Flirting

One of the pleasures of old age is the ability to flirt with attractive women.  I took advantage of one such chance a few days ago when I dropped into the Urgent Care Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering to receive a catheter. The nurse who installed the device was in the first bloom of her loveliness.  Had she not been beautiful, however, she would have been enchanting purely from the nature of her personality -  sweet, attentive, light-hearted, yet devoted.  She acted as if I were the only patient in the world.  And if that wasn’t enough, she was as competent as she was delightful.  I fancy myself a connoisseur of catheter implantations, and this was as painless and fast as possible.  In addition, the catheter was comfortable to wear.  And now I could go home.

But not so fast.  My blood pressure had risen to 221 over 87.  The hospital would not release me with such a high reading.  My nurse returned and gave me an intravenous infusion of a drug designed to bring down my pressure.  It didn’t work.  She then gave me an infusion of another drug with equally null results.  At this point, it was time for the nursing shifts to change.  She came in to say goodbye and to wish me luck.  “It’s your fault I’m still here,” I told her.  “I didn’t want to say goodbye to you.”  I wouldn’t have dared make a remark like that twenty years ago, for fear that the object of my admiration might think I was hitting on her.  No female would think so now, especially in my present condition.  “Well, I’m going home now,” she said, “and I hope you can too.”  Smiling, she patted me affectionately on the knee and left.   

I told her replacement, who was twice as old and half as attractive, that I hadn’t yet taken my evening hypertension pills.  She requisitioned them from the pharmacy and gave them to me.  An hour later my pressure had fallen to 181, still high but not so high as to incarcerate me for the night.  “That’s more like it,” she said, when she saw the results, and then she took my face in both her hands and gave it a firm, maternal squeeze.  Well, even an 80-year-old likes a bit of mothering in situations like that.  But even so, she might as well have patted me on the head and chucked me under the chin.  My career as a Lothario had ended almost as soon as it had begun.


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