Late one night I was making tea when I accidentally knocked over a freshly poured cup on my leg. When I say the scalding hurt I mean I debated whether to drive to the emergency room. I wasn’t sure it was that serious, though. Then I thought, maybe an urgent care. But while paging through the phone book I started to get the impression there wasn’t one open that late. Maybe I could ride it out until the morning and then go to the urgent care office. I finally decided to just take some painkillers and lie down. By the morning the scalded skin still stung but I could cope. The worst part of the whole episode, though, was that awful feeling of loneliness. It was the middle of the night so I didn’t feel I could call anyone, and most of my family’s in Chicago so they couldn’t come over to help right away.

I also recall the night the hospital in Chicago called about my dad. I knew it was serious. The last time I had seen him he was beyond frail. But the nurse or whoever called just babbled jargon. I didn’t know exactly what they were trying to tell me. Again, what should I do, I thought? I was in Pasadena and he was in Chicago. It was the middle of the night. At dawn, I called my family in Chicago and asked if they could drive down to the hospital, which was a good chore for them as the hospital was on the south side of town and they lived on the north side. Still, they could get there faster than I could and assess the situation. Before they could get out the door, though, a physician called me and finally gave me some more or less straight talk on my dad’s condition. I kept asking if he were brain dead, but I suspect for legal reasons he did not want to say that. It was important to me to know because euthanasia is against my religion. But he was having a heart attack about every 15 minutes and while they were able to revive the heart there wasn’t anything else working, he said. When I asked him again if he were brain dead he finally said there was little to no brain activity. “So we should let him go?” I asked. “You should let him go,” he replied. “Then let him go,” I said. It was the most difficult decision I’ve ever made, and it helped knowing my mother, sister and brother-in-law were ready to drive down to the hospital to evaluate what was happening.

Then, the other night, I found myself in a perfectly comic situation. It was my first solo day at my new job and I had worked a long shift. It’s always like that with a new routine. Everything just takes longer. When I tried to exit the parking garage I noticed the fence at the exit gate would not go up. Oh no, I thought. What will I do if I can’t get my car out until the morning? I didn’t see any security guards in the building to help me. What could I do? Then it hit me. Worse comes to worse, I can call Mona to pick me up. I just moved in with her that weekend in Laguna Beach, which isn’t that far from Santa Ana. It would be a little inconvenient, but I knew she wouldn’t mind. She would just want me to come home.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to do that. I found a janitor in the building and between my high-school Spanish and his rudimentary English I managed to explain my dilemma and he was able to show me how to drive my car out of the garage.

So now I have someone nearby I can call for a quick rescue in the middle of the night. For someone who, until I met Mona, felt condemned to perpetual bachelorhood, it’s difficult to explain the significance of that. I’ll just say it’s pretty special and leave it at that.

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