Sergio, Mrs S and my mid life crisis

I get home about 5 minutes before Nissah. She’s all starry eyed and breathless as she flops down on the bed, “Vee I’m in love” she declares. I roll my eyes theatrically, if I had a dollar for every time I’d heard that, Bill Gates would be my housekeeper. “I take it your date went well”
She flings her arms over her head, “It was great, you know it was meant to be just a lunch date but as he drove me back to work he said he didn’t think he could wait till our next date to see me and before I could say anything else he’d walked into my office and told my boss he’d like to open an investment account and he’d like me to manage it.”
I smile inwardly, I guess that the fact that Nissah cant add beyond two digit numbers without a calculator did not come up, still it was a great story. “That’s great Nissah” I say more to hurry her along, “That wasn’t even the best part. We went to see a movie and we ended up being the only ones at the theatre, frankly I cant even tell you what the movie was about cos we talked right through it. Vee, it was the most romantic date ever! Then we had drinks at the Lagoon restaurant. He was so open with me, we talked about everything from his childhood to business, even his Dad. Then he just came right out and said that he really liked me, and that he was tired of the rules of dating and all that. So Vee get this, we’re officially a couple and we’re going to the Pink Ball together next weekend.”
“Wow Nissah that’s great” I said. Frankly it all seemed to be happening rather fast, I mean she just met the guy two days ago, and just one date later they were going exclusive? However I wasn’t going to be the one to dampen my friend’s spirit. As high up as Nissah had her head in the clouds, she deserved to be happy. I just hoped this Oderinde whatever person wasn’t going to be just another Mr. never-do-right. Nissah seemed to attract them like bees to honey.
We spent the remainder of the night rehashing every detail of the dream date. Nissah was still fully dressed happily admiring her brand new Steve Maddens as her feet dangled in the air. I think that was the last image my brain registered just before I drifted off to sleep.

The week whizzes by in a blur of lab tests, MRIs, charts and seminars. Pretty much my usual week. My shifts at the hospital are much better because they co-incide with Sergio’s. Truthfully we spend more time gossiping than actually doing any work. Mostly we bitch about HN, Sergio tells me more about his mystery lover. He’s been in love with this mystery woman since I met him and I haven’t even learned so much as a name, we call her Mrs. S, actually I do. Sergio is a huge hulking mass of man, reminds me of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson whom I actually have this huge crush on. Well I did have a crush on Sergio when I started out at Serenity, that was until we became friends. I used to console myself that his lack of interest in me was probably because he was gay, that was until he told me about Mrs. S. Okay at this point all I know is that Mrs. S is an older woman, stuck in a bad marriage because of her kids and that they’ve been having an affair for 2 years. That’s all he’ll tell me, I think it’s because Mrs. S works in the hospital, but he wont tell me that either. He loves her too much to jeopardize what they have. “But don’t you want more?” I’d asked him. “Than just being a booty call?” he’d asked with a smile. “She’s in it for the kids. I can wait that long.” He’d replied. I’d wished then that someone would one day love me like that. Don’t get me wrong I know Seye loves me the way he knows how, but deep down I know that it can never be that way with him.
“So how’s lover boy?” Sergio asks me with a mischievous glint in his eye. He loves to tease me about Seye. Well I cant blame him he probably knows more about my boyfriend than he does about me. We’re at the nurses’ station and I’m playing solitaire on the desktop, “My man is just fine thank you.”
“So when is he going to make an honest woman out of you?” he asks and I snort with laughter. “You mention marriage to Seye and the look on his face changes like you’ve told him you’re taking a scalpel to his testicles.”
Sergio laughs, “Typical commitment phobe”
“Sounds like someone I know” I’d teased.
“It’s not like that and you know it” He’d retorted. I held up my hands in mock surrender. Geez maybe it’s because he’s been around women since nursing school but Serge could be as prickly as a hedgehog especially when it came to his precious Mrs. S. As far as I was concerned Sergio was obsessed with his sugar mummy whoever she was and the woman was just content with having him as a toy boy. Well I wasn’t going to be the one waking him up to smell the coffee. Besides i hated to fight with my only ally at the hospital. Swiftly I changed topics, “So Nissah has a new guy.”
Sergio raised a brow easily and I envied how he did it so effortlessly. “Your friend is a determined young woman” he said dryly. Well that may be because I’d told him about Nissah’s marriage chart. (I’m not a blabbermouth, we needed to bond and that piece of info was too good not to share) Nissah had met Sergio more than once and had been attracted to him certain they’d make perfect caramel coloured babies all for the three minutes before she’d discovered he was actually a nurse and not a doctor. With a smile I recalled how she’d disbelievingly echoed the word “nurse” like it was some kind of newly discovered exotic virus. Sergio had been understandably angry and it had taken about an hour for me to calm him down. Since then it’d have been easier to get George Bush and Osama Bin Laden in one room. The elitist socialite as Sergio had dubbed her could not understand why any normal man would want to be a nurse. She was convinced Sergio was a closet fairy, not that I’d ever told him that. To be fair, I’d thought he was gay too once upon a time, the fact that he didn’t seem to have any male friends at the hospital didn’t help much. Now I understood that Sergio was just a recluse, he probably liked to keep to himself so that his secrets stayed safe, secrets I hoped he’d one day trust me enough to share, not just because I was dead nosy (which I am) but because I hoped one day he’d see me as a true friend worth confiding in. Besides I told him everything, which usually had him yelling “OKAY!!! TMI” Sergio and I spoke IM at the hospital especially when we had to gossip in a crowded room. We didn’t always understand each other till I’d decided to start an IM dictionary. Just the other day I’d penned in OMG SSNWTSEA (oh my God, she should never wear those shoes ever again} but Sergio had crossed it out saying it wasn’t valid IM speak. Thinking about it now made me smile, if he wasn’t so besotted with his mystery sugar mama, maybe Serge and I could…..oh perish the thought! I was ashamed that I still had thoughts like this. It wasn’t as if I still carried a blazing torch for the guy, I just did not understand this chronic need to imagine us married. We got along so well, he made me laugh, he was so easy on the eyes, we were in the same profession. This was what a relationship was supposed to be like, right? We could just sit down and talk for ages, speak our secret speak and look smug when everyone else gave us the “Are you crazy look?”
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
I was almost tempted to tell him that I’d been seeing mini- Sergios and mini-Vee’s running around in oversized diapers, instead I smiled, “Just checking in on my fantasy life”
He stretched to his 6 foot 2 frame, “Well good luck with that, reality calls. I gotta check in on my guys. Sure you can hold the fort on your own for a couple of minutes without falling asleep?”
I snored loudly and he chuckled as he strolled off. Was I really in love with my boyfriend I thought as I watched Serge disappear down the corridor? The way I figure, if I really loved him I wouldn’t “see” any other man, let alone the older-woman-obsessed-male-nurse I worked with. Maybe I was having a mid-life crisis, I thought and for now that was a much more comforting thought than trying to understand what it was I felt for Sergio.