It's always deceptively warm when I decide to buy a coat. I swear the last three times I have purchased a jacket it's been during one of the 10% of days here when the chill off the ocean doesn't go straight into your spine. This means I spend most of my walks to and from lunch at work shivering like a madman.
A madman like the one at the counter trying to get a Z-Pak. I smelled him before I saw him. My intern saw him from the moment he came in the front door, and started snickering immediately. "I gotta get this one" he said. My intern is young and still full of that testosterone fueled kick down to establish your place in the pack desire that comes with adolescence. He came back with the new patient registration form and the prescription and a few more laughs.
"Ha ha....he tried to make up an address for himself.....he can't even write! Ha ha.....Jesus he smells....."
"Hillary, look at this prescription" I said. "It's for a Z-Pak and Vicodin. He told you he didn't want the Vicodin. What does that say to you?"
Hillary gave me a blank look. I went on. "The guy made a couple bad decisions in his life and now he's fucked. In 15 minutes he's gotta go back out there into the drizzle and gloom and deal with the consequences. No matter what he decides to do with his future he's not gonna have it easy, but I tell you what. For the next 15 minutes we're gonna give him a little bit of normalcy."
Hillary got quiet. It's a rare moment when I don't happily join in the mocking of customers, and he was probably a bit confused. We got his Z-Pak ready and I went out to ring him up.
He was sitting in the waiting room looking as bad as he smelled. Shivering in the warmth of the corpo-pharmacy under a coat that looked like a worn-out version of mine. I called out his name and he stumbled to the counter.
I told him how he was going to take two tablets at once for his first dose, then that he would take one tablet a day until they were gone. I told him not to worry if he didn't feel all the way better when he took his last dose, because the antibiotic would keep working for 5 more days. An affluent man who's the type of customer I spend most of my day with walked by and looked absolutely horrified that such a person would be allowed in a store where affluent people shopped. I smiled. And it wasn't a fake customer service smile.
I told the homeless dude there was a water fountain at the front of the store if he wanted to take his first dose right away, and that he'd be feeling better soon enough. Then I took too much of the homeless dude's money.
"Thanks man"
Most days I don't feel like I have much to give, but today I gave 15 minutes of normalcy to a guy who could use it. Not to mention a bit of a teachable moment to Hillary.
Better than scraping out chicken fat.
*Disclaimer: My intern's real name isn't Hillary. The last time I used Hillary as a fake name to help create a negative impression in voter's minds on the eve of a crucial primary, it worked so well I decided to do it again. You know what to do Indiana.
