The Things They Carried

I was in the hospital pharmacy this morning, early. I'd had an 8 AM appointment with Student Health, landed myself right into a prescription for antibiotics [which I anticipated] that I needed to start taking immediately.

My favorite pharmacist was working, and she took my prescription and told me it would be a few minutes. I sat in the waiting chairs, backpack and lunchbox pooled in my lap. I couldn't help listening to the other pharmacist talking to the pharmacy's other customer.

It's interesting how well I've learned to pick up things, how I've honed those skills in even my brief experiences on the wards. I noticed his Fall Risk bracelet, the hospital clothes he wore under his street clothes. The pharmacist was telling him that the insurance company was rejecting his pain pill prescription because he'd had one filled on Monday. He couldn't pay the 7 dollars out of pocket that they would cost if insurance wouldn't pay. I heard him mention dialysis, but I would have noticed anyway--he had a fistula mid-arm, raised and pulsing out of his skin.

The pharmacist got on the phone to navigate the insurance, and he sat down beside me. He read over his discharge instructions for a few minutes, then said hello.

"Are you a student?" he asked, and I nodded. He indicated my backpack, my lunchbox. "They make you carry so many things," he commented.

"Yes." I said. "They do."

The nuances of this conversation where difficult enough--what he knew or didn't know about me, what I knew or didn't know about him. A white coat always throws up a sometimes-almost-imperceptible barrier. The heaviness of what you know, or what it is assumed you know, sets space between you. You are supposed to be the authority. You are supposed to make people better.

I like things this way, though--sitting beside a man my friend may have just discharged from the wards, I get more time to spend talking to him as a person than they can afford. This isn't an indictment of them--this is just the mere fact of the situation. They have more responsibilities. They carry more things.

My prescription was filled. I had no difficulties paying the four dollars it cost, but I've know--before--what an unexpected expense, even one that small, can sometimes do to you. Send you into a tailspin. Make the pain so much worse.

He carries those fistulas, that bracelet, the knowledge that his health is in the hands of the people the pharmacist is talking to on the phone and something else--shame or simple concern, I don't know which, that he won't be able to pay for his drugs otherwise. I carry my laptop, some legal pads, a sandwich and some yogurt. I carry psychiatrist appointment cards and the memory of every patient I've ever seen--including, now, him. I carry him.

"Take care," he murmurs to me as I walk out of the door. "You too," I whisper back.

They make you carry so many things, I think. They do.