“I go to him because I have to. There’s no one else in town unless you count that guy who sells tinctures in the parking lot. And every time I go, it’s a full performance—ten minutes of diagnosis, twenty minutes of a speech about how this town is “spiritually poisoned.”

I don’t need a philosophy lecture, I need my blood pressure meds.

And don’t get me started on the bill. You’d think he was curing the plague, not checking my cholesterol.

But hey—small town. You get what you get. At least he’s not drunk. Most days.”