The Only Living Girl In Denver

Denver’s nighttime skyline is enchanting until you’re actually nestled in its guts. Trilby felt like that little yellow asexual person in the corner of a Google map, being clicked and dragged by her scruff and dropped into a random quadrant of the city. Her unsuitable, inadequate black flats tapped her away from Building G of the hospital campus, past the parking garage and buildings E and D as she clutched her equally unsuitable, inadequate peacoat to her petite body. The light pollution mixed with water in the clouds to highlight the night pink. It smelled of snow and motor oil in this city from November until April, and tonight was no exception.

She imagined growing an inch smaller and a degree colder with every step she took towards the blue Pontiac that was older than her. The job she had a three weeks ago had a parking spot for her right outside the building, but now she was a five minute walk between the new place and the car that held her college textbooks, hoodies and the remnants of her fast food lunch that she’d eaten on the way in.

She bit the inside of her lip and the pinpricks began congregating behind her eyes. Her head craned back for a second and recognized the intern, walking in her same direction only twenty or so paces back. She’d allow herself a sob-filled freak out once she got to the safety of her car but right now, she could not permit another vulnerability to escape her.

Her key was erect in her hand and at the precise height of the lock by the time she made it to the car. Before she knew it, she was flipping open her cell and pressing Chris’s number.

“It just isn’t getting any better,” she said. She inhaled. Tears drained from her fallen head.  

“Babe,” Chris finally said, from two hundred bored lightyears away. “It’ll be totally fine. You just have to get used to everyone. You’re learning.”

“I’m so out of place it’s embarrassing. Everyone at that pharmacy knows it. And all the patients are mean as hell. I can’t stand another day. I can’t do it. And I’ve got so much Lit and Econ studying to do. I’m quitting tomorrow,” she threatened, to herself mainly.

He sighed. “I really can’t do this right now.”

Trilby hesitated. “What? No, I can’t do this. That’s what I’m telling you. I need to talk to someone.” Neither one needed her to confess that her only someone was him.

“I’m in the middle of a giant final. You know this, babe. I don’t have time to do this with you. I’ll be leaving Laramie next Friday. I’ll see you after my parents’ party on Saturday.”

After waiting too long for an apology, she gave up and provided her own. “You’re right. Sorry. Okay. Alright, I better focus on driving home.”

           Minutes earlier, Abreham cranked the gates down over the drop-off and pick-up windows as she counted her till, praying the amount she reached matched the number on the paperwork from the start of the day. So far today she had been spit at by an irate patient who’d been denied her sleeping pills, chastised by her trainer for her rookie pace, and put on notice by her neglected bladder that a UTI was a future certainty. But counting the till proved the most unwelcome stress in her day so far in this new place. The pharmacy rule dictated no one was to leave their miserable shift until all the tills balanced. Five people watched behind Trilby in exasperation as she thumbed through the twenties.

Abreham whistled the tune to “Islands in the Stream” and flung his lanyard keychain back and forth, the keys banging on the counter. Everyone else stared into her back, having exhausted all of the chit-chat they could scrape together amongst themselves.

           “Come on, man,” she could hear Abreham say under his breath. Typically, Abreham was a good-natured Ethiopian man who joked and gave everyone a hard time. But at this moment, his words fanned the fire inside her and pushed the heat to her cheeks. And then she lost count again.

Barb, who was at least 20 years her senior in age and pharmacy experience, silently pawed at her right shoulder and motioned her to step aside. Trilby could smell her hair spray working to hold up her cotton candy shaped hairdo. Barb cradled a pile of bills in one doughy hand and slipped them to the counter with her other hand’s red press-on fingernails, chanting the amounts in quick bursts of whisper. Her pen scratched the numbers on the sheet and with quick precision, the till balanced.

The group gathered their personal belongings, pulled long hair out from the sandwiches their coats and shirts created and grabbed straps of lunch pails.

“Sorry, guys,” Trilby said, “I only ever had to count pills at my old pharmacy. Never cash.” The disgusted looks they offered confirmed that one, she absolutely had no friends here and two, her not knowing how to accurately count cash was not a failing of her previous employer but of her own, thanks to 19 years of skirting everyday arithmetic.

“Okay everyone, let’s get the hell out of here.” Abreham shut off the lights as they exited the pharmacy and entered the employee hallway. “Have a horrible night!”

           Fridays were the biggest struggle in Trilby’s new life. Driving down Speer on Fridays was like taking a forty-mile-per-hour urban “It’s a Small World” ride; she peered into the faces of the multicultural dolls of Denver, pirouetting around one another holding Styrofoam squares of leftover Asian Fusion or shopping bags from the newest boutiques. People on their illuminated way to or from dates or hair appointments, fitting in to the Denver scene so well it felt like a personal affront to her that she didn’t.

