Dead Man Walking

We had a housekeeper whose job was to collect trash throughout the hospital and dispose of it in an outside receptacle. He used a cart with sides and a door to enclose the garbage inside. The cart was about two feet wide, five feet long, and six feet high including the 4 large wheels. The side door folded down to allow easier access to place the bags inside and to remove them. The cart was wheeled along an area of asphalt at the back of the hospital to the outside trash compacter. The parking lot had a slight downhill slope toward the outside trash bin.

One evening when the housekeeper took a load of trash to the outside container and the cart started to move faster than he could walk. The bottom of the cart caught his foot and he slipped beneath it. The cart ran up over part of his body trapping him on the asphalt beneath the cart. Because of the downward slope and the weight of the cart, he couldn’t escape. He tried calling for help, but he was outside at the back of the hospital and there was no one to hear him.

About forty-five minutes or so later, one of the hospital’s security guards was making his rounds. He saw the garbage cart sitting on the edge of the parking lot with no one near it. He thought that it was unusual and wandered over to investigate. He found the housekeeper trapped beneath the cart.

All he could see of the housekeeper was his head, his shoulder and part of his chest sticking out from under the cart. He helped to move the cart to allow the housekeeper to free himself. Once the guard made sure the housekeeper was okay, he helped to guide the cart to the compacter to unload. The housekeeper took a break to relax and then went back to work.

That night or the next day, someone used a piece of chalk to draw the outline of a person on the tarmac near where the housekeeper had fallen. It was just like the old time movies where the police would draw an outline of the murder victim. The image of the splayed arms, legs, torso, and head was there for all to see. The housekeeper and most of the employees thought it was funny, but not management. They were so upset that they threatened to fire the person who had drawn it and probably would have if they had known who drew it.