the expulsion

CK is one of our most paranoid patients and it can get rather tiresome listening to her complaints. she accuses staff of painting over her watercolours, recording over her cassettes, writing in her diary and rearranging her underwear drawer. today she was insisting that I was tapping her phone

“what makes you think I’m tapping your phone?”

“both my gentlemen callers have heard your heavy breathing so don’t try to deny it”

well I can’t vouch for when I’m asleep but during waking hours nursemyra breathes very quietly and I feel vaguely insulted that two gentlemen are implying otherwise. still, there’s very little satisfaction to be had in arguing with a paranoid patient so I told CK to go to her room where I would ring her and she could listen to my breathing

Ring ring….. “hello?”

“CK, it’s nursemyra, I’m breathing. can you hear me?”

“let me listen to you inhale” she said.

I carry on breathing normally as CK concentrates. the silence at both ends of the phone is suddenly broken by the loudest fart I’ve heard this week. it seems to come in stereo as I hear it in the phone and also from CK’s open door down the hall.

“I think I heard something” says nursemyra. “but it didn’t sound like breathing.”

“yes, that would be one of my gentlemen callers trying to get through. you’d better hang up now, I don’t want to keep them waiting”

Telstra works in strange ways but I didn’t know they could expel gas from an old lady’s rectum.