“Glenn, your foot is starting to look infected,” I told him, eyeing the angry red line crawling up his ankle. “That rusty nail scratch is no joke. We’re going to Hope Clinic—no arguments.”
At the clinic, Nurse Cora examined his foot with her usual calm authority.
“It’s definitely getting infected,” she said, nodding.
“Do I need a shot?” Glenn asked.
“I don’t think so,” she replied. Then she rummaged around in a drawer and pulled out a bottle of enormous yellow pills. She handed one to me.
“Here,” she said. “I’ll be right back with some water.”
She walked off, and I handed Glenn the pill. It looked like something you’d give a horse before a hurricane.
We waited. And waited. After about five minutes, Glenn got impatient.
“Here,” I said. “I have some water — drink it.”
He said, “No way. That thing’s way too big.”
I said, “Be a man. Just drink it.”
After some back and forth, Glenn finally drank the big pill.
He popped it into his mouth and started swallowing like his life depended on it. He gagged. He turned red. His eyes watered. I genuinely thought I might have to Heimlich him.
Finally — somehow — he got it down.
That’s when Cora walked back in holding a small plastic bucket of water.
“Melody, drop the pill in the bucket for the soak.”
Glenn blinked at her. “Soak?”
She nodded. “Yep. After you drop the pill into the water and it dissolves, I want you to soak your foot in it for thirty minutes.”
I looked at Glenn.
Looked at the bucket.
“…Oops.”
The events and characters depicted in Wolfe’s Woofer by Melody S. Wolfe are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The column is intended for satire and entertainment purposes only.