It used to get busy on nights and I daresay it still does. Not all nights are composed of sitting around or just getting up to mischief, some nights we had to work. Depending on the shift-mates this can be a blessing…
On some nights we talked a lot.
On some nights alcohol was consumed.
On some nights strange concoctions were burned.
On some nights – nothing happened.
On some nights we just had fun.
On some nights we read books.
It all depends on the shift.
There is a Laundry-Chute on every floor. Laundry bags are provided to put dirty laundry into. The Nurses know that a Red bag is for Infected stuff while White bags are for general stuff. OK, sometimes they forget and infected stuff gets put into the chute-room which means you get the chance to go back into the ward armed with the offending article and SHOUT really loud at the Nurses. This can be fun.
Mostly, we simply put it into the container provided for such bags and said nothing.
The chute should by rights have claimed lives. On the wards it is located in a tiny alcove that will allow the storage of about half-a-dozen laundry bags. At about waist height is a trap door which, when opened, allows the easy dispersal of bags into the chute. The air pressure at the basement compared to any of the floors above is considerable. Lifting the trapdoor is perilous, getting the darn thing halfway open and then dropping it makes for a LOUD bang. It is hard work because you have to fight the weight of the door and the air pressure and then, when it is fully open, you can feel the air pulling at you and papers in far away offices lift from desks, trolleys move along corridors toward the tugging draught and nurses uniforms are ripped off in spectacular fashion… well no, not that; that was a dream I had. But the chute is a Heath & Safety nightmare.
At one time we played host to the Psychiatric Unit. They have a place all of their own now but then it was the first floor. More than one of the patients tried (without success) to hurl themselves down the chute. One, more enterprising patient, actually managed to gain entry to the locked door and climb into the chute and then drag himself up the floor above!
In the basement (where else?!) is the receiving room. About ten feet along each wall and beside the door that provides entry, the metallic chute does a dramatic turn through ninety degrees in order to eject the falling laundry bags, dropped from high above. The bags give a loud thud as they hit the turn and are spilled across the room to hit the opposite wall and there they pile up and await clearance. (The safety implications here I leave for you to consider...)
One of the chores that befalls the night-shift is to clear the floors of all laundry and then empty the chute. The clearing meant loading up a trolley (gurney?) with the nasty, sometimes very smelly, bags and wheeling them out onto the bay ready for the collection mid morning.
Trolleys. In a Hospital they come in many shapes and sizes. The ones used for patient transport can vary and old ones get put ‘downstairs’ and become general purpose. Two people, one at each end, can handle them well enough but if alone it is a different matter. Some, like the ones used in A&E, are easy to handle, others tend to have a direction of their own that needs to be countered continually.
Porters look at things in a different light. Well, that is - WE looked at things differently, I cannot speak for the new wave. Where others saw just a trolley, we saw a potential race. When others asked for the collection of a body, WE saw Death-Race!
Not something to be undertook lightly. Let only a trusted workmate take charge of the steering. Not really dangerous but it can lead to slight disorientation.
A Death-Race was not a race at all. It was merely someone laying on the Mortuary Trolley (empty), and a second person pushing said trolley.
No great shakes you might think. A ride on an empty trolley, so what?
OK. I admit it. The very idea of using a mortuary trolley can sound a bit gross. But, hey we did a job of work that could get tedious. Only human. It is just a trolley.
For the squeamish I could explain that the bodies went ‘inside the trolley. The top and sides provided a lid for the tray upon which the actual body would lay. A clean sheet draped over the whole thing gave it a less mundane look and leaned toward the “we are here to collect …”, look. And we never ever tried the same thing when the trolley was occupied. We had standards!
Now. The ride itself… Some may come away from the experience with nothing to show for their pains, tho’ these people are, frankly, dull. To truly appreciate a Death-Ride you have to just go with it. And go with it we did, on most occasions.
You lay on your back and let your head fall just over the leading edge (just so the world appears upside down, and it is possible to see where you are going.) Once in position it is best to grip firmly onto the sides of the trolley, tho’ this is not easy as it has nowhere to hold onto. You need to trust fully the driver, this is what makes the Death Ride all the more interesting. A novice driver can turn the hair grey.
When the trolley starts to move all dimensions cease to exist and there is only ceiling as floor speeding past at an alarming rate and with all the pipe work and ducting and wires it feels like you float amongst them and then you come to a corner and direction changes and the walls come into view from the wrong side and you wince and cringe but you still hang on because the thought of slipping brings horror to mind and so you cling to the sides and hope that it will end soon but it doesn’t and corners come and go and walls flash past and the ceiling as floor moves up and down and doorways seem like giant steps as you flash through them and your life follows and then you stop inches from the lift door and you realise that you have been holding your breath and you let out a scream and slide off the trolley and onto the floor as ceiling and try to stand and the legs turn to jelly and you collapse in a gibbering heap onto the floor. After a while normality returns and life gets better.
