nnie drives me to Danbury Hospital on the morning of the day Dr. Glodt is to perform my prostate trans-urethral resection, or TURP, as the doc and his battery of nurses and office workers familiarly refer to it. I have already been to the hospital once to discuss with the anesthetist my preferred manner of being knocked out during the dirty deed. The anesthetist and I have decided jointly on regular old ether, since the last time I had surgery (for a hernia) they gave me a spinal, and I had a headache for a month afterward.

I am at the hospital at 8 A.M., and surgery today is scheduled for 11. A nurse directs me into a booth to change into one of their smocks that ties in the back, but covers the offending frontal part, then an orderly transfers me onto a gurney and transports me down a few halls and into an elevator before depositing me in a small empty room where I am left alone to look up and stare at the ceiling. After awhile, another nurse enters, and gives me a shot of something in the arm, a sedative, I presume, to relax me before they wheel me into the O.R., and pump in the heavy stuff.

"Hey, how ya doin, young fella?" It's Dr. Glodt, cheery and pink, who pops in briefly to peer down at the old guy through owl glasses on his way to wash up, or whatever he will be doing during the next hour before he starts reaming me out. I'd like to tell him to knock off the condescension, but I'm afraid he might take offense and cut off my best friend during the operation.

A bit later I meet the O.R. anaestheologist, not the nice lady I met before who sat behind her desk and agreed with me that I shouldn't have a spinal. This new person, whom I think of as the field anaestheologist, draws a chair up beside the gurney, opening a notebook. She is wearing a sari and introduces herself as Dr. Rabindrinath. She speaks with an accent that sounds Indian to me, but she could be a Burmese, a Pakistani, an Indonesian, a Tibetan, a Bangladeshan, who knows? Anyway, I think I am savvy enough from my past international business dealings with Hindus from the eastern sub-continent part of the world to know what the proper manner of greeting is. (After all she will be responsible for keeping me breathing during the next hour or so). I put my hands together, as if in a prayer, proffering a little smug smile, and say, "Namaste."

Wrong. The lady is a muslim, and informs me in a singsong that still sounds like a Hindi accent to me that she is the sworn enemy of Hindus, and one should never say "Namaste" to a muslim.

I hope you won't take it personally when we get in the operating room," I say, good humoredly, of course.

"Never say Namaste to a muslim," she reiterates.

At the appointed hour, they wheel me in, and Dr. Glodt whom I recognize by his voice but not by his face, which is covered in a mask, takes a peak between my legs. Isn't it about time for the anesthesia to take over? I do note that there are three or four nurses, also in masks, and two other male doctors standing alongside. I have never met either of the other doctors, but I know that I will be getting to know their names better a month from now when their supplementary bills arrive in my mail. I suppose they are like co-pilots. If something happens to Glodt during the actual reaming, one or both of them will step in and finish the job.

"Mr. Brock! Mr. Brock! How are you feeling? Mr. Brock! Do you want to wake up?"

I was just beginning to wonder what was going to happen next, and the operation is over. I am alive. Everything is over. One could feel better, but one is conscious.

I am amazed that the nurse in the recovery room is so interested in me, asking me to spell my name, inquiring how old I am, and what day of the week it is. Of course, I know that she is simply encouraging me to clean out the rubble in this aging citadel that I inhabit, to get it back in spanking clean order again. Talking, becoming conscious, in effect, talking death down, is what it's all about at this point, and usually it goes well. Every gurney in the room, of which there are perhaps 10, is hovered over by an individual nurse, who stands by to call for help, or whatever, in case that old man with the scythe whom I have glimpsed in a distant field from time to time seems to be cutting too close.

"Come on, Mr. Guglielmo. Don't go to sleep. Stay awake. Your daughter is here. She wants to say hello. Mr. Guglielmo! We need oxygen over here, please!" You can tell by the tone of her voice that the nurse in charge of Mr. Guglielmo is on the verge of screaming.

