The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell(85)

Shortly after nine there was a knock on the door. Two hospital staff members entered to assist in putting my father to bed. It was time to leave, and I had dreaded this moment more than any other. My mother leaned over my father’s bed, her cheek pressed to his, her hands rubbing his face and combing his hair. It would be the first time since they were married they would not sleep in the same bed. She clung to him, tears flowing. Though the stroke had left my father’s face an expressionless mask, I watched his eyes pool until a lone tear rolled down his cheek. It was unbearable, and became even more so when I had to step in and separate them.





23

The next week I held a meeting in the back room of the pharmacy with my father’s longtime pharmacy technician, Betty, as well as a young girl my father had hired to work the front counter. They were understandably concerned not only about my father but for their jobs. It had been nearly three weeks since his stroke.

“The store will remain open,” I assured them.

“How?” they asked in near unison.

“We’re going to hire a pharmacist,” I said. “All of us. The first one will be coming for an interview this afternoon.” I hoped that including them in decisions concerning the store’s future would ease their concerns and make them feel invested.

“There was a man here from Longs,” Betty said, meaning the chain drugstore. “He wants to buy your father’s files. He said he’d make a fair offer, and he’d hire all of us.”

“I can’t stop you from taking the job,” I said. “But I’m not selling my father’s files to a chain drugstore. I can’t do that. Give me a month. That’s all I’m asking.”

Betty looked skeptical but agreed. “Your father worked too hard for us to give up. But, Sam, do you know what you’re in for?”

Maybe I was being naive. Maybe I didn’t know what I was in for, but I also knew there was only one way to find out. “With your help I can do it,” I said. “Just give me the chance.”

We interviewed four pharmacists in two days and met again in the back of the store.

“I like Frank,” Barb said, making our choice unanimous. “He most resembles your father’s personality, and that will help to keep our customers from defecting.”

“I have a plan for that also,” I said. I handed Barb and Betty the flyer Mickie and I had created, an invitation to a Saturday reception to “Meet Your Neighborhood Pharmacist.” “We’re going to slip them under the windshields of every car parked on Broadway and mail them to every customer. Then we’ll follow up with a personal phone call.”

My mother was not involved in any of this. She arrived at the Crystal Springs campus at seven each morning, often bringing the staff doughnuts or bagels and fresh fruit, though our finances were tight. She spoon-fed my father his breakfast and helped him get dressed, then spent the day participating in his rehab. At night she kept to their routine, reading him the newspaper and saying her rosary while my father watched television until visiting hours were over.

I went to bed that Friday night and dreamed that I threw a party and no one came except David Bateman.





24

We scheduled the reception at the pharmacy to begin Saturday at 10:00 a.m. Mickie, Ernie, and I arrived at nine to set up a few tables, which looked pathetically bare until Mr. and Mrs. Cantwell backed up their Mercedes and started unloading trays of finger sandwiches, vegetables and dip, cheese and crackers, homemade cookies and brownies, and bottles of wine and cans of soft drinks. I didn’t know what to say.

“You want a crowd? Serve them food,” Mrs. Cantwell said.

Mickie tied helium-filled balloons to the parking meters in front of the store and to the ends of the aisles inside, giving the store a festive look. There was nothing left to do but wait.

I paced the floor like an expectant father. “What if nobody comes?” I said to Mickie. I knew Barb and Betty were pleased with Frank, but if we didn’t have customers, we didn’t have a store.

“They’ll come,” Mickie said. “Have faith.”

“Oh, God, don’t say that. You sound like my mother.”

“Not faith in God,” she said. Mickie professed to be agnostic. “Faith in your father—his customers loved him.”

And it showed.

When we opened the door at ten, his most loyal customers were waiting. Some brought food to supplement our spread and for me to take home for my mother’s freezer. Every one of them shook my hand and told me how sorry they were to hear about my father. Most important, they told me they weren’t moving their files. They were staying put.

Betty and Barb poured mimosas, and Mickie and Ernie circulated the hors d’oeuvres while Frank and I greeted each guest. Frank was better than I’d expected, personable and professional. In between filling prescriptions and answering questions, he worked the crowd like a politician stumping for votes. I don’t know if it was a testament to my father, or our efforts, but just about every client on my father’s Rolodex came that day.

Afterward, as Mickie, Ernie, and I cleaned up, Mickie said, “You did it, Hill. You saved your father’s store.”

But I knew better. “This was just the first step. The most important day is Monday.”

“What happens Monday?” Ernie asked.