The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

Stupid people, while annoying, weren’t Sam’s thorniest challenge. Addicts who needed a fix and whose nerves had been commandeered by withdrawal tremors—they weren’t kidding around.

Just last week, Sam faced the black maw of a Smith & Wesson, shaking in time with the jonesing hand training it on him. It was not acceptable that Sam “couldn’t confirm” the prescription, code for we-both-know-you’re-a-junkie. While Sam was held at gunpoint, Ice had cowered in the back, supposedly deaf to the commotion. Ice didn’t have what it took to be a pharmacist. He wasn’t even a suitable lackey. Had Ice been able to perform his job with even a modicum of precision, Sam might indulge in a good mood now and again.

The explosion had been Ice’s fault too, either directly or indirectly, because he never put anything away. Exhibit A: Baloney Sandwich.

The day of the explosion, Sam happened to be in one of his rages. Entirely justified. Even the Almighty got ticked off now and again, and Sam was feeling Sodom-and-Gomorrah over not being able to find a prescription because college-educated pharmacy assistants didn’t know the alphabet. While Mrs. White sighed and shifted her weight in the pick-up window, Sam barged around, slamming drawers and tidying as he searched.

Mrs. White heckled him and stomped off, threatening to be back soon. Sam could just fill a new order, but the point was, he shouldn’t have to. Ice had filled it. And filed it. Just not in the W’s. Maybe it was in the B section. Or in the A section. Both appropriate to describe Mrs. White. Or even—Sam was rifling through the C’s, the word for the female anatomy playing on his lips, when his eye fell on the agate mortar and pestle, a gift from his late wife, Margot. It wasn’t in its usual spot above the sign that read Sam Reeves, Pharmaciston Duty. Someone left it on the pick-up counter beside the hand sanitizer. A $500 piece of equipment, just left there.

“What? Am I your mother?” He swiped the mortar. The pestle inside swiveled, discharging a sharp crackle, and thunder and white light ran him down. The floor and he were instant lovers and the agate mortar and pestle was history, some of it in Sam’s eyes.

Blinking was hell.

Ice materialized and called 911, too slowly. Sam lay on the floor grinding mortar shards further into his cornea.

“Stop rubbing. You’ll make it worse.” Ice tried to pry Sam’s palms from his eyes, but he writhed and kicked and—as a last resort—spit in Ice’s general direction.

Ice backed off.

Sam and Ice had never gotten along. Ice was actually born Samuel Kelvin Stocker, but Fair Pharm already had a Sam, and there wasn’t room for two. Ice’s face was paralyzed in a condescending, yet somehow vacant mask, no matter what he said or how he said it. Sam dubbed him Ice on the first day; it took less than an hour. He meant it to be an insult, even had the name embroidered on all Ice’s lab coats, but it backfired. Women were attracted to Ice’s cool expression. Their comments were along the lines of: Stoics. Anything could be under there. Sam knew there was nothing under there.

“Should we hold his arms down?” Ice asked.

“Touch me and I’ll kill you.” Sam addressed Ice and the do-gooder to whom he spoke.

At that, she stifled a giggle. Ice whispered something Sam couldn’t make out, and the woman laughed again. Ice was flirting. Sam was blind and his brains were on fire and Ice was flirting.

“Ice, I messed my pants. Do you think you could wipe my ass before the squad comes?”

The woman gasped.

“He’s kidding.” Ice didn’t even sniff.

“Who the hell are you?” Sam asked. She sounded too young to be Mrs. White.

“Name’s Mike. You should stop rubbing your eyes, dude.”

Sam choked on his saliva.

The squad came and manhandled him into a gurney and leather cuffs so he’d stop rubbing. A heartless medic pried his eyes and set off a bevy of fireworks in his skull. At the hospital, it took a fantod punctuated with lawsuit threats for the intake nurses to give Sam a shot of morphine. A white lie about his weight got him an extra-large dose from the idiot nurse. It would take one and a half Sams to be the weight he gave. As Sam fell into a morphine slumber, he wondered if she’d be fired for being stupid. He doubted it.

The Fair Pharm exec who visited the next day brought a fruit basket. Sam couldn’t see it. He had to trust him. Trust a Fair Pharm executive. Fat chance.

Had the nitro been anything more than a trace, said the exec, Sam would have had a tombstone but no casket. They would have had to find his DNA in dirt samples out of the bottom of the crater twenty feet below Fair Pharm.

“With luck like that, you should play the lottery. Or maybe not. Can’t figure out if you’re lucky or unlucky.” The exec laughed heartily over Sam’s near annihilation. Then he turned serious and asked a string of guilt-inducing questions. Did Sam keep the medical nitro locked? Did he lend out the key? Did he wash his hands after dispensing? Before? Was he handling the pestle roughly?

“Yes.”

Why?”

“Because nobody puts back their shit. I’m a glorified den mother.”

“Hmmm.” The exec scribbled something. “Your assistant, Ice, stated you were in one of your—moods, was how he phrased it. Is that true?”

“Ice couldn’t slap tomatoes on burgers.”

“So…true, then.”

Sam shot him the bird with both hands. The mummy tape wrapping his eyes prevented him from seeing the exec’s reaction, but he heard an offended exhalation.

“Sorry.” Sam said. “The morphine. Not myself.”

Sam’s loyalty to Fair Pharm was what saved his job. In the ER, he had refused to say how he got injured, which meant Fair Pharm wouldn’t face the wrath of OSHA or a worker’s compensation lawsuit. Once the company realized it was in the clear,