Hospital Protocol
Monica and Chandler take a moment to warmly look into each other's eyes, sharing wide, authentic smiles. The happiness beaming from them is almost blinding. Monica gives Chandler a few pats on his knee, slides off the hospital gurney, turns, and starts to walk down the hallway. Chandler leaps up and starts to bounce on the balls of his feet. Monica, without turning around, reprimands, "Don't do the dance."
"Right!" he replies as he watches her disappear down through the hospital corridors. Once Chandler confirms she is out of sight, he balls up his fists and shakes them in the air triumphantly, shouting "woohoo!" several times in celebration. He closes his eyes and starts to pump his fists, spinning around in a circle. When he finally opens his eyes again, he finds himself face-to-face with one of the hospital nurses, who, apparently, was standing behind him. She gives him a disapproving look.
"Oh, I'm sorry ma'am, I just, uh really love," he pauses, looks around nervously, and then snatches a box of gauze off of the shelves behind the gurney where he and Monica had just been sitting, "This gauze. It's the best. I'm so glad you guys have it!" his nervous features begin to relax and his eyes widen excitedly, "Wait a minute, you don't know who I am. Why am I lying to you? I don't care about this stupid gauze! Actually, I'm pretty sure that this beautiful, amazing, sexy woman just agreed to be exclusive with me! And we're having sex! A lot of sex! A lot of really great sex! And she's really hot and she does stuff with me! In bed! And its good!" Chandler suddenly realizes exactly what he is saying and his expression goes quiet and thoughtful.
The nurse, an older woman who looks to be in her fifties or sixties, wearing a tired expression on her face, looks down her nose at Chandler. "Congratulations." She deadpans. "I'm really happy for you. Please don't touch the hospital supplies."
Chandler looks down at the box of gauze that he is still holding in his hands. "Right." He hands it back to her. The nurse exaggerates an exhausted sigh and walks away.
Chandler starts to bounce up and down again, looks both ways down the hall, confused with what exactly to do next, and walks in the opposite direction hoping to avoid the nurse he just met. After a few minutes wandering around the labyrinth of corridors he finally makes his way back to the waiting room near the maternity ward. He looks around the rows of chairs and sees Ross, sitting down, alone, with a forlorn look on his face.
"Hey!" Chandler calls out, still trying to stifle his giddiness. "Where is everyone?"
"Oh, hey." Ross replies, sounding depressed, not even looking up to meet Chandler's gaze. "Uh, well, Joey is still in recovery, Rachel went off to the cafeteria and, well, I don't know where Monica is. They say it may be about a half-hour before we can go in to see Phoebe and the babies. Where have you been?" Ross finally looks up. Chandler is a bundle of nerves and adrenalin. He can't seem to stand still. Rocking from one foot to the other. "Dude, what is wrong with you?"
Chandler looks back at Ross, tries to quiet his emotions, "Oh, yeah. I gotta pee."
Ross looks back, "Are you asking my permission?"
"Nooooo!" Chandler exaggerates sarcastically. "I just wanted to check on you first. Now that I did, I'll go do my business."
"Do your business?" Ross scrunches his brow, looking as if Chandler's words emitted a foul odor.
Chandler just huffs and storms off. He walks for a few minutes, not exactly sure where he is going, just knowing he needs to get away from everyone until he can relax. "Calm down Chandler." He thinks to himself, "You are way too amped up about this." Chandler stops walking and finds himself standing in a four-way corridor. He starts to bounce a bit between each entrance way, almost hoping his momentum will fling him down one of them so he doesn't have to make a decision.
"Well," he muses aloud, "Normally when something like this happens, I'd talk to Joey, or Monica, but I can't talk to them." He turns his body around haphazardly, "And I can't talk to Ross because, well, he'd probably kill me." He turns around again, "What I really need is to find a pack of cigarettes!"
Chandler is about to finally make a decision as to where he should go when he hears a somewhat familiar, exasperated sigh come from behind him. He turns around to see the nurse from earlier, sitting at the desk, staring at him. "Are you going to be doing this all day? We check patients in over here and I think they have enough problems without having to deal with you."
"Well," Chandler offers in a sarcastic tone, "I don't know yet, normally when I get this far with a girl I can talk to my friends and getting their input kind of helps and keeps me rational, but, since I can't do that, I think I'll just do this," Chandler starts to bounce around and flail his arms in an exaggerated motion, "until I either pass out or a carton of cigarettes miraculously falls from the sky."
