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I tell this story as evidence that, contrary to popular belief, I can be nice. As a matter of fact, the events of this story detail arguably the nicest thing I've ever done. When I was going to UT, I worked at a Wendy's. One of my coworkers, whom I will call M, and I struck up a friendship. I gave her rides home frequently, and that turned into us sometimes visiting the bookstore together and eventually making an ill-fated road trip to Houston together. One Sunday morning, I walked into Wendy's for my eleven o'clock shift. The manager, who knew of my friendship with M, ran up to me in hysterics. "OhmyGodLaurenM'sinthehospitalwithawatermelontumor!" she cried. "What?" "M's in the hospital with a watermelon tumor!" she reiterated. "A watermelon tumor . . . ?" "She's getting ready to have emergency surgery. What do we do?!" I mentally face palmed and asked, "Which hospital?" "I don't know!" I rolled my eyes and walked to the back of the store. I entered the office, stood on the desk, and retrieved the phone book from the top shelf. I looked up the hospitals and guessed that the nearest hospital was probably the one where M was. I dialed the number. "Hello, yes. Do you have a patient named M?" I asked. "One moment, please." A lengthy moment passed, and then, to my relief, I heard M's slurred voice. "Hello?" "M! What the hell happened?" "I have a tumor." "How?" "I don't know. It's been growing inside for over a year, they said." "So what's this 'watermelon' thing?" I asked. "It's the size of a watermelon." " . . . " "So they're operating to take it out." M was quite a large girl; I reasoned that the gigantic tumor had been camouflaged on her where it would have stood out on someone as skinny as I. "Yes . . . yes . . . So, what's your room number and your phone number?" I asked. M gave me her room number and its phone number. I wrote down two copies and kept one in my pocket. The other I gave to my manager, who let me leave instead of working till five. I drove straight to the hospital and fought with the parking lot: The visitors' parking was not clearly labeled, and I think I drove in through the exit, but as nobody was there, it didn't really matter. I walked in and found M's room, noting with irritation that I wandered around the hospital for a while looking for her room, and nobody bothered to stop me. I could have walked into the nursery with a can of mustard gas, and nobody would have stopped me. Twas ever thus. I found M's room and sat down next to her bed. She was, predictably, extremely nervous about her impending surgery. I assured her it was nothing to worry about since I myself had undergone four eye operations. Granted, a twenty-pound tumor is not the same thing as eye surgery, and my eye surgeries were also no minor deal since I could have gone blind if they'd gone wrong, but those were trifling points under the circumstances. I sat with M until she was wheeled into surgery. I left, went home, changed out of my work uniform, and grabbed my copy of Winnie the Pooh. I then went to the mall and purchased a stuffed Eeyore from The Disney Store, and I returned to the hospital just as M got out of surgery. I gave her the stuffed Eeyore and sat beside her, reading to her from Winnie the Pooh until her adopted older sister arrived to take her back to her apartment. Over the following weeks as M recovered, I made near-daily trips to visit her and help her run errands. She had no car, not that she could have driven anyway. M moved in with her adopted sister after that, so we lost touch. That was in 2003, and to this day, I still can't top that story for acts of kindness. So I'm not particularly nice; at least I'm nice when it counts. |