           She put a Totino’s party pizza in her oven and cranked the kitchen timer. When it was done, she used a spatula to fold it into a semi-circle on a plate and sat it with her on the floor of her couchless living room, which was less like a room and more like the “non-kitchen and non-bathroom area” of her new studio apartment. While waiting for the saddest party ever in food form to cool its molten tomato sauce, she clicked through her address book on her phone. Surely there was someone she was forgetting to check in with. Surely someone out there was forgetting to include her in their big Friday night plans.

           But Trilby made it all the way to Zach – Lit Classmate and put down her phone. There was no one. She contemplated calling Chris again, thought of making up some logistical, non-whiney important fact to tell him just so she could hear a voice, but she knew she’d hit his limit today. And besides, she was starting to wonder if he wasn’t actually exacerbating her loneliness.

Trilby thought about Chris a bit deeper – something she never really allowed previously. Their eight-month relationship had thus far been built out of the bent plastic straws and tape one would use to cradle an egg in a sixth-grade science experiment. They were the egg, surrounded by the straws of group dates to Chili’s and vehicular make out sessions in empty parking lots, bracing for impact when tested and hoping the straws of their cage could keep them from cracking. She had always flatly known Chris didn’t really mean anything to or for her but losing him right now would crack her for certain.

           She absently bit into the taco she fashioned out of her party pizza. The still molten tomato sauce gushed into her mouth and dripped onto her lap. At once she screamed and spit, flung the sauce off her leg, and dropped the pizza on her carpet. She punched her floor with balled fists until the neighbor below her answered with their own blows. Folded into Child’s Pose, she sobbed. How on Earth did she manage to have such a lonely existence in such short order? Where on Earth were the comforts and familiarities of her life hiding? Trilby threw the pizza in her trash but left the sauce on my carpet like a little crime scene. She covered herself up on the mattress in the corner and attempted to sleep.  

_______

           Trilby maneuvered the weekend like a field of land mines. The pharmacy, her college coursework and Chris took their turns with her and she dutifully became the person she needed to be for each. Maybe this isn’t all that bad, she thought, as long as I don’t have an opinion about how I’m feeling in all of this. Then Monday hit.

           The schedule on the wall by the photocopier put her at the filling station. The filling techs counted the pills and labeled the bottles on one side of the massive counter while the pharmacists checked the techs’ work on the other. Her relief of not having to deal with patients contested the anxiety of potentially messing up a prescription; she couldn’t decide yet which emotion ruled her.

           From what Trilby could gather, most of the pharmacists were personable and friendly. It was just the film of closed off comradery and their impenetrable inside jokes, along with her shyness, that kept her from reaching them. She got busy right away, grabbing the first tray containing a label, an empty pill bottle and the stock bottle. Manager Dave was in the midst of getting razzed by Abreham for something she didn’t quite get. The other pharmacists encouraged Abreham’s behavior by providing a chorus of chuckles.

           Brian walked into the pharmacy and set his backpack on the employee shelves in the back and then stood next to Trilby to help fill the afternoon rush prescriptions. She was close enough to smell the body soap he used the last time he showered. He was the singular intern of the pharmacy, with a couple years left of pharmacy school to go. He wore a lab coat like the actual pharmacists, but it was evident by his gait and mannerisms that he’d rather not. His hair was only slightly on the shaggier side – long enough to see curly cowlicks towards his ears – and I couldn’t tell if the color would be considered blacker than brown in color, or vice versa. There was no question, though, that his eyes were a deep chocolate brown.

           “Brian my man,” yelled Abreham, rolling the R in Brian’s name. “My dude, what it is?”

The other pharmacists broke from their conversations to greet him in the same jolly manner. Brian greeted everyone in turn. Trilby had somehow lost my ability to remember what “natural” felt like. Was she standing… weird? How obvious was her swooning? Her mouth went dry as she feigned normalcy. The group settled back into their assembly line work.

“Trilby, right?” Brian glanced over at her as he grabbed his first script to fill.

“Yeah. Yep. Me.” She smiled in a way that made her feel like a robot doing its best impression of a female human being.

Everyone’s hands worked independently of their consciousness, masterfully slitting the foil tops off the bottles with their spatulas, delivering the cotton packing from them like babies, and spilling the capsules onto their counting trays. The afternoon rush enveloped them like a tidal wave, but mushroom clouds of conversations and laughter peaked here and there. Trilby was hitting her stride when Tammy, the supervisor of the techs who managed the pharmacy workflow, came to the filling counter.

“We’re drowning at pickup. We need someone to open up window six."

Manager Dave looked around as a courtesy but everyone, including Trilby, knew this was a job for the powerless new girl. She made a quick look around her.

