When my beloved Christian was first admitted into the hospital, it was an emergency situation, so we found ourselves in an ER filled with blue collar peons, not the upper class muckity-mucks and hippity-hops we normally associate with.
In the little area we found ourselves in, we were only separated from the huddled masses yearning to be free by a curtain hanging on a rod by what I was told were metal rings.
"And how do you operate this quaint device?" I asked the doctor in charge.
"To open it," he told us, "you pull it this way. To close it, you pull it back. And I'm the janitor, by the way."
"Why, I never," I sputtered, not use to such direct contact with the employee in charge of cleaning toilets. In the little mansion we call home, the person in charge of cleaning the toilets has to be defumigated, deregulated, and discombobulated before they can exit the bathroom. This is in the interest of not contaminating our humble-yet very expensive-home.
So I closed the curtain to give us a modicum of privacy (I pronounce it: preh-va-see. You should, too.), but we could still hear the annoying going-ons in the hospital bed next to us.
"I've got good news and I've got bad," we could hear the doctor say. "What would you like to hear first?"
"Give me the bad news first," the patient said, trying to be brave.
"We have to amputate both your legs," the doctor told him bluntly.
"Holy crap!" the patient sputtered, his voice breaking with emotion. "What could possibly be the good news?"
"Christian Grey is on the other side of this curtain, and he wants to buy your slippers."