Let me not bury the lede: Sheryl Ann came through surgery just fine.
Thanks to all of you for the good thoughts and, if you were so inclined, the prayers sent up, down, and over to this part of Long Island in New York—it’s way out there, as many of you know.
At check-in, I overheard a man tell one of the staffers, “You got a nice hospital here, I’m telling you the truth.”
That he felt compelled to qualify the remark both made it art and quintessentially New York.
At around 4 p.m., Arianna, one of the nurses, stopped by, asked and answered some questions, and then gave me her card before adding, “Call me if you need to, but I leave at seven and won’t be back for a week.” Molissa (that is the spelling), another nurse, competent and perky and from China with a Hispanic accent, asked, “When did you last pee?”
“About an hour ago,” I said. “Oh, you don’t mean me?”
“Husband?” she asked my sister.
“Brother. Ignore him.”
The anesthesiologist with the personality of microfiber came by about 40 minutes later.
“I’m Dr. Enez, I’ll be taking care of you,” he said, without any hint of irony.
Are we at Outback Steakhouse?
“Hi, my name is Enez, I’ll be taking care of you. Would you like a Bloomin' Onion to start things off or an epidural?”
“I put you to sleep, I wake you up, you won’t remember anything,” he said.
He asked my sister to take out her hearing aids and then asked her which ear had the better hearing.
She pointed to the ear to which he wasn’t speaking.
As I was leaving the hospital, after my sister was wheeled into surgery, I rode down in an elevator with a couple — I’m figuring in their early 80s — when the man, who was in a wheelchair and whose legs were painfully thin, asked, “How you doing today?”
He reminded me, both in sound and sight and condition of a dear friend who died over a year ago — a man I used to visit in a hospital.
“How am I doing?” I repeated. “Nothing forty-thousand dollars wouldn’t cure.”
“Forty thousand? Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
“My wife will write you a check. Honey, write him a check.”
Which is exactly what my friend would have said and how he would have said it.
His wife looked straight ahead and smiled like a person who didn’t feel like smiling and said, “Not today.”
Humanity In Anesthesiology
Sheryl Ann? I thought her name was Magill, but she called herself Nil and everyone knew her as Nancy?
Glad to know she's doing fine, whatever her name is.
Wait: you “ left the hospital as your sister was wheeled into surgery”? Team player. Tennessee Ernie Ford once guested on I love Lucy and somehow got lost on Long Island. And when he found his way back they discussed his trek and he said “it sure is.” And Lucy said “is what?” And he said: ”A Long Island.”