CCLaP Journal #5

“Sure,” the doctor said, betraying nothing. He turned to his keyboard and began typing with his two forefingers, pecking so inexpertly that X could read the one word entry by watching his keystrokes: “Fatigue.”

“I’m going to have you lie down for a minute,” the doctor said. “I need to poke around your stomach a bit.”

There, with X made supine on the examining table, the doctor poked and pressed around his abdomen, one hand atop the other as if he were guiding the planchette across a Ouija board, vacantly interpreting the invisible gestures from the netherworld of X’s guts. Perversely, X imagined one of the little monsters from Alien bursting from his own stomach.

“Are you feeling at all depressed?” the doctor suggested, still poking, catching X off guard. He had not expected to be asked point-blank. Depressed was one of the red flag words, and his friend warned that mentioning it could take him down the road to a far-different diagnosis than he wanted.

“I wouldn’t say depressed,” X said. “Maybe...apathetic. You know. Motivation.”

“I thought so,” the doctor said, back at his computer. X sat up. “I’m going to put you on ExCella,” he continued. “Schedule a follow-up with the nurse in two weeks.”

“ExCella?” X asked. “Is that like an anti-depressant? Or maybe a stimulant?”

“It’s only been on the market about a month. It’s pretty experimental.”

“Experimental?”

“I mean,” he laughed, “they’ve done the experiments and everything on mice.

What I meant was that for now, the drug isn’t easily categorized. It’s tough to compare it to anything else.

“Don’t worry yourself,” the doctor said, rising. “There’s a discount card available at the front desk.” He then left the room. X looked up at the clock. Five minutes had passed.

The long pane of smudge-free glass almost extended the entire length of the rear of the store, until its progress was halted by the beer coolers. Above the glass, fastened to the strip of drywall between the pane and the ceiling, were a series of plastic cutouts, made to look like wood. Icons such as the white stone bowl of a mortar, perhaps used by a druid, with the matching handle of a pestle extending from the top; an antiquated scale of metal, with the dual weighing arms on each side; three brown bottles of ancient medicaments, labels reading “tooth powder,” “Epsom salt,” and “syrup of ipecac,” all hearkened back an earlier age of pharmacy. The icons too were all arranged around a center symbol, which hung directly above the dispensary window, and read “Rx,” the lowercase x made from a slash through the extended leg of the R.

The actual pharmacy, however, bore no resemblance to the decorations on the other side of the glass. The inside was all fluorescent lights and white walls, white shelves principally housing white plastic pill bottles. At the center of the workspace, a rectangular white countertop bore milk crates of binders and envelopes. The floor of the pharmacy was elevated about a foot and a half higher than the rest of the store, and so the pharmacists often could see above the aisles, all the way to the front door.

Because of his own natural tallness, this height disparity was only augmented with Harvey. Customers on the other side of the dispensary window reached upward to receive their prescriptions from him as if he were the Pill Giving Tree. He did not mind this comparison. Being a pharmacist suited him. For one, it was a job that society truly needed. He enjoyed that his job allowed him to directly help people. Sure, the doctor makes the diagnosis, but what good’s the diagnosis if you haven’t got the medicine for March 2014 | 179