SEX IN THE HOSPITAL

When I first checked in to the hospital (actually, I think the preferred terminology is "When I was first admitted to this hospital;" I've spent so much time in hotels recently that they've become my new reality) I was told it was just an overnight stay. Then it became a two-nighter. I'm now on my fourth night in this satellite station of hell. If I'm going to live, let me out! If I'm dying, allow me to do so in the comfort of at least a three-star hotel. Four-star would be preferable, but I'm in no state of denial regarding my parents' spending habits, and I'll be lucky, if I really am dying, not to take my final breath in a Motel 6. Tom Bodette will leave the light on for you in case you'd care to show up to pay your final respects.

So tomorrow I'll be sprung from this joint whether it be through general discharge or the infamous AMA (againsy medical advice). You may think that AMA discharges are for adults only, but believe me when I tell you that I have my ways.

Assuming that the worst-case scenario hasn't materialized and that I'm not actually dying when I get out of this place tomorrow, my parents will drop me off at the Pseudos' condo when they pick me up from the hospital. My parents are having a brief romantic get-away (I know; the thought makes me gag as well) and then will be preparing our home in northern California for transfer to its new owners. I will spend most of the summer with my Pseudos. If I become substantially ill with anything communicable via airborne means that PseudoAunt doesn't also have, I'll go to stay with Dr. Jeff's family. PseudoAunt has a weakened immune system and cannot be exposed to pathogens any more than is absolutely necesary.

I was actually mildly happy to be in the hospital today. It seems that a male doctor and a female nurse, both of whom are married, had been carrying on some sort of extra-curricular activity. They were so serious that they had made tentative plans to leave their respective spouses, or that's what the intern assigned to me told me after the fact. Then it ended up that the nurse, who is attractive but not THAT hot, was having extra-extracurricular activity with another doctor. The doctor (her original extracurricular diversion) demanded the ring back. (I guess they really did have tentative plans to dissolve their respective marriages.) She first told him he couldn't have the ring back because A) it was a gift and B) he was the one breaking off the relationship. She eventually changed her mind, apparently. She took the ring off and threw it at the doctor, but her aim was exceedingly poor. He glanced in the general direction in which she threw it, but didn't see it and walked away. The intern assigned to me said that what we had just witnessed was at least as compelling as anything we were likely to see on "Grey's Anatomy" reruns, and we didn't even have to wait through any commercial breaks.

The nurses were huddled around the extracurricularly active nurse, patting her shoulder as she cried, as though she was a woman scorned. Eventually someone needed a crash cart and the drama, as do all things, eventually came to an end.

When nurses were changing shifts and my intern was taking a break a few hours ago, I snuck out of bed, dragging my oxygen and IV tubes and pole with me. I walked, slowly because that's the only way I can walk right now, to the approximate spot where I thought the ring might have landed. I got down on my hands and knees and began searching for it. Eventually I became tired, so I took a bit of a nap right there on the floor just beyond the nurses' station where carts of supplies are kept.

Someone must have looked for me in my bed. Eventually my intern found me asleep on the floor behind a cart of supplies. "What are you doing here?" he asked

I told him that I had gotten up to take a short walk but had become tired. He gave me a puzzled look, then smiled and said, "You were looking for the ring, weren't you?"

I nodded in assent. There wasn't much point in lying about it by then, anyway. "Want to go halfsies on the reward if we can find it?" I asked him.

"Sure," he answered, and we shook on it. (I'm actually giving all of whatever I get to him. The doctor will probably be generous with a kid, but wouldn't give the intern anything, because attending physicians more often than not treat first-year residents (intern are first-year residents in most programs) as though they are axe murderers and/or pedophiles who are HIV-positive and are bleeding profusely out of all orifices. This intern doesn't have much money and needs every cent he can collect.) I found the ring about three minutes later in the bottom shelf of a cart between plastic bottles of isopropyl alcohol. It was too big for any of my fingers, including my thumb, which was just as well because a nurse might have thwarted our plans by noticing it on my finger during the night. It fit nicely into a buttoned pocket on the overalls of a stuffed kitty that I always sleep with and that I'd brought with me to the hospital. The plan is that when the doctor shows up tomorrow morning, my intern or whoever else is around will tell the doctor I have something to say to him. I'll give him the ring. If he doesn't cough up a suitable reward, his colleagues will harass him until he does. (My intern held the ring up to the light to make sure it wasn't a zircon. He said the doctor in question was enough of a tapeworm that he'd try to pass off a zircon as a diamond, but the intern concluded that this particular piece of glass was, indeed, a diamond.) We're not trying to make a killing here; in fact we could probably get a lot more than the standard reward for such a ring just for promising not to return the ring to the doctor's lawful wife. All we want is fair and just compensation for the time we spent crawling around on the floor looking for the ring.

Tomorrow night when I blog, it should be from the relative comfort of the Pseudos' sofa in the den of their condo.