a fun little story

my favorite thing about being back at school is hearing all the stories my kids have to tell from their week away -- near death experiences with tanning beds, malicious dog bites, tongue piercings, it's almost as good as a new episode of prison break!
one of my girls told me she'd seen two dead bodies while hanging out with her grandma in the hospital and that reminded me of a story i had buried deep in the recesses of my mind. i thought you all just might want to hear it.
as you may have guessed, it has to do with dead bodies, so if you have a weak consitution, you might want to pass this one up.

i used to work 3rd shift at a hospital in south carolina as a nurse aide. it was a relatively uneventful job as far as jobs go, until the random excitement. this story is about just such an excitement.

i worked on the post-op unit, which saw its fair share of elderly folk (since you seem to need more and more surgeries the older you get) and one poor lady just didn't recover after her surgery. there were a variety of contributing factors, but they all combined to make her stomach swell at an alarming rate after she had passed away. we had to clean her up and do the usual medical type things that you have to do before sending a body down to the morgue. as we were getting her ready, her stomach kept growing and growing. before long, it was bigger than any 9 month pregnant lady i've ever seen. this in and of itself was rather alarming, but then i was informed that i needed to accompany the transport fellow in taking her down to the basement where the morgue was located. seeing as how it was around 3 in the morning, i wasn't too thrilled at the prospect of a visit to the morgue, but you do what you gotta do, right?
when we got there, of course there was no one working. the morgue was locked up tight and no one to be found. no phones, no intercoms, just a long dim hallway that was spooky enough without our poor unfortunate bloated lady on her gurney, but we had to wait for someone to show up. the transport guy and i waited in that hallway for a long while. i didn't know him, he didn't know me, we didn't have much to say to each other, and the situation didn't call for much small talk. after an hour or so, this guy decided he'd had enough, and he said, 'i'm out of here.' i was like, 'what?! you can't leave me down here with a dead body that might explode!!' but i was talking to his rapidly retreating back. the farther he got down the hall, the more aware i became of the gurney and its occupant, and the weaker my moral resolve became. just before he turned the corner, i'd made up my mind -- i was out of there too. i yelled, 'wait!' and ran after him.

i never knew what happened to that poor lady.