"Privacy as well. It's going to be challenging under the circumstances." I heard more movement upstairs, the sound of equipment being positioned, and the general bustle of medical professionals trying to figure out how to handle a situation that definitely hadn't been covered in their training manual. Then came the moment I'd been waiting for.
The sound of Leo's apartment door opening, followed by multiple sets of footsteps in the hallway above. They were bringing them out. I positioned myself at my peephole, ready for the show of a lifetime. This was better than pay-per-view, better than any reality TV show, better than Christmas morning.
This was justice served cold and with a side of public humiliation. The elevator dinged, and I heard the mechanical whir of the stretcher being wheeled out. Through my peephole, I could see the paramedics maneuvering something large and sheet-covered toward the elevator. The sheet wasn't quite big enough to cover everything, and I caught a glimpse of two sets of legs at very odd angles.
Behind them came a small crowd of neighbors who'd been drawn out by the commotion. Mrs. Patterson from 3B had her phone out. Naturally, the college kids from 2A were trying to look nonchalant while obviously recording everything. Even cranky Mr. Henderson from the first floor had emerged from his cave to see what all the fuss was about.
The elevator doors closed, and the building fell silent except for the excited chatter of neighbors discussing what they'd just witnessed. I waited another few minutes, then cracked my door open and stepped into the hallway. "Crazy night, huh?" Mrs. Patterson said, still clutching her phone.
"Did you see what happened?" I shook my head, putting on my best confused-neighbor expression. "I heard the sirens, but I was asleep. What's going on?"
"Two people got stuck together somehow," she said, her eyes bright with gossip. "Had to take them both to the hospital on the same stretcher." "Stuck together? How?"
"Well," she leaned in conspiratorially, "from what I heard, they were, you know, intimate, and something went wrong with some kind of product they were using." I made appropriate shocked noises and headed back inside, where I poured myself a very large, very well-deserved glass of scotch. Phase Two was complete. You know what they say about the walk of shame?
Well, apparently when you've been surgically separated from your affair partner after being superglued together like some kind of perverted science experiment, it's less of a walk and more of a shuffle. A very careful, very painful shuffle that makes you look like you've been hit by a truck driven by karma herself. I was sitting at our kitchen table the next morning, sipping my coffee and reading the news on my tablet like any normal husband whose wife hadn't spent the night glued to another man's anatomy. When I heard the key in the lock, it was around 10:30 a.m., which meant they'd been at the hospital for roughly nine hours.
Nine hours of what I could only imagine was the most humiliating medical experience in the history of emergency medicine. The door opened slowly, like whoever was on the other side was afraid of what they might find. Or maybe they were just moving carefully because every step probably felt like walking on broken glass. Either way, it was Marissa who appeared first.