OOPS-WRONG NUMBER

by Rick Fowler

My first real paying job came as a sixteen-year-old at a Northern Michigan hospital in the late 60’s. My job description was under HOUSEKEEPING, but as an asterisk to the job, I also helped, when needed, deliver the deceased to the morgue.

Now, even though young, I really didn’t have a difficult time lifting the “stiffs” from bed to gurney and transporting. In fact, my buddies would relish any new ‘fresh death’ story I might relay to them after I clocked out. I guess I never fully realized that these bodies would no longer breathe, perspire, want or need again.

Anyway, one evening, I received a PAGE from the switchboard operator who explained that there was a deceased that needed to be transported, relayed the message to my supervisor who said, ”Take Norman with you. Get his feet wet!”

Now Norman was from a small community in Tennessee, and had moved here to be next to other family, and needed a job. Thus, he was new to the area, new to the job. Tonight was his first 8 hour shift and he seemed a bit skittish on this, his first assignment.

After getting Norman and a gurney, we proceeded to the elevator and up to the third floor. We ventured past the empty nurses station and were soon at the door of room 301.
 

We knocked, and then entered to the side of bed 301A Norman was miffed by the appearance of the dead woman. Rigor mortis had apparently set in because her right elbow and forearm were cocked at a weird angle across her face. Though dark-skinned, the deceased had a pasty-white look to her. In addition, she was extremely obese.

Nevertheless, Norman and I, after a bit of maneuvering and sheet pulling managed to get her onto the gurney and pulled the white sheet over the reposed body. Luckily, for us bed B was not occupied. The grunts and strains we exhibited getting that woman aboard the gurney had been a little loud and exasperating.

We pushed the gurney with our fragile package past the still empty nurse’s station. We entered the elevator, with Norman at the foot and me at the head, and began our descent.

Suddenly there was movement beneath the sheet. Norman’s eyes rolled back into his head as a bulbous arm swept back the sheet, and then he fainted to the floor as the confused and sleeping pill- ladened woman sat up and said, “Where the hell are you guys taking me?”

The operator had given us the wrong room number. It was supposed to be room 201 A, Not 301 A. In today’s society we, and the hospital would both have been sued.

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