The doctor moved to the door, then thought of something. She pressed her lips together. She had short, dark hair, tight as if she had curled it, the blood-shadow of lipstick that had faded away. I could tell she didn’t have time to tell us whatever it was she was going to say. “Stop by the pharmacy on your way out.”
“Why?” I asked. “Does he have a prescription?”
“No. It’s going to hurt. But we’re all out of prescription pain meds.”
“Out? How can you be out?”
“Oh, we were out days ago. Everyone refilled everything they had or could get their hands on. We’re waiting on a shipment, but I don’t have high hopes. There are shortages everywhere.”
“Why should we go to the pharmacy, then?”
The doctor looked at us blankly. As if we should know this already. “Vitamins,” she said. “Over the counter pain meds. But especially vitamins. Get as many as you can carry.” She opened the broom closet door.
“Wait,” Grayson said. “Do we stop by the front desk or—”
The doctor was already in the hall. Now that the door was open, we could hear crying. An adult this time. “Don’t worry about it.”
“But I don’t have insurance.”
“Why bother?”
And she was gone.
What had happened in the slow, predictable days I had spent on the farm, rotating and watering the plants, chopping firewood? How much had gone wrong? How fast?
We pushed through the swinging double doors, Grayson walking with a hitch as he dragged his bad leg. His foot looked heavy in its new brace, like he was towing a log, and his breath sounded jagged. He was trying to get used to the pain. The waiting room had gotten more crowded since we had been in the storage closet, and out the windows, the parking lot looked strange. Too white. It had snowed again.
At the clinic pharmacy, a line of people waited in the prescription drop-off area. But I headed straight for the shelves. I swept bottle after bottle of vitamins into my arms, then I started filling Grayson’s arms.
“Hey, those are prenatal vitamins, for pregnant people,” he said.
“So?” I thought for a moment, then put the prenatal vitamins, and gummy vitamins for kids, back. I added boxes of cough syrup, bottles of iodine, rolls of tacky bandages, and painkillers.
“I don’t have enough money for all this,” Grayson whispered.
“I do.”
It was a short line to pay; most people were still at the drop-off desk, clamoring for refills, for something for their pain. The cashier had a look I was starting to think was the look, her lids popping open, her pupils the tiniest dark dots. The whites of her eyes looked as shocked as snow. She filled several paper bags with our purchases and shoved them across the counter to us. A man started to bang his cane against the counter to get her attention.
Grayson and I reached the lobby. The nurse who had given him the ice pack stood on a chair and was shouting, “Please remain patient. You will be seen in the order you arrived.”
From the crowd, there was a murmur, getting louder. People had spilled into the lobby and through the emergency room doors. People sat on gurneys and newspaper bins. Someone was bleeding, a bright red trail that streaked across the floor. I began to hear distinct voices, popping up above the crowd like Lisbeth’s treble when she led the choir. Not going to stand for this... How much more...
We went to Walmart.
3
We had to park clear at the end of the lot, by the Chinese restaurant, which was closed. A hand-lettered sign in the window read No Heat. We walked quickly. The pavement was frosted over, the reflections of streetlights buzzing in the icy puddles on the ground. Strangers joined us, their shoulders down, a tautness to their jaws like an arrow’s string. It made me think of Lobo, Lobo mad. I heard a thudding, which I realized was Grayson’s leg in the cast, striking the pavement.
“I should have dropped you off at the door,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
He would never be able to wear coveralls with that thing. How would he stay warm?
“I have to get used to it. That’s what the doctor said.”
There was no greeter at the entrance to the store. I grabbed one of the last remaining carts, whipping it past a woman who cursed at me. I muttered an apology.
“It’s only going to get worse,” Grayson said.
Inside, our boots squealed on the floor, crossed with slushy tracks. We were only a few steps into the store when I realized I could see my breath.
“They turned the heat off?” I said.
“Probably never turned it on. Big place like this, it must cost a fortune to heat. No wonder the schools closed.”
People and carts clogged the aisles. It was more crowded than even the first of the month, when support checks came in, and everyone who could afford to shopped with their tiny bit of money from the state. Mama had taught me not to go to stores then.
Everyone looked gray as overwashed clothes, exhausted and faded, their eyes turning up at the shelves as if they held the answers. This was another reason I didn’t like to come to town. There was too much suffering.
There had been suffering here forever, even before the cold came. Long ago, we had been forgotten in the holler, forgotten and left to make it on our own with no jobs, no hope of jobs. Now, cold wrung the worst from us. People snapped at each other, impatient, panicking over milk. All the women looked like my mama: grease-colored hair, faded pretty faces. The bright displays of the store, which had always looked garish, now seemed obscene.
“I don’t know what to get,” I said.
Grayson took over. “You’re pretty set for vitamins now. You probably need warmth and nonperishable food.” But in housewares, the shelves had been swept clean of blankets, sheets, even fluffy towels. In the crafts aisle, Grayson shoved bolts of fabric—fleece and hunter’s plaid and thick gray wool—into the cart. “You can make blankets if you have to,” he said. “You don’t even have to sew.”
“Good thing, because I don’t.”
The camping section had been stripped. Hand warmers, lanterns, and portable stoves had disappeared, along with all the heaters, as Grayson had predicted. He put several plastic gas cans into the cart. In the grocery section, I saw a man pulling canned food out of a stranger’s cart. He kept taking them until he was caught by the second man’s screaming wife or girlfriend. We steered out of that aisle.
The shouting intensified. We curved the cart around a smashed jar of cherries, bright and pink on the floor. It was hard not to feel dizzy, not to think of bad things. Grayson edged between strangers, adding energy bars, jars of peanut butter, tins of meat and fish, powdered milk, and packages of hard candy into my cart, swiftly and confidently reaching his hand between strangers’ hands, taking what he thought I’d need.