…”I need something for a cough”.
Concerned Pharmacy Girl: “Is it for you?”
Panda - Eyed Mother: “No, it’s for the children”, watches CPG start to pull down an expectorant “and please don’t tell me they need an expectorant. That will make them cough more and I want them to cough less.”
CPG: “Oh, we don’t encourage suppressing a cough in children”…
PEM: cutting CPG off and raising her voice to a new and interesting octave… “I know but I need to stop their coughing, you see, it’s school holidays (begins to whisper through gritted teeth) and they cough all day and all night and if I can’t stop their coughing I will go mad and then who knows what will happen and I can’t be held responsible for that because you won’t sell me a suppressant!” (PEM breathes in erratic shudders, eye twitching sporadically, a small drop of crazy spittle, sits on her lip, her eyes are wild with the constant bark of the previous night).
(Very young) CPG: “How…about…I. Just. Give. You. The. Suppressant?”
PEM recomposes herself: “Why, yes, thank you, which one would you recommend?”
CPG hands over a bottle of green fluid, trying hard not to make eye contact. She begins to back away slowly…
“I’ve got alot of children…”
CPG: “Here, take two” (Just get out of my pharmacy, you half crazed woman).
PEM Covets the two bottles of sticky green liquid and skulks away to pay. She knows that, even though she will no longer be able to show her face in town ever again, without risking being scheduled, tonight will be a blissfully quiet one…
…and it was. Ahhhhhhh (actually, zzzzzzzzzz).
