Joelle's leapfrog intake: the private arrangement — "She’d been up at Brigham and…"

Joelle's entry into the recovery machine from its opposite end — she does not Come In desperate and puke-white off the street but arrives via a "private arrangement" with a Board member, no Intake interview, luggage and a folding dressing-screen, Pat counseling her personally. The scene registers this as suspect ("a character defect of Ennet House"): the program's whole logic is desperate equality at the Bottom, and a leapfrogged, cushioned admission sits crosswise to it. Her near-fatal overdose ("defib paddles and priests") is the Bottom that qualifies her; the institutional irregularity is the seam the theme keeps worrying. (Internal date-inconsistency flagged below.)