I hold out the pen to her, as I’m already starting to feel the high coming on pretty strong, and she takes it.
“He’s not coming in today,” she says. “I guess he’s already called radiology and gotten you scheduled for tomorrow.”
Her wrist makes an elegant series of movements as she takes a long pull from the vaporizer and blows out a series of — I guess they’re still called smoke rings if it’s coming from a vaporizer, but I’m still pretty new to all this.
“Where do you live?”
I tell her, and apparently, we’re only a few blocks from each other. In this city, that’s a pretty big coincidence.
“Wanna split a cab?” she asks.
“I thought you had work to do,” I answer.
“It can wait,” she says. “Most of what I was going to do, I guess Dr. Churchill already took care of, and I’d rather know that you got home safe than stay here and sit on my thumb, you know?”
It’s probably the pot, but I can’t help but feel like Yuri and I are old friends who’ve just never really had the chance to get to know one another.
“All right,” I tell her. “It’ll be nice to have some company for the ride home.”
“Cool,” she says, and takes another puff before handing the pen back to me.
“Oh, I’m good,” I tell her.
“You sure?” she asks.
“Yeah, I’m still a cheap date with that stuff,” I answer.
She shrugs and takes another puff before going back to her desk and collecting her purse.
“You wanna hear something crazy?” I ask.
“What’s that?” she responds, pulling a small bottle of eye drops from her purse.
“I’m actually kind of hungry,” I tell her.
“It’s kind of nice, isn’t it?”
“It really is,” I answer.
Yeah, I just became pro-legalization.
She puts a few drops into each eye and then tosses me the bottle. I sit there for a minute, feeling the presence of the spout while not feeling any cold or wetness on my eye before I realize that the cap’s still on.
I chuckle to myself as I unscrew the cap, but I just sit there for another minute.
“I really like your hair,” Yuri says. “Where’d you get it?”
With that question, we both start laughing.
“There’s a place down on 12th,” I tell her. “They’ve got some good stuff.”
I finally get a couple of drops in each eye and I give the bottle back to Yuri, who then helps me to my feet, asking if I’m good to walk.
I tell her I’m fine, and I take one more look at the office, breathing in the weirdness of right now, before we walk out the door.
Yuri calls a cab from her cell phone, and we sit on a bench out front while we wait.
“So, what’s your prescription for?” I ask.