The St. Ambrose School for Girls(43)

A hand taps me on the shoulder. I turn sharply and look up.

It is not a metaphor this time.

The man looking down at me is the pharmacist. I recognize him from my first trip here. He has thick salt-and-pepper gray hair that is brushed back from a shiny forehead. He’s wearing a white coat over a tie and button-down shirt. His lips are moving. He’s speaking to me.

So much of me is tied up in my attempt that I can’t decipher his words. I figure he must be warning me not to think I can get away with shoplifting. I put my hand into my pocket, take out my last five-dollar bill, and thrust the crumpled wad to him.

“What’s this?” he asks as he glances at what I’m pushing on him.

It’s strange to have his voice register, my hearing coming back with no warning. I open my mouth to tell him it’s a five-dollar bill, the last one I have, as well as the last one I need, and isn’t that a lucky coincidence. Except as I look down, I see I am not holding out something that has Abraham Lincoln’s face on it. I’m offering the pharmacist a slip of paper. He takes it and reads whatever it is. Then he looks into my eyes again.

“Come with me,” he says, taking the bottles of aspirin from my hand, and putting the Orange Crush down on the floor even though it’s two aisles away from the cooler I got it from.

“Margie!” he calls out. “I’m taking a break for ten!”

“Yeah, okay, Phil,” comes a response from the front of the store.

Phil, the pharmacist, leads me behind his counter and through a door in the wall of the elevated platform from which he dispenses pills and potions more dangerous than the aspirin I’m trying to buy. That I will buy. As soon as he lets me go from whatever he has in mind.

He’s out of luck if he’s trying to bust me. I didn’t put anything in my pockets. He can pat me down. And you can’t call the police and turn someone in just because you think they might steal something.

Phil the Pharmacist is nothing but a speed bump in my road, not a dead end in the progression to my dead end.

“Here,” he says. “Let’s sit down.”

I look around and don’t see much of the rough-walled break room area. He’s brought us to a card table that has four folding chairs around it, and I take a seat because I am suddenly exhausted. He joins me and offers something forward. It’s a paper towel that’s folded in quarters.

When I look at him in confusion, he says, “You’re crying.”

I fumble to get the Bounty to my cheeks. I’m ashamed. It’s one thing to melt down on the inside. Showing this kind of emotion outwardly, I’m naked in front of a stranger.

As we sit in silence, I sniffle. I don’t want to look at him, but I have to check to confirm that I’m being judged.

I’m not. His eyes are kind. And sad.

So is his voice. “You go to Ambrose, don’t you.”

I nod. I don’t answer him verbally because I’m unsure of my voice.

“I’ve seen you in here before.”

I nod again.

“Can you tell me what’s going on for you?” When I shake my head, he says softly, “What do you need all the aspirin for?”

As he poses this question, we both know exactly what they’re for. He probably knows exactly why I chose the Orange Crush, too, some kind of continuing education he’s forced by the state to take flagging the soda when it’s purchased along with two bottles of fifty-count 325 mg pills of aspirin by fifteen-year-old girls in all-black clothes who are in tears and don’t even know it.

“Were you going to fill this?” he says.

I stare at him blankly. He’s holding out the piece of paper that I thought was a five-dollar bill, and when I don’t respond, he turns the slip around to face me. It’s my lithium prescription. The one that I’ve been meaning to bring down here for how long now? As my mind does a quick calendar check, I’m shocked at how many days it’s been since my supply of pills ran out. How did I lose track of the time?

“Who can I call for you?” he says.

“Nobody.” I clear my throat as the implications of going off my medication start to roll in, and I must reject them one by one to stay on track with my boiler room plan. I also have to get out of this conversation. “I’m okay. My roommate is on the field hockey team. She needs the aspirin. It’s not for me.”

The lie flows off my tongue smoothly, and I’m impressed with my destructive side’s ability to cover for itself.

Across the card table, Phil the Pharmacist looks doubtful. Perhaps the lie isn’t as convincing as my need for it to be tells me it is.

“Do you want me to call your doctor?” He points to the top of the prescription where the address and phone number of Dr. Warten are printed. “It’s inside of business hours.”

“I’m fine.” Of course I am. Even if I’m still catching tears with the paper towel he gave me. “I’ve just had a bad day. I’m not suicidal, if that’s what you’re worried about. I swear to God, I’m not going to hurt myself.”

It’s easy to back up a lie with that kind of vow when you’re an atheist, and yet throwing a little religion at the situation seems to relieve Phil. He sits back in his folding chair.

“How long have you been off your meds?” he asks.