Chapter 18

Minutes earlier…

“Naa!” Christina held her friend while she regained her breath. “What is it?! Everyone is staring.”

Naa was hunched over breathing hard, her body protested the decision to run at full speed suddenly without warning.

“I… Chris… help…” she tried to speak between breaths.

Chris’ confusion disappeared, and left in its wake a feeling of dread, rising to a thumping crescendo slowly in her chest while she watched her friend struggle to put words together.

The two women had met and befriended each other two years earlier, soon after Chris moved into the neighbourhood. She wandered into the pharmacy one day after searching desperately everywhere else for a drug. An instant telepathic relationship was formed when Naa offered her the long-searched-for drug with a smile. Gina had looked on for a few minutes as the two strangers bonded and got comfortable with each other minutes after meeting with a pang of jealousy, before telling them to get a room. They all laughed while she rolled her eyes at them. The next few months had seen Chris return plenty times, winning over Gina in the process with her sense of humour. Soon, she was an unofficial third member of their administrative duo, and helped out on weekends whenever she could while cracking them up with her jokes.

Chris’ face was drained of all colour as she watched her friend slowly resume normal breathing.

“Naa?” she asked tentatively, becoming increasing aware of the eyes focused on them.

“Chris. I think someone is going to commit suicide.”

Chris searched her friend’s face for the beginnings of the smile she expected to soon follow. It never came. Quickly, she pulled Naa away from the roadside and the watching eyes, to an empty bus stop a few metres behind them.

“What?!” she said when they were seated. Naa’s breathing returned to normal as she pulled out a handkerchief from her jacket pocket and dabbed at her face. When she talked, she left her hands folded in her lap. Chris took a look at them and felt heartbeat quicken. Her hands were trembling.

Naa paused to take a deep breath before beginning her narrative. “I passed that bus stop on my way back from lunch today," she gestured towards her back and Chris knew which stop she was referring to, up ahead and across the road, slightly bigger than the one they were conversing in now.

“Two people sat there when I passed, and just as I reached there a bottle of pills rolled out unto my path. As you would expect I bent to pick it up and hand it over. Something struck me as familiar with the guy I handed it over to but I couldn’t make the connection fast enough.”

“Which drug was it?” Chris asked, her interest peaked beyond measure.

“Temazepam. As I turned to leave, I caught a glimpse of other bottles in the polybag he held, but he closed the bag before I could read the labels. Still, the rain had kept me out of the office for too long and I was in a hurry to get back so I shrugged it off and left.”

Chris inched closer while Naa readied herself to launch into the next part of her story.

“Now I get back to the shop, and after a few moments, as I’m going through the logs of the day’s sales on the computer, I come across one for a bottle of Temazepam. It suddenly struck me why the guy from earlier seemed so familiar, because I’d met him before! A couple of weeks ago, three to be exact, a guy walked into the shop around noon. Gina was gone to get food, leaving me alone in the shop. He asked if we had any sleeping pills in stock, specifically Temazepam. Naturally I asked if he had a prescription.”

Naa paused her tale to allow a passerby to get out of earshot before she continued, this time in a lower tone, which did nothing to slow the panic spreading through Chris, who was raptly listening to the tale she was hearing, clinging to every word that came out of Naa’s mouth like it contained life.

“Here’s where I began to get suspicious, when I asked about the prescription, he pulled out an old piece of paper, softened and worn to the texture. He told me a tale of how he’d got it months ago but never used it since he’d forgotten about it. I didn’t buy it, so I asked him to go see the same doctor for a newer prescription and return. He didn’t seem too pleased with my response and made to collect the older prescription to leave. I refused, stating it was my obligation to hold onto it as it was useless anyway. He seemed mildly upset at this but he left and I soon forgot about the incident, that is until today. The guy at the stop was the same guy from three weeks ago with the dodgy prescription. On a hunch I compared the prescription from three weeks earlier to the one Gina handed me from the sale. They were identical. I don’t know why, but I rushed to Sarah’s shop to do a little investigation. From there I called Carl’s shop and he sent me a picture for comparison. They had all sold the same pills to the same person with the same prescription!”

“Oh my God," Chris gasped, her hands over her mouth. “The prescriptions were faked?”

“Of course! So, I hurried out of Sarah’s to return to the bus stop—I knew it was futile, but I had to try—and that’s when I saw you.”

“Oh my God, you run from Sarah’s? You didn’t get a taxi?”

“Not until I was out of breath and sweating!” Naa bemoaned, tired and still sweating.

“Could he possibly be just an insomniac?” Chris asked.

“There’s one other thing I saw in his bag… a large bottle of alcohol”

Chris’ felt her eyes widening “Oh God, do you know where we can find him?”

“I was hoping you could help with that. He was your age, maybe a student at the university.”

Chris felt her heart slowdown in her chest. Her brain had made a connection earlier which she had dismissed promptly, but it kept coming back to her. She couldn’t ignore it further now, as the thought thumped loudly on her skull, demanding to be let in. She asked, in almost a soft whisper that Naa could barely hear just as she too was starting her description. “The guy with the pills, d-did he have a large afro?”

Naa’s face shot up to look Chris in the eye, the astonishment visible on her face.

“How did you know that?!”

Without speaking Chris grabbed her arm frantically and pulled her into a run. “We have to hurry. Let’s get a taxi!”