Composition

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Beginning

The short story begins in medias res, or in the middle of events. The story opens with the narrator realizing that she has made “a $70,000 mistake” (l. 1). This statement foreshadows the narrator’s disappointment with having to work in retail after studying pharmacy for six years, and it also…

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Middle

The rising action depicts the narrator trying to be polite to the woman. She tries to remain professional, however, she immediately forms a first impression about the woman: “ (…) this is an important lady, who has fantastically important things to tend to today” (ll. 5-6). The narrator’s sarcastic attitude shows that she does not take the woman seriously, considering her just another fussy customer.

The narrator is also confronted with a moral dilemma. She is disappointed about how her career turned out (l. 10), feeling that her …

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Ending

In the falling action, the narrator searches for the phone number of the woman’s doctor on the computer. A tension point is created when the narrator sees that there are notes related to the woman’s prescription and she realizes that the woman’s daughter suffers from leukemia and not from a cold, as she initially presumed: “Zofran for the nausea, steroids for the bloating, Percocet for the pain… Dasatinib. Leukemia. Damn” (ll. 91-92).

The narrator looks at the woman and notices that she looks tired and …