A Dream Sequence called April 4, 2003-April 6, 2003

I know you already know this because you are smarter than me, but I will tell you anyway why you should never get drunk with your former preceptor.

This weekend was so bizarre at times it didn’t feel like mine. Sunday morning, I am lying under my own Honda Civic starting up with my former preceptor lying next to me doing the same. It was a strangely intimate experience. I had stopped listening to his instructions and was just being present. I decided five steps ago that this was too much trouble and that changing the oil in my car would be something that I would be paying someone else to do for the rest of my life.

I spent all of my Saturday morning at a HIPPA training course courtesy of Eckerd. I have the big white binder to prove it. I was fresh out the training, when I saw I had a missed call from the former preceptor and a message that he was ready now to teach me how to change the oil in my car and that I should come over to his house after my training. I don’t have better plans so I head over to his house only to discover that he was ready now because his girlfriend is out of town, and he has been drinking. He has a beer in his hand, but I can’t tell yet how many beers came before this one. I follow him inside to see the trash pouring out of the trash can and a full bag of trash next to it. The house smells and I wonder how long the girlfriend has been gone. He sees me looking at the trash and says he has been meaning to take it out. He says we should go out and grab a drink, and I agree so that I can get out of his smelly house.

We are out for a while and start to get hungry, so we end up back in the bar we started out for dinner only this time it is just the two of us and candlelight and he orders a nice bottle of wine. This is uncomfortable. I realize too late, because I am slow, that he has had more to drink than I thought and I end up learning more about him than I ever needed to know. This also feels highly unprofessional and I am ready to go back to the dirty and smelly house only he should not be driving which I also realize too late. He is going entirely too fast and not staying in between the lines, so I am silent and pray the entire way home. When we finally make it back to his house, he realizes that he has locked us out, so after trying all the windows he has to kick in the door. I must look extremely worried, because I am, despite him telling me repeatedly not to worry. This is when I realize that he is very drunk and I probably am too and cannot drive home. I announce to him and the dog that I will be sleeping on the couch, but he insists that I take the bedroom. I don’t want to sleep in the bed that he shares with his girlfriend who probably still has no idea I am there. I already know these sheets are not clean, so the plan is to sleep on top of the bed and as I decide this, I realize that he is talking to me again and saying that he wants to show me his gun, his loaded gun. He has already showed me all of the unloaded guns his father left him after he died that are just sitting in bags in a spare room. I tell him thank you very much for the offer, but I don’t want to see the loaded gun and no, I never shot a gun or even held a gun, but he doesn’t listen and he pulls the gun out from the safe in his bedroom. He is waving it around and laughing at just how uncomfortable I am. I keep refusing to hold it and beg him to put it back under lock down because I know we have already cheated death once today. Once that is over, there is one more uncomfortable thing I need to do and that is to call the Rents to tell them that I will be staying in Creedmoor this evening with my former preceptor and to assure them that this is not strange at all and that I am safe and that all will be explained in the morning.

I didn’t think it was possible, but things get even more uncomfortable after the phone call when I realize he has no contact solution or face wash. Always the preceptor, he told me again not to worry and that we could just make a saline solution for the contacts. I trust him and leave my contacts in two kitchen glasses filled with a homemade saline solution and finally go to bed hoping for the best for my poor contacts. He wakes me in the morning by stripping the bed with me still in it. He shares that his girlfriend is on the way home and she has no idea I am there, so I need to leave. Adding to the uncomfortableness of the morning is that the drunk homemade saline solution had way too much salt in it, so my eyes are burning, but I am not letting any of this prevent me from leaving without my oil changing lesson. So, he throws on his former work coveralls and sips a cup of coffee and starts the lesson.

As we are lying under the car side by side, that is when it is clear to me that it is time to go. I am present and aware that I stink plus I need the entire way home to come up with an explanation for my parents that doesn’t include guns, wine, kicking in a door, drunk driving, and absent girlfriends, knowing full well that my unwashed face, slightly red eyes, unbrushed teeth and me still in yesterday’s HIPPA training clothes will be all that my mother will focus on.

I am finally and tearfully making my way back to Tarboro at 9:30 pm on Sunday night when I see Sean walking down 54. I am a crybaby and like most crybabies it doesn’t take much but I am tired and confused and not ready to face Monday. It doesn’t seem real that Sean has suddenly appeared. How did he know I needed to see him? I should explain that he is walking because he doesn’t have a driver’s license. I don’t know all the details yet just that he has a twin who seems to love to drive. All I wanted to do was go to Harris Teeter with him and hang out but I could not so after a quick hello it was off to Tarboro I went.

I can’t remember if I told you already that I have no sense of direction and combine that with me still crying and trying to process what happened with the former preceptor my “short cut” to T- town took a turn and I got very disoriented. So, I am driving down a long and unfamiliar road with a very familiar voice, Shannon W., on the phone with me. She did first ask me how in the world I got on this unfamiliar road and then quickly switched to calmly leading me back until it all became clear where I needed to go and who I needed to be with.

Shannon is also working for Eckerd while we are in pharmacy school, so she asked how my HIPPA class went. I told her that she was not going to believe this shit, but the HIPPA fines are actually insane. I told her that in addition to everything else now I was worried because we can’t ever slip up and accidently give the wrong prescription to the wrong person ever again otherwise, we will be living on the streets. Forever.