‘The Drug Line’ is a short story about a group of people forced to share their time together in a hospital queue. The bare hospital walls provide the setting for a display of some of the complex facets of love.
He’s always the first. Sitting on the wooden chair, cap over eyes, ipod in ears and sunlight on his back. Heβs sits motionless, with his head tilted to one side, pretending to sleep. Harry hates this, as his own swiftly passing years have stolen the freedom of stiffness-free joints and replaced them with over-priced bus fares and a guaranteed second-place in life and in lines. At least he makes a decent queue mate. Matt hardly speaks, he just sleeps and listens to the ipod βtil the hatch rolls open and he goes to pick up his meds.
He is better company than Mel, the annoying teen who insists on making small-talk all the time. Seventy-four years and the weather is the same, politics are the same and there’s really nothing to be said about soapies. Got to give the girl credit for trying, somehow she must believe her purpose on earth is to cure his apparent loneliness. He would take her a lot more seriously if it weren’t for the fact that her eyes always looked past him to Matt, glazed, squinting, muttering ‘uh-huhs’ in all the wrong places.
What could she see in him? He hardly opens his eyes or mouth, his face is always covered and his clothes are at least two sizes too big. Harry has seen it all, and knows it’s really the mystery that attracts her to him. That, or the desire to βsaveβ him. It seems to him that all women have this salvation tendency in them; the desire to selflessly see someone that is lost be found. Even if it makes them miserable, the impulse to sacrifice themselves for the deliverance of another is so strong that it keeps wives with their husbandsβ despite their abusing and cheating.
But Matt doesn’t seem interested. This, despite Mel’s wavy black hair rippling over her shoulders, her eye-lashes curling toward the sun and hipsters revealing just enough midriff to make even an old man look twice. Her attempts at conversation with Matt are always amusing, each week giving him a warm greeting followed by an awkward attempt at opening the book that is his soul. Matt hardly moves, only to turn down the volume slightly, giving one-word answers while staring straight ahead. Harry can’t help feeling slightly sorry for Mel. She spends a few minutes talking to a bitter old man in order to win the grudging attention of the withdrawn young man next to him- only to be ignored by both. That’s when she returns back to her place in the queue, next to Grant.
Grant is always the same. He reads the same newspaper, the same cup of coffee in hand, the same style suit, hair the same and the same expression on his face. He constantly taps his foot to some inaudible music, humming out of time, glancing at his watch in time. Mel and Grant spend the next hour in the queue talking about her school holidays, her work at the old age home and the recent gossip with her friends. Grant talks about work, about the cases he’s working on and problems with his latest dates. They are as alive and talkative as Matt and Harry are subdued and withdrawn.
Their conversation is always ended by the grating of the roll-up hatch, followed by the barking of Sister Mary’s voice as she calls out to the first person in the line. Matt grabs his bag and slouches to the hatch, handing the prescription slip over to Mary. Without a word, she fetches the medicine, hands it to Matt, signs his slip and shouts for the next in line.β¨ Harry follows the same procedure, but manages to manufacture a greeting, to which Mary forces out a reply. She fetches his meds, signs him off, and sighs as Mel approaches. “Morning sister Mary how are you” she beams, fluttering the perfect lashes. “I have a lot of orders today, courtesy of Nurse Witherton at the home”. Sister Mary sighs, and scans the extensive list of drugs on Mel’s list. She shuffles off, returning every few minutes with a container of pills. Eventually, when she is done, Mel smiles sweetly and waves goodbye to the queue.
Sister Mary is most confused about Grant. Surely a well dressed man with expensive shoes doesn’t need to sit in a government hospital queue to get generic meds? It is his kind that she usually only sees accompanying old invalids out of a sense of duty. She hands him the meds, not a little bemused and slightly curious to find out why a high-roller would be spending his time in a queue with a young girl, an old man and the shadow of a person that’s always at the front of the queue.
Being the regular crowd that this is, Sister Mary knows that there should be enough time to find out why fate chose to tangle these lives in a drug line.






