Skinny

One night at our city hospital a scrawny, hippie-looking dude was brought in by police. He was about twenty years old. He was cuffed to the gurney. It was, perhaps, 20 degrees outside, and the streets were covered with snow and ice. I have no idea what this guy was arrested for, but he didn’t want to go to jail. Typically, with patients who are flight risks we take their clothes. I was standing at the nurse’s station surveying my domain when I saw a naked guy running for the doors. Somehow this little dude had slipped his cuffs and bolted. He made it out onto the streets with his package flopping in the breeze and a couple of stunned paramedics looking at him from the ambulance bay. The police were called immediately and in 10 minutes this guy was assisted back to his room wrapped in a blanket and shivering like nobody’s business. Evidently he was not hard to find. The cuffs were applied more tightly.