 |
| In the lobby looking up (450 Sutter Street) |
Everybody knows that 450 Sutter is the building downtown where all the docs in the world have offices. I had to get up early this morning and take Tom there for a certain procedure that you're supposed to have every five years once you turn 50.
When he checked in, the assistant asked who would be picking him up. Tom said my name and she wrote it down.
"What relation is she to you?"
"She’s my grandmother."
When the nurse opened the door and called Tom's name, he pointed to me and said, "That's her."
He then disappeared into the bowels of the operating room. I left 450 Sutter and walked around downtown for a couple of hours. I was staring at the huge screens in the lobby of the St. Francis Hotel when the nurse called and said Tom would be ready to go home in ten minutes. I raced back to the building. I jumped into the elevator and crossed by fingers that everything was all right.
When I burst into the waiting room he still hadn't come out, and they wouldn't even let me go back to see him. Sometimes he asks them not to let me go back to the recovery room because he's afraid I'll try to question him while he's still under the influence of the anesthesia––you know, things about his past. Apparently he had trouble finding his socks and that's what took him so long.
When he finally stumbled out and saw me he said, "Is Nixon still President?" I knew then that everything was all right, and it was. We celebrated at Crepes on Cole with the giant Florentine Crepe and house potatoes.
