Murder at Morristown Hospital

As usual, a group of old people was milling around the main entrance to Morristown Hospital. One of them was muttering to himself, “I don’t care if you call it Coumadin or warfarin. Doctors use it as an easy way to kill old people.” It was hot near the main entrance, but despite the heat, the old man was wearing a loose windbreaker and had his hands in his pockets. Every day, there were a lot of old people like him, either sitting on the benches or shuffling aimlessly about in front of the hospital. Some of them were in regular clothing and some were in hospital gowns and bathrobes. A lot of them talked to themselves, and no one cared.

This particular old man, pulled a sheet of paper out of his left windbreaker pocket and looked at his handwritten?list of all the people who had tried to kill him. They all claimed to be dedicated healers trying to help. But he knew they had almost killed him.

It had started with the idiot doctor who had prescribed Coumadin in the first place without ever explaining that it was one of the most dangerous drugs in the world. Then there was the nurse who had misread the blood sample and reported that there was no problem with the drug’s dosage.

This was the first time the old man had been to the hospital in more than a year, and he was almost overwhelmed by the flash of bad memories it brought back. The tiny pills the doctor had prescribed to help thin his blood had almost killed him. No one had explained that the drug reacted differently in different people or that small things, such as a change in diet, could drastically change what the drug did. It had thinned his blood all right. It had thinned it so much that it had leaked through his veins and arteries into the rest of his body. He had been bleeding to death internally and not even realized it. All he had felt was an incredible tiredness.?Then, one morning, he had gone into the bathroom and urinated pure blood. Sometimes he wondered how close to death he had really been when he was rushed to the emergency room.

The real?pain had begun once he was admitted to the hospital. A three-way Foley catheter had been inserted into his penis. It was a pure torture device. To wash blood out of his bladder, it constantly pumped a saline solution into his bladder with one tube and took the blood and urine mixture out with another—for twenty-four hours a day for a full four days.?There was no way to describe the pain.

The third name on the list was the urologist who had forgotten to order the Foley catheter removed. The old man’s torture had continued two days longer than needed just because the urologist had been doing other things and had not gotten around to checking the chart.

It had taken the old man months to get himself back to full health. When?he’d gotten out of the hospital, barely able to walk, he had refused any drugs and shunned any contact with any member of the medical community. He’d made himself stronger by sheer force of will. Every day he walked a little more. Then, gradually, he’d begun eating better and even lifting small weights.

The old man looked up and suddenly recognized that his doctor was walking out of the front of the hospital and headed to the physicians’ parking lot. The old man got up from the bench, stretched, and headed toward the garage himself, trying to look casual. As the old man entered the garage, he reached into the right pocket of his windbreaker and pulled out his brand-new .32-caliber revolver.

Time to scratch the first name off the list.