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He’s never been accused of sexual harassment, not any harassment – not in the workplace, not anywhere.
He’s never made the workplace environment uncomfortable – well, unless you’d count those occasions when he spotted accounting errors or flagged oversights in the audit trail. Some of those errors and oversights may well have been intentional – and, yes, some portion of the workplace environment was indeed rightly discomforted. But then that’s not the kind of discomfort the discomforted would ever want to complain about – to HR, let alone to the press or the Securities and Exchange Commission.
While he didn’t blow a loud whistle, he did set off alarms that were rightly sounded. The culprits (and they were immensely culpable) blew up. They condemned him for setting off what was, to their sensibilities, a shrieking wailing car-alarm siren – where their conspiratorial silence was serene and unassailable.
Tagged as a whistle-blower, he, in effect, got himself “benched,” and, later on, put on “protected waivers” as the firm was being investigated. His financial well-being – and his ability to still provide for his kids – was held hostage by the terms of his severance package.
The irony: He had always been the unheralded but crucial special-teams-player who made way for the firm’s offensive stars. Quietly, but honestly, he dealt with their infractions: their illegal contacts and blocks, their interference and illegal shifts, their illegal substitutions; he recovered their fumbles.
Even before he was “benched,” and despite all his game-saving (and franchise-saving) interceptions of continued wrongdoing, the whistle-blower derogation did him in. It most surely kept him from ascending to anything remotely like C-level power in the firm.
Only those with clout and hard-to-question authority could presume to pressure for tactile favors. And that kind of come-on – any kind of come-on – seems absent from his aspirations; even his thoughts, it would seem.
In the dating-combine, he was not a high draft-pick
Neither tall or short, his slim and semi-toned physic would put him in the semi-attractive realm. And as a widower, one would imagine that he could be the object of some interest and plausible affection. Clean-shaven, without any piercings or tattoos, or extravagant manners, he self-defined. Whether intentionally and overtly, or subconsciously, or inadvertently, he limited the field of even passing interest.
Those scouting for potential date candidates eventually turned to the more obviously recruitable.
If those of hip persuasions gave him a second thought, it was only to dismiss him a second time.
Evidence: His pleated and cuffed trousers, with their neatly-sewn-in suspender-buttons which discreetly secured non-flamboyant non-whimsical braces. His buttoned-up shirts are still copious decades-old Brooks Bros oxfords. The staid garb presented him as the antithesis of the slim-fit European look – that genre’s satiny torso-hugging shirts, shiny suit-jackets that don’t cover the butt and thus display pants that are so tapered and tight that it must take serious flexibility and limber care to glide the lower limbs into a full-length insertion.
There’s nothing intentionally retro about his attire; no conscious statement to be seen as a throwback. He’s loyal: he’s never abandoned his old wardrobe. Updating would have required unnecessary expense, which, along with the new ultra-slim contours, would have brought budgetary discomfort.
Those who speculate wonder if he ever gave fashion any thought. His closet holds what has been serviceable, and can still be made serviceable by a tailor whose needles and threads were only occasionally complemented by a foot-pedal sewing machine.
Button-down-collars can be turned, but that most amenable and skilled tailor passed on trying to salvage frayed shirt cuffs. No matter, the forensic accountant got elbow-deep in his audit work.
His shirt sleeves were always rolled up just above the wrist. They still are. No cufflinks, no wrist-watch, no college ring; only recently did he take off his wedding band.
And the shoes – lace-ups. Dusted with a paper-towel wipe at home, it’s been years since they’ve been treated to a pedestal-sit-down brush-and chamois-cloth thwick-thwap-spit-and-polish shine. And then there are the frayed and mismatched laces. For the discerning, they tell a story.
He didn’t dress for social success
Prior to the firm’s dissolution in the wake of the highly-publicized demise of its major client, the divorcees and widows in the office and the building would speculate as to his availability. Given their financial beats (and savvy), they analyzed him as a futures contract: as the option expiration date grew closer, these speculators became less and less hopeful of an upside. They would conclude that his pleasantness – his courtliness – was never intended to be encouraging. He didn’t calculate in that way. Fine by him, if he even thought about it – which, apparently, he didn’t – and doesn’t.
For him, the workplace was ledgers and journal entries, price-earnings ratios, capitalization, verifiable assets and fully-disclosed liabilities, reserves for contingencies, financial footnotes – those kinds of figures.
What does weigh on him are very different kinds of discomfort – the pre-op and post-op kinds.
CSI = Cancer Scene Investigation: Once more into the OR
Two hospital gowns, okay. Warmth? He’s shivering.
And why one open to the back, with the other open to the front?
Which goes on first? Does it matter? The sequencing was surely part of the instructions, which were delivered kindly, but a bit rushed. Maybe not rushed; maybe he just wasn’t concentrating.
He may have been distracted by the whisk-whisk of the privacy curtains being opened and closed across the way and to the side of his compartment. Those opaque border-walls screen off his fellow patients who are waiting for their time to be wheeled to the OR.
He may have been distracted by the beeps of monitors and the plaintiff calls from the elderly woman across the way, and the moaning of the elderly man in the screened-off compartment to his right.
He may have been distracted by the clank and ca-chunk of hospital-bed-rails being lowered and then raised, and eventually lowered for the occupant’s “departure” for intervention, repair and remedy.
