Take as Directed

Time was measured not by the hands of the clock but by the cascades of pills that flowed into my mouth. They extended my life, I was told, each capsule buying me more time. I imagined a little angel, sitting on my shoulder with a ledger, adding a minute for each pill swallowed. Surely the larger ones earned more time? As I aged, their quantities had multiplied: from the “little-white-pill with lunch” to the “three round horse pills” that had to be kept away from sunlight. Rise 30 minutes before breakfast and take your iron on an empty stomach with a glass of orange juice, they told me. At the next visit, they admonished me for drinking juice daily. “We're concerned about your sugars, dear.” The young doctor looked positively undersized in his oversized white coat. He was younger than my grandson, but with the same air of self-confidence. He wore thick black glasses, like my husband had when we were young. His spiked hair and brightly colored socks were hardly the epitome of professionalism, yet this generation valued only themselves. He talked as if he had seen the world; perhaps he had through the Internet or Google or maybe he had seen it in an atlas. Do they even use atlases anymore? At my respirologist's office, the bratty clerk with the low-cut shirt rudely directed me back to the waiting room where magazines with miniature font awaited me. Waiting doesn't bother me; when you get to my age, the remaining years are a gift, and you realize that moments don't need to be full to be valuable. I listen to the sound of my own breathing, wondering what rattling she hears when she presses the stethoscope to my chest. She is a handsome woman, with strong features and a nose that dropped off sharply, leaving her glasses to slip as she peered down at me. I used to be taller, but age had taken that away, too. It's as if time was designed to make you humbler. She shook my hand with firm grasp and I noticed the empty spot on her left hand. “Where did that gorgeous ring of yours go?” I asked her. I saw the softness behind her hard features. Pain is universal. I scuttled my way to the pharmacy, my hefty purse balanced precariously on the seat of my walker. Inside, a single piece of paper contained scribbled lines with more instructions. Take two puffs twice daily. Take one to four puffs up to four times a day as needed, although they didn't say that, not at first. The pharmacist had to decipher each code and turn it into tiny labels that were pasted onto the bottles. Each was a treasure hunt, and following all the clues led to eternal life—if life were at the bottom of the sepia-colored containers that housed my pills. When I got to the counter, it was a new pharmacist, this one a chatty chap with thinly cut hair and a thick accent. He didn't smile much, his beady eyes flitted about erratically, and when he offered to teach me how to use my inhalers, I hastily declined. “But has anyone shown you how to use them properly?” he crooned. Apparently, he had little faith in the man who owned this shop before him. I opened the door to my apartment, a tiny bedroom and bathroom wedged between the locked dementia unit and the long-term care facility. I pulled the blue and purple tubes out of the white paper bag, neatly folding the bag and placing it in the bin with the pile of others from earlier this week. The bottles dominated my dresser. Large white ones with colorful labels conquered the back; they promised to supplement my diet. Their dominant forms obscured my dusty family portraits. The middle ones were all my “official” medications, each one signed off by a pharmacist and doctor and carefully counted and placed into urine-toned bottles with child locks. Scattered in between were half-filled packs of antibiotics, antiemetics, antitussants, and antidepressants. I gazed at my shrine. Would they bury these with me—these tokens of a life well lived—or would I just never die if I followed all their instructions? I pulled my wire-framed glasses off my face and nuzzled a spot for them amidst the healers. Their names, once crisp, were now blurred. I laid down in bed and stared into space. I waited for my next dose. ***** This is a work of fiction. The patient characteristics are a composite of several patient encounters, with all identifiable details removed to maintain confidentiality. Conflict of Interest: The editor in chief has reviewed the conflict of interest checklist provided by the author and has determined that the author has no financial or any other kind of personal conflicts with this paper. Author Contributions: Alim Nagji is responsible for the entire contents of this paper. Sponsor's Role: None.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.