We were sitting in my bright yellow mustang, the very first car I ever owned. I was 16 years old and Chrisanne was getting ready to go off to college. A time in our loves I still refer to as her “abandonment”. As we sat in the front seat after two years of being best friends, and going through what we thought at the time was, the biggest part of our lives together, we stared at each other. Sometimes Chrisanne gets a look on her face that’s a cross between Elizabeth Montgomery and Yoda.

“What?” I asked her.

“I don’t want to leave you.” She said back.

“I don’t want you to leave.” I said back.

“No. I mean…ever.”

I then took the note I had worked on for almost 2 months out of my back pocket and gave it to her. It was a Promissory Note. One I had constructed as a sort of contract between her and me.

“I will never, ever leave you. I promise. Even if I get married. My spouse will have to take you on as well. I won’t marry anyone who doesn’t get that.”

….and I signed it.

And then I made her sign it. We cried, held each other and rocked back in the forth in the front seat of my yellow mustang.

When she went into the hospital on Monday morning the operation that was supposed to take an hour or so ended up taking almost 3. Chrisanne asked her mother if she could fly over from Florida and be with her and in turn, watch over me.

A brilliant idea, considering the last crisis we had consisted of an overflowing dishwasher which my friend Matt and I solved by running around the kitchen throwing our arms up in the air and screaming:

“WHAT DO WE DO NOW???!!”

My mother in law is a Southern Woman.

And I mean that in the most honest, gentile and brilliant way. She’s everything you’ve ever heard or read about Southern women. She looks fantastic, salt and pepper hair, always has rings, bracelets or some other tasteful jewelry on, and is never without a matching outfit. Shoes, belts, tops, sandals, and her sunglasses match her purse. She’s meticulous.

And then there’s that raucous, contagious laugh that when she throws her head back and clutches her heart could make a wall tumble from its foundation. Her jokes are never planned, never calculated. They slip out, and like any good Southern woman, she catches herself. With a glint in her eye and a small gesture, the joke slips out and everyone seems to be welcome in sharing it.

My mother in law is Southern. Period.

As she and I sat in the waiting room, we chatted and talked about what to do when Chrisanne got out of surgery. What comes next? What should I get from home? What about the car? How long of a drive will it be? Settling things. Sometimes, as she talked to me, she tried to get me to focus. To think of something else. After all, I’ve known this woman longer now than I knew my own mother. When she speaks to me, I take notes. She knows what she’s talking about.

In the 30 years that Chrisanne and I have been together, she’s never been in the hospital. Not once. I’m the one that supposed to get sick and die, not her. Chrisanne doesn’t go fist. It’s not supposed to work that way. I’m not prepared for that. That’s not part of the plan. And yet, as my mother in law was explaining things to me, talking to me in her hushed alto, the thought of someone digging into Chrisanne with a knife was making me physically ill. My stomach turned like a pancake on a hot grill and I was having trouble swallowing. I went back to the Note. The Note we both signed, and I wasn’t about to renege. And I wasn’t about to let her do the same.

But I was panicking.

Time ticked on in that room. People coming and going, all waiting for the same thing Jan and I were waiting for: for their loved one to be finished, and for this to be over. Everyone staring at the clock, staring the TV, pretending to listen to each other. Some people scanning the room, some with their heads buried in their hands. But everyone…everyone with their eyes on that clock.

Jan’s eyes would occasionally catch mine and without ever turning away, she calmed me down. Everything’s going to be fine. I knew that because I could see it in her eyes. This wasn’t up for discussion. This was something she decided and she knew.

My terror would move somewhere else and a strange sense of peace would cover me. I sat in the chair, and lowered my head to my computer screen pretending to know what I was doing. Jan went back to her book.

When the 12 year old behind the desk left to take care of something down the hall, the phone suddenly rang. Jan folded her book in half, walked over to the phone and in her soothing southern drawl she said:

“Surgery waiting room, may I help you?”

