Ol' Johnny slowly worked the rusty door to his medicine cabinet open, a lengthy process that involved at least 10 minutes of tugging and shoving every time. Nothing in the bathroom was dirty, not really. It did not possess the sterile feel of a hospital either. It simply mirrored the general aesthetic of the block of land the city called 1578 Brownstone Blvd. The whole chunk was old, slightly decrepit, but functioning. Johnny’s calloused hands fumbled into the numerous bottles and containers until he found the cylinder he was looking for. Bored eyes looked out from under a jutting forehead down at it. He jingled it, once, and then twice in the mysterious fashion that everyone does when they don’t want to believe something’s empty, as if shaking it would magically make it refill itself. A rumbling sigh escaped his chest, empty again. He poked his head out quizzically out of the door down the hall towards gas stations front, his ears cocked for any sound. Hearing nothing he stumped back to his room and dressed, bringing the cylinder with him. Ol’ Johnny had two outfits, a dusty tuxedo that he hadn’t worn in an astronomically long time and the other outfit. A brown patched flannel shirt with green slacks. His boots were one of the only things that were still sparkling. As he slowly slid them on a booming voice echoed in the back of his mind…”Your boots will be clean every second of every day do you hear! Me!?! I don’t care if you’ve smashed your leg open with a brick and the blood is pouring out of your hoo-ha’s onto those boots. They will be clean! Mud, dirt, oil! You are going to look right or I swear the God Almighty I will shove my boot so far up you’re…” He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, shaking the spider of the past back into the box where he left it. Dressed fully, his heavy footsteps followed him out of his gas station, pausing briefly to flip the “Open” sign to “Closed”. Ol’ Johnny set his own hours; it was his home so he had long ago decided he could do what he wanted with it. He even had the deed to the land framed somewhere in the closet. There was a slight wind blowing but he didn’t even register it as he clunked his way towards the clinic.
As he rounded the corner he saw a man leaning against the wall, scruffy and blind. He’d seen him every now and then when he chose to take note of the world around him. He’d also seen people in far worse conditions in Europe. Digging down into his old pants he lifted out four grimy quarters and tossed them into the blind man’s bowl. “True, it is not your fate to fall at my hands.” He froze as the blind man rattled out his words. A flash of a never forgotten face flashed in front of Johnny, as did bodies from a million years ago, all tumbling past in a small stream of death. He continued on into the clinic, though his head did keep a small watch on the blind man. For a long time now Ol’ Johnny had been absolutely sure that Old Father Time and the Grim Reaper had both forgotten him on their schedules. It still brought a snort to his body when he imagined an hourglass turned on its side, utterly covered in dust behind infinity of others, or a horribly smudged blot on an eternally long list. Regardless, he sidled into a line, and after a few minutes arrived at a counter, with a glass shield that was scratched and cracked. “Hey there Johnny, what can I do for ya?” The petite Hispanic woman behind the glass dazzled him with her ridiculously white smile. “Good afternoon Celia, just here to pick up some medicine.” He placed the orange cylinder on the counter which she quickly swiped up, examined and then handed back with a frown. “Johnny! How are you out already? That stuff is supposed to last you 3 months at a time!” Her genuine concern made him grimace, he knew how long it was supposed to last, he just couldn’t help that he had needed to use it so rapidly. “I know, I know, I’ll make sure to take it at the right intervals this time.” His deep voice sounded like two stones grinding, with a deep vein of weariness. Celia looked around quickly then disappeared to the back, reappearing with the cylinder filled. “Alright, but this is the last time you hear me?” She said so playfully, and anyone not watching closely would miss the sad look in her gaze as she watched him gratefully place the cylinder away into his pants. He voiced his thanks and left. As he opened the clinic door he heard the blind old man say the same line that he had when Johnny had gone into the clinic. “True, it is not your fate the fall at my hands.” As he walked past him his still well tuned ears heard strains of Over the Rainbow. Being able to remember the actual person singing the song gave his mind over to the spider of the past once again. Yet that sentence still lingered in his mind, and finally gave words to the unspoken question that had been in his mind forever. “Then whose hands if not yours?”At the same time the gristle and boiled leather in him spoke almost immediately back. “No ones, if I fall, it will be by mine and mine alone.”
Back at the clinic Celia’s mind drifted. She knew Johnny would be back before the three months were up. After all, she’d given him the medicine four weeks ago, and before that, only two days. She stood tall though. She’d made a promise to her mother, even if she had been delirious for months before death took her. She’d take care of him. As long as she needed to.
