At Kroger Pharmacy

by Francis Yasha

 

[Editor’s Note: This piece is part of the “Topical” series, with each piece solely submitted to and chosen by the Final Reader Pietra Dunmore.]

 

Ned took a step forward. The motion sensors overhead signaled for the transparent doors just below to slide apart in opposite directions. Ned stood where he was, afternoon shoppers streaming past on either side of him into Kroger. The doors closed behind the stream of shoppers, he waved his hands once again, then joined another round of entrants and flowed forward alongside them.

Ned wandered past the cash registers. How many people there seemed to be – how many people and how much food! The shelves were bursting with variety. Ned walked the bread aisle, circled back past the spices, then patrolled the bread aisle once again. A girl browsing the rye granted him a quizzical look. But he preferred wheat, and he could study the loaves another day, he told himself.

Ned guided himself towards the corner of the store and waited in line. Someone walked away with a neat white bag. “Kroger Pharmacy: prescription for pickup?” he heard.

“No, no for the – vaccination, please,” said Ned.

“Ah, okay. Insurance card?”

“Ah…no.”

“That’s okay,” said the pharmacist. Behind the counter, a broad monitor obscured Ned’s view of the man’s face.

“Go ahead and take one of those seats. We’ll be with you in a few minutes. Get a few things sorted out. Then we’ll call you in over there.” The pharmacist’s outstretched hand pointed to a heavy wooden door. Ned noticed another man sitting in one of the waiting chairs alongside it. “Thanks,” said Ned, then turned to take the second chair.

Every sixty seconds Ned counted sixty beats between the heel of his hand and the edge of the chair. The wooden door peaked open, and a girl emerged, smiling as she danced through the narrow opening. It shut behind her. “All done, honey?” said a woman’s voice, and Ned turned to see the woman, loaf of rye in hand, welcome the girl into her arms. “I heard Wilma’s is back open for smoo-thies,” she sang as they walked together towards checkout.

“Take a look at this article, would you?” said the man in the other chair. Ned turned and encountered the shining face of a cell phone. Ned blinked a few times, and his pupils physically narrowed to the light. “STUDY SHOWS: HUMANS BELIEVE ALGORITHMS OVER PEOPLE,” read the headline flooding Ned’s face, white block case illuminating his features.

“Jesus!” said Ned. He squinted against the brilliance and tried to discern a clean-shaven face peering out from behind it.

“Right?” said the man. “You seem like an old-fashioned guy, where’d you drive in from? I’m about ready to get away from it all too, move out to the country somewhere.”

“Um.”

“Ah, I’m sorry. I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Jake.”

“Ned.”

“Nice to meet you. Listen, Ned, you’re not here for that vaccine, are you?”

“Well I thought I’d –”

“I’ve been reading a whole lot, and let me tell you, I wouldn’t let my own mother get it. Goes into your cells. And once you’re in there, it’s a whole balanced system, you know?” Ned froze. He had lost count of the time. “That’s your whole genome. Your DNA, man. Even your mitochondria have DNA, did you know that?”

The wooden door propped open. Another pharmacist stepped out from behind it. “We’re ready for you Mr. Renfree,” she said looking back and forth. The voice alongside Ned kept speaking, quickly now, the tone dropping to an astringent whisper.

“Do you want to let that in? You can identify a person by the tiniest bit of DNA. With just one little cell, I could say whether or not it belongs to you, whether –”

“Mr. Renfree?” the pharmacist interrupted. Ned stood and walked over to her. He looked back at the chairs and saw the younger man still trying to communicate his warning – arms and legs writhing even as he sat, eyes widening in enacted surprise, face streaked with regret at some gruesome transformation overtaking his body.

The door closed, and Ned sat alone with the pharmacist. “These people,” she said, arranging some items on the counter, “know nothing about science.” The walls were reflective white, colorless like the inside of each letter on the cell phone headline. The block case echoed somewhere in the back of Ned’s vision: ALGORITHMS OVER PEOPLE. The cramped walls murmured soft warnings. How many needles, entering flesh? As many needles as naked arms, Ned reasoned, touching the fabric of his sleeve. “First, mitochondrial DNA is only from your mother. Second, mRNA doesn’t even –”

“I took my cell physiology.”

She stopped, needle in hand, and stared at Ned. “Well! It’s good to have someone versed in science then. Some of these people, my gosh.”

Ned had rolled up his right-arm sleeve. “Now this will only pinch for a moment. Any allergies by the way, past reactions to vaccines?”

“No.”

“Okay. This will only pinch for a moment.”

As the syringe moved towards his arm, Ned couldn’t help but turn his head towards it. There, in the eye of the needle, he found some horror which preceded the poke of the metal point. Before his skin would be pierced, all of the light in the room would swallow him up! All of the strangers would descend upon him with their opinions and their handheld tools. He had a total desire to break that cell phone, break the needle creeping along inches from his shoulder – or else to burst out of that room and –

And so he did. Out from behind that wooden door, past families and aisles packed with groceries, Ned ran. He slammed his entire person against the deceitful transparency of the automatic doors. A new stream of shoppers triggered the sensor, walked in together; they tried to reconstruct the events which had led this man to the floor, which had split the people still flowing past on either side of him. Ned found his way past all of them and ran.

 

Francis Yasha is a Michigan-based writer trained in engineering. This is his first published work of fiction.

 

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