Pocket Change and Frozen Yogurt
By Mark Ifanson
April 15, 2026
April 15, 2026
I finally make it to the front of the prescription pickup line.
The cashier’s a bit shorter and younger than me, wearing a blue tunic that all the workers here seem to be wearing. I suppose it’s a kind of uniform. Name tag says Emily R., Pharmacy Associate.
I smile at her and say, “Hi, Emily.”
“Picking up a prescription?”
“Yes.”
“Name?”
I give Emily my name. She turns and walks to a series of baskets filled with little white prescription bags arranged, I suspect, alphabetically by last name. At least, that’s how I would do it; I can’t see the layout from here.
She returns to the register with my little white prescription bag and says, “Thirty days of a drug you can neither spell nor pronounce?” Well, no, she doesn’t say it like that. She uses the actual name of the drug. I find most drug names confusing. They’re hauntingly similar and yet totally meaningless at once. Quite a marketing achievement.
“Yeah, that sounds right,” I lie.
I had a video med visit this morning. The person on the other end was a nurse practitioner. The screen said so: Robert Green is a Nurse Practitioner working under the direct supervision of a licensed Medical Doctor. I have to wonder about that. If the doctor is directly supervising the nurse practitioner all the time it wouldn’t be very efficient. I suspect they’re speaking figuratively, and the direct supervision isn’t really direct, but maybe more indirect. Just a hunch.
Emily taps her register’s display screen and says, “Okay, Douglas, that’ll be fifteen dollars and twenty-one cents.”
“That’s after my insurance? You’ve got my insurance stuff, right?”
“Yeah, that’s your co-pay. Fifteen dollars and twenty-one cents.”
I reach into my jeans pocket for my phone. Not there. I pat all my pockets. No phone. Must’ve left it at home. “I don’t have my phone.”
“That’ll be fifteen dollars and twenty-one cents.”
I check all my pockets again. There is something in my left rear pocket. I pull it out and examine it closely. My wallet. Right. I put it there when I left home to drive to the pharmacy. It has my ID in it. I wonder why Emily didn’t ask for my ID. I mean, can some random nobody who happens to know my name walk into Walgreens and get my prescription? Would it be theft if they paid for it? What would I have to do then?
Doesn’t matter. I open my wallet, looking for a credit card. I had a bunch of them before putting everything on my phone. Here’s one. Looks kind of old. Might be expired. That would be embarrassing. But wait, what’s this? The middle of the wallet opens, revealing cash. Cash. I remember cash. I look up at Emily. “Do you still take cash?”
“Sure.”
I examine my wallet more closely. There are several bills, a bunch of ones and a couple of twenties. I hand her a twenty.
Emily takes the money and inserts it into a little slot on her register. The cash drawer pops open with a mechanical clatter and bang. Wow, haven’t heard that sound in a while. She looks at the screen again, then at the cash drawer, then at the screen again, and says, without ever looking at me, “Okay. So, your change is four seventy-nine.” She carefully removes four one-dollar bills and fishes several coins out of their little compartments. We look at each other, hesitating. I think she is waiting for me to do something.
I try extending my right hand, palm up. She looks at it for a moment, places the bills and coins in my hand, and says, “Four seventy-nine.” A couple of the coins roll off before I can grasp them. I scoop them off the counter, stuffing the bills into my wallet and the coins into my right front jeans pocket.
We exchange glances. “Here,” she says, handing me my little white prescription bag. Maybe we’re finished? No, not yet. “Do you want a printed receipt?”
“Yes, please.”
This appears to startle her, but she taps her screen again, and a receipt splurts out of a slot on the side. When it finishes printing, she tears it off and hands it to me.
“Have you taken this drug you can neither spell nor pronounce before?”
“No.” As it turns out, NP Green prescribed this for my pre-diabetes that appears to have resulted from one of the other drugs in my growing pharmacological formulary of medications. This one is a new experience for me.
“Would you like a consult?”
Sounds like fun. “Sure.”
“Consult waiting,” Emily shouts over her shoulder to someone I can’t see. “You can wait at the next window. Our pharmacist will be with you shortly. Have a good one.”
I’ve never understood exactly what the good one is that people wish me to have, but it sounds nice, so I give Emily a big smile as I walk seven steps to the window she indicated.
Several people are standing in the prescription pickup line, which now extends into the Pain Relief aisle. I’m a bit too far away to hear their words clearly, but the next two customers are served quickly. The third is an older woman, with short, neatly permed gray hair and dressed smartly in a muted gray pantsuit with a bright turquoise and plum blouse, as if she is coming from or going to something more special or important than a Walgreens run. Emily gathers several prescription bags, totals up the bill, and asks for payment. Gray Hair Lady rummages around in her purse and pulls out a small notebook, asking Emily a question, who then shouts over her shoulder, “Do we still take checks?”
A disembodied female voice responds. “Sure. Needs manual approval.” This exchange causes moderate consternation in the growing line. There is some hip throwing, a little eye rolling and a few barely-audible murmurs of “Really?”
Emily and Gray Hair Lady exchange more comments, ignoring the line’s discontent. Once Emily has the check, she shouts, “Check’s ready!”
A taller brown-haired woman in a white tunic appears from the pharmacy’s forest of shelves loaded with pill bottles. From her upright carriage, aquiline features, and general demeanor, she is clearly in charge. She looks closely at the check and Gray Hair Lady’s ID, smiles, and writes something on the back. Emily says something to White Tunic while pointing at me. White Tunic nods her head and walks to the “Consultations Here” window.
“Hi,” she says.
Her name tag says Nancy B., Registered Pharmacist. “Hi, Nancy.” I think it’s important to add a human touch in medical interactions.
