Dinner with Pop

Caro and I left our house at 5:30pm , called Pop to let him know we were on our way and arrived at his house around 6pm. He was ready. He got himself into our car and off we went to try out the just opened William McBrides near Raritan Valley College. We ordered drinks, dinner and added on a potato leek soup. Just as Caro and I were finishing splitting the soup, our dinners came. Caro ordered a Cobb salad, I ordered a vegetable panini and Pop ordered a spicy seafood fra diablo.It was a little after 6:30pm when Pop got that look on his face...Caro asked, "everything ok Pop?" That made me look at him. He was sort of gagging, not really coughing. Caro gave him the soup cup to spit into (usually he just gets up and goes to the bathroom by himself). He had a tremendous amount of thick mucus that he was gagging out (sorry). Pop is 89 and has been a smoker all of his life. When we asked him if he wanted to go to the hospital, he said he didn't know ( That was scarey...Pop always knows what he wants to do). We asked waiter for the check, took food in take out containers and got Pop back into car. He continued with the gagging. I decided mentally that if we got to Route 22 and he had not improved , then we were going to Somerset Emergency room. As we approached 22 , I said to Pop, "I'm going to the hospital, ok?" " Gdammit, take me home", he said. I then told him that if he did not improve by 6:45 I would take him to the hospital kicking and cursing. He was very shaky going into his house...got the lights on , opened the door to the garbage can and did his thing again. " I think that did it",  he said. And then he lit up a cigarette, "Are we gonna play kismet or what?" he said.
Three cigarettes and three Kismet games later He was fine and we were wrecks! Left him about 9:30pm, kissed him goodbye, told him to call us if he needed us or to press his I've fallen and can't get up button, and yelled to him as we were leaving, "GOODNIGHT DICK!