So Dave was in pain

I'm going to write this so Grandma doesn't blush. Or, I'm going to try.

Dave was in pain Friday night. He came home from work, grunted for hours, kept us both awake, then moved downstairs to the couch to grunt in peace.

At 3 a.m., and once an hour for the next 15 hours, I asked him if it was time to go to the emergency room.

"No, I'm too embarrassed."

"No, what if it goes away?"

"No, it's too expensive."

"No, it's getting better, I think."

"No, I hate hospitals."

Well. I won, eventually, because I sat watching two episodes of "Cops" last night in the waiting room of an emergency room that looks happily nothing like that on "ER."

"Erin? Would you like to go back to see Dave?" a nurse asked. "Oh, Dave said you work at The Northwestern, too."

I gulp, never knowing what that means. "Yes."

"Cool."

Nice.

She leads me back a quiet emergency room to find Dave sitting on a bed, arms above his head, watching the History Channel.

"I got a CAT scan."

"Oooh. Neat."

"Yeah."

We waited for word. Dave thought he was dying. I thought he was a dummy for waiting. But, either way, 20 minutes later, we left with a new understanding of Greek history, a feeling of being violated on Dave's part, and a prescription for a low-grade infection.

So what did we learn? One, I show my love for him with an irritated "WHAT? For God's sake, if you're dying, I will be so PISSED" at 4 a.m.

Two, I show my rational thinking at 4 a.m. by thinking "I swear, he's probably dying and I'll have to go to that financial thing to find out how to be a single mother."

And three, he must have a low threshold for pain -- you know the sound of men grunting as they're lying, bleeding on a battlefield after being shot by a musket or something from old history shows?

He sounds just like that. YOU try to sleep through that.