47 pages • 1 hour read
Mary KubicaShe's Not Sorry
Fiction | Memoir in Verse | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Prologue Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of childhood trauma, abuse, suicide, and mental health conditions.
Meghan Michaels’s phone rings while she’s at the store. She sees a missed call from her daughter, Sienna Long, and gets worried because Sienna is supposed to be at school. She picks up Sienna’s call and asks if Sienna is okay. Instead of hearing Sienna’s voice, Meghan hears movement on the line and realizes that Sienna accidentally called her. Then a man comes onto the phone and says that Meghan has to do what he says or she’ll never see Sienna again. Frantic, Meghan starts yelling into the phone. She hears Sienna calling for her and demands to know what the man wants. The man again tells Meghan to listen to him or something will happen to Sienna.
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary
Meghan stands outside of the ICU room of a new patient: 32-year-old Caitlin Beckett, who has just come out of surgery. Meghan’s fellow nurse, Bridget, explains that Caitlin attempted to die by suicide by jumping off a pedestrian bridge. She has severe head injuries and is in a coma. Bridget doesn’t know Meghan’s “family’s history with suicide” (13), but Meghan feels upset hearing Bridget talk about suicide and people’s reasons for attempting it. She was late to work today and feels rattled already. Meghan silently watches as Bridget interacts with Caitlin, wondering how Caitlin survived.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary
Meghan tries not to think about patients when she finishes her shift and starts walking afterward. As a nurse, she’s been trained to separate herself from her work. She texts Sienna to make sure she’s okay. There have been several break-ins in their neighborhood, and Meghan always worries about Sienna when Sienna is home alone. The perpetrator has been attacking women when they’re by themselves.
It starts snowing when Meghan arrives at the church where her divorce support group meets. She runs into a new woman named Nat Cohen. She’s one of Meghan’s former classmates from Barrington High School. Nat seems upset and has a bruised face, and Meghan encourages her to join the group, insisting that it helps. She remembers how uncomfortable she felt when she first started attending after she and her ex, Ben Long, divorced. She felt more comfortable once she started sharing her story with the group. Nat agrees to come inside but doesn’t participate during the session. Meghan looks for her after the meeting, but Nat has already disappeared. Meghan walks home and thinks about Sienna and the robberies again.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary
Meghan is assigned to Caitlin’s care at work the day after Caitlin’s admittance. Meghan didn’t want the assignment but visits Caitlin’s room anyway. She listens to the other nurses—Natalia, Misty, and Erin—talk about Caitlin’s case. Afterward, Meghan and her other coworker and friend, Luke Albrecht, catch up. They’re older than the other nurses and have an understanding. Luke checks to make sure Meghan is doing well. He noticed she was wearing her wedding ring again and is familiar with her relationship history. Meghan recently went on her first date since the divorce after finding out that Ben had started dating.
Meghan returns to Caitlin’s care. She meets Caitlin’s parents, Tom and Amelia Beckett, and updates them on Caitlin’s condition. Meghan feels their grief and gently explains how comas work and how they can interact with Caitlin. The Becketts tell Meghan about their difficult relationship with Caitlin. They didn’t know she had moved back to Chicago from California. Still, they never believed she would try to die by suicide.
Later, Meghan notices an unfamiliar man standing in Caitlin’s room. She doesn’t trust his demeanor and wants to ask who he is, but he disappears shortly thereafter.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary
Meghan eavesdrops on Sienna’s conversation with her friend Nico in her room. Finally, she interrupts them to ask for Sienna’s help with the groceries. Nico leaves, and Sienna gets upset with Meghan. Their relationship has been tense recently. A train passes, blurring out their conversation. Meghan moved into the apartment after the divorce, and she and Sienna have grown accustomed to the noise. After dinner, Sienna goes to her room, and Meghan opens Facebook. She discovers she has a friend request from Natalie Cohen Roche. She scrolls through Natalie’s page, eager to learn what has happened to her since high school.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary
The day after Meghan meets Tom and Amelia, she finds them asleep in Caitlin’s room. She gives Amelia a blanket, accidentally startling her awake. Once Tom wakes up, he leaves for work. Amelia stays and talks to Meghan about Caitlin’s situation. Meghan tells her that her sister, Bethany, died by suicide the year after Meghan graduated from high school. She then asks Amelia about her other children. Amelia explains that they have two boys, but the children aren’t close. Meghan talks about Sienna and shows Amelia photos of her. They continue talking about parenting, although Meghan feels uncomfortable.
Later that day, Tom tells Meghan about the research he’s doing on the likelihood of surviving the fall that Caitlin experienced. He also tells Meghan about his family’s relationship with Caitlin, explaining Caitlin’s difficulty in supporting herself and his and Amelia’s frustrations with her. Recently, Caitlin called asking for more money. The voicemail sounded strange, but Tom didn’t respond or tell Amelia about it. Meghan promises to keep the call a secret.
Meghan and Luke chat in the break room. Luke is married to Penelope Albrecht, who’s pregnant and on bedrest. He explains their recent financial struggles and Penelope’s frustrations. After he leaves, Meghan watches a news story about a boy who died by suicide near Lake Shore Drive.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
Meghan watches new neighbors move in downstairs while she gets ready for work. She watches as Sienna leaves for school. Afterward, she returns to Facebook and looks through old posts from when she and Ben were together. She studies Nat’s page again too, surprised that Nat has kept her married name on her profile. She also realizes that Nat teaches at a Lincoln Park nursery school. She reviews Nat’s images with her ex-husband, wondering why the couple separated. Then the women start messaging. Nat is unsure if she wants to return to the group but agrees to have coffee with Meghan.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary
At work, Luke remarks on how much the Becketts like Meghan. He admits that they seem strange and says that he doesn’t trust their response to Caitlin’s condition.
