Rose
“Girl, you better get your head out of the clouds and focused on that catheter you need to give to Mr. Morris down the hall,” Nurse Tanya says.
Talk about killing your buzz.
And buzzing like a busy little bee is exactly how I’m feeling this morning.
And not just busy, but beyond happy.
The ride into work felt so much shorter than usual. The air certainly was fresher this morning. I had my window down and the stereo blasting. Even people at stoplights seemed to be smiling at me. Heck, I think I even heard birds singing. And now that I’m here I’m getting so much work done that I’ll surely get nominated for RN of the month, or at least I think I just might deserve it.
They say youth is wasted on the youth, but I’m trying my best to make that sound like an antiquated witticism that no longer applies.
At first I was leveraging the energy of my age by barely sleeping so I could do more and more work. But now the youthful exuberance that comes with my age is coming from another source.
Him.
I can’t believe one kiss has got me feeling this way. One. Little. Kiss.
He didn’t even try for seconds or bury his tongue down my throat.
No attempt at a boob grab, an ass slap, or anything ungentlemanly.
And that tells me one thing.
He’s in it for the long haul.
He’s not in a rush because he wants this to be right. And oh is it ever so right.
So right that I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to myself that I already had thoughts of when I get to come into this hospital as a patient.
A patient in a different wing.
The maternity ward.
If I told Nurse Mary it would sound so cliché. The small town girl who’s trying to make money in the city falls for the handsome and charming doctor. That right there would be enough.
But this doctor is also my neighbor and works on the same floor?
That’s got television drama made for prime time written all over it.
“So, when you get back from wrestling with Mr. Morris’s manhood you gonna tell me if you had another man’s penis in your hands last night.”
“Oh my god! Gross,” I say.
“What, penis too clinical for you? We’re nurses remember.”
“No, it’s just…no.”
“Come on, you’re spinning around the hall like Tinker Bell this morning. Touching everything with your magic wand and making it all better. Girl, you are on fire! And you’ve got that look in your eye that could only come from a night with a man like him.”
“Don’t kiss and tell, right?”
“So he kissed you! How was it? Wait. Then again I could have already guessed that. Get to the good part.”
“Good part? Isn’t that the great part?”
“Girl, when you’re my age everything is done on a timer. There are just good parts and better parts and if you’re lucky you’ll get a couple of better parts before your kids start screaming and the casserole burns.”
I can’t help but laugh. Nurse Tanya is a riot. Nurse Mary may be my best friend here at work, but Nurse Tanya isn’t exactly a distant second.
She talks about her evenings very openly, and very loudly, each and every morning in the break room.
She can make watching television, cooking green beans, or cleaning the tiles in the shower sound exciting. Last week she described how her husband surprised her while she was scrubbing the shower. Apparently she cleans naked when she’s using chemicals and stated “I must still have it because he pressed me against the tiles so hard I thought that we were dating all over again like twenty years ago.”
But that wasn’t even the funny part. She went on to describe how married life is all about compromise and in her case she took the hot surprise animalistic sex in exchange for having her face pressed against tiles, just inches from the tiles she’d just sprayed down with lemon fresh bleach. I could not stop laughing.
Nurses are used to a lot of sterilizing type smells, but nothing kills romance like the smell of cleaning supplies during a moment of intimacy.
At least that would be my guess.
But as funny and entertaining as she is I hope my life doesn’t quite turn out like hers. I mean she sure loves her kids and there seems to be a lot of excitement in her home, or maybe just a lot of embellishing the morning after, but the lack of romance seems like a bummer to me.
But when I look at Cristiano I can just tell how muscular he is underneath those clothes of his I just know that his blood pumps hot and hard through his veins. And his fitness level is certainly doing the same to me.
“When you get back from doing what you’ve gotta do you’re spilling the goods,” she says.
“No goods to spill,” I say. It has meaning in more ways than one, but hopefully not for long.
“Uh huh,” she says, completely not believing me.
I scurry down the hallway, or should I say spin around like Tinker Bell, ready to put my magic wand to the test again this morning.
Suddenly the strangest thought hits me.
All these big city girls are rushed for time and somewhat hardened to the pleasures of life, or the lack thereof. It suddenly makes me appreciate my small town roots, the ones I was both consciously and subconsciously trying to step away from.
Imagine if something really does happen between Cristiano and I and we somehow move to a small town and set up a family practice there together?
I’m crazy for thinking this after just one kiss, but the idea swirls around in my head as I make my way down the hall.
I wouldn’t choose a city as small as mine, but I would choose one small enough where there’s a backyard for kids to play in. A tree to sit under during the summer. And while I’m wishing maybe a space for a simple in-ground swimming pool. I laugh realizing I had to actually picture the swimming pool as in-ground. To many people there are no other kinds, but if you’re familiar enough with small towns as I am you know anything can function as a quote unquote swimming pool, during the hottest days of summer.
And that’s the dream right there. A couple kids, a dog, a little land…and my man.
I never understood why people wanted “revolutions.” By definition a revolution puts you back where you started. It’s one complete circle right?
But I’m as predictably irrational as anyone else aren’t I?
I left the small town for the big city, but now I’m already thinking about the wonderful family benefits it provided.
But just like a revolution has a high point before it returns to where it started, maybe I was the one that needed my high point.
And I’ve found it in him.