Oh, let’s say about 15 years ago, I went through this Hypochondriacal phase in my life. Anxious all the time, chest pains, headaches…I was a real basket case. And the fact that I took NO meds of any kind didn’t help matters any. I swear, if I had gone to a mental practitioner at that point, I could’ve walked out of their offices with at least five prescriptions. I had issues.
So, one day Bobby calls me. He is still a great friend to this day, and he asked me to take him to Newark Airport, I think he was going to Vegas. We lived, and still both live, in New York City. I was not looking forward to the early evening traffic jams we were about to experience in and out of the city, but I was going to be driving his Mercedes Coupe, a beautiful car, and after all…anything for Bobby. Love the guy.
We had an uneventful trip out to Newark, probably talked about sex the whole way, and I pulled up to the Continental terminal to let him out. I pop out the driver’s side to hug him goodbye as a proper show of love and respect. As he pulls away after the hug he grabs my shoulders and says ” Listen, I love you. But you are making all your friends crazy. Take the car, RIGHT NOW, and drive yourself up to Hackensack Hospital and get yourself checked out. We can’t take this ‘my chest hurts’ and you checking your pulse all the time like you are a fuckin’ marathoner. Just do it, okay?”
“But, but, but……”
“No buts, drive up and say you have cardiac problems or some shit like that, do it. Goodbye, I’m going to get laid!”
I’m busted, but what he don’t know is…I have done this before, and I am a pro at it. But I do as he says. This is not this hypochondriacs first Rodeo!
I pull into the Emergency Room area, park in a Doctor’s spot, and walk in holding my chest with a concerned look on my face and say to the admitting nurse, “I am having chest pain.” I should have been nominated for an Oscar for this performance, I am so good!
The Nurse in Charge says out loud, “possible cardiac,” and hooks me up to some futuristic apparatus. A Doctor comes over and in mere minutes they know I am not having a heart attack, but because of the nature of the pain I am experiencing (I’m not), and because of my age, they decide to keep me for some tests. They nicely wheel me over to a quiet waiting area for patients, hook me up to an IV of I don’t know what, and I feel better already. A very large man, my age, in the hospital for the same symptoms I am having is next to me. I think we talked New York Giants Football for an hour, until they came to get him for further tests. We said goodbye and feel better, that sort of thing. Now I want to leave, but various Doctors keep sticking there heads into my curtained off area to ask questions and see how I am doing.
Then Doctor Morgenstern, Rhoda Morgenstern (yes, like the “Mary Tyler Moore Show chick), walks in. She is in her sixties, and has a sort of crazy, frizzy- afro hairdo. She is obviously of the Jewish persuasion and she is slightly scary and wild looking. She has a Doctorly looking white jacket on and the requisite stethoscope around her neck. She asks me how I am feeling, and how is the pain? We are doing small-talk, and the she pulls out a pair of latex gloves. More small-talk and now a tube of lube appears out of her pocket, and I witness her lube up TWO fingers as we talk more. She smiles at me.
“Turn on you side, please?”
“Why?”
“I am going to do a rectal exam”.
“Why?”
“Because you are of that age, and it’s what we do”.
“Are you sure? I am here for chest pains”?
“Trust me, I’m a Doctor!” I swear she said that!
So, looking back at her two lubed fingers, I got on my side. TWO. LUBED. FINGERS.
I swear to you, I am not being a macho heterosexual when I tell you about the pain that was about to happen.
BANG! She pops them in my ass, felt around, took them out just as harshly as they went in!
I am hanging off the table screaming “OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD!” My rectum feels like it was hit by a mortar. I am having trouble breathing! OH MY GOD, the pain! I am somehow scared to look at her.
In due time I look back at her. She is smiling. She looks at me like I am a pathetic sad clown.
“Well, you’re not having any chest pains anymore, are you?”
Did she just say that? “What?” was the best I could do.
And very Groucho-like, even holding the imaginary cigar to her mouth, she repeats “Well, you’re not having chest pains anymore, are you?”
I am in shock.
Uh, was I just raped by an old Jewish lady?
She disappeared. I told one Doctor about it, who laughed his ass off. Seriously laughed out loud while holding his stomach. He told some other Doctors, who made their way by to see that night to tell them the hysterical story about my traumatized sphincter! I was the star of the Emergency Room that night.
They kept me in the hospital that night in something called “Telemetry,” which listens and monitors heartbeats for hours, and let me go the next morning.
Nobody knew who Rhoda Morgenstern was. And nobody in ER fit the description that night.
I think I will stay out of Emergency Rooms for a while.
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