“I
was embarrassed to ask,” he told me later.
“Why?”
I said, “A colonoscopy is a common procedure these days.”
“Well,
I never heard of it,” said Willard. “It sounded scary and if I asked a neighbor
I was sure word would get back to the Missus and she’d worry over it.”
“Gee,
Willard,” I said, “why didn’t you call me? I would have given you a ride.”
“Like
I said,” he replied, “you’ve got a big mouth.”
Willard
said the hospital refused to consider a taxi for the ride home. Few cab drivers
would come up to the second floor and sign the documentation as a designated
driver. Senior
Citizen organizations weren’t of any help. With the high price of gas these
days, few people could afford to ferry patients back and forth to their
appointments.
“So I called an
Escort Service,” said Willard.
“You didn't!” I said. "Did you know what they do?”
“I do now,” he
said, shaking his head.
Willard found the telephone number in the yellow pages under Personal Services, but put off
calling until the afternoon before his hospital appointment. He finally dialed
the number and a woman at Layla’s Carpet Cleaning and Escort Service picked up
after ten rings. He hemmed and hawed, as usual, and she probably guessed
Willard was an aging amateur who was naive in the ways of the world.
“Are
you ready for a woman who’ll knock your socks off?” said Layla.
Willard
told her he never takes his socks off in company.
“Do you have a safe driving record?” he asked.
“Oh,
c’mon you old goat,” Layla said.
“Well,”
said Willard, “safety is very important, as I used to tell my boys in the Scout
troop.
"Look,
honey," she said "I’m a certified carpet cleaner whose business is a
little slow this time of year. You’re dealing with a professional in every
sense of the word. You just forget your merit badges and remember you’re in
safe hands with Lady Layla.”
"I
guess you’ll be OK,” said Willard. “How much?"
“I
call my specialty the Ride Of Your Life,” said Layla. “It'll cost you thirteen
hundred dollars, and I’ll have you back home by Thursday."
Willard
gulped. "I just want a ride to the hospital at nine in the morning," he
cried. "And a ride back at noon."
"Anywhere
you want,” she said. “If you’re short on time, elevators are OK.”
“It’s
only up two floors,” he said.
“Just
don’t choose a busy office building,” she said, not listening..
“I
guess I’ll need you for about three hours,” Willard said.
“That time of day you can have my $99.95 Morning
Matinee Special.” She yawned loudly. "And I'll include my famous Feast of
Many Dishes."
"No
thanks," he said, "I can't eat anything after midnight."
Willard
gave me a blow by blow description of his trip to the hospital with Layla. She picked him up at his house the next
morning. When he saw the old pink Cadillac coming down the street, he asked his
wife to please look in the back hall for his umbrella, and he quickly ran out
the front door. Jumping into what looked like a super sized serving of pink
cotton candy, he landed next to a buxom lady whose scanty clothing caused
Willard to hope she'd had her pneumonia shot. As they drove away, Layla
chattered on about nothing in particular while she snapped chewing gum between
the words of her incomplete sentences.
Each
time the well endowed woman turned on to one street or another, she leaned back
to lift herself off the steering wheel and Willard tried to stare elsewhere. Layla
slowly made her way through traffic, waving to one man after another along
their route through downtown.
“I
cleaned his carpet real good,”
she said after a man coming out of the bank returned her wave with an
enthusiasm unbecoming a banker. Willard slid lower and lower in his seat.
"Why
the hospital?" asked Layla.
"I
guess what I need is too complicated for the doctor's office," he replied.
"It
ain't complicated, honey," she said. "You just let Layla-girl be your
nurse."
Willard
sincerely hoped she would stay in the waiting room and not talk to the medical
folks. "Don't worry," he said, "there'll be plenty of nurses for
this job."
"Kinky,"
she said.
At
the hospital Willard stayed a few steps ahead of Layla as they walked down the
hall to a renovated part of the building an undergraduate intern from the architectural
design school had named Gastro Intestinal Plaza. While the crowd of hospital
workers and visitors were dressed for a normal morning of work, Willard's
escort appeared to have borrowed her outfit from Tina Turner’s wardrobe.
They
checked in under a sign that read, "You Brought Your Colon To The Right Place!"
A look of shock crossed the matronly clerk's
face when Layla bent over to sign the required paper. Her halter just wasn’t up to the task.
“I
don’t have enough hands to hold the pen and everything,”
said Layla, as she unsuccessfully attempted to do so.
Willard
tried to cover his embarrassment by explaining Layla as “my cousin Esther from Omaha. I'm lucky she just happened to be in town this week."
"Working
a convention, no doubt," said the older woman through pursed lips.
A gentleman
in the waiting room who had to be eighty looked up as Willard and Layla were
finding a seat.
"Wow,”
he said. “All I could find was my nephew to drive me here."
Layla
turned to the old timer with a big smile and said, "I'm available this
afternoon, my man."
"Do
you give an AARP discount?" he said. "I'm on a fixed income.”
Layla
put her palms on her thighs and slid them up the front of her body. "I
have a very sliding scale," she
said with lascivious wink.
Willard
said at that point he'd had enough. He grabbed Layla's arm and pulled her down to
sit beside him and told her to please behave herself. By now Layla realized the
obvious. Willard would not be a big tipper.
The
procedure went well, as far as Willard could tell. One minute they were rolling
him over on the gurney and the next thing he remembered the nurse was telling Layla
he should not engage in any strenuous activity for the rest of the day.
"I
don't give refunds," she answered.
When
Willard dressed and found his way back to the family waiting area, he found Layla
getting a signature on a carpet cleaning job from a red-faced hospital
administrator. She practically hung on the man, whispering words in his ear he
probably hadn’t heard from most of the hospital’s independent contractors.
“It’s
those little personal touches,” she told Willard as they left the hospital,
“that always close the sale.”
"I
was pretty woozy," he told me later, "when that Layla woman brought
me home. The Missus came out on the porch when the pink Cadillac pulled in the
driveway. I don't think she ever imagined I'd come home pot-eyed and be dragged
up the steps by a show girl."
"How
did you explain it?" I said.
"I
didn't explain nothin'," he said. "Layla gave her the meds we must
have picked up on the way home. She told my wife she'd found me wandering
around the drug store, asking for Winston Churchill."
"That's
a believable story," I said.
"Didn't
work," said Willard. "The hospital had already called to ask if my
wife was a rock musician or I'd gone off with the wrong driver."
"Uh-oh,"
I said. "You could have avoided all that trouble if you'd simply asked me
to drive you."
"I
know," he said, looking off in the distance and smiling. "But I would
have missed the Feast of Many Dishes ... even though I can't remember any of
them."
copyright, 2012 David Griffin
The Windswept Press
Murrells Inlet, South Carolina
www.windsweptpress.com
