People Will Talk Page #3

lying about once they've been removed.

Mrs. Pegwhistle, it's highly unlikely

that Mrs. Bixby would recognize her own.

So why don't you just give her

any old gallbladder and make her happy.

Doctor, unless all of the patients

are served breakfast at the same time...

I cannot operate the kitchen

with our present personnel.

- Then hire more people.

- But it is common practice in hospitals...

Miss Filmore, in my clinic no patient shall be

wakened from a health-giving sleep...

and forced to eat breakfast at a time

which pleases the culinary union.

But in the interest

of good economy...

Bad therapy is never good economy.

If you must economize...

do it in the doctors'

dining room.

And I will not have the patients bathed

at the stroke of a gong...

for the convenience

of the nurses.

One of the reasons for my founding

this clinic is a firm conviction...

- that patients are sick people, not inmates.

- Of course, Dr. Praetorius.

I'll bet I know

what you're thinking.

"Here comes Dr. Happiness,

the good humor man.

If he tries to cheer me up, so help me,

I'll hit him with an ice bag." Right?

- Wrong.

- Not that I blame you.

One of the few pleasures of being sick

is the right to feel good and miserable.

Don't let any doctor

tell you differently.

I was thinking, it's not much fun

when you get to be old.

It's less fun

if you don't get to be old.

- I want to die.

- You'd like that, wouldn't you?

Just lie around in a coffin

all day with nothing to do.

- How was last night?

- Just fine, Doctor.

Well, if we have another

good night tonight...

maybe tomorrow morning we'll go back

into surgery and take another look.

Doctor, does it hurt

when you die?

Not a bit.

Where'd you get that idea?

They tell me

there's so much pain.

Oh. Did anyone who actually died

ever tell you that?

Of course not.

Well, there, you see?

All this silly gossip

about dying.

You know, I nearly died once.

When I was a kid.

The doctors gave me up

for lost.

The nerve of some doctors

giving people up for lost...

as though they'd found them

in the first place.

Anyway, I was dying.

And I was in a coma.

- You know how it felt?

- No. How?

It was winter at the time.

And I felt as if I was flying

very slowly in a sled...

high up in the sky.

And the world below was covered

in snow and ice and bitter cold.

But I was warm and cozy

in the back of the sled...

wrapped in an ermine blanket.

And then I came out of the coma.

I came back to life.

- How'd you feel?

- Awful.

I had a splitting headache,

and I vomited for three days.

I've never felt as good being alive

as I did when I was dying.

You certainly make dying

a pleasure, Dr. Praetorius.

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