Coup de Grâce in `Mary

An emergency room doctor is distressed when a familiar face is brought in for treatment.

Director Tracey Gallacher's coup de grâce in this short film is casting actress Melora Walters as both the titular ER doctor and her twin sister who's wheeled unconscious into the ER.  It adds a wallop of agony for Mary, who wants to treat (take care of) her sister but gets slapped into realizing that she cannot.  Gallacher's casting is all the more a brilliant stroke of artistry: It is as if to say this incoming patient, and her bloodied scalp, is a projection of Mary's own experience, perhaps repressed or denied, of domestic violence.  It must be a common tragedy in many households, but if there is salvation in film, then this one provides it when Mary calls hospital officials to the case.