No Problem

      The line at the prescription pick-up window was a mile and a half long but I got there at last.

       “What’s your name?” said the young woman at the window.

       “Donnelly,” I said.

       “No problem,” she said, a little mysteriously, since I have never understood why a person’s responding to a request for their name by giving their name might have been flagged as a problem in the first place; but then, I’m a simple soul.

       She went away for a long time and then came back.

       “We don’t have a prescription for you today,” she said.

       “Yes, you do,” I said. “I had a text about it.”

       I showed her the text.

       “No problem,” she said. “I’ll have another look.”

       She went away for a longer time and then came back again.

       “We don’t have anything for you today,” she repeated.

       “Yes, you do,” I said. “I showed you the text.”

       “No problem,” she said. “Tell me your name again?”

        “Donnelly,” I said,

       “Connolly,” she said.

       “No, Donnelly,” I said.

       “O’Donnelly,” she said.

       “No,” I said. “Just Donnelly.”

       “No problem,” she said. “I’ll go and look again.”

       She went away again for a medium length of time, and returned with a pill bottle.

       “Here you are,” she said.

       “Thank you,” I said.

       “No problem,” she said. “That’ll be $450.37.”

       “That can’t be right,” I said. “I only pay $10. My insurance covers the rest.”

       “No problem,” she said, and looked at a piece of paper on a clipboard.

       “It says here the insurance doesn’t cover it,” she said.

       “Yes, it does cover it,” I said. “It always has.”

       “No problem,” she said. She pointed across the pharmacy counter to the drop-off window. The line at the drop-off window was a mile and three-quarters long. “If you have an insurance question you need to go to that window there.”

       So I went to the end of the drop-off line and waited again.

       “Why does my prescription cost me $450.37 instead of $10?” I said to the man at the drop-off window when I finally reached his presence.

       The man took my name and went away for a medium to long time and came back.

       “There’s been a mistake,” he said. “Go back to the pick-up window and tell them you only have to pay $10.”

       So I went back to the pick-up window.

       “Someone’s made a mistake,” I told the young woman. “The man at the drop-off window told me to tell you I only have to pay $10.”

       “No problem,” said the young woman at the pick-up window. “We’ll just need to make up the prescription again for you. It’ll be a couple of minutes.”

       “Why do you have to make up the prescription again?” I said.  “You already had it in your hand when you sent me to the drop-off window.”

       “No problem,” said the young woman. “If the customer refuses to take it we’re required to send it back. But if you’ve changed your mind and decided you do want it after all, we’ll need to make it up again for you. It’s no problem, it’ll just be a couple of minutes.”

       I had by then been in the pharmacy since shortly before the beginning of the dawn of time.

       “What do you mean by a couple of minutes?” I said.

       The young woman was so thrown by the question that she forgot to say no problem.

       “Huh?” she at last managed instead.

       “I mean,” I explained, “what do you mean by a couple of minutes?”

       The young woman sighed.

       “I mean a couple of minutes,” she clarified. “When the customer refuses to take a prescription we’re required …”

       “… to send it back, I know,” I agreed. But I also was beginning to remember, mistily, that long ago, in another time, another world, I had led a whole other life with whole other promises to keep. “Could you please be a little bit more specific about the exact length of time it will take to make it up again?”

       The young woman gazed at me, blank with stupefaction.

       “When you say a couple of minutes,” I attempted, “do you mean five minutes or do you mean a half hour? Because I have other things to do today, and in order to do them, I have to be out of here in ten minutes at the latest. So will this take more time than ten minutes or less time than that?”

       The young woman shook her head.

       “It’ll be a couple of minutes,” she reminded me patiently. “That might mean five minutes.”

       “OK,” I said. This was beginning to look up a little.

       “Or it might mean ten,” she added.

       “Oh,” I said. Then again, maybe it wasn’t.

       “Or it might mean fifteen,” she pursued.

       She thought for a moment.

       “Or it might mean twenty,” she addended.

       She thought for another moment.

       “Or maybe more than that,” she concluded.

       She looked at her clipboard and tapped her teeth with her ballpoint pen.

       “It’s hard to say,” she observed helpfully.

       “You know something?” I said. I gathered together my cell phone, my wallet and my glasses, and prepared to leave the pharmacy, empty-handed, and drive all the way back home, only to return the next day and start all over again. “I think I’ll go away now and come back tomorrow.”

       The young woman smiled brightly.

       “No problem,” she said.