CCLaP Journal #5

it? And sure, Harvey didn’t actually make the medicine, but he could have. He spent two years in school for pharmaceutical engineering, after all, but he came back home after Stella, his wife, died.

“Hey there, Harv,” he heard from the window, where a gray hive of hair peeked over the counter. A thin, veiny hand emerged next, sliding onto the counter a glass bottle of castor oil, followed by citrate of magnesia, a small plastic bottle of witch hazel, a pill bottle of milk thistle, and finally a forty-ounce bottle of Olde English 800.

Harvey walked to the counter and saw the hunching body of the old woman.

“Milk thistle,” he said, crouching closer to her. “This is new for you, Mrs. Juniper.”

The town was small enough, and Harvey cared enough, that he knew the purchases of all his regular customers.

“I got enough problems as it is,” she said. “That’s for the dog. Bad liver.”

“Sorry to hear it, but happy to help,” Harvey said. Sometimes he wondered if people remembered him for this line. Though he knew all the regular orders, the various lengths of their prescriptions meant that every day was a little different, each bringing its own combination of folks. Today, Harvey could expect visits from Bob Donald for his “Hey there, Harv,” he heard from insulin, Debbie Fleming for her the window, where a gray hive of doxepin—she was such a sweetheart hair peeked over the counter. A and Harvey wished her the best— and Trey Gloss for painkillers, ever thin, veiny hand emerged next, since he fell a few stories during a sliding onto the counter a glass roofing job. bottle of castor oil, followed

The next time Harvey looked by citrate of magnesia, a small to the window, he saw a young man plastic bottle of witch hazel, a pill standing there, appearing more young than man, looking over his bottle of milk thistle, and finally a shoulder at the clock above the dairy forty-ounce bottle of Olde English cooler. Harvey wasn’t sure how long 800. Harvey walked to the counter he had been at the window, the and saw the hunching body of the young man hadn’t made a sound.

He looked unfamiliar to Harvey. old woman.

“How can I help you?”

Harvey said.

“Here.” He handed Harvey the sheet of paper with the details of his prescription. Reading the sheet, Harvey noted the oddness of the boy’s first name.

“So it’s just the one letter, then?”

The boy nodded.

“Okay. Just give me a minute, and I’ll get things ready for you.”

The prescription was for ExCella, one hundred milligrams administered daily.

Harvey smiled to himself. ExCella was new to the market, but over the past few weeks prescriptions for it were growing exponentially. On the pharmacy’s corkboard, amongst various sales charts and printed emails from local doctors and drawings left by children in the pharmacy’s waiting area, Harvey had pinned a full-page article about ExCella that had recently run in the New York Times. He looked to it now. “Purpose from a Pill?” the headline said, but Harvey tacked it to the wall principally because of the picture running with the article, a striking black-and-white portrait of Dr. Reid Redford, the man who engineered the pill, and who had also shared an apartment with 180 | The CCLaP Journal