DOCTOR’S PRESCRIPTIONS
After walking a few hundred meters, we had reached the point where we would separate.
“Well, I’ll be leaving now. Be careful on your way back home. Oh, and do not forget to buy your meds. It’s already past midnight so the med shops might already be closed by now. You can buy them tomorrow. Good night’’. My colleague then left on his way to his home which was only a minute’s walk from where we had reached.
I bid him farewell for the night and continued on. Working late at night had taken its toll on me. The headaches I usually had had emerged. It was getting more intense by the minute. I thought I should at least get the pills on my way home. So, I took the small detour to the hospital nearby. I kept massaging my head until I reached the hospital. With luck, the pharmacy of the hospital was still open. I walked up to it and asked the pharmacist for the medicines.
The pharmacist stared at me for a few seconds. He stared at me from top to down and then asked me, “Could you show me some doctor’s approval on this? This medicine is not for public usage, and we are not allowed to issue it without the doctor’s approval.”
I knew the medicine is not issued without a prescription. Just like my colleague mentioned earlier, it is used as drugs by teenagers. So, I nodded in agreement and said to him “I think I do have the doctor’s prescription in my wallet. Hold on just a minute.”
I reached for the wallet I kept in my back pocket, pulled it out and then began searching for the prescription in my bulky wallet full of notes and receipts. Meanwhile, a thin stranger, almost the same height as mine, in a black hoodie walked up to the pharmacy, a few feet apart from me. He called the pharmacist and handed him a piece of paper with something written on it. They started talking in soft voices. I could not hear them but I did notice the pharmacist pointing at me while talking to the hooded stranger. Then, the stranger started glaring at me after they were done talking. Pretending to not notice, I quickly averted my eyes towards my wallet and continued searching for the prescription.
A few seconds later I found it hidden folded in one of the tiny pockets of my wallet, called the pharmacist and presented it to him. He read it carefully and went inside the back room of the store, I think, to look for the medicine. While I waited there for him to return, I could still feel the glare of the stranger at me.
“Did you need something?” I asked. He didn’t speak and simply walked away. “What a strange guy”, I thought. “Maybe he didn’t hear. But he did look straight at me. So, he should have heard. Should I call him back? But he’s gone already. Maybe he cannot speak. But he was talking to the pharmacist.” Quick thoughts and assumptions regarding that odd interaction started coming back and forth in my mind.
“Here you go. That will be 240 rupees for a file of 5 pills”, the pharmacist said. I was so absorbed into my own thoughts thinking about the strange behavior of the hooded guy that the pharmacist startled me. He had returned with the medicine I asked for. I made the payment and put my wallet back into my pocket and the pills in my coat’s inner pocket.
“Did you see which way did he go?”, he asked.
“What?”
“The hooded guy standing there”. He was asking me about the person with the hoodie guy. I pointed in the direction that he went. The pharmacist looked in that direction with eagerness in his eyes.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what were you guys talking about? I saw you pointing at me before.”
“Oh that? That was because he was asking for the same pills that you were asking for. I told him that we cannot provide the medicine without a proper doctor’s handwritten note. So, I pointed at you as an example saying that you are looking for the same in your wallet.”
“He looked a bit strange to me. So, I got curious”, I said to him thinking back that he was possibly one of those teenagers I talked about with my colleague. That explains why he was staring at me before he left. I thanked the pharmacist and moved onwards to my home.
