Mary called me up. Mary the PTA president. Mary the Organizer. Mary…….the friend you want when the shit hits the fan.
“Vicki called. She’s been going to the doctor a lot and was wondering if you’d be able to take her to some of her appointments at St. Luke’s.”
Oh yes. Yes, I would love to do that for Vicki. Just tell me when and I’m there.
“Tuesdays. You’re the Tuesday Girl. I’ll call her and get the info and let you know.”
Tuesday arrived and I picked up my much thinner, very sick friend and helped her into my van. We chatted all the way there catching up on everything as she’d been housebound for awhile with treatments for ovarian cancer. When we got to the professional offices of St. Luke’s, I dropped her off in front.
“I’ll wait here for you while you park the car. They don’t want me going up alone.”
Okay. I’ll make it quick.
That is when I lost my friend. I dropped her off on the ground level, parked on the 2nd level, took a walkway over the dropoff area (huh, I don’t remember seeing that) and got completely lost. Where I was I had no idea and since I have no sense of direction and lay no m & m’s along the way to remember my path, I was screwed. And a cell phone? Well, Vicki and I had already talked about how neither of us had one of those new things and weren’t in any hurry to get one.
I wandered around. Oncology, I’d ask. Well, is she having chemo or radiation? What kind of cancer? Outpatient? Is she having blood drawn? Oh, try that building across the street.
Vicki? Tall, dark hair, talks to everybody? You’d like her as soon as you met her. Everybody does.
At one point I got so confused in a maze of hallways I ended up on the hospital side and thought I was going to cry.
Mary is going to kick my ass.
I left the building, walked next to a construction site where they had to halt the crane while I wandered through sans hardhat and eventually ended up right where I dropped her off.
There she was.
Oh geez, Vicki, I am so sorry. Have you been waiting long? I got lost. Do you know how many oncology departments there are in this place? Who does this kind of thing to their friend? I’m really sorry. You can yell at me. You could even fire me.
Vicki did none of those things. Instead she introduced me to one of her nurses and they both decided to wait there while I got the car and brought it around which that time I managed not to screw up.
Vicki kept me on as her chauffeur. We didn’t tell Mary or anybody else how I lost her on my first day of duty, our secret joke every Tuesday until she moved on.