{"id":388,"date":"2016-06-20T14:21:20","date_gmt":"2016-06-20T18:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tedmalexander.com\/wordpress\/?p=388"},"modified":"2016-06-20T15:09:46","modified_gmt":"2016-06-20T19:09:46","slug":"two-women-one-recovery-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tedmalexander.com\/wordpress\/?p=388","title":{"rendered":"Two Women, One Recovery Room"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>6\/19\/2016\u00a0 Newsday – Opinion<\/h6>\n

BY TED ALEXANDER<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

She was 5-foot-2 with auburn hair and an infectious smile. She was a senior at Farmingdale High School, I was a junior. We were crazy about each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not going to believe it,\u201d my girlfriend said on the phone one day in June 1964. \u201cI\u2019ll be over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"1966<\/a>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

1966 FORD GALAXIE 500XL<\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p><\/div>\n

Twenty minutes later, she pulled up at my house in a new, chrome-streaked,
\nred Ford Galaxie convertible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you think?\u201d she asked. \u201cMy father picked it up yesterday. He said I could take it for a ride. Hop in.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I did. I jumped into an unforgettable summer. Cruising down Main Street in the convertible, or heading for the beach, or parking at a drive-in movie \u2014it was all pure, major-league magic, the type of real-life fairy tale that adolescents fail to appreciate until it\u2019s buried in the shuffle of passing years.<\/p>\n

In September, my girlfriend left for college. We stayed in touch, and I\u2019d see her when she was home for vacation, but distance grew decisive. The last I heard, she had married a fellow student.<\/p>\n

Years later, in the early 1980s, my wife, Portia, was in Huntington Hospital for minor, outpatient surgery. As I stood waiting in the empty two-bed recovery room, I noticed a name on a card at the end of one bed.<\/p>\n

Pause. Nah, no chance. I\u2019d have bet a million dollars on it. I would have lost.<\/p>\n

I immediately recognized the unconscious and familiar face of a female patient being wheeled in, followed shortly by my own still-sleeping wife.<\/p>\n

What were the chances? Stunned, I sat in a chair facing the two women \u2014 one a serious high school girlfriend, the other, a you-can\u2019t-get-more-serious-than-that wife. I looked from one to the other for two full minutes, and when both seemed to be waking up, I resorted to the most adult behavior I could think of: I ducked into the bathroom and closed the door.<\/p>\n

This was totally nuts, and even worse, why was I feeling guilty? I hadn\u2019t done anything.<\/p>\n

I walked out of the bathroom as a nurse arrived, followed by a man who was my former girlfriend\u2019s husband. As curtains were drawn around the women, I introduced myself to the man and explained how I knew his wife. Moments later, he told her an old high school friend was present. He told her my name. A pause, then she said, \u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a hurried, and for some reason nervous, manner, I explained the situation to my now-conscious wife.<\/p>\n

The curtains opened, and the four of us chatted awkwardly. The former girlfriend, her husband and their two children lived in the Huntington area, 15 minutes from us.<\/p>\n

It was that simple, that complex.<\/p>\n

\"1966<\/a>

<\/p>\n

1966 FORD GALAXIE 500XL<\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p><\/div>\n

As my wife and I walked to the car, she suggested the four of us have dinner. I considered it, then declined. The other woman was someone I knew in the golden era of youth. I wanted to remember her as she was at a time before the old grade school was demolished to make way for a mega grocery store, a time when the Yankees were still legend, a time before my best friend, whom I had known since third grade, was cut down on a foreign battlefield.<\/p>\n

I needed to preserve what was magical, and somehow forget what was not. I\u2019m not sure why.<\/p>\n

What struck me was how the summer from decades before remained etched in my memory, while the chance meeting in the hospital had begun to fade.<\/p>\n

Faraway was close. Close was far away.<\/p>\n

And, of course, some things hadn\u2019t changed.<\/p>\n

In the parking lot, I unlocked the red 1966 Galaxie convertible I\u2019d purchased years before. After opening the door for my wife, I stepped inside, glanced over my shoulder and smiled, then headed home.<\/p>\n

Ted Alexander lives in Asheville. His novels, “The Fall of Summer” and \u201cAfter & Before\u201d are available at Malaprop\u2019s Bookstore\/Caf\u00e9 and online book retailers.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Contact him at TedMAlexander.com\/contact<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Learn more about the author and the novels online at TedMAlexander.com\/Books.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6\/19\/2016\u00a0 Newsday – Opinion BY TED ALEXANDER   She was 5-foot-2 with auburn hair and an infectious smile.<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[8,14,12,10,13,9,11],"class_list":["post-388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-publications","tag-1966-ford-galaxie-500xl","tag-after-before","tag-asheville-nc","tag-author","tag-huntington-ny","tag-ted-m-alexander","tag-the-fall-of-summer","h-entry","hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iRM4-6g","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tedmalexander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tedmalexander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tedmalexander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tedmalexander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tedmalexander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/tedmalexander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":405,"href":"http:\/\/tedmalexander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tedmalexander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tedmalexander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tedmalexander.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}