Prompt: The pharmacy
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“Last name?”
The pharmacy assistant’s voice popped the daydream in my ears and the cold, checkered tiled reality of the corner CVS materialized before me.
“Last name?” She said.
“Sorry,” I said. Forty minutes had passed in that line. It was late. I got off work at six, but wife forbid I don’t pick up the cuckoo pills on night one! “Last name Solomon, Scott Solomon.”
The computer keys clacked irregularly as the assistant fingered in my information. I felt the dull heat growing in the back of my neck. On my forearms. These pills better work. The assistant frowned and her pink lips pursed. She yawned into her left shoulder. “Whew, excuse me,” she said.
“No problem,” I said. I pattered on the counter with my finger tips.
The typing stopped. “I’m not seeing it in our system. Is there a different name?”
“No, I don’t know, my wife called it in,” I lied. My forehead was buzzing already and I didn’t want to think anymore. I just wanted the pills and to go home.
“Your wife called it in?”
“Yes.”
“Hm, well, I’m not finding your prescription, so …”
“Christ.” I said. I searched my pockets.
“Sir?”
“So, what does that mean? It should be on there.” I pointed to her monitor, but the movement was too quick and the assistant held up a hand in defense.
“I’m sorry Mr. Solomon, do you have the name of the medication? Maybe I can find it that way.”
I looked over my left shoulder at the steadily swelling line of crazies. And I was the head crazy, holding them all up. I turned back to the counter and cleared my throat. “Lamicil, or lamcil?” I said.
“Lamical? I’m not sure-”
“Lamictal,” I said.
“Lamictal? Okay, let me see,” she consulted her computer. “Lamictal, Lamictal. No. I’m sorry Mr. Solomon, we don’t have any prescriptions in for Lamictal.”
“Ma’am I need that prescription, you see my wife-”
“I’m sorry, I know these things can be confusing sometimes,” she said.
“No, just, listen to me, my wife made me promise and we’ve been fighting day and night-”
“Sir, I’m sorry,” she said in the same trained voiced. “I would call your doctor, but they would be closed now. If you wait until morning, you can call the office and have them call it in.”
I spat a breathy sigh and slapped my palm on the plastic counter top. “Shit.” I said.
“Sir?”
“Thank you for the fucking help.”
The assistant enacted up a black phone and mumbled something hurriedly into the receiver.
I turned and maneuvered past my fellow dregs of social order, and out through the automatic doors into the cool autumn night.