"How's Mr. Guglielmo doing?" I say to my nurse, who is holding my hand, and dripping water from ice cubes in a cheesecloth over my lips.

"Oh, he's fine. He's fine," says my nurse. "Madeline! For Christ sake, get over here!" she hollers.

"What? What? What's up?" I mutter, trying to push the ice away.

My nurse pats my hand. "No, no, nothing. The gentleman nearby has been in surgery for quite awhile."

"I'm all right?"

"You're fine."

"Good."

"Meanwhile, tell me what you do."

"I don't do anything. I'm retired."

"Really? You don't look old enough to be retired." She is still holding my hand, and her nice crisp white uniformed hip is pressed against my thigh. It probably helps to take some weight off her feet to lean against the gurney. You wouldn't believe that you could experience the first stages of an erection under such circumstances.

She is an angel in white. "How would you like to go away for a week-end sometime to a tropical isle?" I venture.

"Oh, oh," she says, "You're fine. You're recovered."

"You've saved my life. I'd like to do something for you."

"Here's your ride upstairs," she says, already giving my gurney a little shove out of its lined up position.

"I'm going now?"

"To a nice comfy bed."

"What's your name? I don't know your name." But I think she has run over to Mr. Guglielmo's side. I can't turn my head much on the gurney.

A few moments later I arrive by elevator to the fifth floor, and they park me along the edge of a corridor. For the first time I notice that wheeling alongside of me are what look like two cloak stands, one with a bottle containing a liquid (glucose) that is dripping into my veins (arteries?), and the other a tube that runs from under the sheet over my legs into a container. I know where the tube originates, right up the old frontal pipe that presumably has a larger diameter now than a few hours ago. I might add that it hurts just as much as when the pipe was smaller.

It would be nice now to get into a real bed. Nobody is hovering over me, so I can assume that I am not about to die, but on the other hand, it is for that very reason that the administrative traffic in the hall is able to ignore me. No one hears me when I call out to them, so at last I reach out with my hand to get the attention of a nurse.

"You son of a bitch! Don't you touch me! Don't you ever dare put your hands on my body again!" I am able to make out that I have put my hand somewhere on the body of a short, but very fat and very dark-skinned lady, a nurse's aide of some kind, who looks as angry as a Rwandan warrior about to seek revenge for some massacre perpetrated upon her or her family. She is carrying a bedpan, and for a moment I am fearful she is going to dump its contents onto me.

"I was just hoping I might get into a bed?"

"Don't you ever -

" "I was trying to get your attention!"

"You'll be in a bed when it's ready!" She hefts her head in the air, and stalks off down the hall. "Smart-ass," she throws back at me.

A bed is finally made available. They hoist me into it gingerly so as not to disconnect any of the tubes going in and coming out. It is merciful, and despite the racket from my room-mate's television set tuned to some interview show guesting six transvestites all shouting at one another, I quickly fall off to sleep.

Bright and early the next morning, that is, at 6 o'clock, I am awakened by a nurse's aide who arrives bearing several kinds of juices on a tray, and some toast and tea. I don't feel like eating, but it's there. I drink some of the juice, and nibble on a piece of toast before falling back off to sleep. The sedatives are still having their effect. In the middle of the morning I wake up again. My roommate has guests. There is a wife apparently, a woman of about 65, which would be about the same age as the patient who I can look over and see in the bed next to mine. He is white-haired, with cheeks flushed pink, and with a jolly demeanor. I wonder if I am looking at a mirror image of myself. There is also a younger woman, the patient's daughter, I would suppose, and she seems to be in charge of two small children, grandchildren of the patient, a boy of about five and a girl of about six. Their faces just about reach up to the edge of the bed where their grandfather lies, beaming down at them. They are uncomfortable in this hospital, seeing their grandfather lying in a bed, just his white head sticking out from underneath the sheets. But they are well-behaved. They withdraw to two chairs, and sit, occasionally slapping at one another in a teasing way when they think nobody is looking. They can't wait to get out of here. I don't blame them. I can't wait myself.

