This, That, and the Other

I am unofficially participating in this year’s A to Z Challenge. My theme this year is girlfriends.

Y is for Yvonne J.

I got promoted to the position of Hospital Relations Representative, and that job entailed my meeting regularly with people like the head of financial management (often called the Controller) at a hospital, the head of patient accounting, or the hospital administrators. My role was to make sure that the hospitals I was assigned to and my company, a Blue Cross plan, worked together to meet the needs of their patients and their financial targets.

Most of the hospital administrators and hospital controllers were male, and many of the patient accounts managers were female. Yvonne was the patient accounts manager for the largest hospital I was assigned to, so I typically had meetings with her at her hospital at least once weekly.

Our relationship had been strictly professional until one day a few months after I was promoted into my new role. Yvonne called me up to tell me that she was all booked up that morning, but said she was free for lunch. I didn’t give it too much thought because many of my contacts had busy schedules and we would occasionally have meetings over sandwiches at lunch.

Yvonne had given me the name of the restaurant where she had made lunch reservations for us. I brought my agenda of topics for us to discuss and the necessary supporting documentation. When I arrived at the restaurant, Yvonne was already there waiting for me, and when I was led to her table by the hostess, Yvonne stood up to shake my hand.

Yvonne was a pleasant-looking woman, but kind of a plain Jane. She didn’t wear much makeup at her office in the hospital and dressed in very appropriate, conservative business attire. But this woman who stood up to shake my hand was far from a plain Jane. Her Auburn hair, which she mostly wore in a tight bun, was combed out and down past her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing her glasses, so I assumed she’d donned a pair of contact lenses. She was also wearing a rather form-fitting, short dress that was on the low-cut side. I actually did a double-take, which she noticed and smiled back at me.

We ordered lunch and I went through my meeting agenda. When I was done, I asked her what she had for me. “I have two tickets to see Hall & Oates on Saturday night. Would you like to go with me?”

I was a fan of Hall & Oates and had just bought their album, Abandoned Luncheonette, that previous weekend. But I explained to Yvonne, “My company has a very strict policy on accepting gifts from clients….”

Yvonne interrupted me. “This isn’t a gift,” she said. “I’m asking you out on a date.”

We went to the Hall & Oates concert, which was great, and started dating for about three months before she took a job at a different hospital in a different state. Yvonne continued to wear her hair in a tight bun, dress conservatively, and wear glasses at our business meetings, but she was like a totally different woman when we were on dates.

When Yvonne told me that she was taking a job as the chief financial officer at a hospital in Chicago, she asked me if I would consider moving to Chicago to be with her. I did give it some serious thought, but decided it really wasn’t a good idea and she needed to focus on being successful in her new role, but we could keep in touch and “you never know what might happen.”

We did keep in touch for about a month, but then I met someone new and I’d heard she’d hooked up with a ER doctor at the hospital.

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