Pharmacy

A man walks into a pharmacy. It’s a new business, having just opened its doors in a building on the corner of his street three months ago. He has been in the store at least once or twice a week since then. The man has cancer. He takes a lot of medicine.

He walks up to the counter and the pharmacist greets him with a smile.

“Hi,” the pharmacist says, and swivels on his swivel chair to look over his shoulder at the bags of filled prescriptions hanging on a rack behind him. “Do we have something waiting for you?”

“No,” the man says, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket, “I need to get this one filled.”

“Oh, sorry,” the pharmacist says. “It’s just that I’ve been seeing you so often!”

The man knows that he is a particularly valuable customer. This does not make him particularly happy, considering all the implications behind the fact. So he finds this apology falls short in its scope.

You’d think, he thinks, that a pharmacist would know.

(Previously.)