I'm through bein' cool

Something small and strange yet rather wonderful happened last night.

I have been a virtual reading machine as of late. Apparently, that’s what happens now that I’ve made a habit of sleeping sitting upright in chairs in strange hospital rooms. I equip myself with a book in my hands, headphones with music in my ears, and drift in and out of fitful moments of sleep. A quick review of the past two weeks tells me that I’ve spent more than 4 days reading the same paragraph in the same book. I’d tell you what book the paragraph is in, but … I uh … I don’t remember the title … or the subject matter, honestly. CLEARLY being a reading machine has NOTHING to do with retention or comprehension.

But no, the "strange and wonderful" had nothing to do with the reading.

I have three different personal music devices that provide me with a portable soundtrack. I bring all three with me pretty much everywhere I go, realizing that ONE will likely require recharging at some point, and then I’ll just move over to the other device.

I was sitting in “my” chair late last night (actually it was very early this morning), when a surgeon I’ve befriended peaked in to see if I needed anything. I’ve become very well-known in these hallways – I’m “Cookie Niece”, “Bread and Jammers”, “the FMD gal”, and – my personal favorite – “Brownie Babe”. This surgeon actually knows me by name and we walked down to the café for a 2:20am tea break. We talked about everything but his job and my reasons for being there (turns out that avoidance is rampant all over places like hospitals in the still of the night) … and then he asked what I was listening to.

“Oh – just uhhhh a bunch of 80’s stuff,” I said. What I was thinking was geez … this is Stanford freakin’ Hospital. I SHOULD be listening to Bach or some oratorio or something befitting the location. “Yeah – like what?” he asked. I felt myself blushing a bit … “ummmm … Oingo Boingo, Depeche Mode, Talking Heads. When ya’ ducked in to say howdy, Devo was playing ‘Through Being Cool’.”

“No foolin’!” he said and, ‘tho it was very early in the morning, he suddenly seemed far more awake. We talked about music for the next 15 maybe 20 minutes while he recovered from a surgery session that I learned had gone into double-overtime. In that time, he went from a brilliant surgeon who had just spent more than 3 hours working on the interior of a patient … to just some guy I could have been friends with in my high school days. We’d spent our free time on weekends at some of the same places and, while our paths hadn’t crossed, we had a LOT of the same memories of a LOT of the same spots.

When we finally stood up to return to our posts – his to sleep for a bit in the employee lounge, me in “my” chair – he said “You know … I’ve been watching your family for more than a week now. I’m pretty impressed at how all of you are handling this. I’ve seen families REALLY tear each other apart, at a time when they can least afford it. And – specific to you – I really respect the tough decisions you’ve made. I hope you have a really good support system because it seems to me you’re taking care of everyone else pretty well, and I think you deserve the same care.”

For whatever reason, hearing this guy say this to me - recognizing he didn’t really know me at all but saw a LOT of families dealing with what we were TRYING to deal with - I suddenly felt pretty damn cool.

“Time to clean some house. Be a man or a mouse. Waste those who make it tough to get around.”