Chapter Twenty-Five Julian #3
Vinny spins through our carefully curated roster of client witnesses. Julian wasn’t wrong—once we put out the bat signal, both recreational and medicinal clients of mine signed up in earnest to share their stories of how, over the years, I’ve made their lives easier, better, fuller.
Happier.
Hearing client after client gush about me and all I’ve done for them should touch me inside. I should be crying tears of joy, of validation, hearing and seeing that a life lived outside the rat race can still have meaning.
But it doesn’t. And I can’t. I can’t feel anything but the pain cresting inside of me.
It feels like I’ve been divided into two people.
The external Nomi, who’s smiling placidly, nodding at all the right moments, the good girl who helps people however she can.
And then there’s Nomi on the inside, a bag of suffering squeezed into too-tight pants she can’t escape.
Forcibly gagged so that nobody discovers she’s trying not to explode, right here, in agony.
I can’t hear the compliments over the sound of my own pain.
The friendly voices can’t reach me where I sit huddled, terrified I’m going to be sick in front of all these people, terrified I’m going to ruin my dreams, and so incredibly furious that my body works against me every chance it gets.
My fingernails are embedded in the soft underside of my forearm, the sharp welts an underwhelming counter to the awful blunt-force pressure gripping my insides.
But it’s all I have grounding me in this moment.
That, and my mounting anger. I know it’s not helpful, and I know it’s whiny, and I know, I know, I KNOW that other people suffer.
That they have their own agonies, their own woes, and that my pain does not make me special.
I know all of this, but I’m still so angry this is happening to me.
That this always happens to me. I try to live, and my body knocks me down and says, Stay down.
You think you can do this? You really think you can do anything? Stay. DOWN.
And if I don’t? If I try to start my own business, or God forbid, date a person?
I pay. I suffer. I hurt, so much.
And the extra slap in the face is that, on the inside, you feel like you’re dying.
But on the outside, you’re just a person about to shit their pants.
You’re the woman trying to cry silently in a public stall, hoping the line of impatient women waiting to pee can’t see you rocking back and forth through the cracks in the door.
You’re the friend who’s left the group dinner to go to the bathroom five too many times to be normal.
You’re the date who ends the night sweating and clutching her stomach and apologizing for needing to go home, right then.
You’re suffering in a way society finds embarrassing.
In ways you’re not supposed to talk about.
When someone asks how you are, they don’t want to hear that you’re internally bleeding again, that you can’t eat, that you’re afraid to.
They don’t want to know.
Julian places his hand lightly on mine under the table. The warmth of his palm sends a shockwave of revulsion through my body, raising the hairs on my neck and kickstarting another set of spasms. I cringe away from him. Hurt blooms in his eyes, and I avert mine quickly.
“Sorry,” I whisper, “you scared me.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he whispers back. “You look… like you’re not.”
Well, that was diplomatic.
“I now call Dr. Julian D’Angelo to the stand,” Vinny announces.
I can feel Julian looking at the side of my face, waiting for me to assure him that I’m fine, just nervous. But I’m not fine, and I’m barely holding on to this external lie that I am. “Go,” I urge. “Just… go.”
Reluctantly, Julian stands, a slightly darker purple down his back where he’s sweating through his clothes.
Poor Julian. I know that, in some ways, he’s even more terrified of this going badly than I am.
My stomach lurches, and desperate, I do the unthinkable: I reach for the pill in my pocket. One more goes quickly in and down.
God, I’m doomed.
“Dr. D’Angelo, you filed the initial complaint against Ms. Wyeth’s dispensary, correct?”
Julian clears his throat directly into the mic. The Commission flinches backward at the feedback filling the speakers. “I did.”
“But you later withdrew your complaint. Why is that?”
“Because I realized that I’d been very stupid about cannabis and all the good it can do.
” His big eyes look so soft without the structure of his glasses hemming them in.
Tender. Or maybe, that’s just how he’s looking at me.
