The Pharmacy Bill I Paid for a Year

I Told Dale and Dale Said Do It

I told Dale the next morning over coffee, the whole thing, the bottle and the card and the island, and I told him what I wanted to do about it, which was going to cost us money we were careful with.

Dale drives a route for the bread company and we are not rich, but we are the kind of not-rich where the pills get bought. He stirred his coffee and he listened to the whole thing without one word, which is his way, and when I was done he said, “Do it. Set it up Monday.” That was all. That is the kind of man he is, and I am not going to make a long speech about him because he would hate it, but I married right.

What I wanted to do was pay for Daddy’s medicine. All of it, every month, for a year, so that there was never again a December where my father stood in his bathroom doing arithmetic over his own heart.

But I knew my father. If I handed him money he would not spend it on himself. He would put it in a card for somebody. If I said one word about the Eliquis he would be so ashamed that he would never let me back in that bathroom, and worse, he might dig in and skip the pills out of pure stubborn pride just to prove he did not need my help.

It had to be a thing he could not give away and could not refuse, because he never saw the money and never had to say yes to it. It had to happen at the counter, between him and the one man in that town he trusted more than he trusted me about his own body, which was the pharmacist.

So on Monday morning I drove into town to see Mr. Gentry.