How We Met...

Neil and I met at St. Louis University Hospital in the Neurosurgical ICU sometime in May, 2009.  It was about 2AM and I called him to deal with some sort of issue with my patient.  --That's what we usually tell people anyway.

We do not actually agree on the exact moment that we met.  I seem to think that I already knew him at that moment.  Perhaps, I had noticed him rounding before that.  I do remember thinking he was crazy cute and wanting to get to know him better.

There was one instance after we met, when he was on the other side of a window and I was sitting with another nurse.  She was asking me who he was and I pretended I didn't really know.  She asked me if I knew what his name was while she was trying to read his notoriously bad handwriting.  I gave her the exact spelling, while trying not to sound like I knew exactly how to spell it and had maybe checked into him already!  She asked what I thought his nationality was and all I could think was that he could probably hear us and I'm sure my face was so red.  

We chatted a bit on the long nights in the ICU when Neil would "take a break" that happened to be two floors below his call room and right between my patients' rooms.  We instantly found we had a ton of things in common.  One day we found ourselves alone- usually we were joined by other nurses, and he asked me if I would like to go out sometime and have a drink.  I didn't want to sound like I had been waiting for him to ask me, so I gave it a good pause for dramatic affect and said, "um... ok."