"You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you might find
You get what you need."
You Can't Always Get What You Want; The Rolling Stones
* * * * *
Phil keeps singing that Rolling Stone's song whenever I ask about our relationship. You see Phil was this sixty-five-year-old retired businessman who checked into our private clinic at the insistence of his children whom he seldom saw. They claimed he had undergone a long-term depression and feared he might have "lost it."
"Yeah, I've lost it," Phil readily admitted. "However, what I ain't telling my ungrateful brats and their obnoxious spawn is that the 'it' I have lost is my flagging sex life - my 'mojo!' It sucks to get old and have to deal with a limp willy."
What you may not know was that Phil was a widower with a lot of money. As such, it was natural that numerous attractive young women were seemingly drawn to a crusty old geezer as Phil often described himself.
"In the beginning, those bitches were certainly willing to anything - and I mean anything - to win my favor. However, they dropped me like the proverbial hot potato once their chances of getting my money faded. With each passing affair and two-faced woman, I just got more and more down in more than one way.
"Finally, with fuss made by my 'loving' family - ha, what a laugh - I decided to 'visited' this exclusive and expensive clinic. To be honest, I just wanted to get away from all the nagging and have some peace and quiet. I figured that since I was here I might as well undergo a series of test to see if anything could be done about my...how did the doctor put it...oh, yeah, my low libido and corresponding erectile dysfunction. Hmmph!"
This is where I came in to the story. My name is Rei which is pronounce like "ray" and is short for Reiko, my given Japanese name. Although I've been told that I'm attractive, I consider myself of average appearance and build, standing about five-feet-three-inches with long thick black hair. I come from the other side of the tracks and am somewhat street-wise rough when compared to my older, more polished counterparts. I suffered more than my fair share of hard knocks before I got it together and finally put myself through nursing school.
When I met Phil, I had just turned twenty-four and was a nurse at the clinic that Phil checked into. This was my first job since graduating as a registered nurse, and is totally unlike what I thought nursing would be like. The patients are well-off, elderly, and for the most part, are looking for sound medical diagnosis and quality treatment, a little rest and relaxation, and a liberal dose of individualized bedside attention and care. It's more like working at a calm quiet spa than a busy noisy hospital.
While my job isn't that bad, there are two things that I really hate about it. The first is that all the nurses are required to wear the traditional nurses' whites with the pinned-on winged-cap and the white stockings and shoes. It seems that our elderly patients never liked the looks of the more comfortable and casual "scrubs" that you see in medical facilities everywhere. Our management felt that if our paying customers wanted to see us in whites, whites it would be. While I wore the standard button-down, knee-length dress, I opted for the thigh-high stockings instead of pantyhose as a small expression of rebellion.
The second thing I dislike about my job is that it's boring. As the nurse with the least amount of seniority, I was stuck with the shift that ran from midnight to eight in the morning. The clinic ward that I watched consisted of twelve private single rooms occupied by patients who were usually asleep or liberally medicated by the time I arrived. Since I was the only nurse on duty, my nights were often full of silence, reading, and late-night television - monotonous - not what you'd call fulfilling.
While the starting pay is okay, there's not a whole lot left over after making payment on my enormous student loans and my tiny studio apartment. Having to make ends meet and living from pay check to pay check don't leave me with many options, personally and socially.
Don't get me wrong, there wasn't much of a social life to scuttle. Scumbag losers, slam-bam one-nighters, and a regrettable abortion were enough to convince me that I didn't have terrific luck when it came to men in my life. By the time Phil entered my life, I was beginning to realize that while I was making a living, I wasn't any closer to living the life that I wanted. All in all, my life had been and was pretty depressing.
Phil's admittance came at an unusual time in that the ward was only half filled. By the time I began my shift, the other patients were sound asleep. The nurses of the previous shifts had left notes about how difficult and argumentative Phil had been, and to watch myself. I didn't have long to wait when Phil's nurse's light went off about one in the wee morning.