Loki earned his spurs by beginning working-life with the biggest bunch of degenerates that the Hospital has seen or indeed will ever see again. (I can say that now. Some of the protagonists are deceased, some have moved on, very few still remain.) He started work straight from the Work Experience Program. This was a ill-fated attempt to manipulate the figures by sending youngsters straight from the classroom into places of work on a sort of slave-labour basis. The theory then being that they would be offered the job as soon as they left school. This of course enabled the Men in Suits to delete the numbers from the “how many people are unemployed” list.
That is NOT to say that Loki is a statistic. Not to those of us that shaped him into the man he is today…
The three other starters fell by the wayside. – Actually, after a few months one of them set himself up as a patient. He was found on an empty ward used to store beds. There he had laid out some ampoules of some drug he had pinched from another ward, a syringe, his clothes (he had donned pyjamas) and a colourful display of tablets that he also purloined. He lay himself on the bed and covered himself with a blanket and played at ‘Being a Patient’, until Lunchtime when he was discovered by the Sister in Charge who was looking for a bed to replace the old one in the ward next door. He left suddenly. - The two remaining starters lasted a few years before going, though neither in such remarkable style. One of them went on to open a market stall and was last heard of as doing - very well thank you very much.
Loki was introduced to Death Rides quite early. He was tough tho’ and after the event he decided to show us that he could still perform to the same level as before and he began to prance about. Moving with the grace of a walrus he gave us a few balletic flights as he jumped around. As a finale he decided to leap into the lift from a good distance. He ran and leapt high, high into the air to gain the distance. In his disordered state he forgot to take into account the height of the open lift. His forehead met the steel frame of the lift with a very loud crash that reverberated up the lift shaft. He fell into a heap of tangled limbs. We rushed forward to help him up but he beat us to it and scrambled to his feet and ran up the corridor toward the loading bay shouting that he was alright. We followed behind and as the loading-bay doors crashed behind him we heard the almighty scream he gave in pain and anguish. The doors opened and he stood before us with hands on hips and said. ‘I’m ok now.’
On some nights we talked a lot.
On some nights alcohol was consumed.
On some nights strange concoctions were burned.
On some nights – nothing happened.
On some nights we just had fun.
On some nights we read books.
It all depends on the shift.
There is a Laundry-Chute on every floor. Laundry bags are provided to put dirty laundry into. The Nurses know that a Red bag is for Infected stuff while White bags are for general stuff. OK, sometimes they forget and infected stuff gets put into the chute-room which means you get the chance to go back into the ward armed with the offending article and SHOUT really loud at the Nurses. This can be fun.
Mostly, we simply put it into the container provided for such bags and said nothing.
The chute should by rights have claimed lives. On the wards it is located in a tiny alcove that will allow the storage of about half-a-dozen laundry bags. At about waist height is a trap door which, when opened, allows the easy dispersal of bags into the chute. The air pressure at the basement compared to any of the floors above is considerable. Lifting the trapdoor is perilous, getting the darn thing halfway open and then dropping it makes for a LOUD bang. It is hard work because you have to fight the weight of the door and the air pressure and then, when it is fully open, you can feel the air pulling at you and papers in far away offices lift from desks, trolleys move along corridors toward the tugging draught and nurses uniforms are ripped off in spectacular fashion… well no, not that; that was a dream I had. But the chute is a Heath & Safety nightmare.
At one time we played host to the Psychiatric Unit. They have a place all of their own now but then it was the first floor. More than one of the patients tried (without success) to hurl themselves down the chute. One, more enterprising patient, actually managed to gain entry to the locked door and climb into the chute and then drag himself up the floor above!
In the basement (where else?!) is the receiving room. About ten feet along each wall and beside the door that provides entry, the metallic chute does a dramatic turn through ninety degrees in order to eject the falling laundry bags, dropped from high above. The bags give a loud thud as they hit the turn and are spilled across the room to hit the opposite wall and there they pile up and await clearance. (The safety implications here I leave for you to consider...)
One of the chores that befalls the night-shift is to clear the floors of all laundry and then empty the chute. The clearing meant loading up a trolley (gurney?) with the nasty, sometimes very smelly, bags and wheeling them out onto the bay ready for the collection mid morning.
Trolleys. In a Hospital they come in many shapes and sizes. The ones used for patient transport can vary and old ones get put ‘downstairs’ and become general purpose. Two people, one at each end, can handle them well enough but if alone it is a different matter. Some, like the ones used in A&E, are easy to handle, others tend to have a direction of their own that needs to be countered continually.
Porters look at things in a different light. Well, that is - WE looked at things differently, I cannot speak for the new wave. Where others saw just a trolley, we saw a potential race. When others asked for the collection of a body, WE saw Death-Race!
