(I’m a nurse. I’ve been assigned to a young girl who just had emergency surgery to save her life. She has a long incision down her stomach, which will end up as a scar. Her parents come to me about a week after the surgery, but before the wound has closed or the staples have been removed, clearly upset.)

Father: “When are we going to talk about reducing that scar?”

Me: “I’m sorry, but your daughter has barely started to heal. Let’s get her healthy before we worry about appearances.”

Father: “Excuse me? It’s bad enough she has [large birthmark]; now you’re going to add this, too?”

Mother: “What about covering it in Vitamin E oil?”

Me: “Ma’am, right now we’re worried about infections and how well she’s healing. We can talk about—”

Father: “No! You will fix her now!”

(I made up something about talking to the doctor about it and left. I truly pity this child, if that was their concern.)

(My husband is admitted to the local Veterans Administration hospital for heart problems. After hours in the ER, he finally gets a bed on the ward. His nurse comes in to introduce himself, check my husband’s vitals, retake history, and so on.)

Nurse: “Is there anything else I can get for you, sir?”

Me: *knowing what’s coming, I silently plead* “Oh, no… Not again.”

Husband: “Yes. Two weeks vacation, a raise, some sanity, and winning lottery tickets, please.”

Nurse: *dryly* “Sorry, sir. You’ll have to see the Travel and Disbursement clerk for those.”

(My husband has been replying that to ANYONE who asks him if they can get him anything — waitstaff, clerks, medical personnel, etc. — for the entire 30 years I have known him. This is the first time I have heard a really good comeback.)

(I work at a detention center, and we are holding two big-name KKK leaders. Both were on TV after their arrest, since they have supposedly attacked one of their own. One of them has to be taken to the hospital for something and he has two male officers escorting him. They are seen in the ER by a tiny nurse.)

Nurse: “Mister… [Inmate]?”

Inmate: “Yeah?”

Nurse: “I see one of your vaccines hasn’t been updated; did you want to take care of that?”

Inmate: “Yeah, why not? The state’s paying for it.”

(The nurse starts humming as she prepares the injection and then proceeds to clean a site on his leg.)

Nurse: “Ready?”

Inmate: “Go for it.”

(The nurse suddenly stabs the needle into his leg, making both the officers cringe in sympathy as the man howls.)

Nurse: “There we go! All done.”

Inmate: “What kind of nurse are you?”

Nurse: “A loving Christian woman who doesn’t judge one’s skin color.”

(It was then that the inmate realized she had seen his face on the six o’clock news.)

(I am about to have a vasectomy, under a local anaesthetic. The female surgeon and I having been making general chat, and she now approaches with the needle to inject me with the anaesthetic.)

Me: “No jokes about ‘just a little prick’?”

Surgeon: “I’m not allowed to… anymore.”

(I am a medical lab scientist. I receive a urine sample from the ER to test only for drugs, marked as belonging to a fifteen-year-old boy. The sample is quite clear — if someone is really hydrated that can happen — and it’s cold. We usually receive urine still warm, but sometimes it sits while they decide if they want to test it for anything. It’s negative for all the street drugs we test for. I release the results and then, a bit later, I get a call from a nurse.)

Nurse: “Hi. I was just wondering about the drug screen for [Patient].”

Me: “Sure. What do you need?”

Nurse: “Well, it was cold when he gave it to me, and I just don’t quite believe it’s negative. Is there anything you could do to find out if it was water?”

(I think for a moment and come up with a few fast things that I could do to find out whether or not it is water.)

Me: “Yeah, let me grab it and try something.”

(I do a really quick test and come up with something you would not expect for pee.)

Me: “Either this kid is in very severe kidney failure, or this is water.”

Nurse: “Thank you. I just graduated and passed my boards, so I’m still learning knowledge-versus-wisdom. Now I know when I feel like the urine feels cold, I should do something about it.”

Me: “Did you want me to credit those charges?”

Nurse: “Yes. We will be recollecting. And there will be a male care tech going in that bathroom with him.”

Me: *laughing* “I would imagine.”

(Once I get off the phone, I do some more chemical testing and learn that this sample has none of the chemical properties of urine. This kid didn’t even think to try the one where you dilute your actual pee with water — which we can also catch — or even to just put WARM water in the cup. It was straight, cold, tap-water. I walk across the lab to tell this one to the other lab scientists, one of whom is known for being extremely cynical about everything.)

Cynical Coworker: “That nurse is way too nice. I’d catheterize the kid. Teach him to never do that one again.”

(We then started a prizeless pool, guessing what the kid was on that he was trying to hide. In the end, the actual urine arrived, and it was positive for marijuana.)