The Pharmacist’s Account

Mary Tyler Moore once said, “sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you’re strangers”.

We’re all united by our secrets, by our past.

Whether we know it or not,

We are all one in the same.

The first customer I ever served was a twenty-something blonde with a kind smile and bright eyes.

A beautiful stranger.

I filled the Oxycodone order without question; she smiled and said, “for the pain”.

I never quite knew what she meant until she began picking up her meds with a scarf where her hair had once been, and the sparkle in her eyes began to dim.

Soon, an older male lookalike began coming in her place, sharing a last name and the same dimness.

Upon inquiring about her wellbeing (which I later learned was slightly unprofessional) I heard that she was fighting a losing battle, about to become another victim to the eternal Cancer War.

I went home and cried that day.

My first lesson learned: detach or the prospect human suffering will kill you.

There’s one man I remember in particular: a bumbling, yet pleasant father of two.

I began by filling the usual family prescriptions: some amoxicillin here, a little bit of Tamiflu in the winter,

But within a few years I noticed a change in pattern.  

First, I filled the Prozac, but I guess that didn’t work because they moved on to Celexa, then Zoloft, Lexapro, Cymbalta, Tofranil and finally Norpramin.

The Norpramin worked for a while because that’s the way it continued on for months.

He came in with his usual smile, bashfully picking up his prescription.

Until one day we received a call not to fill his prescriptions any longer.

I guess the Norpramin stopped working too.

The ones who suffer the most often hide it behind a happy face.

Then there was the man who never quite left the war.

The Paxil kept his mind at bay but the fight never left his eyes,

War waging in his mind,

Every day was a struggle,

Only this time it was his sanity he was fighting for.

He trembled as he walked, as he spoke, as he paid.

His entire body was alert, rigid, ready to fight.

Always dressed in army green, sometimes in his dress blues.

Always thanked me with a ma’am and a curt bow,

Standing at constant attention.

Never at ease, like the Paxil promised.

She started seeing me as a young woman in her twenties,

Always stopping to wistfully stare at the baby items.

I handed her estrogen to validate her right to be a woman,

And him testosterone,

A his and her package of determination and modern medicine.

For years she came by, picking up syringes and pills,

Persevering, forever barren.

She hadn’t stopped by for a while so I figured they’d given up,

Until a prescription came in from the local pediatrician.

The new baby needed vitamins.  

Sometimes, good things happen to good people.

They’re all classic stories of human suffering and perseverance,

Victory and loss,

All compiled into a book called LIFE,

And to ensure our survival we must be the binding to each other’s pages,

And hold tight.