Of Cotton Balls and Leetle Pricks
Fifteen minutes early, I stroll into the busiest pharmacy in the Twin Cities. I can either join the long line to the counter or wait at the window. I should have known better than to choose this place. The line stretches to the back of the first aisle. I’d have to make the best of it. Patiently, I pull out my phone and start playing a game.
While the middle-aged woman in front of me shifts her weight, I focus on my game, swiping my finger to knock down pins and explode bombs, giving no inclination that I want to be spoken to. Yet, she turns as if we’d already been in conversation and says, “You know, I complained to the manager. That pharmacist is so rude, and he’s still working here.”
I acknowledge that this is the worst pharmacy on God’s green earth and return to my game.
“This place is a joke,” she interjects. I nod, close to winning and not wanting to encourage her, but it makes no difference.
She complains at me all the way to the counter. When her turn comes, she raises a wide smile like a white flag at the brusque pharmacy technician, her tone noticeably softened, as if she hadn’t just been ready to raise the roof.
People always want to talk to me. I must look friendly, even when I’m bored as hell. Minnesota Nice oozes out of me.
Returning to my game, I wait until she is through. Her sweet molasses words do the trick, and she trounces off, prescription in hand.
“I’m here to get my COVID and flu shots.” I say, moving up to the counter, “I wasn’t sure where to go but…”
The tech interrupts, “Over there,” pointing at the window with a no-nonsense index finger. I could have gone straight to it if I hadn’t defaulted to polite mode and thought I needed to check in first. Ten minutes wasted.
I join the other queue. One after another, people are told to wait for their prescriptions. so I find myself at the window with surprising speed, only to be promptly ignored. Every time a pharmacy employee walks past, I look up like a dog at the pound, desperate for adoption, only to be rebuffed by refusals to make eye contact. Once a female in scrubs slows at my window as if about to stop, but my hopes are dashed when she looks right through me and moves on.
Finally, a female pharmacist at the counter, busy filling prescriptions and not facing me, acknowledges my presence with a curt, “Be right with you.” Just then, I receive a text from my friend, Where R u?
We had dinner plans at 5:15. As usual, I’d overbooked my schedule.
I’ll be on the way as soon as I get my shots.
With a colossal sigh of irritation, the pharmacist ambles over to me. I explain about my appointment, and she directs me to sit.
I watch as prescriptions are filled for customers, and soon the place empties, leaving just me and another woman waiting. Usually, getting shots at the other drugstore is quick, so arriving early would mean I’d be in and out in no time.
Not long after I settle into my Kindle, my attention is drawn to noises coming from the thin-walled room off the pharmacy desk. That must be where I go to get my shots, I think.
The metallic sound of drawers opening is followed by the thud of them closing, accompanied by the click and clatter of objects and a heavily accented male voice. He complains about how he was supposed to leave work an hour ago, and a woman murmurs an apologetic reply. More drawers close. Feet shuffle. The noise grows louder but less distinct, keeping my attention on the unseen activity. Glancing at the lady three seats down from me, I see from her frown she too must be wondering what the heck is going on in there.
“Now. Let me to examine you,” he says. Her direct gaze meets mine.
The female mutters a response.
“Just a leetle prick.”
The sound of a chair squeaking. Someone fumbling with something.
“Yes, that’s it!”
Our eyes bulge with naked disbelief.
“Oh yes! Yes.”
“Ouch,” she says.
Then nothing. Silence.
We are riveted to the door, waiting to see the woman who caused such excitement, but she never comes out.
Time passes with visions of secret doors.
My friend texts me again, R u done yet? We’re gonna miss happy hour.
Situation crazy, I text back.
Meanwhile, a couple makes their way to the window and checks in for their vaccines. I stop myself from shouting at them, “Fat chance you’ll ever get one!”
Leaning over, I ask the woman next to me how long she had been waiting. She tells me her appointment had been at 4:30. Mine was at 5:00 PM, and it’s 5:15.
Giving up, I head up to the window. Instead of the grumpy female pharmacist, a male pharmacist stands there, peering at a computer screen, his thick dark hair sticking up in one spot. I clear my throat, not waiting to be acknowledged this time. He whips his head toward me with an annoyed look of interrupted concentration.
I say, “I need to cancel my shots. I have somewhere to be.”
