Back in the prehistoric days of medicine they also had problem with a sophisticated device called the “telephone”. Well, that is my take on this problem as there are quite a few people who work in offices who have telephones that work.. On this day, the doctor was walking around the ward but only receiving phone calls about half the time.
It wasn’t the best day of the year, certainly for this patient. He died of natural causes in the morning, but according to protocol a “second” viewing must be held to ensure that this was his new stable condition. Because it was during a shift change, this second viewing did not take place immediately, but was actually pushed back a few minutes. It was about 2pm when the medical student went up to the ward to speak with a nurse about the second viewing. She was directed to one of the rooms, when she entered it was empty.
Trudge back to the nurse to inform them that the room is empty. There are not a lot of places to hide in a hospital room, but sometimes the patient will be temporarily placed in the bathroom – its not what your thinking. Nobody is dumped into a bathtub, the whole bed is pushed into the bathroom.
A small discussion ensues about the missing patient. I wish I could have seen this one in person. Of course the conversation is finished with the following utterance by the doctor in charge of the ward.
“Whoever has lost the body, has to find the body”
“Speak with the morning shift or whatever”
Well, I guess in once sense it is a small bit of karmic payback as the body was indeed found and this same doctor who was called to do the second viewing. As you might have already guessed, the body had made its way to the morgue. It was seven pm, and despite what you see on television, hardly anyone goes down to the morgue.
This doctor was not planning on going there alone so she brought another doctor. It is difficult to say if the morgue is in the basement or really in a subbasement level of the hospital. It is a very dark very very quiet place. The two doctors were slowly inching along the corridor, perhaps thinking of every horror movie they had ever seen on television, when all of a sudden the phone rings.
Yup, both doctors almost jumped out of their skin. It turns out that they were being called by a fellow doctor who was partying it up elsewhere, the real question was how could you reach me in the subbasement when you cannot reach me on the normal ward. Oh, the patient? Yes, he is still deceased.