37. Assuming Helen-Eric




• Before Helen happened, I could peg anyone. I was Carl Jung with a tan. At least that's what I thought then. Now I know better.
  
  The same way you can instinctively recognise a song on the radio after just the first two notes, that's how quickly I could figure someone out. In two sips of coffee or three drags of a cigarette I knew what kinds of music they liked, what kind of boring jobs they held, if they stripped their way through college, everything. After Helen, I no longer trust those instincts.
  
  Helen was a regular customer at the pharmacy. Around the 30th of each month, she would show up like clockwork. Before the doors were even opened to Greg's Drugs, she would be camped out in the parking lot with those champagne colored granny glasses. She would sit there in her big boat of a Buick, smoking.
  
  Probably Virginia Slims or Mistys.
  
  Like an obsessed lover, she would be waiting in that car. The bass from her radio was so loud it would rattle the back window.
  
  Probably Fats Domino or the Everly Brothers.
  
  She was waiting on her valium and blood pressure medicine. I was extremely hung over from a night out at Danzy's, a jazz club on the border of Tennessee and Georgia. I ran her medicare card through the machine and handed her the wrong bag.
  
  I only discovered my error around noon, when Gordon Wattson came in. He asked about his Oxycontin, Aderol, Xanax, and Ambien. He actually got a monthly smorgasbord of drugs, but those were the only four he asked for by name.
  
  When I couldn't find them I called the doctor to see if it had been filled. Yes, it had. I double checked the little bins of medication, searching every white paper bag for, Wattson. But the closest match was, Watts. Helen Watts. That's when I knew I had made a mistake and switched the bags.
  
  I had to do something immediately. My first prioroty was saving Helen's life, but I had Gordon on my back. He was shaking. I figured he was one of those prescription drug addicts, the ones known by any pharamacy as the legal drug addicts.
  
  "I want to talk to your manager. I had this called in yesterday! Can't you guys do anything right? Where's Greg! Why's he hiring High School techs to do his work?"
  
  Definitely a legal pill head. And that was the only thing I pegged correctly that entire day. But he was red as blood and ready to come over the counter at me. So I lied, and told him I was going to call the doctor again, I'm sure there's been a mistake, I'll fix it. I really went to look up Helen's number in the computer and tell her not to take those pills. No answer. Damn.
  
  I figured since she didn't call back or drive through that she hadn't discovered the error yet. It was getting close to lunch time so I told Greg to help Gordon and I clocked out.
  
  I wrote Helen's address on a piece of paper and I floored it to her house. I was plagued by thoughts of the worst case scenario. I pictured that cookie-baking, snowflake-crocheting granny, taking those pills by accident. She had a heart condition and I knew if she took the Aderol, it could kill her.
  
  Aderol is a powerful stimulant that's sometimes sold on the streets. People like Gordon complain to their doctors that they have chronic fatigue syndrome, or whatever the latest fad disease is. Thirty minutes later and they're walking out of the office with alligator smiles, tucking their prescriptions for Aderol or whatever other drugs they scored into their pockets and rushing to the pharmacy.
  
  I finally pulled up to her house, screeching on the brakes. I was moving a million miles an hour but everything still seemed like it was in slow motion. Every second counted. Each second I lost meant she was that much closer to Mars, or wherever grannies go when they're losing their minds on prescription pills.
  
  I saw her big boat outside, and I saw the TV playing in the living room. I ran to the door and pounded on it. No answer. I rang the door bell a few seconds later. After pounding for another twenty seconds with no answer, I let myself in.
  
  She wasn't in the living room. Just an antique china cabinet full of knick knacks and ivory framed photos. I heard water running, so I walked slowly back to where it was coming from. The bathroom door was cracked, little wisps of steam were coming out. I heard my foot squish and I looked down. Water was running into the hallway. The red carpet was becoming darker and I could hear the tub overflowing.
  
  I cracked the door a little more and I saw Helen. Her eyes were rolled in the back of her head, she was lying in her bathtub face up like normal. On a little stool I saw about eight opened pill bottles. When I walked in I saw one roll off. Little pills were flowing over the edge of the tub onto the floor, making their way towards me like German U-boats.
  
  "Helen!"
  
  No answer.
  
  "Helen!"
  
  I walked two feet away from her and screamed. I shook her clammy shoulders. Nothing. I panicked. I grabbed her empty bottles and threw them in a towel. I ran out of the bathroom with them. I noticed a phone in the den among scattered whiskey bottles and I dialed 9-1-1. I told them I was her next door neighbor, and that she wasn't breathing. I think she had a heart attack, I said.
  
  I ran to the kitchen to find a plastic bag. I needed to dump the pill bottles into something smaller so I could get rid of them. I did not want to be implicated in what would otherwise become the Greg's Drugs Fiasco. I didn't want anyone knowing where the pills came from. If they found them and checked the logs, they'd know who dispensed them. I didn't want her to die, but I didn't want to take the fall if she did either.
  
  I looked under the sink and through every cupboard and I still couldn't find a bag. What I did find was hundreds of prescription pill bottles in a far cupboard. Some were from 1979. She had a veritable pharmacy right in her cupboard, and every single bottle was a narcotic. She had librium, valium, phenbarbital, tons of amphetamines, and so many prescription pain killers she could put Afghanistan and Columbia out of the opium trade.
  
  So much for my cookie-baking-snowflake-crocheting-granny theory. She could hang with bikers. Behind the bottles I found an old dusty zip lock full of marijuahna. I slammed the door and dumped the pills down the garbage disposal.
  
  I knew the ambulance would be there any minute so I ran for the door. But as I was charging through the living room, a stark naked Helen appeared from out of no where, holding a golf club. I crashed into her, knocking both of us through her glass coffee table.
  
  My face was wet with blood. Helen had scrambled to her feet like a wrestler, but I couldn't stand up. I saw something in her wide-opened blood shot eyes that said, murder.
  
  "Oh my god! I'm calling the police on you right now mister! The shame of you young people! Trying to rape an old lady!"
  
  She came closer to me. She started giggling and holding up the golf club. I rolled to a corner and tried to stand up. She was a little bear on her haunches, lightening fast.
  
  Her giggling got louder and she started swinging. The pain bit my face and neck. I could hardly see for all of the blood, but I managed to scramble to my feet and shove her down. She was so hopped up it didn't matter. She leaped to her feet before I could even blink, swinging that golf club. She knashed her teeth at me, and hissed. She put herself in front of the door, giggling and hissing, pssssthhhhss. That's when I knew I was dead.
  
  If the ambulance would have gotten there two sips of coffee, or three drags of a ciagerette later, I would have died.
  
  The charges were dropped after I came clean. I was fired, and she was arrested. I didn't know who she was. I thought I knew people. I didn't know who anybody was. My assumptions about people were as valid as their reflections in a fun house mirror.
  
  People aren't just two notes of that song you can guess the name of instantly. Never make assumptions, good or bad, about someone you don't know. People should never be pegged.