Chemo Keep-Away and the White Knight in the Black Cowboy Hat

Avilla pharmacy is a speciality pharmacy.  They specialize in medications like chemotherapy, but also in record phone wait times (HOURS, in fact), cold smuggery and the billion and one ways a bureaucrat can dodge accountability of any kind.  After my medication did not show up when promised and the company denied they knew the person who promised it, and after hours on the phone trying to track down my chemo drugs, several dozen times put on hold and a good verbal thrashing or two I was depressed, drained, and the next morning was even throwing up repeatedly from sheer despair about the situation and my inability to handle it.  I lost the will to fight.

Luckily, Jim didn't.

Jim has one of the most beautiful male voices I've ever heard. This is crucial for a radio girl because we are surrounded by beautiful male voices all day.  A whiney, nasal bleat on a man is a big deal breaker for women in radio.

 Jim's voice is a deep, velvety baritone with layers of undertones.  It can also become a booming baritone GOD VOICE that startles people and, I swear, makes the very AIR in a room pause nervously in the middle of what it was doing.  He does not overuse this voice.  But when it does emerge, it has impact.

Jim is  also a man with a hard-wired sense of human decency and is often, if not usually, the smartest person in a given room.  Jim operates from a moral solidity that many people identify with the midwest: there's things you do and things you don't do and if you don't know the difference you haven't been paying attention on purpose and you need to get with the program.  Jim expects people to be decent and do what makes sense.  He's also warm and funny.  The combination of these traits has nurses and doctors very pleased to see him at every visit.  He understands what they're saying, he's kind, he's funny, and he gets it.

BUT if someone should happen to be blatantly obtuse, dishonest, stupid or unkind they could find themselves startled by him and suddenly feeling foolish and guilty and wanting to hide under the desk.  It happened on a couple of the phone calls; when Jim interjected the change in tone went from smug and cold to shaky and defensive, simply because the logic had been pointed out and the absence of decency had been called out, and with just a touch of the GOD VOICE.

Also, magically today my chemo medication was in my mailbox at the time it was promised.

Jim does not own a white cowboy hat.  But he looks awesome in his black ones.  The white horse is invisible, unless you happen to be an asshole.