Dead Weight

Here's a quick, kindof crazy story.

Earlier this week, we stopped by the hospital on our way to dinner to help take vital signs on all the patients. Unfortunately, on arrival, we discovered a patient who arrived that morning had just passed away. She was a thirty year-old woman with very severe malaria. Well, we finished taking vital signs on all the patients (not her though, she didn't need them!!), and were about to head to dinner, when one of the nurses asked us to stay a minute to help them carry the body to the morgue- of course we we're in! So the hospital guard goes to get a stretcher, and comes back with a pretty old-school looking device- two long sticks with heavy cloth wrapped around them (no wheels!). We put on a pair of gloves, rolled/lifted the body in it's sheets onto the stretcher (note that the whole ward is watching us struggle to get the body off the bed) and headed out to the morgue. None of us had ever really thought about it, but we all decided that we had never thought we were ever gonna be pallbearers! The morgue ended up being a one-roomed building with no air conditioning across a small field (maybe a 100yds) with knee-high grass and no path. The four of us dressed in skirts and flip-flops, led by the guard with a flashlight (it was dark by this point) traipsed across the field, the whole time hoping that none of us tripped (there were a few close calls) and ended up in the dirt with the body on top of us! We made it without incident, placed the body on a table (postmortem body fluids and all). Before leaving, we had to get the sheets out from under her so that they could be returned to the hospital and washed...the hospital is very strict about only giving the patients what they pay for! Mission accomplished, we headed out...only a little late for dinner!!