Friend Back at Home (Yay!)

My friend/neighbor is back home from surgery, having been released from the hospital today.  I think that once you prove to them you can make from the bed to the bathroom (and back again), they pack you up and send you on your merry way (even if you're shouting, "but I have insurance!").

I needn't have worried about figuring out what I should or should not do in this situation.  See, there's four of us who actually form an odd little pseudo-family.  My neighbor and her husband (who we'll call Couple) are about ten years older than I am, and they have a daughter who is off at college.  Now, about three years ago, a law student moved in downstairs from me.  She lives alone (her parents are in the midwest someplace), and since she's away from her parents and Couple is away from their daughter ... well, they seem to fill spaces in each other's lives, and Law Student is a regular guest at Couple's dinner table.

I fit in somewhere between them age-wise -- almost directly in the middle, come to think of it.  I'm actually more a friend of Couple (well, Wife) than I am of Law Student -- but we spend a lot of time together as a foursome, and it's pretty much expected that if some of us are going to grab some dinner or see a movie, we'll ask the others to go along.  Things just sort of evolved that way.

Law Student (who probably needs a new title, seeing as she graduated this year) was away on a major post-bar-exam vacation and just came back the week before Wife's surgery, and, in retrospect, I'm really amazed at how our bizarre little group came together on this one.  While Wife was in the hospital, Law Student and I were responsible for making sure Husband actually ate (we had visions of him sitting at the dinner table, work spread out all around him, with a half gallon of ice cream and a spoon), so we went out for dinner with him every night, and got the story on how Wife was doing at the hospital.  (We also just naturally started sharing tasks -- I told her I'd take care of ordering flowers for Wife -- and it reminded me of how my sister and I deal with presents for our parents.)  The other day, we ran errands together and drove over to visit Wife in the hospital.

Today, I didn't leave work till about 7:00.  Law Student had called me earlier to let me knowWife was out of the hospital, so I called Law Student before I left to see how Wife was doing.  She asks why I'm not home yet.  She was making dinner and they were waiting for me.  So I high-tailed it home and we all gathered in Couple's living room, to watch the "Dancing With the Stars" results show and eat meatloaf.  (And Law Student made mushrooms just for me.  That girl is too sweet.)  When we finished eating, I cleared the plates and filled Couple's dishwasher just as naturally as if it were my own house, and we hung out until Wife was tired and ready for bed.

A few more weeks of this and we might have it down.

I will never, ever, ever say this aloud, and I am somewhat annoyed at myself for even thinking it, but there's this teensy little part of me that thinks that maybe there was a reason I didn't sell my condo and ended up stuck in this building for another year.  Maybe right now, this is exactly where I'm supposed to be.