When he saw an Asian nurse responding, Phil assumed that I'd be demure and meek, and proceeded to rip into me about this and that. "Well about time someone showed up! I've been ringing this goddamn nurse's call button, but nothing. Are you sure this fucking gizmo is hooked up? I could be having a heart attack, and no one would know...much less care! Here I am paying all this money and I can't even get some decent care...can't sleep in this lousy place!"
When I tried to placate him, he continued his rant about the clinic and the care he had received thus far. When I offered him some sleeping pills as indicated in his chart, Phil began irate and personal, saying that all us nurses and especially me did was push pills and not given a hoot about their patients.
I don't know what made me snap - maybe I was tired - maybe I was defensive - or maybe I was fed up with my life. All I know was Phil's rant was the last thing I needed. Before I knew it, I was giving Phil a liberal dose of his own medicine. The years of frustration that I had kept bottled up inside of me came spewing out, and poor Phil was my target.
"Oh, give me a fucking break! I don't know who the hell you think you are, but do you always badger and bully people! Look, you goddamn egotistical son-of-a-bitch, I'm trying to do my job and help you! But because you have money, that doesn't entitle you to treat me like shit! I don't know what your problem is, but maybe...just maybe...it's you!"
By the time I managed to get myself under control, tears were streaming down my face, and I realized that I had just kissed my job goodbye. However, before I could stammer a hasty apology, Phil just said, "You know, nursie, I deserved that. Good for you for setting me straight. I can be a terrible old fart. I know that and ask your forgiveness. My name is Phil, and it is just that...sometimes... especially late at night...it's kind of hard not having anyone to speak to. It gets really hard when you realize just how alone you are..."
Phil was perplexed when I said that I knew exactly what he was talking about. When I shared with him what I was feeling lately, he looked surprised. "Why, Rei...it is okay for me to call you Rei...you're young, pretty, smart, and feisty...you shouldn't feel that way."
"Well," I chided him in return, "look who's talking...you're filthy rich..." We both chuckled and began talking about all kind of things we had gone through. Phil talk extensively about his life, and I rambled about how I got to be in the clinic and seemed to be going nowhere fast. By the end of that first evening, we were chatting like long lost friends, catching up on lost time.
The next evening, I made Phil my last bed check after making sure the other patients were sound asleep. "How was my day? I had one of your young whipper-snapper doctors lecture me that I was going through 'male menopause' and that I would just had to adjust to the normal aging process. Hmmph! How am I supposed to do the 'horizontal-nasty' with some young and willing hot-to-trot chick with a dick that hasn't been able to get it up in years?
"The doc said that he can't find anything physically wrong with me. And, that my condition might be more mental than physical. You know, Rei, the doc might be right. Now, I don't mean to brag but I've had a lot of women. Unfortunately, they only wanted my money and not me which was a real turn-off. The only problem was after years of being turned off, I don't know if I can get it turned back on."
"Phil, I know what you mean. I have no problem attracting guys, but the men whom I attracted, weren't interested in me or being with me. They were just into getting their rocks off and I was just another 'cum-dump' - excuse my French. Anyway, after a series of dismal one-night stands and fizzled relationships, I had come to realize how uninterested I was in starting up anything that I knew was doomed from the start."
When Phil snickered, I became defensive, but he quickly calmed me down. "Rei, I meant no offense and wasn't laughing at you. I was just thinking what utter idiots the men you have known were." With a chuckle, he smiled appreciatively at me and said, "Oh, if I were only forty years younger..." For some strange reason unknown to me at the time, I found my heart beating a little faster and a smile gracing my lips.
I returned to work after my weekend break to find Phil despondent and surly. At first, he wouldn't even talk to me but finally opened up with a snarky "Where the hell were you? I kept expecting you this weekend and got someone totally different. Jeez!"
"What? Hey, wait a minute, Phil! Just in case you didn't realize this, I'm not in the habit of working seven days a week! And on top of that, since when do I have to ask your permission to have the fucking weekend off!".
