The chairs by the pharmacy counter are hard bioplastic and contoured — supposedly — to the human body. They’re not the right shape for Harold or for anyone else who might actually need to sit on them. Too high off the ground, sized for people who haven’t yet begun to shrink, and too straight-backed, unkind to vertebrae that curl you inwards like last year’s leaves.
“I’m waiting for my wife,” Harold calls out when the pharmacist appears. He’s already been ignored, condescended to, smiled weakly at, and ignored again. “Is Rosie ready yet?”
“I need my —” says the next person in a queue that snakes all the way past Allergy and Anti-Inflammatory to Heavy Metal/Haemorrhoid. “Please —” says someone else; then everyone is clamouring like Oliver Twist, if Dickensian orphans had wanted pills instead of porridge.
Amazingly, the pharmacist beckons. “Mr Vetch?” He holds out a paper bag. “I have your prescription.”
Harold levers himself up. “Finally.” The first day of the month is special. That’s when he gets Rosie back. She’s only formulated for a 30-day supply, which means he’s alone for the last day of each month (except for April/June/September/November — and February, which gets weird).
He rips the bag open. “What’s this?” He doesn’t swear — they can throw you out for that. He pulls out a bottle with a single pill inside. “Where’s my wife?”
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“This is the current approved grief mitigation formulation per your insurance.” The pharmacist’s sigh could blow an immovable object straight to Mars. “It’s no different from the usual monthly construct.”
Harold shakes the bottle. Inside is a big pill, squishy and pale, but it’s not a person. Normally they bring Rosie out from behind the counter, looking just like when she went in for her last scan.
“Just add water. Hydration is key.” The pharmacist turns away. Harold considers making a scene but he can’t afford to get banned. The next closest pharmacy is an extra 30 minutes on the bus. He could call their daughter. He could call the doctor’s office or his health insurance line. But he’s not going to do it here. He’ll go to lunch first.
In the deli, he sits with his sandwich and pulls out the bottle. The instructions read: Apply at least 340 ml distilled water. Allow space.
He tips the pill onto the table and pours bottled water over it. He’d thought it would spill everywhere but the pill soaks it up. Then it starts to expand like a Magic Grow toy. Soon Rosie is right there, sitting on the table. She’s fully clothed, thank goodness, and at first glance she looks the same as when he collects her at the pharmacy.
“Harold!” She clambers off the table, steadied by his hand. “What are you eating? Do you know how much sodium is in pastrami?”
Maybe this new formulation is OK. Now he’s glad he didn’t make a fuss.
But by the time they go to bed, he’s noticed that her nose is smaller. Her front tooth isn’t crooked. That mole on her back, the one they’d worried about for years but turned out to be just a mole, is gone. She has a lot fewer wrinkles, too. It’s her but not really, as if her edges had been smoothed by AI.
Also, there’s the extra finger on each hand.
That’s not the worst of it. When he asks her how they met, she says she’d spilt her iced latte on him and then he’d laughed and asked her out. But Rosie didn’t like lattes. They upset her stomach. Rosie thought coffee should be black and bubbling.
Also, he’s never been to a coffee shop called the Central Perk, even if it rings some kind of bell. They’d actually met in a cubicle farm. She’d taught him to keep his yammering voice down on the phone. He’d taught her to speak up in meetings. She’d got a promotion and then he had, too, and there’d been marriage and the kids and some trips and retirement and …
Well. What’s important is this isn’t Rosie. He spends all morning on hold. By the afternoon, he’s back in the pharmacy. Rosie’s placidly smiling — that’s wrong too! — at his side.
“You want more wrinkles on her?” The pharmacist looks baffled. “A bigger nose? She’s too nice?”
“Exactly!” Harold wonders if it’s all in the pharmacy records: the missed cancer, the threatened lawsuit, the way they lost her too soon. They owe him this year, as close to real as possible.
“Harold?” The not-really-Rosie picks at her skin.
The pharmacist, one eye on the queue, checks his records. “Your insurance approved a switch to the generic. It’s a totally legal cost-saving measure.”
