Last night the boys and I were talking about practical jokes, and I told them about a joke I played on a friend a long time ago. A joke in the morgue of a local hospital.
Many, many moons ago I worked the night shift at a small hospital. Because it was the night shift and because the hospital was small we didn’t always have a lot to do.
My friend, D, was a serial prankster and spent most of his time pulling practical jokes on everyone.
One night, I was walking down the hall and out of the ER came one of the nurses pushing a stretcher with a body on it. The body was covered with a sheet and I assumed they were taking someone to the morgue.
Just as I passed the stretcher, D reached out from under the sheet and grabbed my arm.
Needless to say, I screamed and tried to get away from the hand holding my arm and of course the ER crew all jumped out from behind a door laughing hysterically.
I’d been got by D. And I swore to him that I would get him back.
He was a little nervous around me for the next few days but I waited, and like I knew he would, he forgot all about my promise to pay him back.
Meanwhile I was planning and plotting my revenge.
About a month later I knew it was time.
A nurse I worked with had a husband who was a little on the morbid side. He immediately agreed to help.
On the night planned he arrived and I took him down to the morgue. Got him on a stretcher, covered him with a sheet and then closed him up inside one of the coolers.
I found D and told him that a body had come in earlier so I had to go to the morgue to put a tag on the body. I told him that I didn’t want to go alone and begged him to go with me.
He didn’t want to go but I begged and pleaded until he finally agreed.
We got to the morgue and while I was pretending to get a toe tag ready I asked D to open the cooler.
He opened the cooler door, pulled the stretcher out and as he did my friend’s husband let out a horrible scream, sat up and threw the sheet off of himself.
D screamed, took 2 steps back and hit the floor. At that moment another friend jumped out from behind the door and snapped a picture with an instant camera.
It took D weeks to recover and he never would go near the morgue again.
We plastered copies of the picture all over the hospital and daily people would tease D about the morgue.
He told me later that he’d forgotten all about my promise to get him back and it never occurred to him when we went to the morgue that something was up.
Confirming the theory that revenge is best served cold.
It was a very simple plan. The hardest part was finding someone who would actually get into the cooler and wait.
Two days later I had a note in my box from the hospital administrator. I was to meet him in his office the next morning.
This couldn’t be good.
My shift was over at 7am and I waited, wringing my hands, until 7:30 when he arrived.
I was called into his office and with a straight, stern face he told me that in no way could he condone the staff goofing off on hospital time. He pulled a copy of the picture out of his desk, took a long look and then burst out laughing.
He said that this had to be the funniest thing he’d seen in a long time. We were supposed to be working – not playing – but he was going to make an exception this time.
I was extremely pleased with how well the whole thing turned out. From that day forward, D never played another practical joke on me.
That was AWESOME! Nobody better mess with you!