Coming Up, Going Down

By Jerry Mack Grubbs

My heart sank when the nurse entered my room with the prep tray. She didn’t look old enough to be a nurse. I wondered if she was a hospital volunteer instead. “Hi Mister Grubbs,” she said as she set the tray on the edge of the bed and turned to leave. With a sigh of relief I realized she was just getting things set up for the real nurse. From the moment I was informed that my private area would have to be shaved for surgery I had begged unsuccessfully to do it myself. My request was denied with no explanation given. The tray she left on my bed contained a safety razor, spare blades, and a can of shaving cream. As I stared at the tray, dreading the upcoming experience I was about to undergo, the door to my room opened once more and in walked the same nurse. “I’m Nancy and you and I are about to get well acquainted,” she said. It was apparent that Nancy was going to get more acquainted with me than I was with her. This was going to be what I would call a one sided relationship. I didn’t want Nancy looking at my private parts but that was just the beginning of my concerns. Once she pulled the sheet back and raised my hospital gown she had breached that private barrier and I just wanted to disappear. I tried to focus on her name tag to keep my mind off the procedure taking place.

The shaving cream felt cool as Nancy prepared me to be shaved. I couldn’t think of a more humiliating experience when suddenly I realized things could get worse. The process of touching, pulling, tugging, pressing and scraping was beginning to bring me to life. I was so embarrassed. I quit focusing on Nancy’s name tag. I became concerned that she might think I was focusing on the darts in her uniform instead of the name badge pinned to her pocket. I prayed for a miracle. I tried to visualize my favorite food, anything to curb the rising beginning to take place.

Nancy must have understood my humiliation. “Don’t worry; it is just a natural reaction that should be expected.” Easy for her to say, she wasn’t lying flat on her back with her pointer signaling “I’m number one.” The more I tried to focus my mind elsewhere the less success I had. I prayed for relief but it did not come. I looked up at Nancy. She was focused on her task of finding and removing every sprig of hair on that part of my body. She must have sensed my despair. Looking at my facial expression, without the least hint of warning, she took a pencil from her pocket and said, “Down boy,” as she whacked the defiant head. It immediately went limp. The crisis was over. With the stroke of her pencil, Nancy had answered my prayer. I breathed a weak sigh of relief.

With my mind somewhat relaxed I became aware of two distinct sounds: the scraping of the razor against my skin and laughter coming from outside my hospital door. A group of my friends had come to the hospital to visit me just prior to Nurse Nancy entering the room to prep me for surgery. That is why she had temporarily left the room before getting started. She had explained to my friends in the hallway that she would be just a few minutes then they could come in and visit.

“Is the door locked?” I asked. “No but they won’t come in until we are finished,” she said. “How do you know?” I asked. “Because I told them before we started that you were being prepped for surgery and they would need to remain outside until I finished.” Oh great. It wasn’t bad enough to experience this “get acquainted” session with Nancy. Now my friends were right outside the door. They could probably hear everything that was going on. I was sliding from one humiliation to another. Nancy completed her task and washed me off with a warm cloth. I didn’t wait for her; I quickly lowered my hospital gown and pulled the sheet up to my waist. I wanted to cover up the evidence of what had just taken place.

Gathering up her instruments of humiliation, Nancy said, “You did very well Mister Grubbs. Don’t worry; you’ll remember this experience much longer than I will. I have three more surgery preps tonight. Within a few hours I won’t remember what your ‘you –know-what’ looks like.” It has been forty-five years and I still remember her face, her hair and hands. But most of all I remember the nametag pinned to the pocket of her uniform. It was black with white letters spelling out the words NANCY, RN. Even at fifteen, I knew that “RN” stood for Registered Nurse but that night I thought a better definition would be “Razor Nazi.” As Nancy prepared me for hernia surgery I said to myself, “Registered nurse, razor Nazi, registered nurse, razor Nazi, over and over trying to send my mind anywhere besides where it naturally wanted to go. But now that part was over.

Nancy opened the door and invited my friends into the room. As they crowded in and asked how things went, the last act Nancy performed on my behalf was to give my friends the “thumbs up” sign. Some of them roared with laughter while others were trying to figure out what was so funny. I was content to leave them wondering. For the most part they were kind. Only Lonny Posey asked what the nurse meant when she said, “Down boy.” Those were the only words the group had overheard from the hallway as they waited just outside the door.

I was saved by my girlfriend’s mother walking into the room. With her entrance the group quieted and gradually said their well-wishes and goodbyes. She and I were left alone. It felt so good being with her after what I had just been through. Her presence, coupled with her smile, had an immediate calming effect on me. As she stood by my bed she began to stroke my arm. After a few moments my girlfriend Karen came through the door carrying a strawberry shake and a lucky rabbit’s foot. Although strawberry was my favorite flavor of shake until I discovered raspberry, I couldn’t drink it because of the early morning surgery. And as far as I was concerned, the rabbit’s foot arrived too late to be of any use. Regardless of whether I believed in such lucky charms or not, I was happy to be with Karen and her mom.

With Karen on one side of the bed and her mother on the other side, I felt surrounded by what I understood love to be. Karen wore my ring on a chain around her neck signifying that we were attached. Turning to her mother and looking into her eyes, I knew that she and I were attached and it didn’t take a ring on a chain to remind me. We talked frequently but she often said more with her eyes than she ever conveyed by the spoken word. I had been taught how to listen with my eyes years earlier by a girl who visited me in my dreams. As Karen’s mother prepared to leave, she leaned over and kissed me on the forehead and said, “You’ve already experienced the worst because you won’t remember the rest.”

The surgery went well the following morning. My father was the first person my eyes focused on as I was coming out of the ether-induced coma. In my delirium I kept trying to get out of bed. Each time I rose up my dad would push me back down and say, “Down boy.” Gradually I became aware of my surroundings. Meeting Nancy the razor Nazi, the pencil coupled with the “down boy” episode and my friends all laughing when Nancy gave them the “thumbs up” sign were just a memory. But it is a memory that will remain with me for the rest of my life.