| For several months, nurses at a hospital have been baffled to find a dead patient
in the same bed every Friday morning. There was no apparent cause for any of the deaths,
and extensive checks on the air conditioning system, and a search for possible bacterial
infection, failed to reveal any clues. However, further inquiries have now revealed the cause of these deaths. It seems
that every Friday morning a cleaner would enter the ward, remove the plug that powered the
patient's life support system, plug her floor polisher into the vacant socket, then go
about her business. When she had finished her chores, she would plug the life support
machine back in and leave, unaware that the patient was now dead. She could not, after
all, hear the screams and eventual death rattle over the whirring of her polisher. We are
sorry, and have sent a strong letter to the cleaner in question. Furthermore, the Free
State Health and Welfare Department is arranging for an electrician to fit an extra
socket, so there should be no repetition of this incident. The inquiry is now closed.
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