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

the questions stopped. A large planter with smiley balloons arrived. Sam couldn’t see it, but the nurses told him it was lovely. He decided to make it a gift for Margot.

Hopefully, Sam’s eyes would heal before Sunday. That was his day to visit Margot’s grave. Maybe she’d be happy with the planter. Likely not, though. Margot was a tough sell on just about everything. Sam would purse his lips and keep his hands in his pockets until Margot was done. Her tirades were usually about things like Sam neglecting to fold his underwear or the weedy condition of the flower boxes. Had he no pride?

Margot’s grave had no headstone, just a wreath and the flowers Sam brought. The groundskeeper left a body-sized hill of earth and rocks. Sam complained, but the keeper said it had to be that way until the ground settled. Then it would be scraped flush and soft grass planted. That was five months ago he said that.

On the morning of the explosion, Sam had gone to visit her. She was up-in-arms about a few wrinkles in Sam’s khakis. She didn’t understand. Sam had never ironed before. He didn’t even know where the iron was. So he kicked Margot’s mound. Just a little, but when he looked around, the groundskeeper was watching.

That made it easy to tell him off about not leveling the dirt.

Sam’s eyes did heal enough for him to return to work. He puttered around the pharmacy best he could on 20/200. When he got close enough to actually read the name on the wall, he almost lost his shit.

Samuel Kelvin Stocker, Pharmacist on Duty.

Ice? Ice was the pharmacist? Sam was the assistant?

What a sucker punch.

What fuckery.

Sam bungled around, knocking over vials and kicking chair legs. His semi-blindness turned customers into multi-colored blobs. The business end of an addict’s gun barely made Sam blink. Only after the man stomped out, bereft of Xanax, and Ice told Sam in a quivery voice how chill he was about staring down a gun, did Sam realize there was a gun. He thought it a wallet.

As the blobs began to crystalize, Sam knew something was off. It began with Mrs. White. Snarky and wrinkled as ever, she also had a set of pointy, yellow teeth. The top row overhung her lip. Green snot dripped from one of her nostrils, not the yellow-green sort that indicated infection. Nuclear green. Sam could hardly speak to her without grimacing. He kept wiping his own nose to hint her to do likewise. She didn’t. She just got angrier and her teeth got pointier, and the neon rivulet squirmed down her neck and got lost in her wool sweater. All the while, Mrs. White went on about how Sam got his just deserts, and she hoped things would run more smoothly around Fair Pharm from now on.

From now on?

Sam asked Ice how Mrs. White looked to him.

She’d been her crotchety self while Sam was in the hospital, Ice said.

Her teeth. Had Ice noticed anything odd about them?

No, Ice couldn’t say he had.

A person-with-a-substance-dependency (not addict, and no way junkie—Sam got sensitivity coaching) entered the pharmacy. The clerk flagged the prescription as bogus and called Sam over. As head pharmacist, denying the prescription and/or calling the police fell to Ice, but Ice was (of course) nowhere to be found. At first glance, the customer looked almost pretty, as in back-of-a-Harley-don’t-fuck-with-me pretty, but when Sam approached, her eyes became watery swirls of blue and green, like the spinning wheels in Vegas.

“What the hell’s the matter with him?” Harley girl asked the person in line behind her. She meant Sam. When Harley turned, the man behind her would see her eyes. Sam waited for the stunned reaction. None came. The man just shook his head.

Sam had to get it together. He did his best to be firm and coherent while those swirling eyes regarded him. A trail of saliva breeched her painted lips and slithered down her chin. Drips plopped on the counter. She slammed her hands on it and left in a huff. And without a prescription for 75 mg Oxycodone tablets (which only came in denominations of ten).

Even Ice began to take on fearsome qualities. His hair, always unkempt, was in the direst need of brushing, his angled brown locks menaced Sam, especially the beard. Sam internally referred to Ice as Duck Dynasty. It was oh-so-funny until the beard locks transmogrified into little brown arms with tiny hands that groped Sam as they worked side-by-side. No one else could see the hands because of the counter. Sam inched away or pretended to need something across the store. He’d ask someone to go get something from Ice, just to see if they would scream. No one did.

The trial date for Stupid Pregnant Girl finally came. Sam wore his best suit, the one he wore for Margot’s funeral. He even ironed his shirt, but not very well. The judge had a Jesus-like aura and a kindly face, though he spoke sternly. The Fair Pharm lawyer had scales and an alligator tooth. Sam did his best not to shrink back or scream. Stupid Pregnant Girl’s enormous buck teeth made her look eight years old, though Sam knew her to be twenty-seven. People everywhere were…mutilated was how Sam described it, but only to himself. The bailiff had devil horns protruding from his bald head. It was absurd, his whalesque paunch and sidearm and shiny black shoes. Sam couldn’t stifle his gasp when the bailiff turned, and a shiny black arrowhead tail writhed along the floor behind him.

The judge asked if Sam was okay. A crown of thorns materialized on the judge’s head.

Sam rubbed his eyes. Still there.

Somehow, Sam made it through the trial. Stupid Pregnant Girl was awarded an obscene settlement, and new protocol for prescription pick-up would be enacted. Something along the lines of Styrofoam cups. Caution: Contents Hot.

Take the oral medication by putting it into your mouth.

Sam shuffled out of the courthouse and