Headscratchers / Run

• Why does Diane keep Chloe's acceptance letter? Surely it would have made more sense just to dispose of it whenever Chloe wasn't with her. Or are we supposed to assume that Diane was considering letting Chloe go?
  • Same reason she kept the incriminating evidence in the basement (her actual Chloe's death certificate, and the piece of paper of a baby being kidnapped): real serial killers and psychopaths like to keep mementos of what they did for different reasons. She said so herself to Chloe that she "saved" her from her actual parents, meaning she actually deludes herself into believing that she's "helping" her.
• Why did no one do anything at the pharmacy when Diane drugged her daughter (who was freaking out)? Are we supposed to believe that the people waiting for at least an hour in line just left like that, didn't see Diane injecting Chloe with a syringe, and also ignored a girl who was literally having a panic attack? And no one bothered to call the ambulance or 911?
  • I actually thought that scene was brilliant: the customers have no way of knowing what Chloe was asking the pharmacist, or why. All they know is that she's clearly in some kind of distress. They're not close enough to hear the conversation, so what they see is that the pharmacist first denies her request and then becomes more confused and agitated as the poor girl tries to explain. Then the girl loses her voice and clearly becomes unable to breathe— and then her mother comes in, panicking, and then jabs her with something. To an outside observer with no context for the situation but what they're witnessing right now in front of them, it seems obvious what happened: the girl had some kind of reaction while she was out in town, so she went to the pharmacist to ask for help but was unable to communicate what she needed, then her lungs closed up suddenly, but her mother came in just in time and jabbed her with an epi-pen/other medicine.
• How come the doctors never noticed the strange symptoms Chloe had and trace it to the medications she was taking? Why did no one ever tell her or Diane to drop that treatment? I'm also surprised by the fact that Chloe didn't know what color the pills she should be taking are supposed to be, since doctors (sometimes, especially if they're talkative) describe it to their patients. By the way, Diane kept switching doctors a lot (which would be a huge hint that something's fishy with her), so why did no one ever point out how weird that was?
  • They did, that's why the hospital talks about how Chloe's switched doctors alarmingly often in a very short period of time. Diane has to get a new doctor every time one of them starts asking questions.
  • OP may be used to healthcare somewhere slightly more competent than the USA. Switching doctors, or even working with multiple doctors at once, results in information getting lost or mistakes in records and in most cases these doctors will never speak to each other or bother to square this information up. If Diane changes Chloe's doctors before they get suspicious, any records she brings with her will not indicate any suspicion. If she notices signs of suspicion before she leaves, she can lie that Chloe's last doctor was in another state, or another country, or she couldn't afford a doctor and was just using Urgent Care and the Emergency Room, excusing a lack of records for any length of time. Most doctors will take a parent's word that a child showing obvious evidence of chronic illness is really sick and believe a parent's recounting of medications/medical record. If they don't, she can walk out of the office and try another. The fact that parents get away with child abuse of all kinds on a daily basis without raising flags in the system indicates how easy it is to slip through the cracks, and many parents do make their children sick in this way for quite some time. As to the color of the pills, the pharmacy is usually authorized to give you whichever generic version of your medication is cheapest, and your doctor does not know which it will be. Really, it's surprising Diane bothered to lie that the company making Zocor went out of business. It's simpler to say the unfamiliar pill was a new generic heart medication.
• Why didn't Chloe just yell when she opened her room's windows? Someone would surely hear her. Would she have to crawl on that dangerous roof to break the windows of her mother's bedroom?
  • What do you mean "someone would surely hear her", they live in the middle of nowhere with no neighbors, Chloe doesn't even go to school. The only person who comes anywhere near the house is the mailman, and Diane always gets home before him because she has to steal the college acceptance letters. Who are you expecting should have been available to randomly hear a girl screaming in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the day?
• The implication of Chloe smuggling the pills into the prison and getting Diane to take them is that she's paralyzing Diane and that's why the older woman is in the hospital wing. But Diane made Chloe take the pills every day, and it wasn't long after Chloe stopped taking them - and even after years and years of muscle atrophy from the paralysis - that she began to regain movement in her legs. Surely three pills once a month wouldn't be enough to keep Diane completely bed-bound? If it was because Chloe wanted Diane to be "under control" during her visits, wouldn't she make Diane take the pills at the beginning of her visits, not the end?
  • Diane doesn't just have disabled legs; she can't speak or move at all (otherwise she would be able to deny Chloe's visits and resist taking the pills). Diane suffered a spinal cord injury falling down the stairs and is now consciously locked in a paralyzed body. The pills are just to increase Diane's suffering / prevent her from healing. I don't think they're the same pills (they would have run out after seven years and the color looks different). They could be new pills with even worse side effects.
    • While I don't disagree with the answer in general, I think Diane likely still could've and most likely would've blocked Chloe's visits if she wanted to. Not that it justifies anything she did, but Diane clearly loves Chloe in her own twisted way (see: taking her to the hospital when it presumably would've been much easier and more "sensible" in terms of getting away with her crimes to let Chloe die and have it dismissed as suicide). I thought the implication of that final scene was that Diane "chose" to take the pills and suffer because she wanted Chloe to keep visiting her and to maintain some kind of relationship with her, and taking the pills was Chloe's (literal or implied) condition for the visit.