What would happen if a one litre bag of vodka was mistakenly connected to an IV machine, instead of the prescribed drug? A response to The Death Frisbee's 2012 "No E" challenge.
"As official liaison, I am unhappy." Words sounding that angry did not fill our corridors much, not normally around staff anyway, but all in my vicinity did concur with what was going on, although our guilt was difficult to stomach. "I will join you in your consultation to find out what was so wrong with your authority protocols that it got this bad, which is just what I want to know!"
"On that day our ward was unusually busy. This particular old man is now in a coma following a situation in a drug trial that was trying to fix a myocardial infarction. It is an unconscionably sad thing that our staff mistook vodka, an icy cold alcoholic drinking liquid for his actual drugs," is what said angry woman, Doctor Cristina Yang, was told by a young junior doctor ("Ross", first initial "S", according to his staff tag), all doctors in positions upward of him totally abandoning him for a charity round of golf – gods in both our community and our company sponsor's opinions, but cowards and traitors in his.
"Thing! It! 'It' consists of a human's upcoming outlook, and is a fatality-in-waiting from what puny iotas of information I can pluck out of thin air!" Our Asian visitor was obviously livid at a lack of communication from our Administration, and taking it out on all and sundry.
Spying a forlorn human form lying on his back in his hospital room by a window, clad only in a thin brown gauzy gown and a fuchsia pink woolly hat with matching socks halfway up his shins, Doctor Yang also saw a suspiciously sticky black trail oozing stinking runny pus into his wound tract.
"As a physician I would put him on strong antibiotics for as many days as I can justify, but at this point I do not know that it will work. I do think this injury is fatal, and his poor family, aching for a happy conclusion, can only wait in an awful hiatus, with a shocking amount of pain approaching as fast as a subway train, for many harrowing days until it occurs!"
Having no jobs outstanding, our justifiably furious inquisitor slunk back out of sight with a mind in turmoil from what it had found – a hospital in full-blown disarray.