I got an email from David this morning saying that he almost went to the hospital during the night because he was in so much pain.

I immediately called him and he told me to bring my coffee over and he’d tell me all about it.

This is not unusual. Most Saturday or Sunday mornings Liz, David and I have coffee together. When Lizzie isn’t here it’s usually just me and him.

When he described the night it was clear that he had passed a kidney stone and when that was over he was fine so we just chatted.

I mentioned that I was feeling sorry for dave because there were some pension problems that might result in tax penalties for him and I could tell that he’s really upset by it all. I said that I was trying to help him by calling people and asking them what he should do to minimize it.

“Why are you doing that? Let him figure it out himself.”

“I don’t want to kick him when he’s down.”

“Are you nuts? How is he down? He’s in Japan getting his dick sucked.  Poor dave, yeah he’s down”.

I didn’t want to talk about this any more so I changed the subject. Besides how do you explain to a chimp the color blue or that after 40 years dave being scared still touches me.

“I hope you didn’t take any aspirin last night. You were only supposed to take Tylenol.

“That was ‘before’ the procedure”.

“No it wasn’t. The guy specifically said that you weren’t to take any aspirin products for at least 48 hours.” I had to go and get the instructions that they gave him when they released him to prove it to him.

You could have knocked him over with a feather when he read them over.

I wasn’t a bit surprised that he didn’t remember any of it.

The whole time the male nurse was giving him instructions he was looking at his phone. He even started speaking to a passing woman while the guy was going over everything.

I actually had to yell at him to pay attention. “David the man is speaking to you. This is important.”

He pretended to listen then but he clearly didn’t because his reaction when he read over the instructions today showed it was all new to him.

“No alcohol for 24 hours? Glad I didn’t know that.”