Sleeping with Hugh Grant

What’s on my mind? Hugh Grant … Always, always Hugh Grant.

I met him once … Sorta. Maybe not. Never, actually. But I have seen his movies! Wouldn’t miss ’em for the world. 

When I sorta met Hugh Grant (the hunky British actor whom I worship from afar), we shared a hospital room. Before I prepared to meet Hugh Grant, I was last in hospital when my now middle-aged children were born, and before that, when I was born. Things have changed. 

Men now bunk in the same room as women, at least in the burg where I live. Which is unfortunate, because any woman who hopes to meet Hugh Grant would want to be wearing the Full Zsa Zsa when she does. 

(I was wearing the Full Zsa Zsa, but it was as Zsa Zsa Gabor looked when she died two months short of her 100th birthday. Let’s just say Zsa Zsa’s beauty peaked in 1937.)

Only a blue curtain separated my bed from Hugh’s - and I wanted to meet the man behind the blue curtain. Was Hugh really as charming as he was in the movies? Could he still dance as he did in Love Actually? More to the point … Did he still have those cute little buns he had in Love Actually? 

I was sleeping beside Hugh Grant! Which is pretty much the same as sleeping with Hugh Grant. Pretty much.

It sure sounded like Hugh Grant behind the blue curtain. Très charmant. Enjoying a frisson of attention from the nurses. He’d been wheeled to our room around midnight; this morning marked the first day of his hospital confinement. Hugh had snapped his tibia in a car crash. It needed pinning or pegging or whatever it is that surgeons do with well-sculpted legs that project from cute little buns. 

Someone had been driving too fast and it definitely wasn’t Hugh! Which may have been a big fat fibula, but it sure sounded convincing when I overheard him tell it to the nurses.

Sure enough, Hugh disappeared from his bed early that morning, only to be wheeled back a few hours later as every nurse on the floor surrounded his bedside with sympathetic words. I tried to catch a glimpse of him as I limped (unaided and in pain) to the washroom, but all I saw was a phalanx of nurses’ backsides.

In that familiar Hugh Grant-ish manner, he also told the nurses: “It’s a good thing I wasn’t born 200 years ago, or my leg would have been amputated.” Let alone that there were no cars. 

“Hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw!” one nurse brayed. Ah, the ancient courting ritual of thrust and parry! I didn’t mean that as it came out. I didn’t mean that as it left my mouth, either. 

Desperate to see Hugh Grant, I bided my time until the nurses drifted away and I heard Hugh’s gentle snoring. I then tiptoed to his bedside as he slept. My plan was to accidentally-on-purpose trip over his pinned tibia, waiting to request an autograph until his screams subsided. 

I wouldn’t seek an autograph unless he really were Hugh Grant, which is why I didn’t get one. I didn’t have the moxie to assess those buns, but - whoever the guy was - he had a fine set of tonsils, flapping in the sterilized hospital air.

© Nicole Parton, 2019