Richard pointed at the bandage he'd dropped.
"Can I see that?"
"What for?"
"I just want to see it. Can I–"
"You need a bandage, you see a doctor. You
need to see a doctor, you wait your turn."
"But–"
"You wait your turn. You don't just go
grabbing supplies. Go on, back to the waiting room."
"I'm not
taking
it. I wasn't going to
take it." He reached out for the shrink-wrapped package again. "I
just need–"
"Put that down! Only a doctor's licensed to
give you those. You get on now. Put that down and wait your
turn."
"Why can't I just see this one?"
"It's not yours! Get on now, you need me to
call security?"
"No, I just–
"Then see yourself out."
"But I just want to look at it."
"This is a hospital, not a playground. Get
lost."
Dammit.
Richard shook his head but he
couldn't really think of anything else to say so he turned around
and walked away.
He walked around a few corners, down a few
hallways. He tried a few doors. Some were locked, some opened on
empty conference rooms. Others opened on rooms full of clipboards
and pens and other office supplies.
Finally, he found himself back in the waiting
room.
He sank down into one of the paisley couches,
rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands.
The room was quiet except for the buzzing lights and the flipping
magazine pages of the woman on the other couch, and a pencil
scratching on paper behind the desk. No one spoke.
There was nothing else to do here.
So Richard got up. He walked to the glass
doors which slid open for him. Then he walked under the bright
Emergency
sign and away from the hospital. When he got on
the curb at the edge of the hospital's driveway, he sat down, the
Emergency
sign still blinking behind him. He took out his
guide again and punched furiously at the screen.
More maps.
Why,
why
didn't Earth have anything
more useful!
His hands shook, he was starting to worry
about the mess back at the ship - particularly whether Grimm's cut
had opened up again or what microbes might have moved in.
Still, maps looked like the most useful thing
he could find, so Richard bent over the guide, squinting at the
little lines. After a few minutes, he put the Guide back in his
pocket, pushed himself up off the curb, turned north and walked
down the street.
**********
A bell tinkled over the door.
Richard stepped in to the shop and let the
door clang shut behind him. He smiled at the rows and rows of
medicine and bandages and hair products and snack foods that filled
the 24-hour pharmacy.
Taking a few cautious steps into the store,
he looked around. A grey-haired and tired-looking pharmacist stood
behind a desk in one corner shuffling papers. He did not look up,
so Richard moved further in. It only took a few seconds to find the
aisle he needed. Bandages and antiseptic filled racks next to cough
syrup and laxatives and pills for erectile dysfunction. At the end
of the aisle was shampoo. Backing up a few paces, Richard looked
over his shoulder and back to the door. He twisted his head,
looking up and down the row. It was still empty. He tip-toed back
to the supplies he needed and gently, quietly slid a shrink-wrapped
package of bandages off the rack.
He dug around in his pockets for a minute and
pulled out an unimpressive-looking, thumb-sized hunk of black
plastic. The thumb of his left hand pressed down on it and a little
light came on. His right hand held up the shrink-wrapped package
and another light blinked on, illuminating a tiny screen.
Richard glanced nervously over his shoulder.
He tapped his foot anxiously and glanced back at the screen.
..........10% ..........40% ..........75%
"What the HELL are you doing?"
Richard jumped and the package and pocket
scanner clattered to the floor. He squatted and scooped the scanner
up.
"What the HELL are you doing?" The pharmacist
pushed a pair of wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose
under a messy mop of graying hair and glared through them. "WHAT
are you–"
"I'm just–"
"Put that down!"
Richard dropped the bandage he'd been about
to pick up. "Look, I just need to–"
"You can't have that!"
"My friend is hurt. I
need
these
plans."
"That's not yours! You can't just
take
–"
"I wasn't going to!" Richard yelled back. He
pushed himself up off the floor. He was taller than the graying
pharmacist, and he glared down at him. Fatigue and frustration and
the thought of Grimm bleeding back at the ship was finally boiling
over. "I wasn't going to
take
it. I just need the plans, so
I can make the stuff back at the ship." He ran an agitated hand
through his hair and shook his head, totally, totally at a loss. "I
just need the plans."
"Those aren't yours–"
"I
know
that, but–"
"You can't just take those!" the pharmacist
sputtered and glanced over his shoulder towards the door of the
shop.
Richard was still shaking his head. "I just
need to scan it."
"Well you can't."
"Why not?"
"Because it doesn't belong to you, kid. You
want something here you buy it."
"But I don't need it.
I. Just. Need. A.
Copy. Of. The. Plans.
" Richard explained slowly, emphatically,
stopping at each word, so the man would finally, finally understand
and let him get back to Grimm. "I just need the plans..."
"Can't sell you those."
"WHY–" Richard stopped himself. He closed his
eyes for a moment, his fingers pressed into his forehead as if they
could still his thoughts. He looked back at the pharmacist and
tried again, softer. "Why
not
?"
"Do I look like I sell that kind of thing? I
don't sell plans. I sell bandages." He looked over his shoulder
again, then back at Richard. "I can sell you a bandage."
"I don't have any money."
Not from this
planet anyway.
He grit his teeth and silently cursed himself
yet again for being so unprepared.
"Then you don't get anything. You want
something, you buy it," said the pharmacists again. "You want me to
go out of business?" He squinted up at Richard and pushed the
glasses up again. He tilted his head to the side and crossed his
arms.
They glared at each other in silence.
Finally, Richard took a step back and looked
away from the pharmacist. He sighed and shook his head.
"Look, I really need help. My friend got cut
up in a crash. I just need some bandages to wrap it up properly,
and some antiseptic to make sure it doesn't get infected. I can
make the supplies myself, I just need the plans for them."
