The ghost of Christmas only one

I had to go to the hospital yesterday.

No, I did not fall down again. Just wait; be patient. It'll happen when it happens.

Actually I graced oppressed a local medical center with my presence in order to visit a friend who, just this past Tuesday, underwent elective surgery.

Like me, she's a court reporter. We will do practically anything to get out of doing the work we love to hate.

I hadn't planned to plague cheer up my dear friend in person -- on account of, I hate hospitals almost as much as I hate working -- but when I swung by our office to drop off some exhibits, another friend told me our recently-surgeried colleague was still confined to her hospital room.

Who knew? I thought they kicked you out of the joint twelve minutes after you came around from anesthesia. Oh, wait! That's just if you've had a baby.

Turns out they keep you a few days longer for knee replacement because they have to torture you in rehab several times before you're released on your own recognizance.

(Another nice touch is that, once you get home, the titanium knee doesn't wake you for two o'clock feedings or need its diaper changed. Nor does it expect you to send it to college, subsidize an inordinate number of extracurricular activities, and throw it a wedding. You don't even have to name it unless you are tetched and just want to.)

Also? My friend is several years older than me, making neither of us spring chickens, if you get my drift. We bounce back eventually but it does require extra time.

Anyway, I was wearing my "MERRY CHRISTMAS" sweatshirt as I entered the lobby of the huge institution of healing and, predictably, the unique effluvia (ALL hospitals smell the same ... cafeteria, gift-shop, disinfectant, and sickbed fumes combined into a semi-nauseating odor that assails the senses, inspiring an immediate impulse to bolt in the opposite direction) of the place nearly knocked me down.

Determined, I went to the eighth floor. I followed signs, made what felt like sixteen left turns, and finally came to my friend's room.

I walked in.

My sweet friend's pale, tired face broke out into a huge smile when she saw me.

I thought maybe she just liked my sweatshirt, which she has in fact admired before. Actually it had already been commented upon as I'd wended my way to the room on the eighth floor, and would be the subject of additional editorializing during my brief-ish sojourn amongst the unwell.

(Need attention and don't have a baby or a small dog to cart around in public? Wear a sweatshirt with "Merry Christmas" embroidered real classy-like in a Dickensian font and punctuated with a holly-berry-studded wreath, and you'll get your fair share.)

(All evidence to the contrary, people LOVE those two words. They grin and repeat the sentiment on your shirt like someone's pulling a string in back, pronouncing the syllable CHRIST more loudly each time. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas! Merry CHRISTmas! And then we all high-five, at least with our happy eyes.)

(That's what I'm talkin' about, y'all.)

(At least that's what happens to me, but then I routinely promote seasonally appropriate merriment.)

But my ailing friend's positive reaction at my unexpected materialization on the scene was not due to my festive apparel.

The first thing my dear friend said to the young nurse who stood beside her fiddling with some sort of medical gizmo on a rolling cart, and to her own 91-year-old mother seated nearby on a couch, was: "Look, it's Jenny!"

They need to up her meds until she thinks I'm someone else! A more pleasant Dickensian apparition.

Then, addressing me, my friend said something that made me sad: "You're the only one who's come to see me." 

Now, I have related to you before at least one instance in which I was told I was the (first and) only one. So there is precedent.

I knew what my friend meant, however. She has a large and devoted family and of course they've been to see her every day.

She meant I was the only friend who had troubled to visit her in the hospital.

(I don't know about you, but if I am in the hospital and do not have access to my cosmetics or the wherewithal to apply them? Don't visit me. Please.)

But my friend is not vain like me. She's a love. And she clearly needed to feel some love from her co-worker friends, none of whom had dropped by to wish her well despite the fact that the office is less than two miles from the hospital.

And my friend clearly craved the attention of her friends. She asked me to accompany her to her physical therapy session, and so I did. I sat there appreciating my two perfectly wonderful knees while a roomful of recently-surgeried older-than-me people endured leg-boarding and other torture as they inched along the road to recovery.

(Once again, I don't know about you but I would've waited until January before succumbing to the knife. There's absolutely nothing to do in January. December? not so much. Like, right now? I should be decorating my tree.)

(I would rather talk to you instead. Because, yes ... to me this really does feel like talking! In other words, oxygen. The proverbial meat and drink, as it were.)

But just like Christmas, I'll wrap it up.

As I left the hospital (I stayed nearly two hours and my friend and I gabbed nonstop the whole time), I was ruminating on that thing of being the only one.

Solitary singularity can be a good thing, especially when in your solisingular capacity you bless the heart of another.

We're all busy and we all have firm plans extending all the way to December 25th and beyond.

But life is not always predictable, and it's good to be spontaneous. Swashbuckle a bit! There's not much time left.

I admit I felt a twinge of guilt that I hadn't planned to visit my dear friend in the hospital. Truth be told? It never crossed my mind. I wasn't prepared with a gift or a card or a pretty flower or anything (my friend just had a birthday last week and I took good care of her so that's going to have to be okay although technically it was bad form to omit a palliative offering, like being a guest at someone's house and not bringing a hostess gift, which I would never do, I guess it's a Southern thing, but I digress).

More truth be told, the planets aligned and although not only were my ducks not arrayed beak-to-tail (I was in possession of no ducks whatsoever), I was in the right place at the right time and I had both the means and inclination to show up in person, and it paid off.

Because in the midst of her painful incapacitation, the heart of my cherished friend was momentarily made glad.

And even if showing up is the only thing you can do for someone? Even if your time and presence is all you are able to invest?

Shine! Be that bright star.

Don't assume others -- even those whose sense of obligation or devotion should by all rights exceed or, at a minimum, equal yours -- are thronging to do the very selfless deed you've received the inspiration to do.

You may be the only one.

And that can be a special blessing in and of itself.

Merry Christmas! God bless us every one.

I love you.