Hot Diggity

Leah was looking forward to doing her “volunteer gig” at her hospital’s booth for the town’s Fourth of July fair. It was a chance for a meet-and-greet with neighbors, friends, townsfolk and former patients and to catch up with family milestones and scuttlebutt around town. More than that was the satisfaction of doing health screenings on the willing and leaving them with a few health tips. If someone needed a referral, she could recommend ones she regarded highly.

She’d been an acute care nurse for five years now, ever since the divorce, working in the ER and the new unit for head trauma. Just recently she’d completed evening and weekend classes needed to meet requirements for licensed physician assistant or PA, having passed the boards two weeks ago. Her hard work had paid off, finally.

Ian was there when she arrived. She helped him set up the tables, chairs, signs and medical equipment for doing vitals. Leah worked alongside Ian, a trauma physician in her unit. They hit it off from day one. He was gay (“Damn my luck!” she’d say to friends ad nauseum).

The acute care team worked together in a smooth and fluid flow she’d never known before. She loved it, and loved the adrenaline rush of moving along in sync while cracking rapid-fire jokes and quips as hands threaded tubes and reached for syringes.

Around noon, a small group of hospital co-workers stopped by at the booth just to say hello. After they left, Ian “ordered” her to get some lunch, that he’d cover. Leah wasn’t hungry, yet decided to take a break anyway and go for a walk down the fairway and side-aisles with all the stands, booths, tents of all sizes and entertainment arenas with bleachers. She took in the smell of grilled kilbasa wafting her way and could hear “Your Cheatin’ Heart” crooned by a Country band at the far end of the grounds.

She was about to turn back when she spotted a digital sign informing passersby that the hot dog eating contest would start in three minutes. noting it was a fundraiser for donations to the Diabetes Foundation.

Wandering inside out of morbid curiosity, Leah looked up at a stage of eight adult men and one woman standing along a line of tables the length of the stage, and on the tables appeared to be hot dogs in buns stacked in holders of some sort and multiple glasses and a water pitcher in front of each contestant. A few officious-looking old men stood behind them, the timers and judges no doubt. Off to the left beside the stage were two paramedics.

It was time. A whistle sounded once for the contestants to stand at the ready and the second whistle was the signal to begin.

The engorgement was off to a throat-cramming start. Some of them were breaking their hot dogs in half for easier chewing and swallowing and some took their dog-gulps with water-drenched buns, or separately, to ease the esaphageal transmission. The time limit was three minutes.

Leah felt stomach-sick watching this and, about to turn to leave, she spotted a contestant choking and clutching his throat. Her training kicked in and propelled her forward and up the stage steps to the choker. The judges were screaming and flailing arms to stop the contest. Leah reached the choker first, the paramedics close behind.

In one fluid motion she positioned herself behind the man and thrusted her joined fists into his diaphragm three times before turning him around and pounding her open hand between his shoulder blades. The hot dog bun flew out of his mouth and into the crowd. When the spectators caught on to what happened, they burst into applause. Her first impulse was to duck under the table in embarrassment.

Before she could make a quick exit, Leah recognized her “patient.”

It was her ex, Jake, she’d Heimlich-ed her ex, looking very un-Jake-like with head shaved, slimmer torso and a beard he’d never grown before. He turned to her after getting some relief from his coughing fit. His eyes spun out of their orbital sockets on recognizing Leah, his lungs definitely unobstructed as he shouted “Leah! Leah, you saved my life!” loud enough to be heard across the Ohio River. He hugged her so hard she thought her chest would cave and she’d need a tracheotomy from the paramedics standing by.

Jake was the square-jawed, cleft-chin high school hunk. On a full football scholarship to college, he managed to flunk out his sophomore year. The tired old story – keg parties didn’t have obligatory breaks for class attendance and studying. His undoing was himself, his doing was also himself.

So it was back home with Mom and Dad, jobless for months while nesting in the couch and bed. His father leaned his 280 pounds on him when asking that he join his real estate firm as a salesman. Jake agreed though unenthusiastically. His natural charm and proclivity for bullshitting made him a quick-study for the art of the sales pitch. In no time he was making enough money to give an airlift off the couch with his fledgling sales wings.

Leah and Jack married after six months of dating, she 28 and he 32. Jack wooed her relentlessly. “Who could resist this Sir Lancelot”, she’d say to friends as if the helpless swooning damsel. Not that she didn’t have her doubts, but she did her level-best to squash them when they popped up in her clouded mind. “Acute Lovish Lubbishness,” she later called it.

The beginning of the end was money: Jake’s commissions started slipping fast soon after they purchased a home. He shrugged it off, showing little concern. So now Leah felt she had to pick up the slack and do extra nursing shifts and weekends to cover the mortgage and other bills.

First flashpoint. One Sunday evening, exhausted after a long work weekend, Leah found a large credit bill on her card for a John Deere tractor lawn mower with a tow wagon. Jake never asked her. (He’d already maxed out two of his own.) He never answered the question about asking her, but did try to justify it by saying, “We need it, it’s not for me, it’s for us.”

Second flashpoint. Kids. Leah wanted them. Pre-nuptial Jake wanted them, then changed his mind -- and no going back. So, with this subject no longer negotiable, she pleaded with him to have a vasectomy so she’d be able to stop using birth-control pills with their ill effects on her. "Oh no," his considered response, "won't get me to have major surgery on my family jewels.”