Kisses good-bye, and promises to return tomorrow, they back out, nodding at me in a timorous manner, as if to apologize for their presence.

"Bye, bye," says my roommate. He turns to me after they are out the door. "My wife and daughter, and my grandchildren," he says. Which I had already figured out. His name is Jake Mandell, and he's been in for triple by-pass heart surgery, which was accomplished two days before, and he is recovering well. He'll be going home in a day or so.

We get to talking. I tell Jake that I had a daughter once. She died young with cancer. I don't have any grandchildren. He offers me his sympathy.

"It was tough," I reply. "But that was a while ago."

Jake tells me that he never had any trouble with his heart until two weeks ago when he was stricken, exactly one month to the day, he says, after retiring from 40 years as a tool and die maker.

"I shoulda stayed working," he says. "Well, you can't work forever. It's time to begin enjoying life."

I am curious as to what he has in mind, and he seems momentarily bewildered. "I don't really know what to do," he says. He laughs. "It doesn't make any difference, really, but I think my wife would like to do something." He lies silent for awhile. "Israel," he says at last. "I'm Jewish. I'd like to visit Israel."

"You should," I volunteer.

"Where are you from?" he asks.

"Upstate New York, originally," I reply.

"No, I mean, your parents. Or your grandparents."

"Oh. Well, I'm kind of a mongrel. English, German, French. I spent a year in France once."

"Wow," he says. "How did you find time for that?"

"I did it when I first got out of college."

"I didn't go to college," he says, "but I should have done some traveling, I don't know, somewhere, when I had the chance."

"Well, you have the chance now."

"That's right," he says.

"You've got that to look forward to."

"That's true," he says. He chuckles. "Before it's too late."

"Exactly," I say. "Time marches on."

"Like in the old newsreels."

"Exactly."

Dr. Glodt drops by after breakfast. On his bill, after the operation there will be listed a stout three figure item for a post-op consultation. "How you feelin', young fella?"

"Feeling fine, Doc. My pecker hurts."

Dr. Glodt is surprised to hear someone from Fairfield County speak this way, and chuckles uneasily. "Well, you'll be fine. The operation went real well."

"All reamed out, are we?"

He chuckles again. "Yup. Like new again."

"When does the tube come out?"

"Oh, tomorrow probably."

"That oughtta be fun."

"No prob. We puncture the balloon. Pull it out, with the tube. Just takes a second."

"Balloon?"

"Can't you tell? There's a little balloon in your bladder to keep it expanded. We'll pop it, then it'll come out. He says "pop it" like you might explain to a little child whose balloon is stuck in a tree.

"Wonderful."

"Heh, heh. You won't mind. You'll see."

I know he's lying. I'll mind like hell, but what can I do? He's the doctor.

"I'll drop by tomorrow morning. Probably take it out then."

Oh, good. I can look forward to a bill for a second "procedure."

After he leaves it is easy enough to fall off to sleep. Later in the day, I am awakened by my wife Annie who enters quietly so as not to disturb me. Funny, still groggy, I can sense her presence even before I have opened my eyes. Maybe it's the perfume or make-up she's wearing. Or maybe the fragrance from the armful of flowers she's carrying.

I'm so glad to see her. I only realize how much she means to me now that she's here, and everything has gone well, and we're together again. We should be Jewish, we'd go to Israel together.

Annie has brought me something to read, a book of poems by my favorite poet, Robert Frost, favorite for two reasons: one) he's one of the few 20th century poets whom I have ever been able to understand, and two) I met him once quite awhile ago, certainly before President Kennedy's inauguration, when I spent a couple of weeks at the Breadloaf Writers Conference where he was in residence at the time. Annie and I met each other there. We were in our twenties. Robert Frost was sitting in a chair at one end of a room, and about a dozen of us young aspiring poets were allowed to approach him one at a time, as if meeting a store Santa Claus, to shake his hand. It was an honor.

"How's the little Prince?" Annie asks, being funny.

