your prescription is ready
Back in one of my co-op terms with the company I'm working for now, they had hired (or conscripted—I'm not sure of the right word) a highschool co-op to come work in HR.
As I was working in QA, I was usually pretty bored. I'm not sure how it started, but she would come up and talk to people up in R&D. I guess she was bored too. Sometimes she'd stop by my cube and say hi. We'd chat about stuff—nothing important—like how much being a co-op student sucked, or what she wanted to do when she escaped highschool. It was nice. She was nice.
I'd go down and visit her in HR sometimes too. I'm sure the ladies in HR were vaguely amused. One day one of them intercepted me on the way and told me she could use someone to talk to. I think I just nodded, my mood tempered a bit, wondering what was up.
Her great-grandmother had died. She was in tears. I did the only thing I could do, which was to sit and listen and tell her, no, she wasn't silly for getting so upset about it. My grandfather had died maybe a year earlier. I could sympathize a little. I think I sat with her for at least an hour. I hope it made her feel better.
Eventually, the term ended, hers before mine, I think. I don't know if I promised to send her email, but I never did. I saw her once after, in a car with a friend. She got her friend to honk the horn and she waved, and I waved back, after taking a second or two to figure out what was going on. I definitely had a crush on her, but the university vs. highschool thing/four or five year age difference seemed pretty insurmountable at the time. And I felt I would have held her back, somehow.
I heard her name today on the PA system in the pharmacy. Her prescription was ready. I looked around to see if I recognized her, but instead of running up and down the aisles to track her down and say hi, the urge to hunch my shoulders and walk away quietly, pretending I didn't notice, held sway. I know I'd like to see her again, but it would probably be awkward.