After the Drugstore

The black-haired girl with narrow glasses seemed robotic, like someone who might be very capable and proficient working on an assembly line.  But she wasn’t on a classic assembly line.  She was a pharmacy technician in charge of checking out my prescription.  With fingers pecking the keyboard and eyes furtively searching the computer screen, she seemed distant and distracted, perhaps in another dimension. 

Minutes crawled amidst silence.  I checked myself.  Be patient.  There’s a reason for the delay.  No need to be unpleasant.  “Excuse me, I’m just curious.  Why are we waiting so long?” I finally asked. 

“Because the code says the pharmacist has a question.”

“Do we know what it is?”

“No.  She’s busy.  Very busy.”

She remained fixated on the computer screen.  I wondered if she might be checking her Facebook account.

Meanwhile I watched the faces of the customers at the drive-up window behind her on the back wall.  They seemed hot, tired, angry, frustrated.  They squinted scowls and snarled at the deadpan face of the girl with dyed straw-blonde hair inside the glass.  She, as well as my black-haired girl, seemed more mechanical than human.

The customers barked into the microphone like animals in auto-cages, gawked and strained, craned their upper bodies out of their car windows.  They stuffed money in the retracting box, retreated, and returned again with arms extended awkwardly when it was time to reach for their stuff.  I didn’t see one person with a pleasant expression.  In fact, they appeared hurt, even in excruciating pain.  But this made sense, I reasoned, since pharmaceutical drugs, according to author Dr. Jerry Tennant, MD, MD(H), PSc.,D, are toxic chemicals that promote illness and depression (we call them side effects, but the effects are often more than an aside).  

I shifted my weight to the other foot.  It had now been about 5 minutes since I approached the counter.  I, on the other hand, would keep it together and be neutral. I wouldn’t turn ugly like those people at the drive-up window.  The black-haired girl left and returned again.  She spoke.

“The pharmacist wants to know if you want both dosages.”

“Yes – isn’t that what the doctor ordered?”

“But she wants to know if you want them both,” she reiterated. 

“Yes, I do.  I need a 60 mcg and 15 mcg since no 75 mcg exists.”  I felt steam rising.  “I came in yesterday to pick up my order and was told you didn’t have the 15 mcg available, so I would have to come back today.” 

The order had been a partial prescription that would cover just a few days rather than a whole month.  It should be simple, and I told her so.  “It’s just a few pills – nothing complicated.  The pharmacist and I talked yesterday, and since the price wasn’t unreasonable we decided not to bill insurance and deal with the legalities of switching insurance from my regular pharmacy to yours, and then back again.”

She looked at me blankly in the midst of my explanation, as if to shut out the extra information.  Then she left.  I assumed she told the busy pharmacist, the one who said my order would be ready for pick-up today, that yes I actually wanted what the order said, and by the way, I wanted it today.  Then she returned and there was more pecking on the keyboard, but no eye contact.  Seconds dibbled along, drops from a leaky faucet of time.

Finally she stepped away for about 15 seconds and returned with two white envelopes to ring up the sale.  It had been close to 10 minutes by this time.  The length of time didn’t bother me so much, but the interpersonal black hole with stale interaction and miscommunication did.  Had I done anything to fill that hole?  No.

“That will be blah-blah dollars,” she said mechanically, with a twang resembling that of a taped solicitor’s voice. It was exactly twice the amount I was told the day before.

“Can you check on that, please?  That’s not the amount I was told yesterday.” Fury foamed in me like sugar at the boiling point, but I tried to hold it back.  This froth…it was anger and frustration like what I’d seen on the faces of those sad, sad people at the drive-through window.  I wasn’t upset with the black-haired girl, trapped in a job that meant nothing to her – I felt sorry for her somehow – but rather the huge, impersonal, degrading system.  The lack of respect.  The clinical coldness.  But was I acting in a way to diffuse it?  No.

My mouth remained tersely clamped shut except to muffle, “That’s a lot of money for such a few pills.”  I grabbed my bag as soon as the transaction was finished and got out of there.

By the time I turned into our driveway, the boil had quieted to a simmer.   The real reason for telling this rather long story is because of what happened next. 

I began replaying the faces I’d seen at the pharmacy.  Carefully and compassionately.  The two robotic technicians.  The caustic woman at the drive-through window with the pursed lips and huge sunglasses that slid halfway down her sweaty nose.  The distressed, frowning mother with a car full of noisy kids who needed a prescription but would have to come back because of some glitch in the insurance. The little boy with fearful eyes sitting near me in the waiting area. The bored cashier at the front of the store, scanning candy bars.  This is America on an average day, I thought.  Devoid of joy. Where did I fit?  Was I making a difference?

I looked out over our calm lake, and it provided an answer.  Its reflections of clouds, trees, and flitting swallows reminded me that I also have opportunities to reflect the love of God in everyday situations.  To be an ambassador of hope, to make a difference, to have compassion and show it when gears of disillusionment grate and grind. 

I’d seen the need for mercy there in the drugstore.  Christ’s passion is mercy. The reflections spoke to me of this.  And I saw prayerful intercession as the desire of my heart.