She said, "that neck brace makes you look fat."

I work in a giant medical complex. There are always patients and families mulling around, sometimes waiting anxiously, sometimes just sitting together and laughing or testing an uncomfortable silence. And every now and then I overhear really funny stuff.

I've been having a particularly time lately making sense of interpersonal relationships, whether romantic or otherwise, my own or my friends'. Right now it seems like hurting each other is an inevitable human behavior, and when we are hurt, we turn right around and take it out on someone else. So the cycle goes on, whether we are aware of our part in it or not. "We are all just big wounded responses," says Carol Churchill.

And occasionally we embrace it, rush headlong into taking someone down a few notches with zeal. The daughter was being brought, bandaged, through the lobby in a wheelchair by what looked like her brother and father. They stopped next to a woman who was seated, facing the other way. The daughter said, "hey, mom," weakly. The mother turned around, gasped, and opened her mouth to speak.