The nurse looks at him quietly. She looks at her watch. Looks back at him, back at her watch, and sighs. "Well, I can't in good conscience let you smoke, that's kind of my job, and although I imagine letting you pass out would be much easier for me," she looks at her watch once more and her entire body seems to deflate. "I've got about fifteen minutes. Let's go kid." She gets up from behind the desk, pulls a white cardigan from the back of the chair and starts to walk down the far corridor towards the exit. Chandler, looking confused, hesitates and shakes his head. "I said c'mon kid! I don't have all day!"
Chandler tilts his head, nods slightly and starts to follow the nurse. They make their way quietly down a series of hallways, through several waiting areas, until they come to a quiet, darkened room. Chandler nervously quips, "Look, if this is about the gauze, I'll pay for it. You don't need to take me to your nurse interrogation room..."
The nurse shoots Chandler a look that causes him to stop talking before he can finish. She flips on the light and directs Chandler to sit down. She pulls up a chair and looks at her watch one more time. "Okay kid, go."
Chandler, very confused, takes a moment to figure out what he is supposed to say. "Well, see my name is Chandler. And you are?"
The nurse cuts him off, "No, we're not doing that. If I am lucky, we will never see each other again. Just tell me what your problem is."
Chandler scans the room for a moment to collect his thoughts. His face relaxes and he starts to speak. "Well, I don't really have a problem. You see, you know when I told you about all the sex I was having?" The nurse looks at him impatiently and raises an eyebrow, "Well, you were there, you know what I said. Well, you see, this girl, she isn't just any girl. She's one of my best friends. In fact, she is probably is the best friend."
The nurse's face softens to one of concern. "Well, obviously you think there's a problem. You wouldn't be this bundle of nerves right now if everything was great," she then pulls back from him, "unless you're one of those pathetic guys who never had sex before."
"I've had sex!" Chandler pronounces emphatically, "But I guess, if you really knew me, you'd know this is how I normally act when I am with a woman, but this time, yeah, it's different." Chandler quietly looks down at his feet.
The nurse leans in and places a reassuring hand on his knee. "So, there it is. This girl is different?"
"Yeah, she's different." Chandler smiles reflectively for a moment. "I screw up with women all the time, at an Olympic level. And if that happens here, well, I don't know what I would do then. She's really important to me. She's important to everybody. What if I do something stupid and she hates me and then our entire friendship goes up in flames? We're close, all of us, and me screwing up, something like that, it would wreck everyone. So, yeah, she is different. Even before we did anything like what we are doing now, she always was, well, she still is, out of all the women I've ever known, she's the best one." Chandler drops his head wearily, worried if he looked up, his eyes would betray a sadness that he normally holds deep inside himself, that he has been trying to bury away for almost his entire life.
The nurse pauses, takes his hand and gives it a squeeze. "Well then, don't screw it up." Chandler picks his head up and gives a half smile. "Look, kid. Everybody screws up. I've been married for 17 years and I still screw up. My husband still screws up. He actually screws up a lot. He's probably screwing something up right now." She looks off to the side, then returns her gaze back to Chandler. "There's no money back guarantee on future happiness. You just have to make sure that when you do screw up, you salvage whatever you can. If your friendship with this girl is that important to you, then you do whatever it is you have to do to make sure you hold onto that. Listening to you talk about it, I can tell, when push comes to shove, you'll do the right thing."
Chandler's face becomes serious. His eyes go weak and vulnerable. "I don't know if it is that easy, At some point she is going to find out that," his voice cracks a bit, he stiffens up and starts again "she's going to find out that she can do better."
The nurse, still holding Chandler's hand, stands up and motions for him to do the same. "Well then kid, I guess you'll just have to be better." She smiles at him and Chandler seems to relax for a moment. "Now, why don't we get you back to your friends."
Chandler and the nurse make their way back to Phoebe's recovery room, she opens the door and leads Chandler inside. Once there, Monica looks up at him, holding one of the babies, smiling deliriously. He makes his way over, places one of his arms around her back and starts to stroke the babies head gently. "I think you're my favorite." She says as she looks down lovingly at the bundle she's cradling. The nurse steps back out of the room and closes the door.
She starts to walk back to the main desk reflecting on the conversation she just had, when another hospital worker joins her. "Hey, Sheila, where have you been." Sheila hesitates for a moment and looks back at her co-worker. "oh, just helping out a friend."