In She Goes...

Yesterday morning, at about 6.15 am, we parked a few blocks away from the hospital (they charge a lot for parking) and walked through the dark streets, with the rain coming down fairly heavily. Within minutes of arrival, after signing away my rights to everything, I was taking my clothes off and putting on one of those ridiculous hospital gowns that close at the back and have poppers all over them that are supposed--and fail--to make them wearable without exposing one's bum.
The first of the nursing staff we met was Nurse Becky, whose responsible task was to lean over me, with her face close to mine, and ask me my name and my birth-date. And then she said, "And you are going to have a ......?" And she looked at me, smiling, and waited. "A pacemaker, " I said, eventually. This must have convinced her I was the right patient, and she passed me over to Henry, who had been fluttering around in the background. "I am a male nurse," he said, "But I came in too late to put my uniform on."
It seems that Henry also works as a flight attendant for Delta Airlines. "I do the hospital work for a giggle," he said, which I did not find encouraging. He took me through several forms to sign and started me on a drip--or at least put in the valve or shunt, or whatever they call it, so that sedatives, anti-biotics, and a saline solution, could be dripped into me. And then two burly figures appeared, dressed in their blue scrubs with their little blue caps over their hair, and wearing surgical masks.
 "This is Kay," said Henry, "And this is Sean. They'll be prepping you for the surgery." Sean spoke a few words and was obviously Russian--a typical Russian bear of a man. "Hey," I said, "How come a Russian has an Irish name?" "Long story," he growled, "My father is Russian, my mother is Greek." As if that explained his Irish name.
These two characters pushed me into the operating theatre, rolled me onto the operating table, and went to work sticking electrodes all over me, from my upper body to my calves. They shaved away a bit of hair below my right collar bone, where the "thing" was going to go in, and stuck two little pipes up my nostrils to provide oxygen. The heart monitor started beeping, and I could see that the rate was jumping around above and below forty. The nurse said to the surgeon, "Look at the monitor, Doctor." His reply was, "That's why he's here." They covered my face briefly with a couple of cloths--why I know not--and when they took them away, there was a cloth screen that prevented me from seeing where the action was going to take place. Then I had a terrible itch in my right thigh. "Please someone," I said, "please scratch my right thigh." and someone did.
And the next thing I knew was that I was on a gurney, being pushed by Kay and Sean into a lift and up to my room, where I was the sole occupant. Joan arrived shortly after, having seen the doctor. He had assured her that all had gone well--no complications, everything wired up, power on, and the pacemaker was working properly.