Being dead really sucked. I had a cramp in my leg and the body bag smelled like a bicycle repair kit.

I was all alone in a seldom used room deep inside the emergency department. I could hear Greg laughing with the wardsman just outside. I was lying hermetically wrapped atop a special hospital trolley nicknamed the ‘silver bullet’. Once you have shuffled off your mortal coil you are placed on top of this trolley and hydraulically lowered down into a secret compartment underneath. A false mattress complete with sheets and pillow is then placed on top giving the illusion of an ordinary hospital trolley.

Dead people rarely show themselves. People die on the TV news in far away places, only after a warning that “the following scenes may be unsuitable for some viewers.” Death must be sanitized, sterilized and hidden away from our mortally sensitive society. Especially in hospitals. The seemingly empty bullet is thus able to make its way innocuously down to the morgue without flustering the shopping mall ambience of the foyer.

To pull this off I was going to have to be even deader than I thought. The old hospital trolley seemed to creak with every microscopic movement I made. The plastic sheet lying across my face seemed to fill like a spinnaker with even the slightest breath. I felt the need to sneeze.

Greg had recently transferred to our department. He was an outstanding nurse, had a great sense of humour and looked like Bono from U2, making him nauseatingly popular with the female nurses. He was also an avid practical joker, successfully targeting me on many occasions, making him popular with everyone.

But this time I would get him. Big-time.

I had spent the last few hours carefully setting up my sting. The wardsman was in on it, as was most of the staff. Our concocted cover story was as follows: A 90 year old man had died of a massive heart attack despite our best efforts to resuscitate him. The shift had been so hectic the staff had not yet had time to transfer him downstairs to the morgue. All the relevant paperwork and resuscitation notes had been creatively forged and lay in a neat pile beside me on the bed. Greg had just come on duty and was asked to quickly transfer me ‘downstairs’. Greg and the wardsman entered the room. I heard Greg pick up the paperwork and flip through it to make sure everything was in order. He leaned over me checking that the mortuary tag tied to the outside of my bag matched the details in the notes. Yep, I was dead all right.

As had been arranged, the wardsman informed Greg that the hydraulics on the bed weren’t working and that I would have to remain on top of the bullet. They placed a cotton hospital sheet over the grey plastic bag and we were off.

Its kinda creepy laying inside a body bag dressed in a shroud, travelling helplessly toward the coldest room in the hospital. The service elevator took an age to arrive which provided plenty of time to ponder the existential fragility of life. Greg and the wardsman chatted on as we waited, and waited. I had the alarming thought that if we didn’t hurry up I might in fact suffocate in this plastic sarcophagus. That would be a pretty embarrassing way to go.

And then I wondered if Greg had actually out pranked me and knew exactly what was going on. Perhaps the wardsman was a double agent, and together they would lock me in the mortuary fridge. Popsicle penance for impersonating a dead man.

The lift arrived with a clatter. It was one of those neat industrial lifts with the doors that you have to pull open from the top and bottom. Once inside the wardsman signalled me by taping my foot. Showtime.

Now, I could have just let out a loud moan and lifted myself up into the sitting position a’la “The Return of Frankenstien”, but no, I chose the far more subtle and terrifying soft gurgle.

Silence.

I followed this with a loud inspiratory breath and some extremity twitching.

Nothing.

I couldn’t stand it any longer, and so with a loud “gotcha!” I sat up and fumbled the zip open on the body bag. They are not easy to unzip from the inside by the way.Greg was as white as the sheet I had been covered with. His gaze had diverged on some place far away behind me. His legs had long since left for a safer place, abandoning the rest of him to slide slowly down the door of the lift. His mouth was agape, as a small birdlike noise dribbled out. He looked not the slightest bit like Bono.

Then, slowly, his face re-booted. His gaze focused on me as the realization of what was happening squirted up into his frontal lobes. “Yoooooou baaaastarrrrrrrrd!!”

In retrospect, it probably wasn’t such a good idea to spring my prank in the confines of a service elevator. I heaved the door open and took off, Greg in hot pursuit. “I’ll get you for this Mr Miller!”

I ran, dressed only in a white shroud, hobbled by my cramping leg. Mortuary tags flapping behind me on their strings. I was being chased by a crazed rock star who had definitely not yet seen the funny side of the situation. Dead man running.
We rounded a corner, Greg closing on me and found ourselves scampering through a packed physiotherapy waiting room. It was too late to stop. It was to late to explain. The expressions of utter disbelief on the faces of these people will stay with me till the day I…well… die.