for a woman dating a married man, whose primary way of communication is via pager, how would she find out if something seriously bad happened to him (such as a life-threatening injury or illness)?
mike delino, unhappily married and in his 40s, cancels a date with his teenage daughter to go car-shopping in order to meet his mistress, wendy, for a nice romantic dinner. when he does not arrive at the restaurant, it propels wendy into a tumultuous journey of trying to figure out what happened to him. this invariably causes wendy to reconsider her own situation. has he left her? is he alive? feeling helpless in one sense, yet finally taking control of her life in another, wendy attempts to track mike down.
during her increasingly desperate efforts to find him, wendy inadvertently drops clues that cause mike's teenage daughter, iris, to begin questioning her image of her father. while struggling to cope with her father's coma, brought on by a severe car accident (the reason he never showed at the restaurant), iris begins to see evidence of another aspect of mike she'd never considered.
wendy finally manages to locate mike in a local hospital and rushes there. when she arrives at the hospital, we follow her tense travels through the labyrinth-like halls and elevators. she lies to staff members about who she is ("mistress" rarely passes for the requisite "family member"), frantically searching for mike's room -- until she ultimately ends up outside his hospital room door. what she finds shocks her into a self-realization that she hadn't expected, but one she can live with.
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preparation for filming iris (michelle solomon