“Dave,” raised a hesitant flat palm, “I’ll go do the pickup window.” She finished the script in front of her and slid the tray neatly aside. She grabbed a dreaded till and logged in to the Point of Service computer. Before she was ready to call the next patient in line, the patient came to her. A tall man with an Easter egg belly and eyeglasses from the 1980s. His gray shirt said “DONALDSON HEATING & AIR” in the right corner.

“Sir, I need to get set up really quick. I’ll call you over here in a minute.”

“Nope.” He connected his hairy knuckles to the pickup counter. “You’re going to help me right now.” His temples twitched under the pressure of his clenched jaws. The world could hear his nose breathe.

“Sir, if my computer isn’t up there’s nothing I can –”

He picked up his fists and slammed them down, staring Trilby in the eye. The techs directly to each side of her took notice.  

“Now, I’ve been sitting on hold with you jokers all damn day and I’m going to get my subscription, now.”

That did it. The sick and tired heathen in her found its way out. Her brain lit up in an electrical storm and she felt her eyes bulge from the sockets, ready to unleash three weeks of frustration. It was her turn to slam her fists down, and she did so while leaning towards the man in an uncharacteristic act of stupid bravery.

“You don’t get to talk to me like that,” she said, her voice a slow crescendo that ended in a yell. The pharmacy got substantially quieter. She was taking in the air required to continue her counter assault when she felt a gentle hand grace her arm.

“Is there a problem?” An Ethiopian accent. Abreham stood next to her and smiled. At first Trilby was sure this is where she’d be fired from the worst job ever, but the realization set in that Abreham was next to her in solidarity. She looked around the now frozen pharmacy. The faces of her coworkers showed the same – there were two sides to this situation, and they were on hers. They stood and watched, stilled and ready for battle. This was her team. She belonged to them, she understood.

Manager Dave and a couple of the other pharmacists joined Trilby and Abreham. Manager Dave diplomatically explained the zero-tolerance policy for patients harassing his technicians and their right to refuse service to anyone. The man continued on that he knew the mayor of Denver and was going to sue the shoes off everyone’s feet, and he barked all the expletives that came to mind. Abreham laughed like he really did find the man funny, not scary like the man was hoping. Manager Dave threatened police intervention.

The man grew more furious but withdrew. He pivoted and stomped out of the pharmacy lobby, both arms up to raise his middle fingers proud and high. When he was just about to the exit, he turned and yelled a racial slur towards Abreham. The pharmacy saw a collective red. Shouting began on all sides, with even the patients in line getting in on the action.

Before her superego could kick in, Trilby hoisted herself on the pickup counter, unsure what her body was trying to accomplish. “You come back here and say that to our faces you little bitch!” She was sick with rage but couldn’t remember the last time she felt so alive. The pharmacists, in more procurement of their superegos than she, wrangled Trilby back on the pharmacy side of the counter, laughing in surprise at her insanity.

The excitement eventually died down, as well as the afternoon rush. There were minutes instead of seconds between patient activity and so the techs working the counters had their chance to relive their account of the action. This was not the first massive altercation in the pharmacy’s history, Barb told Trilby. An event on this grand and dramatic of a scale happened about once a quarter here. She explained that since the pharmacy was in the heart of Denver, and Denver was a city like any other, it contained hard folks no matter what side of the pharmacy counter you represented.

“And then, and then she goes, ‘Come to my face and say that bitch’,” Abreham said between cackles to another pharmacist, who was on her lunch break when the drama unfolded. The event elated all of them; it gave them something to rally behind for the day. Every time Trilby walked near Abreham he’d kid, “Little T, the gangster… check yo’self, here she come!” Trilby wasn’t sure how to handle her new status. She briefly caught eyes with Brian, who was on the phone with a clinic, back to work at the boat and who had stayed invisible during the drama. She was soon flush with embarrassment.

           Trilby pulled her knit cap over her mess of hair and looped her green scarf around her neck. She replayed the day in her head and a laugh escaped her as she once again tapped her way from Building G of the hospital campus, on her way past the parking garage. She contemplated buying a six-pack of beer on the way home to celebrate the hilarity of it all when she heard someone.

           “So it sounds like you’ve got a new nickname, Little T.” Brian materialized next to her, and she wondered if he had heard her laughing to herself just before.

           “Oh my god. Yeah, I suppose.” She shrugged and smiled at the sidewalk. “What a weird day, huh?”

           They walked each other to their cars past buildings E and D and talked about how much they both liked Abreham. The pink night sky grated and released the faintest of snowflakes for them to appreciate. Trilby was buzzy with the gift of something – a simple conversation with another person in the same city – making her feel so deeply good again.