I drove to Ridgeway on Saturday and got there before his usual pickup time. I waited near the counter until the pharmacist recognized me. I gave her his name and said I was there for the second prescription. She looked at me strangely and asked whether I was sure I had permission to pick it up. I said I was his wife. She checked the screen again and told me the prescription wasn’t under the insurance we use. It was being paid another way. I asked what the medication was for. She hesitated and said, “It’s not for blood pressure. It’s for something completely different.”
I asked who had been picking it up. She said my husband had been coming in every few weeks, always alone, always asking for the same pharmacist. Then she mentioned something that made my stomach drop: the prescription wasn’t filled continuously for eleven years. There had been a six-month gap in 2019, and during those six months someone else had picked it up using my husband’s authorization. I asked for the name. She couldn’t give it to me, but she said the person had used an address on the other side of town. I knew that address. It belonged to a woman I’d never met who had called our house once in March and hung up when I answered.
I went home and waited for him. When he walked through the door, I put the pharmacy receipt on the table and asked him who lived at that address. He didn’t deny knowing it. He sat down, covered his face with both hands, and finally said, “I wasn’t hiding another woman. I was hiding the fact that someone has been alive this whole time who wasn’t supposed to be.” Then he told me the prescription wasn’t his at all. His doctor had been writing it under his name because the actual patient couldn’t legally receive it under hers. He said he’d been helping her since 2015, and the reason he’d never told me was because she was the daughter my husband and I were told had died before we ever met…
