Saturday, December 19, 2009

A Random Christmas Memory From An Almost Dead Man.

The last year I worked on Christmas Day I got paid time and a half to fill twelve prescriptions, seven of which were refills called in on the touch tone system with a requested ready time of the next day. My employer isn't always the sharpest knife in the drawer. I mostly worked on a reset of the pharmacy and even cleaned a thing or two, perhaps the last time I have ever cleaned anything at work. I did wait on a couple customers though, one of whom could not have been more Jewish if he had come straight from central casting.

"THEY HAVE YOU WORKING ON CHRISTMAS YOUNG MAN?" he shouted in an incredibly yiddish accent. "WHAT DID YOU DO TO DESERVE SUCH A FATE??"

"Fell out of love and got saddled with an alimony payment" I said. "Maybe with the holiday pay I can afford the good cat food." It was one of my better impromptu quips and we both shared a little chuckle.

"YOU'RE A YOUNG MAN AFTER MY OWN HEART!!" he said as he left.

"And you,...are a living stereotype" I thought to myself as he walked away. And chuckled again. It's not easy to chuckle when you're working on Christmas Day.

That was a few years ago. I forgot all about it until the doctor called this afternoon. Wanted to know the directions on the last morphine prescription that had been dispensed for him.

"I'll have to up that" said the doctor before he hung up. And shortly thereafter a lady was at the counter with an order for 20 milligrams of liquid morphine to be taken by mouth or under the tongue every hour as needed for pain or shortness of breath. Those of you in the professions know that means that'll probably be the last prescription he'll ever get.

Sigh.

He gave me a couple good chuckles on a Christmas Day when I worked for 8 hours and came home to an empty apartment. I don't know much else about him, but I just want to throw that into the Karmasphere.

And hope maybe the Karmasphere takes that into consideration when deciding what happens to him next.

7 comments:

Phathead said...

Funny how this time of year brings out those memories is it not?

pacalaga said...

I'm sorry. I hope karma is kind to him. And you, in fact.

Anonymous said...

Maybe because it's slow presumably patients when we actually have time to think and ponder a bit and ruminate on humankind.

When I relate events like this from a holiday, it's an O. Henry-type surrealistic synopsis, like spelling out the irony in drips and dabs.

One Christmas when I was working in-patient in a hospital, we were the only place open and at the time we had a retail license for prescriptions drugs for employees and out-patients, but not for people to come in off the street and we didn't do any OTCs. The out-patient pharmacist gets a call from outside from a guy needing to buy an enema, and started giving the caller a runaround. I still remember the petite spitfire intern who was incensed that the patient was getting hassle about an enema. "An enema! He can't even get an enema from us on Christmas Day! What is the world coming to. Why can't you just get one off the shelf?" (I'm pretty sure he got one from us, though, pharmacies in town had holiday covered by the next year.)

Từ Thanh Giác said...

When I divorced I walked into my new studio apartment with a futon mattress on the floor, a table and chairs and alimony payments,I never felt so free.

While I was single I volunteered to work on Christmas to let the married guys off, but I was paid double time and a half.

I wonder if the gays, who are pushing so hard for the marriage rights, really thought it out.

Anonymous said...

My first "divorced" Christmas, was just like the above comment ! the empty studio apartment never felt so FREE! I decorated a small tree....all in pink with an angel on top, in silly defiance of my ex, who forbade any regligon in his house.
Christmas is fun now, it just a while to get there.

midwest woman said...

keep throwing out into the Karmasphere...something will stick. Merry Christmas.

Penny Mitchell said...

Thank you for relating this, and for remembering him so fondly. I know he would appreciate it. I do.