She said "Dern, I'm dead!"

The day had been rough and I was scheduled for the night shift at the ER, and I knew there would be no opportunity for me to nap. I also knew there would be lots of coffee drinking that night as I managed to stay awake all day dealing with problems and then working all night in a busy ER on what is normally the busiest of all nights.

I walked in feeling great, my inner voice encouraging my outer spirit that it was going to be a piece of cake.

It wasn’t bad at all. We had some horrendous cases come in, so there was rushed times and then some people who came with silly little issues, one man even came because he cut himself shaving. It hardly even required a bandaid. 

Things settled down and there came a lull unlike any I had witnessed since I started working in the ER. We were down to only 3 patients and they were all settled in for the night. So one of the male nurses who is computer savvy pulled up a program that was created by experts in the medical and psychiatric fields. This program was a predictor of sorts, it predicted a person's death date. It required truthful answers to a series of questions about things like, your age, weight, family status, any illnesses you experienced and it even questioned your attitude towards things. The attitude part was just to determine whether we were more positive or negative when it came to life in general. After about 30 minutes, most of us had taken the test and received our answer.

Once this nurse typed our data and hit the enter key, it would calculate it all, then come back with our Date Of Death.

It was pretty daunting and downright creepy but all of us were so into it and we would laugh at the dates. Overall, so far, we were all pleased with our dates. 

There was a nurse who worked that shift and I had worked many shifts with her before. I would say that she was probably the most negative thinking person I had ever met. She would even complain when the pharmaceutical reps would cater in wonderful meals for our shift. I even heard her say one time, “That was just too much food, the whole catering thing is ridiculous!” Who complains about free food? Especially from an excellent restaurant that seasons their food to perfection. One night we spoke of her and no one could ever remember hearing her say anything nice or upbeat.

Well this nurse had watched and listened as we gave our truthful answers to the nurse in charge that was inputting our data. Yet she had not participated. Some in the group began working on her and encouraging her to join in the fun. I did not think that she would ever agree but after some strong persuasion, she did. 

As we all gathered around that computer screen, I was just certain that she would never admit to being so negative about everything. But she surprised us all as she saw herself exactly the same as we saw her.

All of the data was input and we stood there silent and anxious waiting for the computer to process this and tell us how long this very negative person would live. I remember standing there hoping the ambulance phone would not ring, and no other disturbances would interfere with our fun before we got this answer.

“Bing”, the answer came up and we all stood there stone faced and shocked! Then all of us began laughing uncontrollably. According to this computer program, she was already dead! It gave a date that had passed 6 months before!

She laughed and we laughed. Then we all laughed again.

She regained her composure, stood up,  then said “I told y'all that I felt like I was dead and a zombie most days…well there’s your proof!” She walked off muttering, “Dern, I’m dead”…

For me it was a great shift and I was happy to be alive!