DATE 7 – THE HOSPITAL ONE
Updated: Feb 25, 2020
Hot, Irish Paddy, with whom I’ve been chatting for a couple of weeks, cancelled our much-anticipated date last week. To be fair, he had a pretty decent excuse: doctors had found clots in his lungs and he was rushed to St Mary’s for emergency, life-saving treatment.
He’s been keeping me up to speed on his progress but as it didn’t seem like he was getting out any time soon I thought, ‘why not have our first date in the hospital?’…
On Thursday, I tubed over to St Mary’s after work, took the lift up 8 floors, greeted the nurses, lathered myself in anti-bacterial handwash, steeled my nerves and strolled into the ward. Thankfully I recognised him lying on the bed with his sexy DVT flight socks on. Obviously he couldn’t get up to greet me so I just sidled awkwardly into the visitor’s chair next to the bed.
Weirdly enough, the brain adjusted pretty quickly and I found that I had normalised the situation within a few minutes of sitting in my visitor’s chair. Although, I will admit that I’ve never heard of a first date where a nurse interrupts your conversation to take future mate’s blood pressure and temperature and to put on some DVT boots.
Conversation was remarkably pleasant despite the groaning of his neighbour and the old man who kept hobbling past in his hospital robe pulling along his IV drip. We ended up talking for two hours and had a surprising amount in common, not including the penchant for weird first dates.
I left as soon as I noticed he was falling asleep. It wasn’t until I got to the tube that I realised I still don’t know how tall he is.
16 October 2016