“Work today? With the storm?”
“I got called in. I’m covering for somebody.”
“But you have your own things to take care of, too; when are you supposed to have a day off if they keep calling you in like that? I always told your father that I didn’t like these hours for you—”
“It’s fine. Really. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worried about you.”
“Gee, thanks.” She kicks off her boots and jams her feet into a worn pair of sneakers.
Esther clicks her tongue. “You know what I mean. You take care of yourself. Your brother, on the other hand, would lose his head if it wasn’t screwed on—”
“He’s your baby,” Laila says, mimicking the whiny inflection with which her stepmother has justified every deferral to Alex’s selfishness for the better part of two decades.
“Exactly.”
“He’s a seventeen-year-old pain in the ass is what he is.”
“He’s still my baby. And don’t talk about your brother that way.”
“Uh-huh. Well, your baby is over here eating all my food and not paying rent. The least he could do is help with the shutters. He knows I don’t like to climb ladders.”
“Ay, mi’ja, por favor. I’ll send you money for his food.”
“That’s not the—” Laila cuts herself off. Now is not the time. Not when she’s already running late. “Look, if he calls you or anything just let him know that I’m working up in Apopka and that I need him to take care of the shutters. Okay? I texted him, but I don’t know, maybe his phone died or something. And tell him to call me back! Bye!”
“Wait!”
“What? I have to go.”
“Be safe. And call me when you’re home. I don’t like you going to work on a day like this.”
“Okay, I will. Go back to sleep, and try not to take anything else today.”
Traffic is surprisingly light on I-4, but she hits a snarl less than a mile away from the shopping plaza in Apopka. The store taunts her from just beyond a red stoplight. There’s nothing to do but wait it out, slowly creeping forward with each cycle of the traffic signal. She glances at her phone. Still no word from Alex. Coño, Alex, she thinks, you better not fuck this up. Though she’s not one to normally honk, she does so now. “Come on! Move it.”
Her phone chimes.
On your way? Sanjay is waiting.
In traffic a block away, she fires back, then tosses the phone onto the passenger seat.
An accident that isn’t even on her side of the street backs traffic up in either direction. As if people don’t have enough problems in their lives that they need to rubberneck on somebody else’s tragedy. When her turn at the light finally arrives, she guns it through the intersection, doing her part to break the cycle.
The store has been picked over. Bottled water and canned goods are conspicuously absent from shelves. (She was right to do her shopping when she did.) The seasonal aisle looks ragged with nobody having had time to tidy up in the onslaught of last-minute shoppers. Her domain—the pharmacy—fares only slightly better. Sanjay is short-staffed and prescriptions are piling up.
“One of the techs called in,” he says, dashing between shelves. The remaining tech, Cecily, does her best to ring up a long line of customers at the register. “It’s been like this all day,” he continues. “I haven’t even had time to fill prescriptions. Cecily hasn’t even taken her break. And then Rajani has to be on call and there’s nobody at home to watch the kids.”
She places her purse under the counter, cracks her neck, takes a deep breath, and smiles. “Okay, what do you need?”
She finds her rhythm in short order once Sanjay departs. The flow of new prescriptions abates long enough for her to knock out some of the most urgent scripts waiting in the queue. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t be the one counting out the pills. A tech would do that, leaving the pharmacist to verify the fill, but with one tech down and the other chained to the register, the duty devolves to her. She’s quick, but she’s also scrupulous, since the potential for mistakes is high when taking over in the middle of somebody else’s day. She refuses to rush even as returning patients stream in, anxious to pick up their pills before the storm arrives. Landfall is now expected for ten P.M.
“They’ll have to close the store early,” Cecily says.
Laila glances at the time on her phone. It’s going to be a tight turnaround and still no word from Alex. “I hope so. I still have to put up my shutters.”
They work steadily for the next couple of hours. The crush of patients wanes. A stack of unfilled scripts still needs filling, but the immediacy has passed. In all likelihood these patients won’t be back until after the storm. Laila gives Bill a call, and he confirms that corporate plans to close stores in the area early but has yet to decide on exactly when.
After hanging up she sends Cecily home.
“Really?”
“Yeah. You’re welcome to stay if you want to, but I think the crisis has passed. Bill says they’ll be closing soon. I can handle things in the meantime. If you have stuff to take care of still at home you should do that.”
“Yeah, all right.” Cecily rings up the lone patient in the waiting area, then shuts down her till and gathers her belongings. “You sure you gonna be all right, Laila?”
“Yeah, absolutely. Don’t worry about me. I’m just going to get through this pile, then lock up.”
“All right.” As she walks out she calls back: “Hey, say hi to your brother for me, okay?”
“Will do! Stay safe!”
Then Cecily is gone.
She checks her phone again. Still no word from Alex; nothing from Esther either. “Where the fuck are you?” she mutters to herself.
“Are you a pharmacist or a sailor?”
She looks up to find a large, bald man, midsixties, looming over the register. He wears an amused grin and she doesn’t like the way he’s looking at her at all. Instinctively, she surveys the immediate area. A shift leader straightens shelves nearby should she need assistance.
“I didn’t realize anybody was standing there,” she says, masking her surprise with a clipped tone that passes for harried friendliness.
“Busy day?”
“Something like that.”
“You’re not Sanjay.”
“You’re observant.” She lets a trace of an accent color her words. Patients tolerate a higher level of acerbity if you sound foreign, she’s learned. It allows them to feel superior even while she refuses to act deferential. “Sanjay left early. I’m Laila.” She flashes a smile and goes back to logging scripts in the system.
“Ah, mucho gusto!” the man says. “¿De donde eres?”
Great, a gringo who can string together basic phrases.
“Puerto Rico,” she says. Though she’s never been to the island, it’s what he expects, and giving him that is easier than explaining the diversity of the Latin American experience.
“Beautiful island. My son loves it. Do you have any kids?”
“I work too much. No time for kids.”
He grins.