“Hey, big legendary high school football hero, you’re saying a miniscule tug and tie-off of the vas differens on your balls is too much for you?” was Leah’s taunt. It didn'lt work nor the taunts that followed.

Matters worse, condoms were out of the question because he didn’t like them and intercourse wasn’t the same (little did he know couplings would drop to zero thereafter).

With that, Leah’s thoughts turned to a legal exit. Telling her dear Irish-Catholic mother would send her into episodes of hyperventilation and a headlong rush to extra rosaries and novenas. She had to leave out the "D word." To soften the news a bit, she emailed her a half-serious poem, the last stanza reading, To rust gone my trust, nerves plucked to frayed wires buzzing, my mind snarled in hairballs of anger and bewilderment”. (Mom always said she had the touch of the poet).

Arguments got more heated. Jake never laid a hand on her nor would he even think of it in his worst fits for he knew her cop father taught her martial arts and had her practice on her two older athlete brothers. That not enough, her dad would bring a “world of hurtin’ on him” (his overused Army phrase) if Jake mistreated her in any way.

In one milder dispute, Jake exclaimed, “Leah, what happened to you? You were always level-headed, rational and agreeable.”

“Oh, that Leah,” she screamed, ‘Well, this is this Leah!”

Third flashpoint. Jack’s denied infidelities. Leah picked up the scent of another perfume on not one but three of his dress shirts in the laundry basket. No smoking gun, no trail of evidence, not necessary.

On her return to the fair tent, Leah tried to regain her composure. Couldn’t fool Ian, though.

“Leah, what’s up, this couldn’t be the unshakeable Leah who treats gunshot wounds in the ER with nary a rippling nerve.” She managed to raise a half-smile at that.

“I’ll talk about it later over a beer, Ian.” And they did. And it was a release and some relief.

Two days later a bouquet of flowers appeared at her apartment door. Just home from work, she picked them up and placed them on the kitchen table, noticing a note attached. She decided to shower and pour a glass of wine first before opening. The flowers were yellow roses, her favorite – Oh God, she thought, not many people knew that.

The note read, I owe you big time, Leah, you saved my life. No coincidence that you were there, you of all people. A sign? Please let me thank you by treating you for dinner at Eton on the River. No strings attached. Regards Jake.

Knowing it was against her better judgment, she agreed when he texted her next day, And every day up until the dinner, she thought about ways of getting out of it. She tried to assure herself that this Jake was a different Jake. Some leopards can lose their spots after all, can't they?

Jake was already there waiting in the reception area. Leah wore a dress for the occasion. He was dressed to the nines in jacket and necktie, playing the perfect gentleman, even pulled out her chair. (Didn’t even do that on our first date, she mused.) He ordered her favorite wine, Pinot Noir and he had Scotch on the rocks. Every entrée on the menu amounted to a day’s pay. Leah gulped down her first and second glass of wine more to rewind than to unwind.

She noticed he was wearing a wedding ban, theirs, on his ring finger. She had to ask.

“Well, umm, don’t know, I guess it’s a sentimental thing,” his vague reply.

Desperately craving small talk while waiting for their order, they gave brief hesitant updates. Jake’s father had a stroke, leaving him to take over the business temporarily, now permanently. Bottom line, not encouraging. Leah offered that she was doing well in her career and absolutely loved her work. Family was doing fine, she offered, though they’d still be doing fine if they weren’t.

Leah ate very little and nervously waited for Jake to finish. No, she didn’t want dessert and brandy. After he paid the tab and as they were walking to the door, he whispered that he’d love to see her “new digs.”

Leah snapped back in a rushed whisper, “Oh, I’d be happy to text you photos of my digs, Jake.”.

Weeks passed. Jake kept sending texts repeating how much he’d enjoyed the dinner together and how he wanted to do more to repay his debt of gratitude and, he had to admit, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

That was it, enough! Leah knew she had to end the “Jake thing’ once and for all. She ruled out an in-person meeting. Too messy and “stressy.” So it would be an email putting it to him straight, pulling no punches. No other way. She’d try to soften it a little and do her best to dispense with the acid sarcasm nipping at her keyboard fingertips.

Email: Dearest Jake. I’m really the one who should thank you for getting me to see the flaming arrow of sunlight coming through the dense column of trees. All said and done, I wish you well, no hard feelings.

Alas, my ex, it’s time to set the record straight. Had I known the choker was you, truth be told , I would have stepped aside for the paramedics to take over. They were equally trained for such emergencies. Now that I think of it, I’d have pounded on your back a lot harder and re-inserted the wet bun whence it came.

Oh yes, the ring. Bumped into a friend of yours now living out there in Royalston also. He said you had a “very private wedding” there three years ago, which he hadn’t attended. It must be just rumor and nothing else, Jake, for I’m sure you would have mentioned it at the restaurant.

With that out of the way, I see it as perfectly fitting to express my deep gratitude and appreciation for giving me ample reason to end our relationship and marriage thereby giving me the gift of a guiltless divorce. Your absence from my life freed me to complete my courses and further my professional career. I’m now a licensed Physician’s Assistant.

In closing, I’d be remiss not to advise you, Jake, that you would do well to work more on your salesmanship and marketing skills. The problem may not be the economy, the market or your firm’s ill fortune, for it could very well be that you are the picture-window glass that people see through, but like some unsuspecting stray birds, fly into it, stunned. Some don't recover, some do -- get up and fly away.

My very best, Leah