JUST CALL RAFAEL

When we arrived our gracious concierge, Rafael, introduced us to our golf cart and gave us a whirlwind tour which left us incredibly impressed and thoroughly lost.  He assured us that he could be reached at any time and to just call him if we needed anything.  He was graciously emphatic. 

As is our norm, we half-listened, smiling and nodding.  Then proceeded to try to do everything ourselves.  Jen and I spent 30 minutes at the wrong main entrance, eventually involving 3 increasingly worried Mexican valets chattering frantically on walkie talkies trying to find a rental car in their garage that didn't exist, almost certainly suspecting that we thought "coche" meant golf cart rather than car.  How long they spent looking for our golf cart, I do not know.  Finally we gave up, walked home and called Rafael.  Within the 5 minutes it took us to stroll to the correct main entrance, our car had been found, air conditioned and made ready.

Did we learn?  No.  Not much.

Next morning Mamie awoke with crusty eyes.  Time for antibiotics.  No problem.  After all, we saw a pharmacy on the highway close by -- it had huge signs in English advertising antibiotics, along with a variety of pharmacological happiness aids for the elderly.  I offered to drive her there.   We did CALL for the car.  Quick and easy.  Then headed off for the Mad-Max-highway dash.  Mastered that.  Check.  

Feeling flush with independence and confidence, we pulled up to the pharmacy.  Rats.  Not open for 40 minutes. Details.  Oh well. Check out the neighboring grocery store.  Drive around a bit.  Back at 9:50, hoping that the pharmacist might arrive 5 minutes early.  A groundskeeper (?) wanders by, hosing off the parking lot, sees us, stops and says (in Spanish), "It's not open yet."  "Yes," I reply, "10 more minutes."  He grins,  ". . . or 20."

Being kind, he walks behind the pharmacy and knocks on the door of an old car,  "You have clients.  CLIENTS!"  Door open, a disheveled, brightly tattooed young man stumbles out, stretching half-heartedly, and shuffles up, rubbing his eyes.  He unlocks the door, the alarm goes off, Mamie screams, alarm goes off.  Mamie grasps her heart, breathes rapidly and exclaims loudly,  "THAT SCARED THE CRAP OUT OF ME!!!!"  No reaction from pharmacist.

Mamie walks up to him -- lets say, to be generous, 8 inches nose-to-nose -- "Conjunctivitees.  Infectionnaise.  My EYES," fully subscribing to the longstanding linguistic belief that increased volume = increased understanding.  

Looking slightly afraid and definitely awake, said very-non-English-speaking-almost-assuredly-not-a-pharmacist wanders off to the bar shelves and selects a small bottle of drops.  I look at it but cannot read the font 0.04 words. Mamie, though, can still see out of her left eye and says, "Oh, polymyxin -- PERFECT."  Turns to non-pharmacist,  "what's the dosage?"  No response.  So I help, "1-2 drops each eye q 6 hours today, then q 8 thereafter."   No reaction.  "Dos gotas cada seis horas . . ."  She looks at him, "dos drops?"  He nods most unconvincingly.  We leave.

Back at the palacio Mamie goes in her room and starts screaming.  "Narda, Narda,  put the drops in my other eye.  It hurts too much.  I can't do it."  Now Mamie is a person who screams  when her hair is pulled (really, \ask Jen), so . . . needless to say my reaction is badly blunted.  I put a drop in her other eye.  Now not only is she screaming, "IS THIS NORMAL!?!," but her eyes are streaming and she cannot open them.  No, not really normal, I think to myself, not even for you.  Squinting my best I examine the bottle and somehow, with atavistic xray vision, I read, "otica.:"  Hmmm, I bet otica is otic.  "Mamie!  These are for your ears!  It's the lidocaine."  

'Cause I'm sure you have other things to do today, I will not describe the "I'M GOING BLIND!! OH MY GOD!!!  BLIND!!! BLIND!!!!"  Narda reassurance, given repeatedly and repeatedly discounted, "WILL I SEE AGAIN?"  scenario.  Why do I even bother talking?  But the end result is that she wants to go BACK to that same pharmacy, get a refund and the correct drops. I refuse.  REFUSE.

"Let's just call Rafael."

An hour later, he delivers the appropriate antibiotic to Mamie -- now recovering in her lounge chair at the beach club -- and tells her that he's consulted with a physician who assured him that the topical lidocaine will definitely burn, but it will be a temporary effect and she'll be fine.  

Seriously, why do I even bother talking?