After a break up and a bout of binge drinking before a blood test, I found myself in a hospital gown at eight in the morning.
As I’m sitting awkwardly on the table waiting to be examined, a young blonde girl with a tight ponytail comes into the room. Immediately I’m self-conscious, and wonder what happened to the nice middle-aged Indian woman who had greeted me, and told me to undress.
I’m Nicole.
I introduce myself, and we get to know each other while she rubs jelly on my stomach.
We talk about where in town I live, and she mentions that she used to go to the diner a block from my house on a weekly basis as a kid, when visiting her grandparents. Her grandparents who happen to live two blocks from my house, and a street I’ve spent a good time of deal running on. I then find out she lives right near my old job.
God, we’ve probably run into each other a million times without knowing it.
And due to the half-asleep and gown-wearing nature of our meeting, all I can do is smile and gulp out this blushing and muttering that hopefully sounded like words.
Probably.
You don’t mind that I’m practicing on you do you?
No, not at all.
You have really nice looking insides.
I just stare at her. You don’t hear that compliment often, unless you know serial killers. And she was so adorably awkward about the whole thing, and she started to back peddle.
I meant I can see everything easily. I get a lot of old people in here. It’s a refreshing change.
On a clever day I could have just spun that into something, but we both laughed over it. We kept talking and I couldn’t tell if it was the awkwardness, the scrubs, or the fact that she saw my organs, but there was something there. Unfortunately due to the fact that I was weeks out of a three year relationship, I couldn’t bring myself to remotely come close to ask her out. After a long, lingering goodbye, I just walked away cursing myself.
The next day, I realized it was stupid and she could have been amazing, but she was nowhere to be found when I walked back into that radiology unit. I chalked it up to fate, and kept telling and retelling the story any and all my friends. She became the embodiment of missed opportunity and my white whale of what-if girls.
