I didn't mean to fall in love with a married man. It completely caught me off guard. Our rendezvous began once a month and always in the same location---his place. The meetings became progressively more frequent as they increased to every three weeks, then two, and finally weekly. That was 37 years ago, and his name was Dr. G.R. McHottie, my obstetrician. Yes, I fell in love with my doctor in 1970.
Maybe I'm like Marion Fahnestock who said a huge weight was lifted from her shoulders when she finally revealed her affair with President John F. Kennedy. She said she held the secret for 41 years and offered, "It's a huge relief. And now I will have no further comment on this subject. I request that the media respect my privacy and that of my family." (Oh puh-leeze.)
I took it as a sign of affection when Dr. McHottie wrote out a prescription and threw in an extra refill for a diuretic for my swollen ankles. That would have been as good as a marriage proposal if I had been a recreational drug user.
I wondered if the (soon to be) 8-pound, 5½-ounce baby boy was coming between us each time I waddled into his office. I'd reach to open the door but I was already there.
Unlike today's chicks, a woman "in a family way" in the 20th Century and earlier worked tirelessly to draw attention upwards toward her head and shoulders and away from her bouncing baby bladder crusher. Fashions centered on camouflaging her mega bundle of joy while her hair and face shouted, "Hey, don't look down there! Look up here!"
I'm sure it was an attempt to make myself more attractive to Dr. McHottie when I got a permanent wave in my hair. And the splash of Blue Waltz perfume was even more ammunition.
For me, part of the allure was the cardigan sweater he wore on that Sunday afternoon when he made his rounds at the hospital before his tee time. What a dreamboat he was as he noted the entries on my chart, never looking up to let our eyes meet. The only things batting faster than my fresh Mabelline lashes were my heartbeats.
I was jealous of the women in the hospital rooms on either side of me when Dr. McHottie paid his daily visits. I seethed as I listened to their cavorting through the paper-thin walls. "Surely," I thought, as I applied a thick layer of Revlon's Red Hot Mama lipstick, "He wouldn't leave his wife for THEM!" My Room 409 (where else?) was a feedlot for the green-eyed monster, and it was alive and well.
When I would be lying flat on my back with my sheet off, trying to pull my gown over my hipbone, the door would crash open, and there would be Dr. McHottie. Or, just when I would have a compact mirror trained on my backside to see if the epidural had left a crater in my skin, a draft of air would herald Dr. McHottie.
I'm sure it was no accident. He'd walk in just when I would be bathing in a saucepan with one arm balancing the soap and washcloth and the other clutching a wet sheet to my body.
(Music fades.)