“You see, I thought that because I was top of my class at Yale and received the prestigious Corrington fellowship at Philadelphia General Hospital, that that meant I knew everything about what it really takes to help people. But it took me coming to Sparrow Nook to understand the kind of compassion, patience, and personal investment patients need their doctors to have, and I learned all of that from watching Nomi Wyeth work with her medicinal clients. She is, without a doubt, a force of real good for the people in her life. She will do so much good for this town, if you let her.”
One commissioner audibly sighs at these words, pressing her hand against her heart. Jackie, on the other hand, rolls her eyes.
“Thank you, Dr. D’Angelo, that is all.” Vinny turns and is about to call up his next witness, me, when a voice calls from the back.
“Chief Commissioner, if I may question the witness?”
Mike fucking Tonuto saunters up to the front. Except for a dark red flush on his rounded cheeks, he looks perfectly at ease as he clasps his hands behind his back, approaching Julian.
“You may, Council-friend Tonuto,” Jackie Lombardi announces with bloodthirsty interest.
“Objection!” Vinny cries out. “As a city council member, Mr. Tonuto is an interested party to the outcome of this hearing. It’s inappropriate for him to intervene.”
“Vinny D’Angelo.” Mike Tonuto puts his hands on his hips. “I ask you, is it a crime to love my town?”
“No, but—” Vinny begins, but is quickly cut off by Mike’s loud, theatrical laughter.
“Okay, then! Sit down and give someone else a turn to talk.” Mike’s eyes glint with meanness, even as his smile is cranked up to eleven.
Jackie bangs the gavel. “Objection overruled. Proceed, Council-friend.”
“Dr. D’Angelo,” he begins. “Is it true that you and Nomi Wyeth are now in a relationship?”
Julian blinks, visibly taken aback. “Um, yes, but I made the decision to withdraw well before that—”
“A sexual relationship?”
“Objection!” Vinny stands and shouts. “The nature of Dr. D’Angelo’s relationship with my client is entirely irrelevant to the legal matter at hand, which is whether Ms. Wyeth’s dispensary constitutes a pharmacy for all intents and purposes under the ordinance.”
Jackie sighs, fully put out. “Mr. D’Angelo. Whether your witness’s testimony is credible is of utmost importance to this matter. However, I’ll sustain this objection. Council-friend Tonuto, please continue with a different line of questioning.”
The objection doesn’t matter, though, because the revelation causes shockwaves through the Commission’s expressions. Looking from Julian, to me, to my painted-on eyebrows and Kardashian cheekbones, back to Julian, wariness radiates across their faces.
“I apologize for the indelicate nature of my questions.” Tonuto salutes the Commission. “I have no further questions for this witness.”
Vinny, obviously ruffled, stumbles through calling me to the stand. It’s been a while since I stood up, and I wobble on the sharp points of my heels, feeling lightheaded and underfed. Vinny offers me an arm, and I take it.
“Ms. Wyeth, is it true that you majored in chemistry in college and went to pharmacy school after graduation?” Vinny runs both his hands through the stiff hair at his temples, grimacing at the resistance there.
I frown a little. This wasn’t one of the planned questions we rehearsed. “Yes, but—”
“And is it true that you use your pharmaceutical knowledge to assist your clients in selecting the drugs that would best suit their conditions and needs?”
My heartbeat picks up even faster. “Well, yes, but—”
“Is it also true that you always wanted to be a pharmacist when you grew up, and now you basically get to be?”
I glare at Vinny, then Veronica. None of this is planned. “Well, I wanted to be a doctor, but—”
“Even better!” Vinny cries, clapping his hands.
“There you have it, members of the zoning commission. Ms. Wyeth comes to the dispensary business by way of a true foundational interest in medicine that she nurtured through extensive formal education, ergo, this will be a pharmacy the way Ms. Wyeth plans on running it, basically a CVS!”
“Now that’s not entirely accurate.” I lean over to speak more fully into the mic, my entire body clenched like a fist. I try to laugh a little to diffuse the tension caused by openly contradicting my own legal counsel, but it falls flat.
