The Night Pharmacy

Two forty in the morning. At the chain pharmacy on Wenyi West Road, only one fluorescent light was still on. Lin Sui set her third cup of instant coffee behind the counter and heard the automatic door chime—ding-dong. At this hour, people who came in usually weren't buying medicine. They were buying what they couldn't get anywhere else. The man who came in was Chen Mo. He wore a raincoat turned inside out, the hood dripping onto the tiles, leaving a small dark pool. He didn't look at the shelves. He just slid a crumpled prescription across the glass. 'Nitroglycerin. Prescribed before.' Lin Sui took it. The prescription was six months old, made out to Chen Mo's father. By the rules she couldn't sell it—but she knew him. He'd come four times in the past few months, always late at night, always the same drug. She turned the slip over, said nothing. 'How's your father?' Chen Mo paused. Water still dripped from his coat. 'All right,' he said, then added, 'He just won't go to the hospital. Says my mother lives alone, and if he leaves, no one will bring in the laundry.' Lin Sui bent to find the medicine. On the lowest shelf, glass bottle stood beside glass bottle, like a row of silent old men. She thought of her own father, also weak-hearted, who had collapsed in the kitchen last year and was already gone by the time they reached the hospital. She didn't say it. 'Twenty-one tablets. One a day, under the tongue. Don't wait till it hurts.' She pushed the bag across, then took a box of aspirin from the side. 'Take this too. Cheap. Remind yourself.' Chen Mo paid. His phone lit up inside the raincoat pocket; he didn't look. At the door, the chime again—ding-dong—and the rain outside suddenly louder. He stopped, his back to her. 'Your light,' he said. 'Could it stay on a while? The one in my father's room has been flickering for half a month. He won't spend the money to replace it.' Lin Sui said, 'It's on.' Three-oh-five. The rain had eased. She poured the cold coffee into a paper cup and heard a car splash through a puddle beyond the shutter, then recede. The desk phone rang once—a line fault, no one there. The door closed. The water from his coat dried slowly into the tiles. She slid the expired prescription under the keyboard, didn't throw it away. Outside, rain struck the rolling shutter, again and again, like someone testing the door from the other side, then letting go.