Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Where have all the nurses gone?


Doctors are a superstitious, cowardly lot.  So my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts.  Errr, no forget that.  Just think of the superstitious, cowardly bit.  There is no disguise.

Doctors are so superstitious that they do. Not. Ever. Use. The word. Quiet.  It's never a quiet day.  It's never quiet in here.  Even patients aren't allowed to say these things.  People will be quickly corrected.  It is in fact "steady", "ok", "not too bad", or (for the extremely bold or naive) "a bit slow".  Everyone knows that saying it is quiet invites the attention of the Gods, who will smite you most unjustly and spitefully.

Yet some things, when examined with the might and majesty of science, turn out to be not superstitions but cold hard facts.  Take, for example, the observation that when the nurses are hard to find, it means that the shit is about to hit the fan. After lengthy investigation I have determined that this is true, a truth that shines brighter than the sun, casting shadows on our minds so we knowest it even while our backs are turned from the light.

Sorry, got a bit florid there,

The facts are these.  Nurses, with their superior sense of hearing and touch, are able to sense the low-frequency vibrations caused by distant shit hitting the fan.  As the shit and the fan grow closer, the nurses become agitated and distressed, and will find ways to escape the impending disaster.

For example, today I saw a herd of fifty nurses galloping wildly in circles, biting and kicking at each other in dismay, before they suddenly veered away and plunged off a great precipice to fall hundreds of metres into an icy mountain river and were swept onward to the sea.  Soon afterwards, a busload of bespectacled teenage girls who were unable to weight bear on their mildly sprained ankles presented to triage.  With their mothers.

Another anecdote, if I may, for while the plural of anecdote may not be data, it certainly is "blog":

Last year, I myself witnessed a dozen nurses leaping above the water of their pond, shaking their golden tails in the sunlight.  Very soon, they were all lying helplessly on the bank of the pond, their scales glittering while their gills gaped and flapped as they slowly suffocated in their thirst for oxygen.  I stood above them and sang an old Scottish dirge but kept my sextant ready.  Sure enough, soon it was reported that there was no more instant coffee in the break room, and it was the weekend so the cafe was shut.

As you can see, even seemingly inexplicable occurrences have their origins in physicks.  The modern man of science must eschew superstition in all its forms if we are to struggle up beyond this primal muck in which we wallow.

I'm Bat-Man!

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