Not something to be undertook lightly. Let only a trusted workmate take charge of the steering. Not really dangerous but it can lead to slight disorientation.
A Death-Race was not a race at all. It was merely someone laying on the Mortuary Trolley (empty), and a second person pushing said trolley.
No great shakes you might think. A ride on an empty trolley, so what?
OK. I admit it. The very idea of using a mortuary trolley can sound a bit gross. But, hey we did a job of work that could get tedious. Only human. It is just a trolley.
For the squeamish I could explain that the bodies went ‘inside the trolley. The top and sides provided a lid for the tray upon which the actual body would lay. A clean sheet draped over the whole thing gave it a less mundane look and leaned toward the “we are here to collect …”, look. And we never ever tried the same thing when the trolley was occupied. We had standards!
Now. The ride itself… Some may come away from the experience with nothing to show for their pains, tho’ these people are, frankly, dull. To truly appreciate a Death-Ride you have to just go with it. And go with it we did, on most occasions.
You lay on your back and let your head fall just over the leading edge (just so the world appears upside down, and it is possible to see where you are going.) Once in position it is best to grip firmly onto the sides of the trolley, tho’ this is not easy as it has nowhere to hold onto. You need to trust fully the driver, this is what makes the Death Ride all the more interesting. A novice driver can turn the hair grey.
When the trolley starts to move all dimensions cease to exist and there is only ceiling as floor speeding past at an alarming rate and with all the pipe work and ducting and wires it feels like you float amongst them and then you come to a corner and direction changes and the walls come into view from the wrong side and you wince and cringe but you still hang on because the thought of slipping brings horror to mind and so you cling to the sides and hope that it will end soon but it doesn’t and corners come and go and walls flash past and the ceiling as floor moves up and down and doorways seem like giant steps as you flash through them and your life follows and then you stop inches from the lift door and you realise that you have been holding your breath and you let out a scream and slide off the trolley and onto the floor as ceiling and try to stand and the legs turn to jelly and you collapse in a gibbering heap onto the floor. After a while normality returns and life gets better.
Loki earned his spurs by beginning working-life with the biggest bunch of degenerates that the Hospital has seen or indeed will ever see again. (I can say that now. Some of the protagonists are deceased, some have moved on, very few still remain.) He started work straight from the Work Experience Program. This was a ill-fated attempt to manipulate the figures by sending youngsters straight from the classroom into places of work on a sort of slave-labour basis. The theory then being that they would be offered the job as soon as they left school. This of course enabled the Men in Suits to delete the numbers from the “how many people are unemployed” list.
That is NOT to say that Loki is a statistic. Not to those of us that shaped him into the man he is today…
The three other starters fell by the wayside. – Actually, after a few months one of them set himself up as a patient. He was found on an empty ward used to store beds. There he had laid out some ampoules of some drug he had pinched from another ward, a syringe, his clothes (he had donned pyjamas) and a colourful display of tablets that he also purloined. He lay himself on the bed and covered himself with a blanket and played at ‘Being a Patient’, until Lunchtime when he was discovered by the Sister in Charge who was looking for a bed to replace the old one in the ward next door. He left suddenly. - The two remaining starters lasted a few years before going, though neither in such remarkable style. One of them went on to open a market stall and was last heard of as doing - very well thank you very much.
Loki was introduced to Death Rides quite early. He was tough tho’ and after the event he decided to show us that he could still perform to the same level as before and he began to prance about. Moving with the grace of a walrus he gave us a few balletic flights as he jumped around. As a finale he decided to leap into the lift from a good distance. He ran and leapt high, high into the air to gain the distance. In his disordered state he forgot to take into account the height of the open lift. His forehead met the steel frame of the lift with a very loud crash that reverberated up the lift shaft. He fell into a heap of tangled limbs. We rushed forward to help him up but he beat us to it and scrambled to his feet and ran up the corridor toward the loading bay shouting that he was alright. We followed behind and as the loading-bay doors crashed behind him we heard the almighty scream he gave in pain and anguish. The doors opened and he stood before us with hands on hips and said. ‘I’m ok now.’
4 comments:
Death races and chute jumps, wow it reminds me of work. Though we didn't have morgue gurneys, we had automatic repair lifts. We also used to play pen darts with cheap ceilings and I won't even go into the stuff with the labs.
Don't worry, we weren't in a place but anyone but us could be hurt :)
good read Cat.
That is the thing with simple FUN - No one gets hurt.
Thanks for the comments. Much appreciated.
Love these characters, even the freaky "patient" -- tho if I had to work with him...
His sort reminds me of a place I worked, which was located across from a cemetary -- in fact, our National one in Washington, D.C.
One of our morbid coworkers there snuck over the fence and returned with a skull to show off, untill we booed him into putting it back where he found it.
That's awful!!
Glad you made him put it back
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