I hadn’t had as much time with Landon since Keisha had arrived, so I hung out with him after he got ready for bed, lying on the other twin bed in his room and asking him about school and the nearly-finished basketball season. There was a time when he and I would snuggle on his bed together, but a few years ago he’d deemed himself too big for such things. That was when I’d realized he was growing up; it had been harder for me than I’d expected it to be, but I was glad that we still had a special bond. I had to remember that it required me to be invested, however, if I wanted to keep things that way. He was twelve, after all, and prone to the same kind of independence that often spurred me to isolate myself from people.
“So, what girls do you like?”
“Mom,” he said, disgusted. “That’s gross.”
“It won’t be for long,” I told him. “One day you’ll go to school and think, ‘Holy cow, who is that?’”
“You’re totally going to make me throw up, ya know?”
I smiled at the ceiling and then turned onto my side to face him on the other bed. I propped my head up on my hand. “And how is it having Keisha here?”
“It’s cool,” he said, and the sincerity was a relief to hear.
“I’ve been kinda busy with her and missed a lot of your stuff.”
He shrugged, but he looked at the ceiling and not at me.
“I’ll do better, okay?”
“Could you also buy Pop-Tarts? ’Cause that would make me miss you a whole lot less.”
I threw the pillow at him and then insisted on a good-night kiss on my way out of the room.
“I love you, little man,” I said from the doorway, turning off his light.
“I love Pop-Tarts.”
Chapter 8
I was recruited to work at Walgreens prior to my graduation and started working the night shift at the twenty-four–hour store in Long Beach as soon as I was fully licensed. After Landon was born, I cut back to part-time, usually working six to midnight, when John could be home. For a profession that required a doctorate degree, we didn’t always get traditional white-collar hours. I didn’t go back to work full-time until Landon was in first grade; I worked three twelve-hour shifts a week back then while John arranged his schedule so that one of us was home when Landon got home from school every day. For a two-parent, working family, we did a really great job of being there for our son.
John’s father was a carpenter, and I had always teased John that he’d been born with a rasp in his hand like John Henry and his hammer. My John was talented and had built up his own custom cabinetry business before we’d married. His excellent reputation and unfailing work ethic were the only reasons his company survived the economic horror of the last few years, but he could sometimes go weeks between jobs, which was as difficult financially as it was emotionally.
My salary alone couldn’t support the lifestyle we’d built in the years preceding the crash, and before we’d accepted that we needed to not live with the expectation of work right around the corner, we’d racked up enough credit card debt to put ourselves in a tough situation. We made some hard choices—selling our camp trailer, dropping the lease on John’s workshop space and moving his equipment to his parents’ garage, and trading in my Explorer for a used sedan, to name a few.
John started picking up small carpentry jobs here and there—installing crown molding into the few custom homes still being built, taking a few framing jobs to try to fill the gaps in his schedule—but it hadn’t been enough.
After ten years at the Long Beach store, I put in for a management position in Fountain Valley. I got the job, the increased pay, and the year-end bonuses, which was great, but I missed the Long Beach store. Since John still wasn’t working as much as we needed him to, I often picked up extra shifts, and I liked it when those extra shifts were at the Long Beach store.
Neither John nor I were happy with the overall situation. He felt like twenty years of building his company had been a waste of time, and I felt the same way about my eight years of schooling that now had me working at a mind-numbing pace. However, as we watched friends and neighbors lose their jobs completely and foreclose on homes they’d been paying on for a decade, we stopped complaining, even to each other, about how hard we were working to make ends meet.
We were able to refinance the house last year at a lower interest rate, which reduced our payment, and I’d pulled back on my 401(k) contributions so we could pay off the credit cards—which we’d done just before Christmas, later than we’d planned because we’d helped pay for Keisha’s rehab. Now that John was working a little more, Landon came home to an empty house more often than any of us liked, but he hadn’t had to skip a season of basketball or worry about where the money would come from for new shoes.
I was no longer picking up random shifts at any store that needed a licensed pharmacist in Orange County, though I still worked at the Long Beach store about once a week; I loved the staff, and they were often shorthanded. They would call me directly whenever they needed another pharmacist, and I said yes as often as I possibly could.
This week, I worked ten-hour shifts at Fountain Valley Tuesday through Friday but picked up six hours in Long Beach Monday morning so I’d be home in time to take Landon to his Monday afternoon practice. There were only a couple more weeks left in the basketball season, then he’d trade out the basketball for a lacrosse ball, which he’d eventually trade for a baseball in the summer.
The Long Beach store always seemed to keep up a steady stream of customers, which was fine by me since staying busy made the time go faster. I spent the morning talking to doctors and deciphering and filling prescriptions in between telling customers where to find toothpaste and flip-flops—the joys of working a retail pharmacy. It was fine. I was good with names and prescription details, and I could often remember what regular customers had been taking from the last time I consulted with them, which always surprised them since this wasn’t my main store.
