Take Your Medicine, page 1
TAKE
YOUR
MEDICINE
TAKE
YOUR
MEDICINE
PAMELA CRANE
Rockin’ C Reads
Raleigh, North Carolina
Copyright © 2024 by Pamela Crane
Rockin’ C Reads
Raleigh, NC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
www.pamelacrane.com
Edited by Proofed to Perfection Editing Services
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978-1-940662-42-8 (eBook)
978-1-940662-43-5 (paperback)
Thank you for supporting authors and literacy by purchasing this book. Want to add more entertaining reads to your library? As the author of more than a dozen award-winning and bestselling books, you can find all of Pamela Crane’s works on her website at www.pamelacrane.com.
Chapter 1
March 18, 1970
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Women’s House Magazine
May 1970 Issue
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Women’s House Magazine
June 1970 Issue
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Women’s House Magazine
July 1970 Issue
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Women’s House Magazine
November 1970 Issue
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Women’s House Magazine
February 1971 Issue
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Women’s House Magazine
September 1971 Issue
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Women’s House Magazine
March 1972 Issue
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Women’s House Magazine
April 1972 Issue
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Women’s House Magazine
May 1972 Issue
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Women’s House Magazine
October 1972 Issue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
To any woman who has ever been told to fit in better, to smile more, to shut up and listen, to make yourself smaller, to follow the status quo, to take your medicine like a man… don’t be afraid to spit it out.
Chapter 1
March 18, 1970
Samantha Stanton’s father often joked about her killing him with kindness, until the fall of 1965, when his death became the punchline. Sam called it murder, her mother called it an accident. Potato, potahto. In the end, it didn’t really matter, did it? He was gone, and that’s all anyone knew for sure.
Except four and a half years later it still mattered to Sam. Her father wasn’t coming back from the grave, not until Jesus came a’callin’, and Sam couldn’t let this bygone be gone. By the arrival of the Disco Era, she decided to pull the trigger on avenging him. Figuratively speaking, that is, because in the spring of 1970 Sam didn’t own a gun, and she couldn’t purchase one even if she wanted. It was one of many things women couldn’t have. But retribution, Sam decided, she would have.
The easy part had been figuring out her father’s killer.
The hard part was figuring out how to get back at him.
Then an idea came to Sam on the tail of her home’s foreclosure notice. It was an idea that would probably get her fired and most certainly get her on someone’s hit list.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Sam’s mother had yelled into the phone receiver when Sam called to tell her the plan.
“If I could prove that the drug industry is corrupt, I could then explain to people why natural remedies are a better alternative.” Sam’s breaths came heavy as she packed her car for the long drive ahead.
“And how do you plan to do this?”
“By educating the biggest consumers in America.”
“Honey,” her mother began with the sharp tone Sam recognized before every lecture, “I know your dad always supported your dreams, but he’s no longer here to protect you. This vendetta will only destroy you.”
Sam closed her blue train case with a click. “At least I won’t go down without a fight.”
The grim reality was that after Sam’s father—the only person who truly understood Sam’s unconventional dreams—passed away, along with him went her ambition. The domino effect of losing her father, and subsequently losing faith in herself, rattled down through the past four years.
But recently she had found her resolve, and a plan formed—pulling her to the only place where Sam’s message could reach America’s biggest consumers, the magazine-reading masses: Ladies Home Journal.
“You really think going back to New York is a good idea?” Sam’s mother lamented.
“Stop worrying so much. Everything will be fine, Mom.”
Thus, her father’s fateful passing led Sam through a series of twists and turns, much like the Pennsylvania turnpike she was now driving along.
It was a brisk March morning when she kissed Fido’s muzzle with an affectionate goodbye, left her suburban Pittsburgh home well before dawn to hit the highway, and had no idea what waited for her at the end of the 350-mile journey to New York City. But even if Sam could have predicted the upcoming bruise to her face, stint in jail, escaped pony, and incriminating byline in tomorrow’s newspaper, she would have done it all the same.
That’s the type of woman Sam was: reckless and resolute, emphasis on wreck. As Sam had been reminded at her father’s funeral, the family curse of losing everything seemed to be her birthright. And believe it or not, it all started with a parking ticket…
Chapter 2
The drive from the Steel City, where the three rivers ran brown and the air hung with smog, to the Big Apple, where skyscrapers pierced the clouds and bodies jostled like jockeys along the sidewalks, took all morning.
