Meta: Past Expiration

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Funny thing... I was going to write the Plugfic for this one, and then I realized that Arthur Machen beat me to it over a hundred years ago.

Pluggers are stuck in 1895.

Preparing Next Week's Medications

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She watched him out of the corner of one eye as she worked, carefully removing the cap from each of her prescription bottles, measuring out seven or fourteen or twenty-one of each pill and depositing them carefully in her pill organizer. He was doing the same, brows furrowing every time he had to twist open another bottle. His arthritis had been so bad lately, despite the medication.

She waited patiently, and at last he raised his head to look at her. "Could you do the rest of mine, dear? My hands..." He flexed them, once, then winced.

"Of course," she answered calmly, reaching across the table to take the bottle from him. "Shall I do all the rest of them for you, too?" He nodded gratefully, and she busied herself with the task as he rose and padded to the fridge. She could have offered to help without waiting to be asked, of course, but it was better this way. He wasn't even paying attention to her, now; he was up to his shoulders in the refrigerator, looking for the milk that she had buried at the far back of the shelf.

She worked with unhurried efficiency, opening the bottle that had stymied him -- the big orange pills, prescribed by Doctor Farson for his blood pressure -- and carefully placed one pill into each of the seven compartments of his pill organizer. Next were the pills for his kidneys; two small green pills each day, tik-tik, tik-tik as she filled out the container. The last bottle was his arthritis medication, nondescript yellow things with numbers embossed into them far too small for his failing eyes to detect.

Without pausing, she uncapped this last bottle and measured out a week's dosage. Then her hand slipped quietly into her pocket, to emerge bearing seven nondescript yellow pills, which she distributed methodically into each compartment. No numbers showed on these pills; there were, in fact, no markings of any kind, but she needed none to know what would happen to him if he kept up this dosage. Very soon they would start doing more than simply fail to help with his arthritis. Perhaps even this time next week she would be preparing her medications alone.

She closed up the prescription bottle and set it back with his other pills on his side of the table. When he finally came back over, glass of milk clutched carefully in both gnarled hands, she was just finishing up with her own medications. She smiled briefly at him as he approached.

"Thanks, love," he said, reaching out to take the container of pills. She smiled again at the sight of it in his hand, seven little boxes in a row, each with its own little secret of a clever yellow pill that was not for arthritis.

Four Eyes

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Tim blinked a few times, squinting against the sudden blurriness of the world. "Now, keep in mind, it takes those just to make my vision almost normal," he said, handing his glasses to one of his friends. "Don't look too long. Most people get nasty headaches if they try."

The green-clad blur that he knew to be Ben laughed. "Oh, wow, I can practically see through time with these! You sure you're not legally blind, man?"

"Hell if I know," Tim answered with a grin. "All I know is, if I wanna see six inches in front of my face, I need those things."

The green blur shifted suddenly, and Tim squinted again. He could barely make out the movement as Ben handed the glasses over to Garrick. "Don't drop 'em," Ben said humorously, and Garrick mimed doing exactly that before putting them on.

A half-second later he whipped them off again, holding them back out to Ben. "Gah!" he exclaimed, "I think I have a headache already!" The three chuckled, and then Ben began to hold the glasses back out to Tim.

"Here you go, buddy, you can have back your eyes no -- "

As Tim reached out for the glasses, Ben loosened his grip on them; the former man's poor vision betrayed him, however, and he misjudged the movement, accidentally batting at the glasses instead of grabbing them. Knocked from Ben's hand, they fell unceremoniously to the sidewalk. There was an apologetic cracking noise.

Nobody said anything for a few moments, until finally Garrick broke the silence. "Uh. You want us to walk you home so you can get your extra pair, Tim?" he asked hesitantly.

"I don't have an extra pair."

"Oh," Ben replied.

Overlook

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"It just doesn't seem fair," Katie said quietly. She glanced at their father, sitting by the window in the wheelchair one of the nurses had fetched for him. "This must be so humiliating for him, to wind up in a place like this."

Dean nodded. "He and I actually talked about it some earlier, while you were parking the car." Then, as she looked at him in surprise, "We didn't say much, really. I told him we were sorry about all this. He told me he was too."

Tears loomed in Katie's eyes. "He's just so helpless sometimes," she said in a choked voice. "He was always so strong, and now sometimes he can't even remember where the bathroom is in his own damn house."