I hand her the little white prescription bag containing my meds. She asks, “So, have you ever taken this drug you can neither spell nor pronounce before?” I’m disappointed she isn’t addressing me by name, but she looks busy.
“Nope.”
“Well, common side effects include bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation and loss of appetite.”
Wonderful.
Nancy continues with the consult. “It’s pretty simple to take, just one pill per day, with a meal. Doesn’t matter which meal, you just need to make it a habit that’s easy to remember. You’ll probably be taking this for the rest of your life.”
Oh, goody.
I think it best to clarify Nancy’s guidance. “So, when you say ‘with meals,’ does that mean simultaneously?”
“What?”
“I mean, do I take a bite of food and then pop the pill in my mouth before I swallow?”
“No, that’s not necessary.” Nancy is speaking slower now, so this must be really important. “It’s just best to take this on a full stomach to slow down absorption and avoid stomach irritation.”
“So right after a meal is good?”
“Right.”
“And before a meal is bad?”
Nancy pauses before responding. “Well, it’s not perfect. After’s better.”
“How soon after?”
She is squinting at me now. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, not at all. Just wanting to clarify the procedure. Five minutes? Ten? Fifteen?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have asked that last question. Nancy is clenching her jaw and looks a bit flushed. She shouts “Ten” without raising her voice. I wonder how she does that.
Spinning on her heel, Nancy retreats to her sanctuary of shelves and pill bottles. “Bye.”
~~~
The front door of the fro-yo shop isn’t closing properly, so I pull it shut after I enter with my little white prescription bag stuffed in a jacket pocket. Brian, the owner, is assisting a customer at the register. He starts to say hello but then recognizes me, and so begins our little dance.
“You see that guy? You can ignore him, that’s what I do,” he says, nodding his head towards me while maintaining eye contact with the customer paying for her fro-yo. It’s always something like that. It’s not so formal a thing that I would call it a ritual, but it is routine, Brian making some comment like that when I show up, pretending to be upset by my arrival.
“He never wants a free sample,” he says in mock disgust. The customer at the register fidgets, making a tight little half-smile as if she is slightly uncomfortable with this interaction.
It’s true, though, I never ask for samples. I know what I want, and get it.
They’ve been building a new freestanding Starbucks two blocks away for over two years. It looks like every other Starbucks I’ve ever seen. One would think that they’d have the construction down to a science and could build them quickly. Apparently, that’s not the case.
I mention this because some banter is always expected of me when paying for my fro-yo. I’m cool with that.
I ask Brian, “Hey, how long’ve they been working on that Starbucks?”
Brian likes questions like that. Something business-like. Makes his eyes sparkle. He’s had the fro-yo shop for a long time now, made it through COVID, have to give him credit for that. It’s easy to get him started talking on all sorts of topics. Over the years, I’ve learned about his employee hiring problems, quirky AC, the balky front door, yogurt mix ordering mishaps, and how his 19-year-old son got a girl pregnant just like he did at 19, making him an under-forty granddad. All he knows about me is that I like fro-yo.
When I was in 8th grade, our US History teacher, Mr. Wright, liked to talk a lot too, just like Brian. There was an informal competition among the students to ask him questions only tangentially related to the day’s lecture to see if we could get him off topic for the rest of the class period. We were quite successful. By the end of the year, we were three decades behind the course syllabus.
Brian agrees with my observation that the coffee shop’s slow progress must be costing the owners a fortune on the construction loan. He proceeds to tell me about another construction project a few miles away on Patterson Avenue, a Burger King and a gas station, that’s been going on for over three years now. Do I know where that is? It’s next to the Home Depot. I don’t know where he means, but pretend I do. We are jointly baffled by some people’s lack of business acumen.
My fro-yo is weighed and rung up. Eight dollars and fifty-two cents. Used to be a lot cheaper, but inflation and minimum wage and so forth. There’s a sign on the wall behind the register: Please pay with cash so we can avoid credit card fees. I usually pay with my phone and Brian has never complained, but today I pull out my wallet.
Brian’s face lights up with a smile that creases the corners of his eyes. We’re gonna stick it to MasterCard.
I start to pull out a twenty, but pause. “I’ve got exact change. The hard way. You like ones?”
Our eyes lock in mutual understanding. Oh my, yes, Brian likes ones. And exact change. He nods, licking his lips expectantly.
I count out eight one-dollar bills and hand them to him. His hand trembles slightly. We are both silent.
I fish out the change from my pocket. The Walgreens change plus something else I must’ve stuck in my jeans long ago. Haven’t washed them in a while. I’ve read somewhere that jeans rarely need washing, you can just occasionally throw them in the freezer; it kills the bacteria and you can break off the dirt. I like that.
Here’s my hard way change: three dimes, four nickels, two pennies. I give the coins to Brian. Tears are forming in his eyes as he hands me a spoon.
The weather is quite pleasant, so I sit outside to eat my fro-yo. I take my first bite. Nice. I take another, and pop in my mouth a tablet of the drug I can neither spell nor pronounce. I hope Nancy would approve.
Mark Ifanson writes in various genres. His work has found a home—or will soon be residing—at Bewildering Stories, BULL lit mag, Maudlin House, Sci Phi Journal, Points in Case, 101 Words, and other literary neighborhoods.
You can check out more of his work at www.chillsubs.com/profile/markifanson.
Author’s Note:
There is a performative nature in everyday life. This story’s main character, Douglas, is living in his moments (yes, I realize how clichéd that sounds, but it is indeed what I just typed/felt/thought), and yet feels somewhat detached from the world around him. Don’t we all, sometimes?