I sat there in my chair nursing my 9am coffee with my mouth hanging open.

No one in the room moved.

“…uh-huh..” she answered into the phone, “…just a minute, please.” She covered the mouthpiece with her left hand. “…is there a Johnson here? Johnson?”

I guess she repeated the name just in case the Johnsons didn’t hear it the first time.

A woman rose out of her chair, and stammered:

“I’m….I’m her daughter.”

“Phone for you, Honey.” Jan said sweetly.

She handed the phone to a perplexed Mrs. Johnson’s daughter and sat down.

We all then became dependant on Jan in the Waiting Room. We knew that when the 12 year old left (as he did almost 3 separate times) that Jan was going to be up and answering the phone for us. We were safe in the knowledge that Jan was there and that if the phone rang none of us had to be responsible for it. The woman with the fabulous outfit and matching shoes was on the case. I think there came a moment when we assumed she’d be ushering in the doctors as well.

Every once in a while I’d trot downstairs to have smoke and prop myself up on a spare white wall outside the hospital and across from the emergency entrance and sob. Tears rolling off me and onto my cigarette. As I re-entered the waiting room, Jan would peer at me from the pages of her book, and smile. A cry that could have turned hysterical suddenly became therapeutic and healing. And then it stopped. It didn’t go on unnecessarily.

When the 12 year old finally arrived from his Briteny Spears concert, and sat back down at his assigned desk, Jan rose out of her chair again, as everyone held their collective breath. After all, this time nothing was ringing.

“Can you please tell me when my daughter will be out of surgery?” she said kindly.

“Umm…uh…the uh…name?”

“Blankenship.” She said still smiling.

“Another 2 hours I think. I think.” He said back to her.

“That’s not what they told us.” She said still smiling. “That’s not what they told us.” She said repeating it to me.

Here eyes squinted and the waiting room knew Jan was not to be jostled. Her daughter had better be returned to her exactly the way she left her, or there’d be nothing left of the waiting room except The Waiting.

After the longest 3 hours in recorded history, Chrisanne’s brilliant and hilarious surgeon finally appeared. She took is in the consultation room, and breathed a heavy sigh. She apologized for having taken so long and then began to use a lot of terms that sounded like she was reciting a Dr Seuss poem.

“The macklites were strangled in the brackel-tites. While the hemo filter garbled with the bremo-mister.”

She then calmed down and explained to us that the surgery was much more complicated than originally thought and that Chrisanne has lost more blood than she would have liked. The mere thought of Chrisanne losing blood suddenly made me want to throttle her. It had nothing to do with her great, great skill, or the easy going, truly calming bed side manner our doctor employed; it was simply the fact of it. The fact that someone made her bleed set my teeth on edge. I wanted to leap on her and push her into a wall.

But then, Jan leaned forward, and said very simply:

“So..she’s all right? Everything’s all right?”

“Yes,” our doctor said warmly, “..Everything’s all right.”

I backed down. No need for a murder. I never liked jail anyway. The food’s terrible.

On our way up to see Chrisanne in her room, I wondered about staying over night. I wasn’t about o leave her there, that wasn’t an option. But I was nervous. I didn't know what to do. I didn’t know who to ask. So..I asked Jan.

“Who do you think I should ask about staying over night?”

Jan cleared her throat and with her eyes dead set ahead to her daughter’s room, she simply said to me:

“Just walk in like you own the place. That’s what I do.”

And since the same steely reserve that runs through her mother runs through my wife, I know I have nothing to fear. The doctor said it might 2 or 3 days before she gets out of the hospital, but I have my doubts. 2 or 3 days? That’s far too long. <aybe for most people. This may have been the worst operation in a while performed by these people, and recovery for anyone else might be 3 or 4 days, but they haven’t met these two Southern women. After all, a contract is contract. Tara might be burning, but nothing on earth is going to topple that plantation.