The pharmacist turned the screen toward me. The signature belonged to Cheryl. I recognized it immediately because I’d seen her sign birthday cards for my husband for years. But the ID number underneath wasn’t hers. It belonged to a woman whose name I didn’t recognize. I asked the pharmacist how long that ID had been attached to my account. She said it had been added in March, right before the early refills started. Then she showed me the pickup history. Someone had collected my medication twelve days early, then again nineteen days early, and once the prescription had been picked up before I’d even requested the refill.
I went home and checked the little tin where I kept my medication records. Three bottles were missing. My husband insisted he’d only been picking them up because I had asked him to, but I knew I hadn’t. I asked why he had been counting my pills into the weekly organizer every Sunday. He said he was trying to help me. Then I asked why Cheryl’s name appeared on the pharmacy authorization. He stopped talking. After several minutes, he admitted Cheryl had asked him to let her pick up the prescriptions because she was “helping with family things.” I asked what family things required access to my medication. He wouldn’t answer.
The pharmacist called me the next morning and said there was one more problem. The authorization form hadn’t been signed by Cheryl at all. The signature belonged to someone using the same name and address as my husband’s sister, but the ID number belonged to a woman who lived two counties away. I asked the pharmacist to check every authorized pickup since March. There were only two names: my husband and that woman. Then she read me the phone number attached to the second authorization. It was my husband’s old number — the one he told me he’d disconnected in 2020. I went home and found the old phone in the back of his desk drawer. It was still charged. And when I turned it on, the last message wasn’t from Cheryl. It was from the woman whose ID had been used to collect my prescriptions.
