On a 7-9, he's laid up at the hospital

As you're humming happily to yourself and looking in the mirror, trying to make yourself look good for Brian, your phone rings with the chiming melody to "I'll Be Home For Christmas." You snap open the handset and answer.

"Honey-bear, where are you?" you say.

"Sweetie-pie, I'm sorry," he says. "I fell out of the cab at the dispatch center and broke my leg. I'm in the hospital and they're gonna keep me overnight."

"Oh, no, honey-bear!" you say. "I'll be right there. Do you need anything?"

You pack a little care package for your husband with things he might want if he's laid up in bed and might be a little bored and lonely. After all, they might have taken away the love locket Brian wears with a picture of you looking up your skirt. If he's not with you or one of his out-of-town girlfriends, he can always look at what he says is your best side.

Your husband is in the window half of a semi-private room overlooking the parking lot and the interstate highway. Besides the cast on his left leg, elevated and immobilized, he pretty much looks like the man you sent on his way a couple of weeks ago. A grizzled sandy blond with a closely trimmed beard making his round baby face more manly, and big strong shoulders grading down to a softer middle. They've got him in a hospital gown, but somehow he's managed to hold on to the heart-shaped locket with your picture.

"Honey-bear, I'm here!" you say. Your 'do-me' heels clicking, you go to his bedside, bend over him and lose yourself in his lips. He kisses back as hard as he can. Already you're feeling a little better. Warmer, especially inside, down there.

"So glad you're here, sweetie-pie," Brian says. "It's been EMT to doctor to nurse for a while, but after they decided they'd hang onto me overnight, they all fluttered away."

You glance down to the lap of your husband's gown. He's pitching a big tent. At least there's nothing wrong there. You wonder if there's anything like a conjugal physical therapist to show you what you can still do when a man is hurt with a broken leg.

"How did it happen, honey-bear?" you say.

"Well, Patty was at the end of her shift when I came into the dispatch center," Brian says. "She said to wait at the truck and she'd come out and run through the check-in in person. I'm in the cab, she's outside, and we finish the check-list, when she says, 'Wait a minute, buster, one more thing to check.' She climbs up the ladder and opens up my pants."

"Oh, Patty," you say with a smile. Patty caught you and Brian having an intimate farewell once and somehow now she thinks she's your deputy if she catches Brian at the start or end of a trip. You wonder if you said something to give her that idea.

"So Patty is doing her thing, and I'm patting her head, when her foot slips on the ladder and she's falling. I try to hold her, but then I'm going over too, and the only thing I can think is if I land on her, I'm gonna bust her into a million pieces."

Patty is a little thing, you'll allow.

"So I kind of push off and instead of falling on Patty, I fall onto the concrete and there's a kind of snap, and my leg feels kinda off. But I pull up my pants and try to stand up, and well, that's all she wrote. Here I am. Not the kind of homecoming you deserve, sweetie-pie. I'm sorry."

"Oh, honey, I'm sorry," you say. "Is there anything I can do to help you feel better?"