Herb walked into the emergency room not feeling very well. He sat waiting for about 3 hours until a fat blonde haired nurse finally called his name. He followed her into a small room.
"I'm just going to check your blood pressure now," she said, placing a blood pressure cuff around his arm.
Herb just stared at her, through her, not saying anything.
"What seems to be the problem today?" she asked him.
"I can't seem to hold any food down, I get these headaches all the time, I cant sleep anymore, my cat doesn't seem to like me, a scorpion stung me the other day, and I think there might be snakes living in my intestines." Herb responded.
The nurse looked at him, thinking to herself this poor old man must be insane.
She fidgeted around about five times trying to get a blood pressure reading.
"Hmm, that's very strange, I'm not getting anything." She remarked.
"Didn't I tell you that I'm also a zombie, happened years ago in a beautiful land." He said.
"Ok Mr. Herb. Now I'm just going to feel for your pulse now. Just try and relax for me. The fat nurse felt no beating under the skin. Not even a quiver. Cold streaks rushed up her spine and made her head tingle, as she looked into Herb's black eyes.
"What's the matter?" Herb asked her.
"Oh, nothing, I'm going to try and listen to your lung sounds now Herb, I need for u to take a deep breath when I tell u to."
"Ok"
The fat blonde nurse heard no sounds at all. She had been doing this routine for 15 years, and never had she experienced anything like this.
"You know, one time in Brazil, I ate a mans heart, and seduced his wife afterwards. She was a succulent splendor, a rare form of female. I should have let her live. But she had the seed as well."
The nurse tried to hide her fright. She slowly got up from her chair and said..
"I'll be right back, I mean the doctor will be in soon to see you."
Herb smiled at her. And said, "thank you Helen."
Helen was the nurse's middle name. She became even more scared.
"What did u just call me?" she asked, almost paralyzed.
"I said, sure is hot as hell in here, wouldn't u say?"
"That's not what u said." She told him, quickly walking out of the room.
The fat blonde nurse waddled off to find Doctor Stone.
She was visibly shaken as she rushed up to him.
"Excuse me doctor, but this is rather urgent. I have a man in room 3 who doesn't seem to have a heart beat, pulse, or any other signs of life." She told him.
"Have u been drinking again?" the doctor said to her.
"No, dammit, I told u I go to AA meetings now."
"Sure doll," the doctor said, laughing at her in his rich smug way, with his slicked back soap opera hair.
She waddled off, almost in tears. She thought of her lost love that had left her high and dry. The nurse went into the ladies room. She smudged more trashy lipstick on her fat lips. She stared at herself in the mirror, as mascara ran down her cheeks.
"My gawd, I can't take this crap, its all a dream, all just a dream," she cried, pulling a flask from under a secret compartment under the toilet. Her hands shook. She lifted the taste of whisky to her lips. It had been almost 6 months without that warmness to fill her lonely gut. She drank the entire pint down. Tried to pull herself together, popped a few breath mints and pain pills in her mouth, and sat on a toilet, smiling for the first time in 6 months, as her diet lunch of wheat bread, salad, and grapefruits came slithering out of her puckered starfish.
Doctor Stone walked into the room Herb was in.
"What seems to be the trouble today Mr. Herb?" the doctor asked.
"The trouble seems to be a lot of pain Doc."
"Well lets just have a looksy, shall we?" the doctor said, trying to find a pulse that wasn't there. The doctor then tried all the same things the nurse had tried. Doctor Stone's face grew a tad pale.
"Your wife's name is Gertrude, you have three daughters, Bella, Betty, and Beatrice. You have no sons, I know where you live, I know you are having an affair with one of the younger med students on your staff, by the name of Samantha." Herb said.
Doctor Stone looked like he was about to have a cardiac arrest. He dropped the stethoscope he was holding.
"What are you? What do you want from me?" the doctor whimpered.
"First off, I would like a nice shot of morphine. None of that generic shit either. Then I would like to have u fill me out a prescription every week for what ever I see fit. Of course, that is, if you value your family."
Doctor Stone got out a long needle, and filled it with the juices Herb craved. Doctor's hands shaking, he injected the strange man with what he demanded. Then he wrote him a prescription for the strongest pain pills on the market.
Herb got up, lifted his arms to the air, saying .. " Now that wasn't so hard, was it doc?"
"I don't understand, if you are dead? Then what good are these drugs even going to do u?" the nervous doctor questioned.
"Who ever said I was dead? I'm more alive then you can ever imagine. Seen more then any medical book could teach you. I have lived in lands and centuries far gone. I will see you next week Doc. And remember your family. Cause if you try anything stupid, I think we both know what will happen."
Herb bumped into the blonde fat drunken nurse as he was leaving. She was a wreck. He kissed her cheek, blew a silent whisper in her ear, and walked out the way he had come in.
This story Copyright 2001 Nicholas Morgan.
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