"Then you get some money, say..." the
pharmacist stooped and picked up the package from the floor and
squinted at it for a minute. "say, five hundred dollars for this
one, maybe. Maybe more. You get some money and you get yourself a
license."
Richard blinked. "Five hundred dollars? It's
a bandage."
"Well you don't want the bandage. You want
the plans to make your own. You need a license that lets you do
that. The bandage is five dollars. The license is five hundred. Or
more. I don't know – you have to go to the company that made
it."
"What?"
"You want the plans and that's more," the
pharmacist said like that explained it. "You don't want a bandage,
see? You want to
make
bandages. See?"
"No."
"You could make five hundred bandages with
those." He jabbed a finger at the scanner in Richard's hand. "Or
five thousand. That's why it's more. Make sense?"
"No."
The pharmacist looked over his shoulder
again. He shook his head. Then one hand jammed the bandage's
package back on the rack so fiercely that three other packages
clattered to the floor. The pharmacist bent and picked them up,
muttering.
"Kids. You want things for free. Like you've
got some sort of righ–"
The bells over the door tinkled and clanged
again.
The pharmacist stopped muttering,
straightened up and turned to face the newcomers. Richard looked
over the older man's shoulder. He tried to smile at the two
dark-blue-suited men coming down the aisle, but the badges on their
dark blue shirts were familiar. He had come to Earth unprepared,
but not ignorant. His stomach clenched and his hands shook as his
eyes moved over the shields pinned on the men's chests.
The pharmacist smiled. "Hello officers."
The officers smiled back. One stuck out his
hand and the pharmacist shook it. The other eyed Richard, his gaze
glancing off the bloody knee of his jeans then resting on the tiny
scanner in his hand. Richard's hand moved instinctively towards his
pocket.
The officer grabbed the scanner.
"Hey!" Richard reached for it.
The officer's arm butted against his chest
and for the second time that night he almost fell to the floor. The
officer caught him, closing his arm in a vice-like grip.
"Thank you," said the first officer to the
pharmacist.
"Thank you for coming."
"Yep, this is the one" said the second
officer still looking at Richard, one hand still clasped firmly on
his arm. "This is the one's been causing a bit of trouble around
town tonight."
"
Arrgg!
" Richard let out a frustrated
growl. "I just need a
fucking banda–
"
"You may want to keep quiet," the officer cut
him off. "Until we get down to the station."
**********
Maybe they have bandages in jail.
Richard's jaw clenched so hard it was getting
sore, but the bite of the handcuffs reminded him to shut up. He
tried to relax his wrists, but they still pulled reflexively
against the biting metal.
He was sweating. The cool night was slowly
lightening into dawn, but it wasn't warming the chill inside the
police car and Richard shivered under a drip of sweat sliding down
his temple.
The car stopped. The door opened.
"Thank you," said Richard as he fumbled from
the car.
They had pulled up to a little box of an
office set in a wide parking lot flooded with white light that made
a little bubble in the night. Matching cars sat in a row beside the
front door.
A hand clamped down on his upper arm and then
he was walking – or being walked – through the front door into the
office.
More blue uniforms walked around inside. A
few others lounged in hard chairs. One dozed, snoring lightly, head
lolling back. One or two looked up from papers or coffee or phones
when Richard and the two officers entered, gave them passing
glances then looked back to their papers or coffees or phones.
The hand holding Richard's arm herded him
past the desks and into a smaller room at the back of the
station.
"Sit."
The hand on his arm pushed him sideways. His
legs hit a metal chair beside a wide and dingy desk. He fell into
the chair, the hand on his arm jerking him into a sitting position
before he could fall to the ground.
The hand unclamped from his arm, and the
officer who'd been herding him sat down across from Richard.
"We've been having complaints all night about
you," he started, his voice slow, measured, his eyes squinting at
Richard. "Couple calls from the hospital, then the pharmacy."
"I was just trying to get some supplies for
my friend," Richard explained without hope. "And I don't have any
money and–"
"So you decided to steal them?"
"What? No! Steal..." He shook his head,
utterly, utterly confused. "No.
Steal?
"
"That's what Medz is saying."
"Who?"
"Medz." The officer raised a eyebrow. "The
makers of the supplies you were stealing."
"I
wasn't–
"
"We've been on the lookout for you folks.
Medz wants to press charges. You'll be lucky if they only push for
a fine." He shook his head. "Worse than theft if you ask me."
"I
didn't–
"
"But some good people are finally reporting
you folks. We got a report at the hospital. And the pharmacy.
They're sick of you all freeloading."
"'You all'?"
"You never turn on the fucking news do you?"
The officer snorted. He shook his head. "
Fucking kids
" he
muttered under his breath. "Think you can get away with it. Not
anymore."
"I just needed a bandage! And some
medicine."
The officer leaned back in his chair and
smiled. "Uh huh." He pulled a notepad out of his pocket and started
to scribble on it. "And what were you going to do with it once you
stole it?"
"I didn't–
you're not listening to me!
"
Richard dropped his head into his hands and spoke through a
clenched jaw. "I was going to make some supplies for my
friend."
The officer's smile widened as he scribbled
some more on the notepad. "So you were going to distribute?"
"To my friend." Richard looked up. "Wait–what
do you mean
distribute
? I just need some stuff for my
friend, I wasn't–"
"You were planning on–"
The door opened.
It was the other officer who'd come to the
pharmacy. He gestured to his partner who got up and flipped the
notepad shut. A moment later the door slammed behind both of
them.
Richard rested his head in his
still-cuffed-together hands.
He waited.
The door opened again.
The officer who'd interrogated him was back.
"Up," he said.
Richard stood.
The officer grabbed his arm again and herded
him back to the bigger room with all the desks. He shoved Richard
into a hard plastic seat.