He may have been distracted by the gush-gush of the orderlies’ and nurses’ padded feet, and by bed gurneys wheeled down the corridor to the OR.
He’s got one hospital gown open to the front, the other opened to the back. He hopes he’s got the right arrangement. He wouldn’t want to hold up the operation or foul up the procedure by donning the gowns out of sequence. So that possibility – as ridiculous as it may seem – does occupy him. He’s too embarrassed by his inattention to ask about the ordering of the gown openings. And he’d have to get the attention of an attendant who must have more important matters to attend to.
There are lots of beeps – of various pitches, sequences, and cadences – that have to be monitored and responded to. No, he won’t ask again which gown is to open to the front and which to the rear.
He’s definitely distracted by having to fold his street clothes into plastic drawn-string satchels. The sacks always arrive to him promptly in the recovery corridor, and nothing is ever missing. And after several of these operations, he’s learned to dress for the occasion. No more well-pressed attire. He now comes and goes in loose-fitting wrinkle-wear.
Besides, try as he might, he can’t imagine dressing for success in a hospital gown; even two hospital gowns; even two hospital gowns that had somehow been slipped on with one opening to the front and the other opening to the rear, in the correct order.
The mind wanders even as his lusting capacities may be wounded and compromised
It seems odd that even as he shivers in hospital gowns, he is eyeing nurses. Some with sweaters buttoned up over their scrubs, some with fleece pullovers pulled over. Their feminine contours are undetectable. And yet, from any hint of outline he imagines the “inlines.”
Self-conscious, he pretends to look for and study the logos which are often embroidered over the left breast. It’s not that he wishes for X-ray vision; he simply envisions the contours, with a mental tape measure or protractor, and, imaginatively, the kind of compass used to inscribe circles. That’s sufficient. He’s diverting attention from the impending insertion of a transurethral catheter - intravesicularly.
He’s not sure if he has all the syllables, or if he has too many syllables. Spelling aside, the mere phonetics of the word have him squinch in the area destined for investigation.
The spelling and syllable-count occupy him, as he shivers, wrapped in this-way-and-that-way hospital gowns.
Her comfort in dealing with his discomfort
He was grateful for the heated blanket whose weight and warmth were comforting. The blanket was bestowed and gently arranged by a nurse who went about the draping unselfconsciously. Calmly, she had pointed to the call-button, and in a tone that was neither matter-of-fact or provocative, she had said, “Need another, just let me know.”
She was the nurse he hoped would return, though he wouldn’t push the call-button to chance that he might see her again. No pretext, no pretense. He’s glad he didn’t bother her with his being perplexed about the arrangement of the hospital gowns. No need to create more embarrassment than would be absolutely necessary, under the circumstances.
Without being obvious, without staring (he hoped), he did notice that the sleeveless fleece vest she wore did not appear to have a logo of any kind. It was rumpled, though, especially for a fleece. No contours could be discerned.
Just as well. He wouldn’t have wanted her to know what he was thinking.
The heated blanket cooled his version of lusty thoughts, which seem all the more purposeless, ludicrous, under the circumstances. Some days later – for just a moment, fleetingly – he would imagine being with her in a more intimate sheet-and-blanket scenario. That bed and bed-time may be history.
He had diverted and suppressed those thoughts by active listening for monitor beeps, the whisk-whisk of privacy curtains, the clank and cachunk of bed-rails, the goosh-goosh of orderlies’ covered-footwear, and the clack of gurneys.
As for the blanket-draping moments, with the nurse in the rumpled fleece, he was relieved that he had refrained from banter that might have been heard as suggestive. He had counseled himself to guard against any word, gesture, any sigh, that might be taken as other than a patient’s appreciation for a most-considerate nurse’s comfort in dealing with his discomfort.
Will “history” repeat itself, and necessitate still another eviction proceeding
“We got it all,” is what he wants to hear, even though those surgeon’s reports (and there have been several) amounted to temporary reprieves. But oh, those respites induced euphoria.
There were sequels, however: “The Return of the Tumors” and “The Revenge of Tumors Redux.” With each, he hoped, the prospect of “The Return to Euphoria.”
Given immunotherapy, diet, exercise, and wishful thinking, another recurrence is inexplicable, to him – though statistically likely. The recidivism of neoplasms is an affront. The gall – not only have some returned like twice-evicted squatters, but they may bring with them still more unwelcome tenants.
Intravesical installation of immunotherapy chemistry fends off recurrence – for a while. Maybe longer. Certainly a stay of execution as concerns several of the invaded organs and glands.
Intravesical, or is it intravesicular. The spelling and syllable-count still occupy him – helpfully – when he endures the insertion; counting how many more minutes he has to hold in the chemistry. He’s an okay patient, but a really cognizant counter.
Discharge, retrieval, and no discomfort as to his discomfort
He didn’t want his friend to see him in the recovery corridor, where he was still tubed.
He marveled at her patience as he was rolled out to the hospital drive-up. He marveled at her un-inspecting smile, as he was delivered to the curbside from a wheelchair. He marveled at her geniality as he was helped into her sleek low-slung two-door, with its mag wheels, and its luminous paint-job glistening under the hospital’s halogen lighting. He still marvels at her nonchalance when she had to pull over to allow him to deal with each surgery’s aftermath.
They are not bed-mates, but they are close. For him, she is necessary. He wonders, “What’s in it for her?”
