Femocil: Coping with Changes

We sat in silence and thought for a while.

"You know, I do take a multivitamin with lunch. I suppose it's possible someone replaced those pills with Femocil—although I have no idea why they would do that."

"Well, you should check for that. That seems unlikely—I can't believe someone did this to you on purpose. That would be pointless. It's more likely the drug has gotten into the water supply. Maybe there was an industrial accident, and this is happening to all the men in the neighborhood. The changes are pretty subtle for the first week, so we wouldn't have noticed outward changes in any of the neighbors."

We called the water treatment facility and asked them to come check out our water the next day. I kept an eye out at work for potential sources of exposure. During lunch I remember to check the vitamin bottle. I opened it up and poured out a few tablets. They were pale purple. I remembered that, upon opening it the first time, the color had struck me as odd. I turned the tablets over and held them up to the desk light. A cursive "F" was inscribed on the side of them.

"Fuck. That's it."

I contemplated the little purple pills. The bottle was full of them. Supposedly the changes they caused would reverse once the doses stopped. Natural hormone balance and physiology would be restored and everything would creep back to normal. I spilled the tablets back into the bottle and snapped the lid back on. I opened a bottle of water from my office supply, and tilted my head back for a drink. Setting the water back down on the desk, I noticed a Femocil tablet on the desk. It must have tumbled away when I dumped the lot of them back into the bottle. I recalled the sex from last night. I caressed my smooth cheek with the back of my hand. Cheryl probably won't mind. Picking the water back up, I popped the Femocil into my mouth and washed it down with a gulp.