The Greatest Showman: March One-Shots

14. Lightbulb

P.T. gets home late that night, and discouragingly hangs his hat on the stand beside the door. He hears the rhythmic drip-drip of the rain seeping through the cracked ceiling into the half-filled bucket, and sighs. There's a rock in his stomach, slowly growing each time he faces disappointment: which has happened more times lately than he would like to admit.

He peers into the living room as he lays his coat over the back of a kitchen chair, and sees Charity lying on the couch. Slowly, he walks in and notices she's asleep, a piece of paper titled "Family Expenses" in her hand.

The rock grows.

P.T. gently reaches down to ease it out of her hand, sighing as he sets it down on the table beside the couch.

"Daddy," Caroline suddenly calls from the other room. P.T. pulls the blanket up to Charity's chin, lightly running his hand over her blonde locks, and then goes into the girls' bedroom.

"Hey," he whispers, going over to sit down on the edge of the bed. Both of his daughters stare up at him, eyes half closed with exhaustion.

"Did you sell anymore tickets tonight?" Caroline asks.

"A few, yeah," P.T. tells her quietly, trying his best to hide his discouragement and feeling of utter defeat. "Most people were rushing home, though, it's Friday." He picks up the book that had been sitting beside Caroline's arm, Tom Thumb. He stares at it for a minute, then reaches over to set it on the bedside table. "But, um. We sold a few."

"I think you have too many dead things in your museum, Daddy," Helen pitches in.

"Do you?" P.T. responds, still speaking in a whisper, as he nods a little.

"You need something alive," Caroline remarks, turning so that she's lying flat on her back, looking up towards the ceiling. "Like a mermaid," she says dreamily.

"Or a unicorn," Helen says, showing her crooked teeth in a bright smile.

"Unicorns aren't real."

"Well, mermaids aren't real either."

P.T.'s lost in thought for a moment, looking down at his two girls, his hand resting on Caroline's arm. "Go to sleep, both of you," he says at last, giving them a smile. He grabs the Tom Thumb book, and then turns out the light.

In his office, he sits at his desk, Caroline's words, "you need something alive," replaying in his head. His eyes graze over the book again, and then land on the apple that Charity had brought to him the other day. He flashes back to his life as a young, homeless boy after his father died. To the woman in black robes who probably had less than even he did, but who offered him an apple with a kind smile nonetheless.

She was different, P.T. knew. Not only was she wearing black robes and likely poor, it also looked like she had some facial deformities as well. P.T. remembers the way the people in the alley backed up as she passed by them, their noses scrunched-up and their faces sour.

Yes, she was different—but she was also the nicest person young P.T. had ever met (aside from Charity, of course). If she had just a little bit more money, she could have had a tremendous impact on the world, showing her kindness to others, and inspiring others to follow her example.

She just didn't have the platform to do so.

Suddenly, as if a lightbulb chain had just been pulled, P.T. has an idea. An incredible, one-of-a-kind, likely-controversial-as-hell idea. He immediately jolts up, as if he had just been electrocuted. His eyes are wide.

"Yes," he whispers in disbelief.