I Have Other Choices; I Blame Myself

Welcome to the Ghetto Pharmacy, my friends. The Ghetto Pharmacy, where more unctions than medicines are sold and ashtrays are for sale next to off-brand cotton swabs. Slender bottles of Florida Water hawk themselves above plastic tins of Splenda.

This is the Ghetto Pharmacy, where the Ghetto Doctor sends me whenever I mistakenly see him. As for this Ghetto Doctor…

He has surveillance cameras in his office.

He does not take blood. “The insurance companies, they get so mad if one of the girls screws up and labels something wrong and it just became easier to send patients to a lab…”

He says this upon my entrance on my last visit: “First we each have sex, and then we have to deal with the consequences of that action…” What? I hadn’t said a word yet.

And during said last visit, he picks up his phone for the third time while I sit on the other side of his desk in a “consultation”:

“Yes, blah blah blah blood scans on Monday, blah blah blah…”

By now I am worn and put my head down on his desk (with my hand underneath—no way, no how am I going to let my face touch that disgusto-wood, germy surface) and I peep up to say, “Please, please get off the phone.”

“Ma’am, ma’am, please call me back in a half an hour.”

“Tell her you have a patient here in front of you,” I interject as he jabberwockies.

“Ma’am, I have a very sick patient sitting right here. Call me back in 15 minutes. No, please, ma’am. Call me back in 15 minutes. Fine.” He looks at me. “You tell her.” He punches “speakerphone.”

In disbelief, I raise my head and say, “Lady, I’m sitting in the [Ghetto Doctor’s] office and you won’t get off the phone. Can you please call him back in 15 minutes, please?”

I feel my dignity slip through the blisters in my throat as I lay my head in my palms and swear, swear, I am done with this circus.

Fucking Ghetto Doctor. Fucking fuck. Fucker.