That afternoon, Meghan and her coworker give Caitlin a sponge bath. Afterward, Meghan tends to her other patient, Marin Layley. On her way back to Caitlin’s room, Meghan sees the strange man at Caitlin’s bedside again. She demands to know who he is, as only family is allowed in Caitlin’s room. The man leaves.
At home, Sienna asks Meghan for baby photos of herself for a school project. Her behavior is rude, and Meghan worries something else is going on with her. Meghan goes into the basement to retrieve the old scrapbooks. She feels afraid while inside the storage cage, convinced someone is waiting for her in the dark. She finds the albums and heads upstairs but becomes terrified when she discovers that the basement door is stuck shut. She bangs on it, and an elderly neighbor opens it, revealing that someone shoved a wedge underneath the door from the opposite side. Meghan tries to calm down while going through the scrapbooks with Sienna afterward. However, she can’t stop thinking about being trapped in the basement.
Prologue-Part 1, Chapter 7 Analysis
The protagonist’s first-person point of view introduces the narrative world and its primary characters, conflicts, stakes, and themes. Meghan is telling her story in her own words and therefore possesses authority over the narrative. Her matter-of-fact voice creates an assured narrative tone and suggests how her character traits bleed into and dictate the way she conveys her story on the page. As a single mother and a nurse, Meghan is accustomed to caring for others and putting others’ needs before her own, and she sees the world through these facets of her personal and professional experience. The ways in which she describes her shifts at the hospital and her interactions with Caitlin, Tom, and Amelia Beckett read as both logical and empathetic. The same is true of Meghan’s early descriptions of her relationships with her teenage daughter, her ex-husband, her friend and coworker Luke, and her new friend and former classmate, Nat Cohen. As Meghan herself says, “[I]t’s in [Meghan’s] nature to be compassionate” (18).
However, Meghan’s confident narrative voice is partly an affectation—a sign of her need for control, which is already slipping. Meghan’s inability “to compartmentalize, to be detached, to mentally separate [her] professional [life] from [her] personal [life]” begins to complicate her interactions with others and her modes of processing the world around her as soon as Caitlin arrives in the ICU (18). Meghan wants to do her job and to do it well. However, when Meghan is assigned to Caitlin’s care, she grows increasingly distraught. She attempts to care for Caitlin in a professional manner, but her mind and heart have trouble emotionally disconnecting from Caitlin’s case, though the reason why is not yet clear. Meghan’s unexplained reaction to Caitlin generates suspense and hints at the theme of Secrets and Their Destructive Consequences, as Meghan clearly knows more than she is saying.
Meghan’s response to Caitlin and Caitlin’s family throughout these chapters also reveals how Meghan’s past trauma continues to affect her, developing the theme of Stalled Recovery From Trauma. In Chapter 1, Meghan feels upset and overwhelmed listening to her coworker Bridget talk about Caitlin’s reason for “jump[ing] from a bridge” (16). Meghan’s internal monologue explains that she’s responding to Bridget with discomfort because she and her family have a history with suicide. Similarly, Meghan experiences a visceral reaction when Amelia asks her, “Have you ever known someone to do what Caitlin did?” (51); Meghan says that she feels as if there’s “a boulder: large, heavy and unable to be knocked loose” in her throat (51). Meghan’s shared memories about her sister’s death by suicide offer a window into Meghan’s past that provides insight into her present circumstances and emotional state. Meghan has experienced trauma that remains unresolved. She therefore struggles to interact with her new patient and her family in the way she usually would because the Beckett situation triggers her tragic memories and sorrowful emotions.
Because Meghan has established herself as a reliable narrator in the Prologue and early pages of Chapter 1, the reader has no reason to doubt that Meghan’s anxiety when talking to Bridget and Amelia is simply the result of her sister’s death. In fact, the consistency of her emotional response, as well as her physical reaction to Amelia’s question, tends to corroborate Meghan’s story and reinforce her apparent reliability. The eventual revelation that Meghan is responsible for Caitlin’s injury complicates these moments, suggesting another reason for her discomfort. At the same time, Meghan’s tendency to compartmentalize raises the possibility that she is lying to herself as much as she is to readers—thus making her explanation of her reaction “true,” in a sense.
Meghan’s trauma, her past, and her unrevealed secrets act as the primary sources of narrative conflict. However, the repeated allusions to the robberies in Meghan’s neighborhood add another layer of narrative tension. Meghan’s concern about the unidentified man who has been breaking into homes and stalking vulnerable women hints at subtextual drama and contributes to a threatening narrative atmosphere. Meghan attempts to maintain a level narrative tone throughout these chapters. However, her recurring references to the break-ins, her fearful walks home, and her fear for Sienna imply that Meghan is emotionally unsettled; the backdrop of robberies thus serves to intensify Meghan’s internal world. These allusions also augment the narrative mystery and accelerate the narrative pacing while complicating the stakes and foreshadowing coming events. This layering of one unresolved case on top of another is common in the psychological thriller genre, and Meghan’s developing relationship with Nat Cohen has a similar narrative effect. Nat’s mysterious character and unreadable behavior further charge the narrative atmosphere and add another conundrum for Meghan and readers to unravel.
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