“Stranger Drugs will be like a pharmacy in the most classic sense of the word. A place where people can buy products that suit their medical or recreational needs after consulting with a trained, knowledgeable sales associate, but also a place where the community can gather and enjoy a soda, or a brownie, or even burn some cannabis flower on our back smoking patio. It’s more than a CVS could ever be, but it’s exactly the kind of classic pharmacy that our town’s beloved Strange Drugs was for Sparrow Nook.
Just with fewer poodle skirts in our booths. ”
I smile nervously, but the zoning commission won’t even look at me. I glance at Veronica, terrified, and she subtly points up at her right eyebrow, eyes wide.
Oh, fuck. There’s something wrong with my eyebrow? I have been sweating like crazy, and oh, God, I did briefly put my head in my hands, too. I flip my hair in front of my shoulder, hoping it will hang in front of the offending brow, only to see Veronica gesturing at her left eyebrow, too.
Internally, I whimper. The god-forsaken Imodium hasn’t kicked in yet, and swells of cramping pain wash over me, bearing down on me like a tide crashing to shore.
“Thank you, Ms. Wyeth,” Vinny says glumly to the floor. “No further questions.”
“My turn, then.” Tonuto smiles patiently as he’s back on his feet, the only one in these chambers willing to look at me. It’s a smug, pleased expression, which is how I know my makeup must be truly fucked.
“Ms. Wyeth, did you graduate pharmacy school?”
I sniff. I knew this is where it would go if my brief stint in grad school came up. “No.”
“Did you finish your first year in pharmacy school?” Mike’s eyebrows are high as he exchanges looks with each of the zoning commissioners in turn.
“No.”
“Your first semester?”
“No.”
“Why is that, Ms. Wyeth? Too hard for you?”
I was sick, you fuck! I was hospitalized for a systemic allergic reaction to the medication I was on! I nearly died!
“I… I guess you could say that.” I look at my hands, trembling on my lap.
“So, you’re not a pharmacist?”
“No.”
“Will Stranger Drugs be licensed by the New Jersey Board of Pharmacy?”
“No.”
“Hm,” Mike says simply. “Are you on drugs right now, Ms. Wyeth?”
“Objection!” Vinny yells, suddenly coming back to life.
Mike raises both hands. “No judgment, sweetheart, but I saw you pop a pill twenty minutes ago, and you don’t look uh… very put together?”
My mouth drops open. “That’s over-the-counter medication! I’m—I’m not feeling well, it’s true. I’m very nervous.”
The Commission stares at me with shocked disapproval.
“Are you on marijuana right now, Ms. Wyeth?”
“No!” I yell, just as Vinny bellows, “Objection! You gotta be kidding me!”
My eyes well with tears as the audience murmurs in a collective strain of anxiety.
“Listen!” I spin to face the Commissioners. “Mike Tonuto is only trying to get me shut down so that it’ll hurt his brother, Sammy DiFiore. He doesn’t want my dispensary to drive up business for him. And he put Julian up to filing the zoning complaint against me in the first place!”
Tonuto cranks out a laugh and shakes his head.
“Commissioners, I recuse myself from every issue involving my half brother, Sammy DiFiore, and I wish him all the best. Frankly, the connection Ms. Wyeth is positing here is so tenuous, it makes me question her…mindset.” He arches an eyebrow meaningfully, then stops in front of the witness stand where I sit.
He smacks it with the flat of his heavy palm, his pinky ring clink’ing against the wood.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you, is this the face that Sparrow Nook wants to display to guests on our beloved Main Street? Because let’s face it, Stranger Drugs is no pharmacy.
This is one woman’s exploitation of our sick and elderly via the legalized use of mind-altering drugs.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want stoners like her on my Main Street.
” He gestures at me with a pitying scorn. “Thank you.”
The room erupts. Julian, on his feet, pointing and yelling. Mr. Gutierrez cursing. Eve tries to rush Tonuto in something like a tackle, Graham holding her back. All my friends and family and clients coming to my aid, as if there’s anything left of me to save.
I slip off the stand and run to the bathroom before anyone can stop me.
The Commission’s decision is announced twenty minutes later, I learn via text.
Approval denied.