“Hey, Karen!” he boomed, his voice echoing past the allergy aisle. “This HOT FLASH GEL FOR TESSA B—IT’S NOT SCANNING!”
The pharmacy went silent.
Every head turned.
My face ignited, a five-alarm blaze of humiliation that had nothing to do with my internal thermostat. This was Beau, the self-appointed master of ceremonies for other people’s ailments, and he had just made my hormonal decline the Saturday matinee. He held up the box of gel like a game show prize, oblivious to the fact he was broadcasting my private medical information.
He saw a customer. A barcode. He didn’t see a person.
The clueless man holding my prescription hostage had no idea my entire career was built on dismantling problems with precise, carefully chosen language, and I was about to use that skill to write the final, laminated, and publicly posted chapter of his.
The Saturday Gauntlet: A Low, Simmering Heat
The heat started in my chest, a low, coiling burn that had nothing to do with the broken air-conditioning in the pharmacy. It was a familiar, unwelcome guest, the kind that shows up unannounced and overstays its welcome. My own personal, internal thermostat, permanently on the fritz.
I clutched the strap of my purse, the worn leather a small comfort against my damp palm. Mark, my husband, had offered to come. “Just text me the list, Tess. I can grab it after I mow the lawn.” But I’d waved him off. It felt like admitting defeat, handing over a part of my own maintenance like a car I could no longer figure out how to drive.
So here I was. Carden’s Pharmacy on a Saturday. The ninth circle of suburban hell. The line snaked from the pharmacy counter at the back, past the incontinence aids, and was currently stalled somewhere between ‘Seasonal Allergies’ and ‘Stomach Remedies.’
I took my place behind a woman wrestling a toddler into the seat of a squeaky shopping cart. Just ahead of her, a man coughed a wet, rattling cough that made me want to bathe in hand sanitizer. This was the gauntlet. And at the end of it was Counter Three.
At the end of it was Beau.
The Voice of Counter Three
You could hear Beau before you could see him. His voice was a theatrical boom, a stage actor’s projection utterly wasted on the acoustic-tiled cavern of a chain pharmacy. He wasn’t just a pharmacy technician; he was the master of ceremonies for other people’s ailments.
“ALBUTEROL! FOR A GERALD W!” he’d bellow, holding up an inhaler like a prize. “GERALD, YOU READY TO BREATHE EASY?” An elderly man would shuffle forward, face crimson. Beau would give him a wink, a performance for the captive audience in the queue. He thought it was charm. He mistook mortification for appreciation.
I watched him now, leaning over the counter, his name tag—BEAU, with a smiley face drawn in Sharpie—askew on his light blue scrubs. He was talking to a young woman, probably not much older than my son, Leo. She was hugging herself, looking at her shoes.
“Okay, so the doctor said once a day for the YEAST INFECTION CREAM,” Beau announced, his voice carrying clear over the toddler’s whining and the rattling cough. “You got that, sweetie? Don’t want that little problem coming back!”
The girl snatched the bag from his hand, her face a mask of pale horror. She fled, not even making eye contact. Beau just chuckled, turning to his computer screen with the self-satisfied air of a man who believed he’d just done a good deed. My internal thermostat kicked up another ten degrees.
A Grant Proposal for My Nerves
My job is writing grants. I take a complex, desperate need—funding for an after-school arts program, a mobile health clinic, a new roof for the historical society—and I shape it into a compelling, logical, and emotionally resonant narrative. I build a case, brick by brick, with data, anecdotes, and carefully chosen language. My entire career is based on controlled persuasion.
Standing in this line, I found myself drafting a proposal in my head. Project Title: Operation Personal Dignity. Abstract: The following proposal outlines a critical need for basic human decency in a high-traffic public-facing healthcare setting. The primary obstacle, Technician Beau, exhibits a chronic lack of volume control and a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of privacy.
It was a stupid mental exercise, but it was better than focusing on the prickle of sweat forming on my upper lip. Or the fact that my new prescriptions—the very reason for this humiliating pilgrimage—were designed to stop exactly this kind of random, internal combustion. The irony was not lost on me.
I pulled out my phone. A text from Mark: Lawn is done. You want pizza tonight? Leo’s asking for that place with the garlic knots. I smiled. A little slice of normal life, a reminder of the world outside this fluorescent-lit purgatory. Yes. And get extra knots, I typed back. The line shuffled forward. Three more people to go.
The Final Approach
The man with the rattling cough was next. Beau greeted him like a long-lost brother. “FRANK! MY MAN! Got your LISINOPRIL right here. Keeping that blood pressure down, buddy?” Frank, unlike the girl, seemed to enjoy the attention. He and Beau bantered back and forth, their voices a duet of misplaced bonhomie.
I felt a twinge of something ugly. Judgment. Was it only me? Was I the only one who felt violated by proxy every time Beau opened his mouth? I glanced at the woman with the toddler. She was pointedly scrolling through her phone, her expression tight. Okay. Not just me.
Frank finally moved on, and the woman with the toddler stepped up. Her transaction was quick—a simple antibiotic for the child. Beau, thankfully, kept his commentary to a minimum, instead making goo-goo eyes at the kid. A small mercy.
Then she was gone. The counter was clear. A gulf of five feet of beige linoleum separated me from him. “Next!” Beau called out, his smile wide and expectant. He beckoned me forward with a flourish.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I took a deep breath, smoothed down my t-shirt, and walked toward Counter Three. It felt less like an errand and more like walking into an arena.
The Public Unraveling: A Price Check on My Last Nerve
I gave him my name and date of birth, keeping my voice just loud enough for him to hear. My name is Tessa Black. Private. Contained. The opposite of this man whose entire being was an exclamation point.
He typed with a dramatic flair, his fingers stabbing at the keys. “Tessa, Tessa, Tessa,” he muttered, a little sing-song. He squinted at the screen. His smile faltered for a second, replaced by a flicker of confusion. He scanned a barcode on a box I couldn’t quite see, then did it again. The computer beeped in protest.
“Huh,” he said, scratching his head. He held the box up, tilting it under the light as if the answer was written in invisible ink. He turned his head, not away from the line, but toward it, projecting as if he were trying to reach the people in the dairy aisle.
“Hey, Karen!” he boomed, summoning the pharmacist from the back. “Got a weird one here! This HOT FLASH GEL FOR TESSA B—IT’S NOT SCANNING! NEED A PRICE CHECK!”
The words hung in the air, echoing in the sudden, absolute silence of the pharmacy. Every cough, every whine, every squeaky wheel stopped. It felt like the world had gone into slow motion. I could feel dozens of pairs of eyes boring into me. The man behind me, the mother at the end of the aisle, the teenager near the greeting cards. All of them. Looking.
My face ignited. It wasn’t the slow burn from before. It was a flash fire, a humiliating, five-alarm blaze. Hot flash gel. He might as well have announced that my uterus was holding a going-out-of-business sale.
About the Author
