Meet Miss Pryce
It was freezing in the parking lot, besides the fact that it was a hot day outside. Hundreds of cars, of all shapes and sizes and status, were lined up mostly on the bottom floors mainly due to the fact that people most people were too lazy to walk. The second floor was just as packed and the third floor was only half-filled. It was the fourth floor that was completely empty, devoid of any human life or mechanical machine save for the elevator.
That is, until a green jeep came rolling up the ramps at speeds probably illegal. It screeched to a halt before turning sharply and managing to fit into a 'compact' parking space. It's brake lights turned off and the sound of the engine soon died. The driver's door opened and, immediately, two legs swung out and hit the ground with a definitive flop. The driver, a woman, stood up and straightened her leather jacket out.
Her height was probably the first thing anyone would notice. She stood at an average of five feet and nine inches but her poise and stature made her seem so much taller. The woman turned and bent back inside the car, most likely to look for her purse. When she emerged, she had a small slip of paper in her hand with scribbled writing on it. She re-read it and then tucked it in her back pocket.
"Alright, got that. Now where's that other thing?" The woman muttered to herself quietly even though there was no one else in the lot. "Ah, there you are." She grabbed a small black wallet off the dashboard and placed that into the other pocket. The woman then shut the car door and clipped her keys onto the hem of her pants, where they were at all times if not in her hands. She walked around her car and made her way to the elevator.
The elevator trip was short, thankfully, although a bit rocky and then the walk across the street to the Princeton Plainsboro Hospital was brisk. Once inside the hospital, the woman took a deep breath and went up to the receptionist desk.
"Hi, I'm here to pick up a precscription?" The woman leaned over the counter, attempting a smile.
"Down the hall and past the clinic," the receptionist, a woman who looked old enough to be in her nineties, pointed to the open counter up ahead. "The doctor's on his lunch break right now but they should have someone there."
"Thanks," the woman nodded back to the receptionist briskly, trying to hide her annoyance. It was clear that she wasn't too thrilled about having a substitute hand over a prescription. Her sandals made loud floppy noises as she walked and it raised a few eyebrows but she didn't take any notice. Coming up to the counter, she looked up at the doctor inside. He was currently writing something down on a clipboard, probably taking count of the medicine. "Hey, hi. I need to fill out a prescription. The name's Karri Pryce."
"Can I see I.D., please?" The doctor didn't move from his spot.
The woman frowned but pulled out her wallet. "Look, I come here a lot. I'm Karri's sister, Cordelia. She sends me to pick up her medication when she's busy. It's the Vicodin and the ketoprophen-stuff." Cordelia flipped out her driver's license and handed it to the doctor. And just to make sure, she dug her fingers into her other pocket and took out the small slip of paper. "Here's the prescription from her doctor last time she was here."
The doctor finally tore himself away from his clipboard and came over to look at the papter. "Well," the doctor started and Cordelia could tell by the tone of his voice that it wasn't going to be good. "I'm going to have to call her doctor. We've had some problems with our medicine recently," and by the way he said it, he didn't sound too happy about it. "We just need to cover our bases, as you know. But the Vicodin, I'm afraid, we're out of."
"Out of? What do you mean?" Cordelia raised an eyebrow, her curious eyes scanning the hundreds of pill bottles behind him. "Are they just in another building? I mean, I can go to another building if that's the case."
"No, ma'am." The doctor who was way too patient for Cordelia's liking. "We don't have any at this hospital. The shipment was delayed due to a storm."
"Well, what about another hospital?"
"All the hospitals are waiting on the next shipment. The closest hospital with any Vicodin is four hours away." The doctor sighed and handed her back the paper. He turned and picked the phone off the wall "Let me give you what we do have. Write down your name and number on that slip and I can call you as soon as we have the Vicodin ready. Just give me a few minutes to call the doctor who wrote this."
Cordelia stared at the doctor as if he had grown a third-head. What was with all the beefed up security? She had been coming to Plainsboro for the past couple of years and never had a problem about getting medication before. What happened? Had one of the doctors been giving out wrong prescriptions or perhaps too many? Whatever the reason, it didn't matter. She leaned against the counter and rubbed her forehead. Her sister was not going to be happy about the lack of Vicodin. Her growing addiction to painkillers was bad enough but when she was off the meds, it got worse.
And if Karri wasn't happy, than there was no way that Cordelia would be.
- -
Cordelia is a made-up character for a House MD role-play