SWALLOW by Hannah Grieco
The pharmacist has to get the key, which is missing for the moment. The tech apologizes. It was hanging by the fridge in the back, just yesterday. He’s not sure where it went, but the pharmacist will find it as soon she finishes filling the Lithium prescription.“Just the 300 mg, right? You guys are pausing the 150s?”Yes, 300 mgs. Once in the morning and twice at night. We’re moving down from the larger dose, but if I say, “Yes, we’re going down in the dose permanently, I hope,” if I say, “So far we’re doing pretty well,” if I say anything at all, we’ll be at the hospital in twenty-four hours.I nod, and everyone smiles. I wait by the register, wishing I’d stopped for a coffee on the way. I can’t dash over to the in-store Starbucks though, not with this old grocery bag full of medicines I need to dispose of, practically spilling over. I can’t carry this to the front of the store and place it down by my feet as I order, as other shoppers walk by and see a bag of more than a hundred, probably close to two hundred, bottles. There’s no situation where that’s normal. Where someone wouldn’t look twice, a third time, then look away. The pharmacist finishes printing up the label. “You can pick up his Synthroid and Benztropine tomorrow.” I pay for the Lithium.“You’ll need a Haldol refill. I’ll call the doctor for you.”She puts the Lithium into a brown paper bag, like the kind you’d get at the liquor store to hide what’s inside. She hands it to me. She walks back behind the shelves and returns in less than a minute, a single key spinning on her pointer finger.“The night team never puts anything away.” The gray disposal unit is out in front, by the sunscreen. It’s R2D2 shaped, and she jams the key in, wiggles it hard, grunts, then clicks it, at last, into place. She pulls the handle, opening the wide metal mouth.“Just four to five bottles at a time. It’ll jam otherwise. I’ll come back to lock up when you’re done.” Four to five bottles at a time, starting at the top. 2024 and early 2025: the shifting doses of two medicines that no longer work. Another that caused breathing and swallowing issues. Still another to help with sleep, but caused worsening psychosis. And then a fifth, a medicine to stop excess salivating, but it tasted so bad we gave up.A layer down takes us to 2023. Then 2022. My hands start to shake. Deep breaths, but there’s a sadness I am less and less able to control when I’m by myself. It’s ugly and it’s here and I’ve been trained, carved into enduring stone, but by 2021 I am on the edge of a profound new, uglier, version of it. By 2020, I am actively sobbing in this grocery store, in front of this pharmacy, as I put bottle after bottle, year after year, into the R2D2 unit and close its mouth to make it swallow. Every failed med trial, every pill that was both hope and fear, both maybe and never. Every sleepless night—not because he woke me up, but because of the guilt.This one will work. I promise.Another layer, another year, repeating until I reach the bottom: 2015. How can medicines from ten years ago still hold on so tightly? The Zoloft, the stimulants, the antihistamines for sleep. The baby diagnoses. The belief that everything would be fine as long as we found the right med or two. The stirring in my gut, something alive, waking. Something that knew better. When the bag is empty, I hand it to the tech, who shoves it into the recycle bin under the counter. The pharmacist comes back out to lock the disposal unit.“Wow, you filled it right up.”How to explain the fear that even if a medicine is wrong, you might need it. At any moment, insurance will stop covering this. At any moment, the school will stop letting him attend. At any moment, these bottles will be all you have left to remember him by.“I kept putting it off.” I smile. I am carved in stone. I pocket the Lithium. He really is doing pretty well this week. I’ll grab him a piece of cake when I get my coffee.