Road-weary Samantha Stanton sniffed, wrinkling her nose at the fragrance of gasoline and tire tread, with notes of travel sweat and anxiety. Opening the eggshell-blue train case on the passenger seat beside her, she spritzed herself with the Ô de Lancôme she’d stolen from her mother, then parked her dead father’s 1965 Chevrolet Impala SS smack dab in the middle of 54th street.
“You can’t park there!” a meter maid shouted as she waved her pink ticket booklet in warning.
Sam glanced up and down the street, where every square inch of parking was occupied in front of the entrance to the Ladies Home Journal headquarters. The middle of the street would have to do. She had bigger problems than a $25 parking ticket to worry about. Like punishing her father’s killer.
“Then ticket me if you must,” Sam dared, slamming the car door behind her. What did a parking ticket matter when her father was dead?
The cherry-red white-top convertible looked exactly like the midlife crisis purchase her father had intended it to be when he bought it brand new five years ago. His effort to chase youth and vigor proved fruitless, however. Months after he traded in his family-friendly, paid-off Ford Galaxie and signed the $4,900 muscle car loan at a whopping 12 percent interest that the steelworker couldn’t afford, he fell to his knees and clutched his chest in his living room watching Bonanza while his wife cooked chicken a la king in the kitchen not even twenty feet away.
One minute later he sprawled face down on the persimmon orange carpet.
Five minutes after that Sam’s mother rushed to his side, unable to find a pulse.
Within thirty minutes Sam consoled her weeping mother as the ambulance attendant wheeled his body to the back of the Cadillac Superior ambulance that reminded Sam of the nearly identical style hearse she knew would soon follow.
The funeral expenses emptied their family’s meager savings account, and by Christmas of 1965, a home foreclosure notice arrived in the mail. Death had become the gift that kept on giving. With hopes of saving her childhood home, off to the bank Sam went. As luck would have it, borrowing money was out of the question:
“You’ll need to bring your husband to cosign on a loan,” the banker had explained.
“What if I don’t have a husband?” Sam had a habit of questioning poor logic.
“What about an uncle?” the banker suggested.
“I have none of those either.”
The banker offered only poorer logic in return: “I suggest you pretty yourself up and try harder to find a mate, miss.” But Sam knew that was a hopeless cause.
Past the point of desperation, Sam decided to do something that went against every fiber of her being. No, she didn’t solicit a potential husband or find a long-lost uncle, but instead accepted a fate much worse:
A job in the food service industry.
Her typist position during the day left her evenings open just enough to fit in a waitressing stint that went terribly wrong. During one night shift in particular, she came to discover that she was either too forgetful or too clumsy—or possibly both—to turn it into a career. Patrons didn’t tend to like wearing their beverages, or appreciate alfredo when they ordered a potato.
The last straw broke when Sam promised free soft serve to a table full of boys after a Little League victory game—not realizing the ice cream machine had broken hours earlier. When Sam asked the cook what she could offer the kids instead, she misheard his British-speak “eff all” as “waffle” and proceeded to order a round of waffles on the house… the bill for which came out of Sam’s final paycheck before she was promptly fired (and told to get her ears checked).
The $0.89 per hour cashier job that Sam’s mother had reluctantly taken at Gimbels department store helped supplement her Avon door-to-door sales, but it still wasn’t enough to make ends meet.
Sam never told her mother that she had applied to college and was one of two women accepted into their plant pathology program. Along with a full ride, too. The day Sam tore open the acceptance letter felt like the first day of the rest of her life… until she saw the foreclosure notice for the house, which her mother failed to hide. So Sam respectfully declined the scholarship and settled into her life of mediocrity.
It wasn’t a total loss when she accepted a typist position for Women’s House Magazine, a small-time Pittsburgh-based rag, because in a twisty unexpected way, it drew her back to New York City, to this very moment.
That singular event—the death of her father four and a half years ago—eventually came full circle, bringing Sam back to the city that never sleeps, in this busy street, in front of this towering building where nearly a hundred women waited for her on the Manhattan sidewalk. Just as zealous. Just as single-minded. And just as fed up with traffic.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” the meter maid announced as she slid the pink ticket under Sam’s windshield wiper.
Sam was already marching across two lanes toward the glass and chrome building where she would, for the first time ever, do something that would land her in jail. It was just shy of 9:00 a.m., but the city was already wide awake and abuzz.
A pulse of adrenaline—along with a horn beeping behind her—quickened her gait toward the pack of women. Radical Feminists, the media had pegged them, as if it were an insult. But it was 1970, and radical now held a whole new definition. And feminism was growing as fast as a hippie’s hair, if last year’s Woodstock music festival was any indication. They might as well have called them the Groovy Equalists, as far as Sam was concerned.
