precious interferon an inch from my face.
“You just
wasted
this entire bottle,” she hissed with fury. A few minutes before that, I had injected the valuable immunity promoter and then removed the bottle from my workspace without sealing it, thus contaminating the remainder of the supply. In one stroke I had wasted at least a thousand dollars of the medication, and also created a big paperwork problem. I felt a rush of shame such as I hadn’t experienced since I was a little girl getting caught reading on the wrong page by yet another teacher who was sick and tired of dealing with me. As the protagonist of my own private chapter seven,
I looked up with a flush upon my face and remorse in my heart.
Lydia, smelling opportunity, stepped in and assured the steaming Pharm.D., “She just needs a break—she hasn’t had a break all day. C’mon, kiddo, let’s go.” She led me to the courtyard, and we commenced our umpteenth break for that very shift.
When we got there, I sat down and put my head in my hands. “If I get fired, I don’t know what I’ll do,” I said, hiccupping as tears threatened.
“Fired? Is
that
what you think?” Lydia cackled. “Jesus, relax. I’ve never seen anybody get fired from this hellhole. In case you haven’t noticed, long before people get fired, they quit.”
“I can’t quit,” I confessed with anguish. “I need the money.”
Lydia lit a cigarette and took a long drag while looking at me. “Yep,” she said sadly, “you and me are the type that can’t quit.” She waved her pack of Winston Lights toward me and I declined for the sixth time that day.
When Lydia dropped me off at my apartment later that night, I asked her what she sat and thought about during those long hours when we worked silently in the pharmacy.
She considered the question for a moment, and then answered, “My ex-husband.”
“Let me guess,” I ventured, “he’s in prison?”
“He
wishes,
” she snorted. “Bastard lives in Iowa.”
As we sat there and laughed at a joke that’s as old as Minnesota itself, chapter seven echoed in my head:
miserable little dogs, we laugh, with our visages as white as ashes, and our hearts sinking into our boots.
When the medication orders slowed down in the pharmacy and I was tired of sitting, I would go and visit the blood bank to see if they wanted me to carry some pints over to the emergency room. This afforded me the opportunity to burn off some energy, since there was always a lot of time for pacing while waiting for the number and type of blood units to be verified repeatedly by all parties.
The lifer who worked the three-to-eleven shift behind the counter was named Claude, and while not as ancient as Lydia, he still qualified as a senior citizen in my eyes, having arrived at the ripe old age of twenty-eight. Claude fascinated me, both because he was the only person I’d ever met who had been to jail and because he was easily one of the most harmlessly nice guys I’d ever known. His hard life had left him physically the worse for wear, but he didn’t seem to harbor any resentment, and I supposed this was because his attention span was so short and shallow. Working the blood desk was hands down the easiest job at the hospital, Claude had boasted to me with a sort of confused pride.
Claude explained that there were only three things that he had to remember how to do: thaw blood, check blood, and dump blood. Claude began each shift by wheeling several pallets, each stacked high with bricklike bags of frozen blood, out of the deep freeze and into the plus-five-degree room to thaw. Immediately after it was donated and processed, the blood had been frozen and stored, and now it had to thaw slowly in order to be usable. By moving the blood, Claude was preparing the stash that would be available for use three shifts hence. The next thing Claude did was to man the counter for about seven hours, waiting for someone to come down with a blood order. Before signing
“You just
wasted
this entire bottle,” she hissed with fury. A few minutes before that, I had injected the valuable immunity promoter and then removed the bottle from my workspace without sealing it, thus contaminating the remainder of the supply. In one stroke I had wasted at least a thousand dollars of the medication, and also created a big paperwork problem. I felt a rush of shame such as I hadn’t experienced since I was a little girl getting caught reading on the wrong page by yet another teacher who was sick and tired of dealing with me. As the protagonist of my own private chapter seven,
I looked up with a flush upon my face and remorse in my heart.
Lydia, smelling opportunity, stepped in and assured the steaming Pharm.D., “She just needs a break—she hasn’t had a break all day. C’mon, kiddo, let’s go.” She led me to the courtyard, and we commenced our umpteenth break for that very shift.
When we got there, I sat down and put my head in my hands. “If I get fired, I don’t know what I’ll do,” I said, hiccupping as tears threatened.
“Fired? Is
that
what you think?” Lydia cackled. “Jesus, relax. I’ve never seen anybody get fired from this hellhole. In case you haven’t noticed, long before people get fired, they quit.”
“I can’t quit,” I confessed with anguish. “I need the money.”
Lydia lit a cigarette and took a long drag while looking at me. “Yep,” she said sadly, “you and me are the type that can’t quit.” She waved her pack of Winston Lights toward me and I declined for the sixth time that day.
When Lydia dropped me off at my apartment later that night, I asked her what she sat and thought about during those long hours when we worked silently in the pharmacy.
She considered the question for a moment, and then answered, “My ex-husband.”
“Let me guess,” I ventured, “he’s in prison?”
“He
wishes,
” she snorted. “Bastard lives in Iowa.”
As we sat there and laughed at a joke that’s as old as Minnesota itself, chapter seven echoed in my head:
miserable little dogs, we laugh, with our visages as white as ashes, and our hearts sinking into our boots.
When the medication orders slowed down in the pharmacy and I was tired of sitting, I would go and visit the blood bank to see if they wanted me to carry some pints over to the emergency room. This afforded me the opportunity to burn off some energy, since there was always a lot of time for pacing while waiting for the number and type of blood units to be verified repeatedly by all parties.
The lifer who worked the three-to-eleven shift behind the counter was named Claude, and while not as ancient as Lydia, he still qualified as a senior citizen in my eyes, having arrived at the ripe old age of twenty-eight. Claude fascinated me, both because he was the only person I’d ever met who had been to jail and because he was easily one of the most harmlessly nice guys I’d ever known. His hard life had left him physically the worse for wear, but he didn’t seem to harbor any resentment, and I supposed this was because his attention span was so short and shallow. Working the blood desk was hands down the easiest job at the hospital, Claude had boasted to me with a sort of confused pride.
Claude explained that there were only three things that he had to remember how to do: thaw blood, check blood, and dump blood. Claude began each shift by wheeling several pallets, each stacked high with bricklike bags of frozen blood, out of the deep freeze and into the plus-five-degree room to thaw. Immediately after it was donated and processed, the blood had been frozen and stored, and now it had to thaw slowly in order to be usable. By moving the blood, Claude was preparing the stash that would be available for use three shifts hence. The next thing Claude did was to man the counter for about seven hours, waiting for someone to come down with a blood order. Before signing
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