Day Fortytwo

I'm sitting in Badham library torn between reading Peach Blossom Pavilion (which after 200 something pages has become extremely sexy) and finishing my report. However Morgan is two computers on my right, chatting incessantly to a couple of guys she has just met. None of them are bothering to keep their voices down and every word is drilling into my head.

The girl on my left is packing her bags in an agitated sort of way. She even manages to deliberately make a racket out of saving her document on her USB. I turn and look at her.

"I can't concentrate here." She hisses when she catches me looking.

"I know, right? I can't study either."

She mumbles something like "I don't give a shit about this anymore" and storms out.

For Freda's sake I show up at work this morning. I spend most of my time putting away dispensary stock and the rest yawning loudly.

I'm neither a pharmacy assistant nor a pharmacist. I don't wear uniform and nobody trusts me. I dispense a girl's Diane-35 ED. Freda checks it, and I hand it out. The girl asks to speak to the pharmacist. I suppress my urge to tell her that I could probably help her with whatever she's about to ask, and fetch Freda instead.

"Um," says the girl, "it's my first time taking this. Where on the pack do I start? I have my period at the moment."

Freda hesitates, and then pulls the CMI from the packet to scrutinise the small print. The two of them pour over the handout to figure out how the pill should be commenced. I roll my eyes. I could have told her the answer in two seconds, and warned her that she was about to become a estrogen-fuelled fatty.

A short while later, an elderly woman approaches the dispensary. I greet her. She asks for the pharmacist. It's probably a poly-pharmacy related problem, I thought. Either that or something that requires knowledge of medical states, which I can't confidently say I possess. I call Freda over and am about to return to my pile of stock when I see the woman pull two extremely old boxes of pills from her handbag.

"Would you be able to dispose of these for me? They've past their expiry date and I don't need them."

I take the boxes from her, smile politely, and say: "You'll never tell from looking at me, but I'm very qualified in the art of throwing away trash." I walk to the sink and dump her meds into the biohazard bin.

I'm working in Kirribilli tomorrow. It sucks, because PPF is on Wednesday, and because Eugene and I didn't get much work done yesterday. Between deciding what to have for lunch, playing DS and much pinching of tummy fat on Eugene's behalf, there wasn't a lot of time for anything else.

There was a man who brought in a hand-written script. Another blank script was stuck to it. The doctor probably had really fat fingers. Eugene pried it off and handed it to me.

"Write me a script."

I obliged. Eugene Bae, I wrote. 5/7 Mario St, Yoshi Yoshi, 2053. I crossed out the doctor's name printed on the top left-hand corner and write my own. On the blank part of the script I write Reductil 15 mg, 2 mane for beer belly. 30 tablets. Repeats: none.

I'd pay to see Eugene's expression again. He was utterly horrified. Nevertheless it didn't stop him from polishing off every last morsel of his pad kee mao.

Serves him right, anyway. Just because I like him very much doesn't mean I can't identify him as an awful influence. They could perch a couple of snails in the dispensary on Sundays and the shop will probably be more tidy on Monday morning than it would be if it was left to me and Eugene.

For some reason I think of Sevil. I was an awful influence to her, too. I encouraged everything she shouldn't have been doing - spending all of her money on clothes (distasteful clothes, but that wasn't within my control), making fun of customers behind their backs, binging on cookies, having sex. When she confided that she was contemplating sex, she was 17 and half-dating a guy who insisted she shrink to a size 8 "for her health".

I wanted to tell her that it was ridiculous, but I would have just sounded condescending. Besides, I had sex when I was 16 and she knew it. I wondered whether that played a factor in her decision, if she thought having sex at 16 was normal, and virginity was too ripe one year later. I felt awkward. I told her to go for it if she was 100% sure, and that if she wasn't, it doesn't hurt to wait. A few days later she told me she had done it, and that it was awful. I told her the first time is always awful. Two months later she and her boyfriend broke up. She didn't think much of it and I didn't have the heart to tell her that when she's 20 years old she's going to kick herself.