The Gurney Pusher would not take my wife to the morgue
(C) Edward Ordman 2020
A story that sounds like a tall tale, but happens to
be
true.
Once upon a time my wife was in a hospital, on a
gurney, the
doctor instructed the gurney pusher to take her to the morgue. The
gurney
pusher said he had religious objections to doing that, since she
was still
alive. After a brief discussion, the doctor agreed and summoned
another gurney
pusher to take her to the morgue.
Yes, it really happened. In June 2007 my wife
Eunice was
mugged and very badly injured, in Jerusalem. We’d been traveling
to all the
places that no one in their right mind would go - Hebron, the
Palestinian
Parliament in Ramallah, contested settlements - with no problems,
but she was
attacked by a purse snatcher just off a main street in tourist
country. She was
pushed down hard on pavement - badly broken shoulder, concussion,
chipped tooth
among the obvious injuries. She was taken to Hadassah Hospital -
Ein Kerem, and
we will praise it to the skies to any interested audience. After
she was
somewhat stabilized and the arm immobilized, next stop was
neurology for a
brain scan and whatever else they test for after concussion.And after that she was
supposed to go to the
dental school to assess tooth damage and check for possible jaw
fracture or
other damage.
Hadassah is
spread out over multiple buildings on a steep
hillside (overlooking the home of John the Baptist) and it was not
clear how to
get to the dental school building. Would she have to be loaded
into an
ambulance and driven down the hill?A
careful study of building floor plans revealed a solution - there
was a route
between the buildings, with no steps, through a maintenance tunnel
in the
subbasement.But to
get to it, one has
to go through the morgue.
Neither my wife nor I
objected to going through the morgue, when asked - it seemed far
better than
lifting her in and out of an ambulance twice. But the gurney
pusher said he
could not do it. He was a religious Jew and a cohen - a descendant
of the old
temple priests of millennia ago - and he was not allowed to be in
the presence
of dead bodies if it could be avoided.Once he explained, the solution was obvious: the next
passing gurney
pusher was hailed, asked if he was a cohen, and, since he was not,
they swapped
patients. The new gurney pusher took my wife through the morgue to
the dental
school.
When my wife had major heart surgery in 2015, we
spent a lot
of time with gurney pushers. They have enjoyed the story and I
thought I’d pass
it on here.
