No one ever questioned my husband when he was the apothecary, but because I’m a widowed woman, the townsfolk don’t trust me and they avoid my Apothecary shop.
“Ms.North isn’t trustworthy. She’s a widowed apothecary.” This is all I hear every day. The townsfolk gossip and spread rumors about me and my suffering business. They believe that I should remarry because they think that it is shameful to be a single 32 year old, but I have no intention in doing so. Some people think that I poison medicines and trick people into buying toxic remedies. None of these rumors are true, of course, but they bring my soul down. My whole life is surrounded by stress and worry. This stress weaves its way around my shop and turns my hair silver. My daughter Lily, is my only joy. She is a lit candle, that never goes out. She does her best to stay optimistic, no matter how difficult the circumstances are. I am desperately trying to train her to be the next apothecary, but it is hard and everyday, people have been dying from malaria, the same disease that my husband and son both died from. People have been blaming me for all the deaths that have occurred this past few weeks. They blame me because they are afraid to face the truth. Malaria is deadly.
“Lily! Come downstairs! There is an emergency,” I urgently call from downstairs. I hear her boots clomping down the creaky, old, wooden stairs. She arrives just seconds after I had called her. Outside, the sky is dark, for it is only 6 o’clock in the morning. We arrive just in time to see a young woman dragging a girl into our shop. The girl’s skin is papery and yellow and her eyes are hollow.
“Can’t you do anything for my daughter?” she asks, wiping a delicate tear from her face.
“It depends.” I respond stiffly. The mother helps me gently carry the girl over to a worn cot at the back of the store. I can tell just by the look of the girl, that she has malaria, but I’m nervous to tell her mother.
“Lily, examine her immediately,” I urgently say, trying to ignore the nervousness of my voice.
“Yes mother,” she responds quietly. As Lily carefully kneels down next to the girl, I ran to the front counter. My eyes scan over the familiar medicine bottles until I find the little, jar, labeled, “peruvian cortex,” I pop the cork and take a small amount of the rough, dry, plant bark. The girl has malaria. The girl has malaria. I mutter under my breath. I start mashing up the bark in the mortar and pestle, but all I can think about is my dead son, Abraham. He too, had suffered from a bad case of malaria, several years ago. The memory of my son consumes me.
His eyes are a sickly red color and he burns with fever. I don’t even have to feel his forehead to know that he is death bound. I kneel down next to him and gently caress his face. His eyes flicker open briefly.
“Stay strong,” he says quietly. Then, his head flops back onto his worn pillow and his pale eyes glass over. He was dead.
Then my tears come, long and hard. They fall into the mortar and pestle.
“Mother, she isn’t going to last long. Can’t you hurry up?” Lily asks. “Mother?” She hurriedly walks over to me. “What is the matter?” I shake my head and say nothing. Wiping the tears from my face with a handkerchief, I quickly bring the peruvian bark over to the girl, but I know that I’m too late. Lily is horrified and turns her head towards me. I start spooning the bark into her parted lips, but it is too late. I know what death looks like, for I have seen it too many times. Her eyes are still and unblinking. I feel for her pulse, but a clammy, dead, stillness is all that I can feel. Her mother collapses on the ground, crying hysterically. It is now, when the word failure rings loud and sharp in my head. I am a failure. I couldn’t even save one little girl from dying. The girl reminds me too strongly of Abraham. I feel more tears coming, but I quickly blink them away. I mustn’t cry. Not now. Lily is in shock. Her face is a white sheet and I suddenly realize what a hard blow this death must be for her. Afterall, she watched her father and brother die. And now a young girl? I try to comfort her with a hug, but she just shrugs it off. I look out the store window to see the sun rising. The day had just begun.