Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine: Bad Days: Chapter 26 Summary & Analysis

Eleanor is naked on the kitchen floor of her apartment under a pale, wooden table, upon which she’s lined up 12 packets of prescription painkillers, a bread knife, and drain cleaner. She wishes she were dead, but she knows that it won’t be long before she grants herself this wish. Beyond the table, Eleanor sees a mess of empty vodka bottles, but she feels too numb to feel shame. She decides she has two options: to get dressed and buy more vodka or to kill herself. She settles on the latter but drinks more vodka and loses consciousness.

Eleanor wakes up again and can’t discern how much time has passed. She vomits. In disgust, Eleanor thinks about all the liquids, bones, and organs that exist inside her body. She can’t believe she’d ever thought anyone would be able to love her.

Eleanor drinks more vodka, vomits, and struggles to recall what happened the night of the concert. She remembers that Polly the Plant died the morning of the show, which she now takes to be a bad omen. Eleanor had believed that Polly could persevere through anything, but Eleanor’s new social obligations distracted her from caring for Polly. Eleanor recalls crying as she dumped the dead plant in the garbage, knowing that caring for Polly had been the only thing getting her of bed in the morning.

Eleanor remembers coming home from work the day of the concert, getting dressed up, and attending the gig alone. Reality hit her at the concert when she realized that the musician didn’t even know she existed. Eleanor feels shame as she recalls how she stood at the front, dolled up, pining for a man who looked right through her. She realized that the musician would never want her and that pursuing him had been pure “fantasy.”

Back in the present, Eleanor falls asleep again. She wakes up and decides to postpone killing herself and get more vodka instead. Eleanor throws on some clothes and walks to the corner shop. She asks Mr. Dewan for three liters of Glen’s vodka; Dewan is concerned, but Eleanor insists on the three liters. Eleanor is weak, and the walk home takes forever. When she returns to her apartment, she gets into bed and drinks more vodka in an effort to suppress her painful thoughts and memories. She is utterly ashamed of what she now sees as complete self-delusion. Eleanor realizes that Mummy has been right all along: Eleanor Oliphant is nothing but “an embarrassment.”

Eleanor realizes that she believed, falsely, that she could “solve the problem of [herself]” with work and vodka, and that she’d “clutched at a random straw” when she decided to pursue the musician. She thought she could have a future, but she now knows that this was wrong. Eleanor laments how alone she is and how badly she needs someone “to help [her] manage Mummy.”

Eleanor’s thoughts return to the night of the gig. She’d had a lot of vodka to drink. The band stopped playing to fix a broken guitar string. To entertain the audience, the musician dropped his pants and mooned the audience, which was greeted with a mixture of cheers and boos. Eleanor finally sees the musician for the jerk her truly is. The band starts up again, but Eleanor leaves to get another drink.

It’s back in the present, and Eleanor feels hopeless and like she doesn’t matter to anyone. She realizes she’s spent her life waiting for death but that she’s tired of waiting. She drinks more vodka and her thoughts return to the night of the gig. She remembers seeing a misty substance appear by the stage. The substance was actually dry ice—stage smoke—but, at the time, Eleanor thought it was real. The room filled with the stage smoke and Eleanor heard screams but couldn’t tell if they were coming from her or from someone else. Panting, Eleanor runs outside. She is alive but horribly, utterly alone.

In the present, Eleanor wakes up again. It’s night, and moonlight passes through her window. She thinks some more about loneliness, recalling that there were times she thought she’d die of it. During these dark moments, she aches for human contact—any human contact. Sadly, she realizes, the only contact she receives is from hands “wearing disposable gloves.”

People are uncomfortable with the fact of loneliness, Eleanor realizes. People are always expected to say they’re “FINE,” even when they are hurting. She recalls a woman in the office when she first started working for Bob. The woman’s sister had ovarian cancer, and she spent most of her time caring for her sister. Despite this, the woman would only talk about the cancer “in the most oblique terms.” Eleanor thinks that “loneliness is the new cancer,” as society perceives of loneliness as “a shameful, embarrassing thing brought upon yourself in some obscure way.” People don’t want to talk about loneliness out of fear that they will catch it. Eleanor drinks some more and passes out.

Eleanor wakes to the sound of a man banging on her door and shouting for her. She’d been having a nightmare about a fire and at first thought the banging wasn’t real. Eleanor struggles to get out of bed and walk to the door. She looks down at her bare feet and sees a big, ugly bruise splayed across one of them, though she can’t feel anything. Eleanor finally answers the door. She’s too weak to raise her head to see who her visitor is, but she hears a man’s shocked voice exclaim, “Jesus Christ!” She responds, calmly, “Eleanor Oliphant.”