"Well, he's got a tube down his throat, and a balloon pumped up inside, but other than that, he seems to be okay."

"That's the most important thing," she says.

She informs me that there is a winter blizzard raging out side, and she wasn't sure she would be able to get to the hospital in the deep snow. Actually, looking now out our hospital room picture window I can see the gale outside. I hadn't noticed it.

"You shouldn't have come," I say. "Call me on the phone later in the day."

"Let's go away somewhere when you get out of here," she says.

"Oh, yes," I say quickly, surprisingly moved by the suggestion.

"You think of where you'd like to go," she says.

I nod at her, and find myself tending to drift off to sleep again. I pull myself back awake. "I feel lousy, Annie," I say.

"You cheer up," she says, patting my hand. "You'll feel better tomorrow."

We're quiet for a moment. I wonder if I'll feel better tomorrow. I just don't mean my pecker. "You better get going before you get snowed in," I say.

She sighs. "You're right. It's not getting any better."

"Call me when you get home."

"Okay." She kisses me lightly on the lips. "Relax. Take it easy."

"I will. Thanks for coming. Thanks for the flowers."

She picks them up from the side table where she had put them down. "I'll get somebody to put them in a vase."

"Watch out for the Rwandan warrior."

She gives me a quizzical look, but decides to let it pass. She gives me a little wave, and lets herself out the half open door.

After she has gone, I open the Robert Frost Collected Works she has brought, and leafing through, turn to some familiar and favorite lines, particularly appropriate, it seems to me, for a wintry snowy night, like tonight:

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see my stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow. . .
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Still under some sedation, it is easy to let the book fall onto my chest. The remainder of the day passes, I'm not aware of it. When I wake up again, it is night-time. A nurse, not my nemesis, is tucking me in for the night, and Jake Mandell is snoring lightly next to me. My nurse looks at the Robert Frost book, and puts it on the night table.

"You like poetry?" she asks.

"I used to write poems once."

"I write poems," she says. "I sold one to the American Poetry Review."

"Stick with it," I say. You'll be glad."

"Oh, I will," she says. "Don't you write poems any more?"

"Oh, no. It's too late now."

"You shouldn't say that," she says. "It's never too late."

I can feel myself about to drop off to sleep. Maybe my nurse will continue to write poems all her life. I can't remember any more when I gave it up.

Sometime during the middle of the night, I am vaguely aware of a commotion in the room. The light over Jake Mandell's bed has been turned on. There are a couple of male orderlies with a gurney, and some nurses. I don't know how many. Much murmuring, but with intensity.

"Hello," I call out. But nobody answers. They wrestle Jake Mandell onto the gurney, and with much rustling of starched nurse's uniforms and a sucking sound of white sneakers on the vinyl floor, they roll him out the door.

"Mary, get over here with the oxygen." Jake Mandell's bed is empty. A male orderly ducks his head back in the doorway to turn out the light on Jake Mandell's half of the room.

"Hello," I say again.

"Hello," the orderly answers back, and snaps off the light, and disappears. Perhaps I am dreaming. I seem to be at a rather large party all of a sudden. It is formal, I think, and there are people waltzing, like in one of those movies that Robert Taylor might have appeared in with Greta Garbo, although I don't recognize either of them, or anybody else specifically. In fact, I don't know anybody at the party, and I am wondering why, indeed, I am even there. Annie is with me, and we stand aside, possibly we are talking, although I am not aware of us saying anything of any great substance.

After awhile, the people at the party seem to be outside the building, climbing into the back of a van of some kind through two open doors. As the van departs, with the doors still open and swinging slightly, the people are all looking back, and waving good-bye, and I find myself waving back at them, feeling a little foolish, however, because I hadn't gotten to know any of them. I know I will never see any of them again, and I turn away, profoundly sad for some reason. In fact, I am crying. Annie seems to have disappeared, and I wake up then, and there is sunlight beaming across Jake Mandell's empty bed.

© Robert Riche