The indignation that crosses his face could have scorched me to bits.
“What are you talking about?” he exclaims, “You wait.”
“That’s okay. I can come back another day.”
“No!” he says, darting to the window, “It takes a lot of time to get these ready and I have yours here.”
“Oh, okay,” I say, scuffling back to my seat like a scolded child.
Not one minute passes and the door of the room where one goes to disappear swings open, and he storms out with a clipboard. Shoving it toward me, he says, “You come.”
I say, “She’s ahead of me.” He narrows his eyes at me as if I’m a sucker who just lost my chance, then heads over to the couple who had checked in after us.
“What are your names? I will take you.”
They look guilty and say, “No, they were here before us. She should go,” pointing to the other woman.
As if she doesn’t exist, he moves back to me, saying, “Your name?” I tell him.
“I take you,” he says firmly.
“But she’s been here since 4:30.”
“I do you both.”
I hesitate, looking at the lady, “Her first.”
“Fine,” he replies.
“Really. I-I can wait,” I say.
“Please to follow,” he orders. We do.
To break the awkwardness, I quip, “two-for-one special” and the lady giggles. He stops, turns, and stares at me like Rasputin. I shift uncomfortably under his prolonged, stone-faced, piercing gaze. Then he belts out a loud guffaw as if he just got it. I wince. It wasn’t that funny.
Blasting the door open, he steers us to chairs across from one another as if we’ve been bad in school. We meet each other’s eyes with amusement. Guess HIPAA went out the window.
Clanking on the keyboard, he stares daggers at the screen. “I was to leave like two hours ago, and I’m still here.” I raise my eyebrows at the woman seated across from me and she lifts hers back.
“But nothing to worry. I take care of all. Then I go home to supper,” he says, trying out a smile.
He slides a drawer open and rummages around in it, while I glance around the room. Empty boxes and plastic pieces of Band-Aids are all over the floor as if there’s been a free-for-all going on. I notice another door, leading into the pharmacy. That’s where that lady must have gone, I think, Lucky her. She got to see the backroom on her way out.
Another drawer slides closed, and he runs his hand through his hair with a flummoxed expression.
Abruptly, he gets up and leaves the room, banging the door behind him. We hear sounds of boxes shuffling and crashes like someone is looking for something with desperation. Drawers and cabinets opening and closing and then other voices join in. “Must be here some place,” a female says.
I drill a look at my companion and consider making a run for it. Just as I turn toward the waiting room door, he returns with a box in his hand.
“Out of Band-Aids,” he says, shamefaced, “Had to take one off the sales floor.”
The situation was so absurd. The lady and I can hardly hold back our laughter.
Taking a Band-Aid over to her, he tells her to hold out her hand. He peels the backing off the Band-Aid and places it face-up in her palm, telling her to hold it.
Then he goes back to rifling in the drawers again and throws his arms up in the air. “Where are cotton balls?”
We share smirks, more comrades-in-arms than victims at the scaffold. She holds her Band-Aid with resigned determination.
“Ah, here they are. You two will speak for years about this,” as if we were not complete strangers. “Can you believe? Pharmacist with no Band-Aids?”
With a shot and cotton ball ready, he makes his way over to her. “Let me to examine you,” he says, pinching her shoulder in various spots. “Yes, that’s it. Just a leetle prick,” and jabs the needle into her arm. She flinches from the force.
Pressing a cotton ball in place to absorb the blood, he says, “Where is it? What did I do with that Band-Aid?” She holds up her palm to him.
After placing the Band-Aid, he makes his way back to the desk and digs in boxes, hammers on the keyboard, and readies her other injection. Returning to her, he repeats, “Let me to examine you,” pinching her again before stabbing the shot in.
“Now. I will do you!” he says, turning to me with overenthusiasm. I grimace.
As he ransacks more boxes for treatments, she gets up to escape. I give her a look of abandonment, but she just offers a sympathetic glance and mouths, “good luck” on the way out.
Then he is on me. “Let me to examine you.” He doesn’t make me hold the Band-Aid, but the jab is like none I’ve ever had. When he comes at me with another needle, I make him use the other arm. The second poke is no less intense.
As I gather my things to leave, already sore, he proffers me a going-away grin. The last I hear as I exit out the not-special door is, “You and your friend will have such a laugh in the parking lot.”
