Diary of a Neighborhood Pharmacist, Entry #6

I've told you that the all-night pharmacist has largely replaced the bartender as the after-hours confessional of choice. We don't expect tips the way bartenders do, and we don't cut for commercials like radio call-in show hosts. Emergency room workers and police get a more intense grade of drama, but not on a repeat basis.

I have one woman who calls in routinely at midnight to ask of she can take her prednisone at the same time as her nebulizer treatment.

It's always the same time, as if I'm marked on her day planner. By now, it's less of a question than a conversational gambit – an opening line on the order of "Do you come here often?" – before she tells me the events of the day. I would like to ask her to call at one or 2am, but haven't had the nerve to ask.

Most days I don't care; don't even listen. She was overcharged at the supermarket, found a great pair of shoes at K-Mart …. I wonder if she calls Barry* with the same stories on the weeks when I'm off? I doubt it.

Last week was different. Her voice wasn't the same. "I don't know what happened to my husband," she said. "He was in Louisiana. New Orleans. And I don't know what happened to him. Not that I care, the bastard, but I want to know."

"We'd been married for two months when he said he had to go back to New Orleans. I said I would go with him, but he didn't want me to come. I think he was just ashamed to have me see the shack where he grew up. He went, and I didn't hear from him for two weeks, and I figured that was the end of that. He didn't want to come back, and I didn't much care if he did or not. He was my second husband, you know. The first was shot by the police, and it took me days to clean the walls, but this was my second and he'd run out on me after two months. At first I didn't much care, but now I do. I watch television, wondering if I'll catch sight of him, but there are so many faces in the shelters, and sometimes I wonder if he's one of those bodies floating by. They're face down, so he could be there, on the screen, and I'd never know."

She pauses, and I feel as if I should say something, but can't think of anything to say. "I understand," doesn't seem to fit. Nothing fits. The stock exit line of the all-night pharmacist, "You have to see a doctor," doesn't fit. I don't say anything, and neither does she.

Then, lacking anything else to say, she begins to repeat the story, essentially unchanged, while I try to think of what I can add. Sympathy? A rant against the government's response to the crisis? Recommendations on whom to consult for legal advice? In the end, I settled for telling her that it's perfectly OK to take prednisone at the same time as her nebulizer treatment, and claim that I have to take care of somebody else.

There are no other customers or telephone calls, but I have to take out the garbage. It helps occupy the time.

*not his real name

See the previous installment, Diary of a Neighborhood Pharmacist, Entry #5, or the next installment, Diary of a Neighborhood Pharmacist, Entry #7.

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