| For several months, nurses at a hospital have been baffled to
find a dead patient in the same bed every Friday morning. There was no apparent cause for
any of the deaths, and extensive checks on the air conditioning system, and a search for
possible bacterial infection, failed to reveal any clues. However, further inquiries have now revealed the cause of these
deaths. It seems that every Friday morning a cleaner would enter the ward, remove the plug
that powered the patient's life support system, plug her floor polisher into the vacant
socket, then go about her business. When she had finished her chores, she would plug the
life support machine back in and leave, unaware that the patient was now dead. She could
not, after all, hear the screams and eventual death rattle over the whirring of her
polisher. We are sorry, and have sent a strong letter to the cleaner in question.
Furthermore, the Free State Health and Welfare Department is arranging for an electrician
to fit an extra socket, so there should be no repetition of this incident. The inquiry is
now closed. |
