There’s a knock on the door; you call out “Who is it?!?”
You can only hope you don’t hear “Tis your Favorite Nurse, here for a home visit”…
Editor’s note: you have found yourself in the thick of the epic, the one, the only, The Long Tale of COVID. If you need to catch up, you can find all the posts here. Enjoy!
“So, are you going to text Cami back and tell ’em, ‘Thanks, but no thanks’ to the extramarital activities that were proposed?”
“I don’t know! I don’t want to be rude, yet I don’t want any feelings to get hurt. I mean, you’ve been a ‘pretty girl’ most of your life, 1Nobody talks about that school portrait from 5th grade… how do y’all go about dealing with all those unwanted advances?”
“Well…”
“YOU GOTTA HELP ME! I’ve never been a pretty girl before!”
Not only had I finally made it home to My Beautiful Bride after the most involuntarily interesting COVID-cation the world had ever seen, but I had finally finished up telling her all about the one chapter of the story that remained unresolved: being hit on/picked up by my Urgent Care nurse, Nurse Cami. And now I was desperate for advice how to get out of this pickle that I got into on account of 1) being a good listener, and 2) “not knowing how to say ‘No’ in Spanish.”
“Ja, what they say is true,” my breathtaking female companion and mother of my children finally replied, “It’s not easy being nice and pretty. It’s a rare feat that’s nearly impossible to pull off.”
“Yes, yes…quite the conundrum: how does one exactly go about asking someone–literally–‘Could you kindly ----- off?’ And I do mean ‘kindly’…”
“So…how was your night of getting some solid, uninterrupted rest? Wasn’t it totally worth the $298 for you to get a head start on the battle with your COVID? Ain’t I just the best hubby?!?”
Fast forward to the following morning, and I was keen to know exactly just how much My Beautiful Bride had benefited from swapping places with me and staying in that hotel room that I ’bout became broke and homeless trying to score. You know, the one that I had cajoled her into crashing at so I could–completely coincidentally, by the way–maybe have enough solitude to finish my weekly blog post.
“You didn’t tell me it smelled like smoke.”
Wait, what?
“That’s because it didn’t! At least not when I was in there. Somebody must of snuck in there during the few hours neither of was there and took a cigarette break. Don’t worry though, I’m on this! I’ll call the manager straigtaway and compl–“
She held up her hand to cut off my convoluted stream-of-consciousness hypothesis.
“You had COVID, you idiot. I bet the walls could have been covered in fecal matter and you still wouldn’t have noticed. Remember how you told me you couldn’t taste your ill-advised Chick-Fil-A meal at all? Because you couldn’t smell worth sh*t.“
“Oh, right. I guess that’s a more likely explanation. So…on the bright side at least your sense of smell is going strong!”
The only reply that comment garnered was an icy stare. This was not going as well as I had hoped.
“Alrighty then. Well, how about sleep? Being close to the elevator didn’t bother me, but I of course had noise-cancelling headphones on.”
“Oh, the elevator wasn’t a problem…”
“That’s good to hear.”
“…the wedding reception that went long and strong until 2 or 3 in the morning on the other hand? Yeah, that was a problem. Let’s just say that it wasn’t one of those boring-ass white people weddings, either–and pardon me for being racist against your people.”
“What do you mean ‘your people‘?!?”
“Aw, give me a break, you’re as Caucasian as they come–for dat ass and doze lips–and you know it…”
“That’s true. But no unexpected visitors, right? Right? Right!”
“No, no unexpected visitors…but how were you so suspiciously confident that there wasn’t, hmmm?”
Apparently I paused too long before replying.
“Oh, dear Lord, please tell me you didn’t give Nurse Cami our home address…”
“Ah, finally! The wife is off to get some beauty rest at our expensive af hotel room, the girls are fast asleep in bed, and now, it’s time to finally get to word-smithing. Now, let’s see here…oh yeah, right, I was in the middle of trying to tie together a case of chronic athlete’s feet in with some Breaking Bad references…”
Rewind to the night before, and I was finally getting that “me-time” that I had been chasing in futility for the last 3 gawd-awful days. Nothing was going to stop me now. Not rain, not sleet, not snow, not amputated fee–
“BUZZ! BUZZ!“
I could feel my phone letting me know I had a text message. Indubitably ’twas My Beautiful Bride, thanking my profusely for her luxurious accommodations. But…that’s odd…she has a Google phone. Her messages only go to my phone…it’s only people with iPhones whose iMessages I can see on my Mac…why do I have a new iMessage notification on my Mac?
“Oh. Shirt,” I blurted out so loudly I almost woke the kiddos:
You’ve gotta be ----- kidding me, my dude. At the very least, wait until I get over having the plague before trying to meet up with me!
But maybe–just maybe–he’s truly this concerned with every patient that he interacts with. Or at least the ones that come into his Urgent Care, convinced that they’re dying of COVID-related skin-worms…
“BUZZ! BUZZ!“
Oh, jeez:
“Aww, hell, nah! Nope. Nope, nope, nope. You sir, are NO angel–and I ain’t got time for your late night ‘you up?’ come-ons.”
So, what did I do, you must be wondering? Well, I did what every pretty girl like me does in a situation like this.
I deleted his number, ghosted his ass, and did the one thing I had set out to do from the very beginning: finish my ----- blog post…
And that, my friends, is your cue to tip back that heavily-spiked eggnog of yours, as that is indeed the third and final context in which we have heard the term ‘ghost’ used!
Whew! Finally it’s all over–just in time for the holidays, no less!
Oh! That reminds me….
*rustles around noisily in his cheap Santa sack*
…I have something especially for you, Dear Reader. For having stuck it out with me on this epic journey, I have a Christmas gift that is all yours! For our Christmas Day edition of The Point of the Story this year, we’ll be releasing the bonus notes* for the Long Tale of COVID! An easy, loosely-structured read, covering various bits of trivia, behind-the-scenes look at all those stupid post titles I had to come up with, and Easter–or should I say ‘Christmas’?–Eggs that you may have overlooked.
I bet you just can’t wait for Christmas morning, now, can you?!?
*P.S. Reader Discretion Advised…
Content created on: 14/15 December 2022 (Weds/Thurs)
Footnotes & References:
Leave a Reply