One night, a brand new nurse named Jill was working with Dr. Bob, and he decided that he would give her a special “welcome.”  He asked Dana, one of the more experienced nurses, to be his accomplice.

First, Dr. Bob found a clear, plastic specimen cup with a lid.  He put about a tablespoon of creamy vegetable soup inside.  He added a bit of ketchup, and stirred.  The result was pretty gross looking stuff.  When Jill was standing at the nurses station, Dana called out, “Hey Dr. Bob, you want me to send this sputum sample up to the lab?”  She held the container up for him to see.

Dr. Bob said, “Hang on, let me see that.”  He took the cup and held it up to the light.  Jill watched this with a puzzled expression.  Then, he unscrewed the lid and looked inside.  Jills eyes at this point got very big, and she looked concerned.

Then, Dr. Bob took a long sniff of the specimen.  At this point, Jill literally took a few steps backwards, trying to distance herself from what was clearly a crazy person.

Then Dr. Bob did the unthinkable.  With a quick flick of the wrist, he swallowed the sputum sample like it was a shot of whisky.

Jill, completely aghast, fell right down onto the linoleum floor with an expression of horror on her face.  The other nurses who were in on the gag were having a hard time holding it together at that point.

But Dr. Bob, straight faced, said “No, I think it’s just bronchitis.”

Frankly, I’ve never believed in this superstition either, but there was one night where my faith was tested.  It was around 11pm, and a local police officer was standing at the nurses station doing some paperwork.  He was new to the force (a veteran would never do this), and of course he casually asked the charge nurse, “kind of quiet for a Friday, isn’t it?”

This resulted in an immediate groan from 3 nurses within earshot.  I chuckled, but decided the comment would have no effect.  How wrong I was.

Not 2 minutes went by and I heard the triage nurse yell with fear in her voice “I need some help out here, NOW!”

A young man had driven up to the ER doors with his brother sitting in the passenger seat.  His brother was not moving, not breathing, not doing anything.  He looked about 25 years old, but had the gray color of a very old man.  We grabbed him, threw him onto a gurney and proceeded to give every treatment, medication, that we had.  But he was dead.  There was no explanation for it, no accounting for it.  One moment he was alive, eating a hamburger with his brother, the next moment he was gone.  He had always been healthy, he wasn’t a drug user.  There was just no reason for him to suddenly die like that.

The rest of the night was chaos, both with an onslaught of other patients and dealing with the aftermath of a family suddenly torn apart.

Many night shifts later, I still think about that young man.  And no matter what is going on in the ER, I never use the word “quiet.”