Being on Medicare and getting vaccinated was a new combination for me; I didn’t know which card to pull out so I did all three: Medicare, Supplemental, and Part D.

The guy stewed over the computer for awhile. Turns out someone had put my maiden name in the system and my last name bounced. We talked him through it, he tried again, and finally it worked.

Finally–not quite looking me in the eye–he handed me my two cards back.

There are three, I said. I gave you three.

He’d clearly been hoping I wouldn’t notice. He’d already picked one up off the floor and there had been no sign of the other.

He got another employee to look all over. Then to try. Then there was this little Monty Python sketch of all the methods they used (those tongs had a definite rubber chicken look to them) after they realized where it had to have gone.

There was the countertop, there was this one area where there were two filing cabinets just below the countertop side by side, and there was a metal plate under those cabinets. And somewhere in there, they determined, was the only place it could be.

They said they would work on it, and the original guy, who turned out to be the pharmacist, gave me my flu+covid shots and told us to wait 15 minutes to make sure there’s no reaction, like they always do. They promised us they would work on it in the meantime.

Forty minutes later, I said to Richard, quite sure of this though we couldn’t see from there, They’re not doing anything and they’re just waiting us out hoping the store closes on us.

We went back over there and I was exactly right.

They tried to tell us it was gone, it couldn’t be done, go have your insurer issue a new card, not their problem. Sorry.

Richard, looking at the cheap set up, told them all furniture is designed to come apart when you need it to.

They were in disbelief. We really wanted them to deal with this?

He offered to help, and he certainly looked the big and strong type.

They tried to say it couldn’t be done.

Things get put together and they can come apart and he was offering to do that if they needed the help.

So okay, boss pharmacist apparently thought, better you than me, and let him into the pharmacy area to help with those filing cabinets. Which he seemed to think were permanently installed.

They’re too heavy full, you have to empty them, Richard said to one of the women, boss-man having gotten himself as far away as he could. (Richard wasn’t about to touch official pharmacy stuff.)

Another store employee saw him on the wrong side of the counter and came over to ask what on earth is going on over here and all three pharmacy people said in unison and waving their hand away at her in unison, Never mind.

(One of the pharmacy women had basically said they’d all be fired if I went in there to try to help, too.)

Richard said to me afterwards, There was no organization in those cabinets–just stuff. Thrown in randomly for someone else to have to deal with later.

But drawer by drawer it all got removed and then at long last one steel file cabinet got moved out of the way. Then the other. (See? They do move.)

And there, under the metal plate on the floor that the two filing cabinets had been standing on, was my Medigap card. How it got there I’ll never know. But one hour and fifty minutes after we arrived for my shot we finally had my card back, and my husband is a hero because they would utterly have blown me off, and in fact did, but he refused to be. Nicely, but firmly.

It was probably not a good time to ask them if they could squeeze in the paperwork and a shot for him too even though online had said there was only the one opening. So we didn’t. His is tomorrow and thankfully somewhere else.

As I type this I’m realizing, we still don’t know which card we’re supposed to hand them. We don’t ever want to give them too many again.