Friday, December 25th, 2020

The queuing machine spits out a piece of paper. I’m number 163 in line for the pharmacy. They’re now helping customer 128. This will be a while. I think of coming back another time. It’s always busy on Fridays. I’m on a mission, though, picking up prescriptions for my family who live at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers. I’d visited them earlier, sitting on a bench in the park outside it. They handed me a Ziploc bag with their prescription printed out and health plan membership card. They didn’t have to pay anything for them today. As I understand it. many medicines are “in the basket,” covered by the plans. For some others, once you hit the payment limit for them, refills for the rest of the year are free. The numbers in the pharmacy line go by relatively quickly. Many people still give up and leave. The numbers count through from 132 to 140 without anyone coming to the counter. Some of the people who leave without being served place their numbers in a neat pile on top of a display of masks near the queuing machine. People riffle through the pile. If they find a number that’s sufficiently far ahead, they take it and leave their own. I’m ready when called. I tell the pharmacist that I have two separate orders. He fills my family’s first, then my own. I bag them up separately and head out. I still have to run the rest of my Friday errands before the stores close for the Sabbath.