heart monitor by the door dying. At one o’clock the Night Sister had come to the ward and Wilt had heard her whisper to the Ward Nurse that they’d have to do something about the man because he was coupling and wouldn’t last till morning if they didn’t iron the problem out. Listening to the sounds of the monitor Wilt could hear what she meant. The beeps were most irregular and as the night wore on they got worse, until just before dawn they petered out altogether and he could hear the poor old fellow’s bed being wheeled out into the corridor. For a moment he thought of looking over to see what was going on but there was no point. It would only be morbid curiosity to see the corpse being carted off to the morgue.
Instead he lay sadly pondering on the mystery of life and death and wondering if there was anything in the ‘near-death experience’ and people who had seen the light at the end of the tunnel and a bearded old gentleman, God or someone, who led them into a beautiful garden before deciding they weren’t to die after all. Either that or they hung around the ceiling of the operating theatre looking down at their own bodies and listening to what the surgeons had to say. Wilt couldn’t see why they bothered. There must be something more interesting to do on the ‘other side’. The notion that it was fascinating to eavesdrop on surgeons who’d just cocked up one’s operation suggested the ‘other side’ didn’t have much to offer in the way of interest. Not that Wilt had much confidence in the existence of the ‘other side’. He’d read somewhere that surgeons had gone to the trouble of writing words on top of the theatre lampshade that could only be seen by people and flies on the ceiling to check if the ‘near-death’ patients could really have been up there. None of those who had come back had ever been able to quote what was written there. That was proof enough for Wilt. Besides, he’d read somewhere else that the ‘near-death’ experience could be induced by increasing carbon dioxide content in the brain. On the whole Wilt remained sceptical. Death might be a great adventure, as someone had once put it, but Wilt wasn’t keen on it all the same. He was still wondering where the blighter by the door had got to, and whether he was chatting with some other newly dear departed or simply lying in the mortuary cooling gently and getting rigor mortis, when the Night Sister came round again. She was a tall and well-scrubbed woman who evidently liked her patients to be asleep.
‘Why are you still awake?’ she demanded.
Wilt looked at her bleakly and wondered if she always slept well. ‘It’s that poor bloke by the door,’ he said finally.
‘The poor bloke by the door? What on earth are you talking about? He’s not making any noise.’
‘I know that,’ said Wilt, staring at her pathetically. ‘I know he’s not making any noise. Poor sod can’t, can he? He’s shuffled.’
‘Shuffled?’ said the Sister, looking at him curiously. ‘What do you mean, he’s shuffled?’
Wilt stared at her more pathetically still. ‘Shuffled off this mortal coil,’ he said.
‘Shuffled off this mortal coil? What are you babbling about?’
Wilt took his time. Obviously the Sister didn’t know her Shakespeare.
‘Pegged it, for goodness’ sake. Kicked the bucket. Dropped off the perch. Handed in his dinner pail. Crossed that bourn from which no traveller returns. Died.’
The Sister looked at him as though he really had gone mad. Gone mad or was delirious.
‘Don’t be so stupid. There’s nothing the matter with him. It’s the heart monitor that’s gone wrong.’