Today, Edna McDonald came in. She was ninety years old and lived a few blocks away. She came to Walgreens every day on her Jazzy chair with her Yorkie, Shoonka, in her lap. She always bought something—cookies, gum, Polident. Today she needed some prescriptions filled, two priors and one new script that made my stomach drop when I read the slip of paper.
You could learn a lot about a person from the medications they took. After filling the prescription, I told the tech I would ring up Edna myself. After her name was called, she motored up to the pick-up side of the counter, where I met her with a sympathetic smile. Up close, I could see how thin she was and how pale her skin was beneath the crème rouge she’d rubbed onto the apples of her cheeks.
“How are you, Edna?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m just lovely, dear,” she said, smiling so that her over-rouged cheeks smoothed out and looked shiny under the fluorescent lighting. Her dentures were bright; I bet she soaked them every night. Though she was probably thirty years older than Aunt Ruby, she had the same sweetness about her. I’d assume it was a trait dependent on age except that Aunt Ruby had always been that way. I imagined Edna had too.
“You’ve taken these medications before,” I said, showing her the two refills before I double-checked the labels and slid them into a bag, “but the dosage of the oxycodone is higher than your last prescription.” I lowered my voice. “Be mindful of that in regards to going out on your chair. Oxycodone can throw off your perception and reflexes.”
“Yes, dear, I will,” she said, her voice reflecting the heaviness of our discussion. She knew I knew it was bad.
“This one is new,” I said, pointing out the Cytoxan. I went on to explain when to take it and how much. Take with food, report any digestive reactions, drink lots of water, and urinate regularly.
She nodded and listened attentively. “Do you have someone to care for you, Edna?” I asked after I finished, leaning forward until she met my eyes with her somewhat watery blue ones. I could see the milky cloud of a cataract in her left eye. I was
betting she wouldn’t get it surgically fixed. Edna was dying.
“A home nurse will be coming to see me a few times a week,” Edna said, petting Shoonka, who’d fallen asleep on her lap.
She meant a hospice nurse, someone trained to work with people who were not going to get better. Cytoxan would be more effective on someone younger, someone with a hope of recovery, but at ninety years old, Edna’s chances weren’t good, and she wasn’t a good candidate for more aggressive treatments. I wondered what type of cancer it was. I imagined that giving her the prescription was mostly about making her doctor feel better about doing something, even if it wouldn’t be enough.
“Do you have family you can call?” I asked. I knew how independent she was, but judging from the dosage of the pain medication she’d been prescribed, she’d have a difficult time caring for herself much longer.
“My daughter passed away five years ago,” Edna said. “And my son lives out of state.”
“You need to call him,” I said. It made my throat a little tighter to think about her having buried her daughter.
She started blinking quickly, and I put aside the bag and the medication sheets so I could take her hand across the counter. Her skin was as soft and thin as parchment. “Edna,” I said softly, giving her hand a squeeze, “you need to call your son.”
Whatever strength had helped her put on a happy face that morning dissolved, and I held her hands while she cried and told me about her diagnosis, her fear of death, and her concerns about calling her son. She hadn’t talked to him since Thanksgiving and didn’t want to be a burden. I listened to her for a good ten minutes before she promised me she’d call him. She gave me her home number so I could check on her that afternoon and make sure she’d called.
Even knowing I had patients lined up for me, tapping their toes and impatient with my excuses, I walked next to Edna’s chair as far as the parking lot. There was another pharmacist on duty, and three techs, but there still wasn’t time for me to just leave like I had.
After Edna motored toward home, I hurried back inside and spent the next hour getting caught up. The store manager came over after the second customer complained about the long wait, and I did my best to explain. He muttered about bad online reviews as he headed back up front.
I apologized to the pharmacy staff, but they were sympathetic; Edna McDonald was part of our community, and a nice balance for the time-crunched professionals that made up the majority of our clientele. I took my break at noon, though I wasn’t working long enough to warrant an actual lunch break. I was on my way out to my car with a banana and some string cheese I’d brought from home when a familiar face came through the front doors. We both looked at one another, trying to place each other in this out-of-context location.
“Shannon, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “And you’re Tori?” I said it as though I didn’t know who she was, but I knew. I never forgot a face.
“Great to see you,” she said, and her face broke into that gorgeous smile that lit up the room at book club. “I didn’t know you worked at this Walgreens.”
“I just fill in now and then,” I explained. “Do you live around here?”
“Kinda,” she said. “The house we’re using for the show I’m working on is a few miles away.” That’s right, she was part of the production crew on some reality TV show. “But I was sent to find a special soap for sensitive skin. One of the girls on the set has developed a reaction to something in the hot tub. The on-site nurse told me what to get, but I’ve already made two stops and neither store had it.” She waved a paper in her hand.
“Let me help you look,” I said, reaching for the paper, which she gladly relinquished. Within a few minutes, she was in line for the cash register, gushing her thanks for my help.