"I know, Kay-kay, I know." Dean wrapped his sister in a hug, trying to comfort her, feeling her tears begin to wet his shoulder as he continued. "He knows too. He can't always take care of himself these days, and he said he hates it, but that..." He swallowed. "That he knows it's time for this. For someone else to take care of him. Someone who knows how."

Katie looked over at their father again, still sitting by the window. The slump of his shoulders matched her own. "God, aging sucks," she whispered.

Ben-Gay

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Richard lowered himself into the bath gingerly, sighing as the warm water began its work. He'd have much rather run the water hot, except his doctor had nixed that -- warm was bad enough, she'd told him, it was cold that would actually help the inflammation in his joints. Thing was, there was nothing soothing about a cold bath. It seemed rather an oversight on the part of whoever was in charge of such things.

He lay there for a few minutes, not really thinking about anything, letting the warm water do its work. It had been a long day, with little opportunity to relax. He'd gotten a lot accomplished, though. Richard smiled a little. Yeah, it had been a pretty good day.

Eventually the water grew tepid, and then he rose, leaning fairly heavily on the bar installed in the bathroom wall. He stepped out carefully, then grabbed a towel and began drying off.

It was funny how much more he had come to appreciate a good bath since the accident. His broken leg and ribs had mended, and the pin in his hip had long since been set into place. Mainly he didn't have too much trouble with pain anymore, except on long days like today. But he was always up for a nice warm soak.

Finally, bathed and dressed, Richard exited the bathroom and walked slowly down the hall. He would watch a little TV, maybe catch the news, then call it a night. As he settled onto the couch, the lack of pain from his joints made him smile again. And since he'd done things the smart way 'round, he wouldn't even have to go to bed smelling of Ben-Gay tonight.

Premiums

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I'm currently (04/14/2010) looking for the image to this one -- it was something about how plugger health care premiums don't go up because for "plugger health care" you should actually read "band-aids and a kiss from mommy on your scraped knee", or something like that. Stay tuned for possible future pictoral update!

Helen looked over the paperwork and sighed. "The co-pays have gone up again, too."

"Cripes." Dan pulled out another of the kitchen chairs and sat down heavily. "How much?" Wordlessly she handed him the page, pointing at the relevant section. He winced. "Bloodsuckers. They just keep wanting more, don't they?" Then he set down the paper and sighed. "How's Joey doing?"

"Not too bad today," Helen answered quietly, eyes cast downward. "But you know, his prescription is coming up for refill again soon."

He nodded. "I know."

She looked up at him. "He's doing so much better with this medicine, Dan. Most days he says he hardly feels any pain at all."

"I know," Dan said again. Then he sighed. "I'll talk to my boss. Maybe he'll let me pick up some more hours. I mean, he said he couldn't before, but..."

"Explain it to him," Helen pleaded. "He'll understand, won't he?"

All Dan could do was shrug. "I hope so," he replied, and then was silent.

Calendar

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Laura placed the last pill on her tongue, lifted her water glass again, and then paused. "I' 'oday 'Eu'day?"

"Wednesday," Theo replied, turning the page of his paper. "Why?"

She sipped her water and swallowed. "Oh. I guess I'll have to take today's pills too, then."

Theo sighed, then folded up his paper again and set it back on the table. "Laura, you know what the doctor said about doubling up a day."

"Yes, yes. Doubling the blue ones might give me trouble sleeping; doubling the big yellow ones might give me a stomach ache; doubling the little yellow ones or the red ones will mess up some fancy chemical balance." She fumbled at the pill holder a few moments before getting the compartment labelled W to open. "But if I didn't take them every time I missed a day, I'd hardly be taking them at all."

"You're going to land yourself in the hospital again," Theo groused, but he picked up the newspaper again all the same. They had had arguments like this one before, and always he had eventually given up and let her have her way. She had always been stubborn, although her memory was less so.

"Getting old is awful," Laura commented, closing up the pill holder again.

Theo raised an eyebrow at her over his paper. "You're only thirty-six."

"So?" she replied, putting her hands to the small of her back and stretching. "Tell that to my battery of medications."

"She's only thirty-six," Theo solemnly informed the pill holder, before going back to his paper.