Despite the group’s muted colors of conservative thigh-skimming suits, their expressions conveyed the same defiant passion that Sam felt with each click of her platform clogs on the concrete.
A yellow checkered taxicab skirted around her, nearly knocking her onto the wide sidewalk while spraying her with last night’s rainfall.
She gave the driver a hairy eyeball. “Watch where you’re going!”
“Do you have a death wish or something?” a woman in a mandarin leisure suit asked, drawing all eyes and ears on Sam, their designated leader. “You can’t be too careful on these crazy streets.”
But Sam already knew this from the years she had lived in Brooklyn as a fresh-faced naïve careerwoman—minus the career. At least a real career had been within reach, she consoled herself. On the same day she had been offered a promotion to the coveted columnist position at the prestigious Ladies Home Journal, a rare weekday long-distance call rang through her tiny apartment. The three-minute and $12 call from her sobbing mother was just expensive enough to use up an entire day’s wage, and long enough to wreck Sam’s world.
“Your father needs you,” was what her mother had opened with when Sam had answered the phone. “The medicines and treatments aren’t working. Your father’s heart is barely hanging on by a thread.”
So Sam, the ever-dutiful daughter, turned the columnist promotion down, left New York, and headed home to Pittsburgh to care for her ill-fated father and soon-to-be-widowed mother. Mere months later, when her father’s heart gave up anyway, she was burdened with the shame of failure and bills they couldn’t afford.
Even after regaining her footing as a typist for Women’s House Magazine, with an unprecedented 140 words per minute, undoubtably the skill that secured her the job, Sam’s meager salary was no match for survival in this world. But money—or lack thereof—didn’t stop her from filling up her gas tank at $0.36 a gallon and driving across Pennsylvania to New York with a resolve to right old wrongs.
And finally take down her father’s killer.
“Are we ready, ladies?” a gorgeous gal in argyle called out.
“Remember, do not give in, no matter the cost,” another said, her sleek and severe middle-part catching the tail wind of a passing truck.
The cost—that was the lingering detail that gave Sam a slight hesitancy. They would certainly be breaking a law—or two or three—today. The cost could end up ripping mothers from their children, wives from their husbands, businesswomen from their only source of income.
“This is no small sacrifice,” Sam reminded them.
Not that Sam wasn’t familiar with sacrifice. She had given up the only guy she ever loved—regretfully. Then gave up her dream columnist job to help her sick father—willingly. She turned down a college scholarship to support her mother—selflessly. She spent her evenings alone studying plants that could heal others—happily. But to petition all these women to risk their own comforts for a greater cause… this was asking a lot. And every cell in Sam’s body resisted the urge to ask for anything.
“We’re ready for it!” Argyle Gal urged. “Any wise words to inspire us before we make history, Sam?”
Sam thought a moment, tapping her chewed fingernail on her chin. The cool sensation of the gold heart necklace skimming her collarbone gave her the words she needed to say:
“I’m proud of you all for showing up this morning and risking so much. Each of you is braver than you realize! And it won’t be in vain. As we know, choosing silence is choosing our own downfall. As long as we padlock our tongues, all women will continue to wear chains. So here’s to making some noise, ladies!”
A collective cheer boosted morale as the women surged ahead. A chorus of “You’re our hero, Sam!” and “Lead us to victory, Sam!” filled the street.
While they had become Sam’s comrades of a sort, there remained a chasm that she couldn’t quite cross over into genuine friendship. Not one of them invited her to a Friday game night. Or to a Saturday night of disco. Or even to a Tupperware party. Not that Sam would have gone anyway. It could have been due to her lack of interest in typical feminine things, like the latest hairdos, makeup, or fashion trends. But she sensed it was something deeper. Something about her that didn’t quite vibe with other women her age and status.
Her mother had plenty of opinions on why—her strange passion for plants, her apathy toward appearance, her indifference to dating—but Sam worried it was something off-putting that a coat of foundation and a man on her arm couldn’t fix. But there was one person whose vibe matched Sam’s perfectly. It had been friendship at first sight.
She eagerly searched the pool of faces for his in particular. She had been certain he would come—she had given him plenty of notice—but his infectious energy was missing and his goosebump-inducing smile nowhere to be found.
When her gaze settled on a lone figure, her fury surfaced. Hanging along the outskirts of the throng was a sole cameraman and local news reporter from a no-name network Sam didn’t recognize. Was that it? Where was Eyewitness News? Or Report to New York? Her rebellion—and all that was at stake—wasn’t even important enough to draw the attention of any major news outlet?!
