Friday, December 10, 2010

Mr. Not-Quite Right

The majority of the time I work as a patient education director, but I'm also an RN and do on-call work in a private office.  Like I mentioned before, if it isn't a married doctor, it's a patient hitting on me and that has all kinds of ethical "rules" attached that I'm reticent to break.

I do, however, run across the occasional single guy who isn't my patient.  A while ago this happened with a cardiologist at the hospital where I work.  After a few dates, numerous hours logged on the phone and too many texts to count I began to think he could be my Mr. Right v 2.0.  He even bought my son a birthday gift despite never meeting him.  Yeah, a decent way to melt the heart of a single mama is to be good to her kid.

Two things that are sure to make me fall in love with a guy: intelligence and wit.  I value intelligence highly and a great sense of humor is a must.  Reid has the first requirement cinched easily.  He is brilliant and I feel myself falling a little bit more every time we have an in depth conversation at the magnitude of his intelligence.  The sense of humor part?  Ehhh, not so much.  He can be funny at times, but there are other times my smart-assery is lost on him.  I have done a lot of back and forth internal conversations about whether or not this is something I can live with or a deal breaker for me.  This particular quandary took care of itself.

One night we were at dinner, we were having a fantastic conversation and I felt that giddy feeling.  At that point I seriously thought that I could deal with the imperfect sense of humor thing because I know that in 30 years we'd still have a great relationship filled with deep and meaningful conversations and that was good enough for me.  I found Mr. Wonderful.  The whole dating drama was over. 

Until I started being playful.  I admit, I am extremely flirtatious especially when I'm in a relationship.  I don't stop the little games when I'm in a committed relationship and become complacent, I just escalate. 

I slipped off my shoe and ran my foot slowly up and down his calf and even traced little designs on his leg with my toes.  He was obviously affected by this pretty quickly.  His breathing was uneven and he kept clearing his throat while he was talking.  I wasn't content to just make him a little warm under the collar, I wanted to have some fun.  The next step was to clean my fork slowly and provocatively while looking at him with one eyebrow raised.  I barely finished licking the last remaining bit of sauce from my top lip when he decided we needed to make a hasty exit.

Confession:  I was really proud of myself by this point.  The speed at which Reid went from discussing the latest case study about Aspirin correlating with decreased cancer deaths in additon to the well-known cardiac benefits to being all worked up was a record even for me. 

What do they say about pride going before a fall?  I've found that old addage to be true thus far.  When we got back to his house, he began kissing me and then abruptly pulled back.  "Krista, I'm a doctor.  A medical professional.  People saw me at that restaurant.  They could have been patients or the family members of patients.  How would they feel about seeing the physician in charge of their health and quite possibly their life in such a compromising situation?"

After being thoroughly lectured, my desire for any more fun that night disappeared along with my silly notions of a relationship with Reid.

3 comments:

Brett said...

Reid is a schmuck.

Krista said...

Either that or I'm a slut ;-)

Mandy said...

Oh my gosh - seriously - the BIGGEST turnoff for me is someone that takes themselves too seriously. Loser!