Shortly after nine there was a knock on the door. Two hospital staff members entered to assist in putting my father to bed. It was time to leave, and I had dreaded this moment more than any other. My mother leaned over my father’s bed, her cheek pressed to his, her hands rubbing his face and combing his hair. It would be the first time since they were married they would not sleep in the same bed. She clung to him, tears flowing. Though the stroke had left my father’s face an expressionless mask, I watched his eyes pool until a lone tear rolled down his cheek. It was unbearable, and became even more so when I had to step in and separate them.
23
The next week I held a meeting in the back room of the pharmacy with my father’s longtime pharmacy technician, Betty, as well as a young girl my father had hired to work the front counter. They were understandably concerned not only about my father but for their jobs. It had been nearly three weeks since his stroke.
“The store will remain open,” I assured them.
“How?” they asked in near unison.
“We’re going to hire a pharmacist,” I said. “All of us. The first one will be coming for an interview this afternoon.” I hoped that including them in decisions concerning the store’s future would ease their concerns and make them feel invested.
“There was a man here from Longs,” Betty said, meaning the chain drugstore. “He wants to buy your father’s files. He said he’d make a fair offer, and he’d hire all of us.”
“I can’t stop you from taking the job,” I said. “But I’m not selling my father’s files to a chain drugstore. I can’t do that. Give me a month. That’s all I’m asking.”
Betty looked skeptical but agreed. “Your father worked too hard for us to give up. But, Sam, do you know what you’re in for?”
Maybe I was being naive. Maybe I didn’t know what I was in for, but I also knew there was only one way to find out. “With your help I can do it,” I said. “Just give me the chance.”
We interviewed four pharmacists in two days and met again in the back of the store.
“I like Frank,” Barb said, making our choice unanimous. “He most resembles your father’s personality, and that will help to keep our customers from defecting.”
“I have a plan for that also,” I said. I handed Barb and Betty the flyer Mickie and I had created, an invitation to a Saturday reception to “Meet Your Neighborhood Pharmacist.” “We’re going to slip them under the windshields of every car parked on Broadway and mail them to every customer. Then we’ll follow up with a personal phone call.”
My mother was not involved in any of this. She arrived at the Crystal Springs campus at seven each morning, often bringing the staff doughnuts or bagels and fresh fruit, though our finances were tight. She spoon-fed my father his breakfast and helped him get dressed, then spent the day participating in his rehab. At night she kept to their routine, reading him the newspaper and saying her rosary while my father watched television until visiting hours were over.
I went to bed that Friday night and dreamed that I threw a party and no one came except David Bateman.
24
We scheduled the reception at the pharmacy to begin Saturday at 10:00 a.m. Mickie, Ernie, and I arrived at nine to set up a few tables, which looked pathetically bare until Mr. and Mrs. Cantwell backed up their Mercedes and started unloading trays of finger sandwiches, vegetables and dip, cheese and crackers, homemade cookies and brownies, and bottles of wine and cans of soft drinks. I didn’t know what to say.
“You want a crowd? Serve them food,” Mrs. Cantwell said.
Mickie tied helium-filled balloons to the parking meters in front of the store and to the ends of the aisles inside, giving the store a festive look. There was nothing left to do but wait.