Do You See What I See?

Last Monday my husband had cataract surgery.  It's his second time around, so he knew what to expect and wasn't all that nervous.  Still, in medical situations more than anywhere else he points out to anyone within earshot that I'm his husband.  The results have run the gamut of a rude Yeah, I know and then pointedly ignoring me (in return we filed a complaint and nixed that nurse practioner from any further contact with us) to Together fifteen years?  You could show us straight folks a thing or two.

When the post-op nurse came to retrieve me from the waiting room, I could tell she was at ease with the relationship.  Still, she was a woman of a certain age and accustomed to the traditions of marriage---which apparently includes a similar age among the two parties involved.

We were walking down past the numerous patients recovering in their curtained surroundings when she asked me: "Have you had cataract surgery?

I glanced over at her, my gray-blue eyes surely flashing just a little.  "No."

"Oh."

It was, of course, only her way to make her small talk seem both professional and personal, but I considered what she saw in me---perhaps a sexy sixty-something, but the question merely made me feel a fugly forty-five. 

For once my husband looked his age and a bit groggy.  He lay there listening to the nurse delineate all the dos and don'ts---a list she surely mumbles in her sleep, although her delivery at that moment was again striking that balance between professional and personal.

"Okay, then," she announced.  "You're free to go."

We all held our breath for a moment, not quite knowing what to expect from one another.  My husband slipped from the gurney and though steady enough his body language expressed an uncertainty.  Subconsciously I heard something---was it the nurse, saying take his hand---and so I did.  Hand holding comes naturally to some couples, and it's certainly lauded between men and women, but since it's not publicly permitted for us, it isn't a habit of ours outside the gayest of ghettos.

So there I was, gently holding my husband's hand as we paraded past the patients.  From their blurry perspective I was merely a good son, holding Daddy's hand, while the nurse walked ahead us, casting glances back at the married men following her.  I was starting to have an identity crisis.

The nurse smiled up at me when we reached the door:  "Perhaps we'll soon see you too for cataract surgery."

My husband snorted and I gave her a bristly smile back.  "I don't think so.  My vision is still nearly twenty-twenty."

"Oh.  Well, aren't you lucky."

Somewhere in the back of my head I could hear myself screaming at her I'm only forty-five years old, but my tight, upturned lips kept my thoughts to myself.

"Then I guess we won't see you two again," she continued as she opened the door.

We thanked her and turned to our audience looking back at us from the waiting room.  I dropped my husband's hand.  With a soft slap it hit his jeans, a signal to move forward.