It all started with this damned spider bite on my right knee.

Last Saturday, while working in the yard of John's house, This Man was bitten by, what I later concluded, was a spider. The bite left a nice, aching bump just slightly to the right of my right knee cap. Not paying any attention to the growing wound, Monday the bite grew and was pretty red and that's when I realized that it needed to be looked at.
"You need to get that looked at immediately." John precautioned.
"Oh my god, you HAVE to go have it treated." Lucy told me from Texas.
"...Yeah, you might want to have it checked out." My housemate, Jay, advised.
Rather than travel all the way to La Jolla to the VA hospital and rather than endure the emergency room, This Man decided to walk around the block to the neighborhood clinic.
This was late Monday evening.
The first guy working at the clinic briefly dismissed the red bump as merely an insect bite. "You'll be fine," he said. "Just put some calamine lotion on it [for the itching]." I ran into John, showed him the bump and he recommended that we go back to the clinic to have it looked at.
Back at the clinic (again) and that's where I saw him. It was Raymond. My ex.
He didn't see me.
That was a good thing.
The charge nurse informed me that the doctor had already left for the evening and I would, in fact have to return tomorrow, seeing as I would need to get an antibiotic. "Come back early tomorrow morning, " she advised.
Tuesday. 8:30 bright and early. This Man strolled back to the clinic and that's when I saw him again.
Raymond. Right there behind the counter. He was smiling.
" I thought that was you! How have you been?"
We stood there in the foyer of the building and exchanged pleasantries. He was good. I was good. Not much had changed. His mother was well. Even though we lived in the same neighborhood, Raymond and I hadn't seen each other since we'd called it splits back in early December.
"I still think about all the crazy times that we had," he told me. We did have some fun times together. We also had some turbulent times...some dramatic times and it was those that caused us to break up.
"I miss you," he said. That scared me because he was looking me dead in the eyes. "Do you ever think about me?"
How do you think I responded?


Mahalo