Mrs Goody Two Shoes XXI

Ca we have some healthy conversation, please?

The one on the operating table is actually fine, sleeping under the effect of anaesthesia. The one waiting outside -- that's the one in real trouble

Have you ever wondered how conversations are customised by the places they are held in? They are kind of like set breakfasts at restaurants. Observe closely and you will notice how ready-made they are, scripted to suit, not the occasion really, but the site.
The point I am trying to make here is simple. If you are in an old, decrepit house, you would be sharing scary ghost stories whose versions become more and more exaggerated with every telling, wouldn't you? Anxious mums discuss the difficulty of Chapter 16 in the science book while they wait near the school gate to collect their wards. As if they are the ones appearing for the exams all over again.
Happens. Automatically. Like a trigger has been pulled. But I figured out the worst place to be at when such overcooked, over-served conversations are being thrown at you, or are carried on in voices loud enough so that you definitely overhear them, is the nursing home. I used to think it's the haunting tales that spook me the most, but I guess I was wrong.
My husband underwent a three-hour-long surgery recently. Well, the time is of utmost importance here. It just translates into that many hours (and some more) of torture for me. I was terribly anxious about him, but now that I think of it, I feel he was chilling under in the air-conditioned OT and sleeping peacefully with a nice high of general anaesthesia.
No one seems to have anything cheerful to say in a hospital. The talk's either about diseases or mishaps. One of the old aunts who appeared to have emerged from the dead herself, and I do not know why she was even there during the operation, blabbered incessantly. "You never know with these surgeries. One nerve snipped, and you are ruined." That was directed at one uncle but I could, of course, hear.
"You know what happened to my neighbour? He lost his eye! The doctor cut the wrong nerve and poof, he was blind." She added in a malicious hiss, "For life!" Then she turned to me and gave me a totally fake smile, "Nothing to worry, okay?" I stopped short of slapping her.
I was also being assaulted by my grandma from another direction. I had been against this close-to-ninety-year-old visiting the place -- one, she was too old for this, and two, I knew this is what I would have to bear. "Make him gargle with lukewarm salt water four to five times a day. Four to five times a day would be good. Lukewarm. Not hot..." You get the drift.
The buzz refused to stop.
"General anaesthesia does not suit every one."
"I think they should have done this at my cousin's nursing home."
"Light yoga after the operation helps."
When the doctor finally came out and announced the husband was fine, the conversations stopped suddenly. Almost in tears, I ran to hug him. Yes, because I love my husband, of course. But yes, and don't share this with him, also because the doc had come and rescued me.