“Not a problem,” I said with a shrug. “It’s what I do.” We both stood there awkwardly for a few seconds. “Well, I’m on break so I better get to it.” I held up the banana and she smiled again.
“Sorry I interrupted.”
“Not a problem,” I said again, waving away her apology. I really did like to help people. I started to turn away, but she put a hand on my arm and stopped me.
“I started that book you recommended,” she said, her smile falling a little. “I feel so bad for Henrietta.”
“I know,” I said, reflecting on the story as well. “How far are you into it?”
“I just started reading about how that first doctor discovered that her cells weren’t dying like the others. He’s starting to sell them. Is the rest of the book as interesting?”
“It really is,” I said. “There’s so much left.”
“Good. I’m really glad you chose it. I feel smarter already for having read just that first part.”
I laughed, we said our good-byes, and I finally made it out to my car. It was overcast—February in Southern California—so I didn’t need the air conditioner. Just solitude. As I opened the packet of cheese, I realized how comfortable I’d been talking to Tori whereas I’d been so uncomfortable every other time I’d seen her, which was only twice, I guess, but still. Why was today different? Was it because she was in my domain—my workplace—and I was in my role as pharmacist? Or was it because she was one of those people who just made you feel comfortable?
I envied her and wondered what was so different between her and me. Obviously, we had different ethnicities, histories, and education, and I was at least ten years older than she was, but what was it about myself that made it hard for me to be comfortable in a group while she could be so at ease?
I thought about the next book group meeting, and the instant butterflies that took over my stomach reflected my anxiety, but for the first time since Aunt Ruby had talked me into attending the book group, I was actually excited to go. Tori liking the book so far gave me confidence, and like Ruby had said, I was an educated woman. I could lead a good discussion, and maybe if I opened up a little bit, I wouldn’t feel like such an outcast. Keisha had done it, Tori had done it, why not me?
Chapter 9
Keisha got a job! The local Denny’s just a few blocks away called her for an interview and offered her the job on the spot. She came home all smiles and confidence, and we celebrated by going to dinner—girls’ choice—and an action movie—boys’ choice. It happened to be the same evening as her NA meeting, but I was sure we’d make it to the next one. We’d already attended three since the night she came home late.
She and I had also talked about her antidepressants, which she’d been forgetting to take. I explained, again, the ramifications of not keeping her brain chemistries steady, and she promised, again, to be more consistent. That she hadn’t been taking her meds helped explain her relapse—though we’d never talked about my knowing she’d been drinking or something that night—and she really seemed to understand when I explained that without the right medication, she would be driven to self-medicate, which would trigger her addiction all over again. She recommitted to the contract, and I think the fact that I was accepting and compassionate to her situation went a long way to renew her faith in my love for her. She said she would try hard not to work Tuesday evenings so she can continue with her therapy appointments. I felt validated in my decision to give her a second chance and was eager for more time to pass—more days sober and successful.
My copy of Henrietta’s story came in the mail and though I didn’t get to it right away, I started spending a little time every evening putting together my notes. I treated it like an assignment from school, highlighting key points, marking pages, and conducting additional research on both Henrietta Lacks and the author of the book, Rebecca Skloot.
By the Saturday before the next group meeting, I was completely and totally overprepared. I tucked the pages I’d printed from the computer into a folder and put the folder and the book on the table by the door so that I wouldn’t forget anything, even though group wasn’t for another week.
Keisha was at work so I went on a hunt for my husband and s
on. They’d promised to clean Landon’s room today—it was starting to smell—and left me to my obsessive book group project. Now that I was finished, I was hoping they were close enough to being done that my offers to help wouldn’t be needed.
“How’s it goin’?” I said, leaning against the doorframe and looking over the nearly perfect room. I whistled under my breath in admiration. “Nice work.”
Landon was organizing the books on the bookshelf mounted on the far wall and looked at me over his shoulder. “You probably don’t even recognize this room.”
“You’re right,” I said with a nod. “If not for having counted the doors in the hallway, I wouldn’t know where I was.”
John emerged from the closet with some articles of clothing thrown over his shoulder. He was putting a jacket onto a hanger. “Okay, bud,” he said as he headed my way, “I think that does it. You need to transfer that last load of laundry in about fifteen minutes, okay?”
“Okay, Dad,” Landon said without turning around. “And I promise to keep it clean from now on.”
John rolled his eyes at the impossible promise, and I stifled a laugh. We knew better. I moved aside so John could exit, then followed him down the hall to the coat closet, where he hung up the jacket. “These are for Goodwill,” he said, taking the clothing off his shoulder and handing everything to me. “Do we have a box for them?”
“Yep,” I said, heading toward the laundry room. This time, he followed me. I showed him where the plastic tub was under the counter. I added to it as needed, then bagged everything up when it was full and dropped it off at the Salvation Army. I’d done a drop-off a few weeks ago, and these were the first new additions since then. The rumble of the washing machine beside the box was a welcome sound because it meant that Landon would have clean clothes on Monday. Always a good thing.
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