” produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Her films have won film festival awards internationally, and she’s honed both leadership and collaborative spirit in the Orchard Project Episodic Lab, the Outfest Screenwriting Lab, IFP, and the Austin Film Festival. She is the creator of #nicewhitemom videos, which critically explore with comedy how white women perpetuate racism. Carrie has a ridiculously expensive but surprisingly useful MFA in directing from Columbia University and will be forever proud of her early days as a theater nerd.
