The Pharmacy Bill I Paid for a Year

Gentry Drug

Gentry Drug sits on the square between the Piggly Wiggly and the shut-down dress shop, and it has sat there since before I was born. There is a soda counter in the back that does not run anymore and a blood-pressure machine by the door that half the old men in the county treat like a social club. Mr. Gentry’s daddy ran it, and now Mr. Gentry runs it, and someday I do not know who runs it because the big chain out by the highway takes a little more of him every year.

He knew me before I got to the counter. He knew my face, my maiden name, my mama’s name, and the year my mama passed, which was nine years ago this spring, and he said something kind about her the way he always does, because he does not forget that a person is still somebody’s dead wife just because the prescription stopped.

I asked him if we could talk where the line could not hear, and he came around and we stood by the vitamins.

I told him about the bottle. I did not have to tell him much. He already knew. He had seen my father’s refills come in late, he said, a week here, two weeks there, and then that last fill not come in at all until he had called the house himself. He had a word with Daddy about it and Daddy had told him money was fine, money was fine, and Mr. Gentry had known that was a lie the same as I had, but a pharmacist cannot force a grown man to spend money he says he does not want to spend.

“I’ve been worried about him, Shannon,” he said. “That’s not a drug you skip. He pops a clot, we’re not talking about a bad week.”

I told him what I wanted. I wanted to put money on the account, enough to cover every copay my father had, the Eliquis and the rest, and I wanted it set up so that when Daddy came to the counter, the medicine was already paid and he never saw a price and never got a bill.

Mr. Gentry rubbed the back of his neck. He said it was a little unusual but it was not against anything. People paid on each other’s accounts, he said, more than you would think, in a town like this. A church would quietly cover a member. A son would call from Atlanta with a card number.

“But he’s going to ask me,” Mr. Gentry said. “First time I tell him it’s covered, he’s going to stand right there and ask me who.”

And here is the thing I decided, standing by the vitamins, that I have gone back and forth on ever since.

I told him to tell the truth.