2:57, Community Mercantile

A woman in burgundy scrubs walks through the automatic doors and straight to the opposite side of the store. Her hair is falling out of her ponytail and her skin is shiny from sweating all day. She picks up two 8 oz. bottles of kombucha wonder tea, double checking the price labels of $1.99 under the refrigerated shelves. She pauses on her way to the registers and switches both bottles to one hand, then sets them down on a dinnerware display table as an afterthought. Reaching in a pocket, she produces neatly folded one-dollar bills, which she counts. Five.
"A Sparkling Himalayan Tonic" the bottles claim. She doesn't sigh, but indulges a small memory of her mother that's been floating around the limits of her consciousness all day. Of being a toddler and watching her mother lightly grease a baking pan and dust it with flour. She would lean out of the screen door in her long everyday dress and shake the excess flour from the dusted pan into the bushes outside of their tiny suburban home.
You see, the burgundy-clad woman is so sleep deprived and exhausted that she's just this side of delirium. She thinks of the sparkling Himalayas themselves, and picks the bottles back up.