sleep deprivaton: odd effects on the brain

After all night and half a day at the hospital, I'm heading home at last. Someone yells out my name before I make it outside, and sticks an envelope in my hand. Inside is an eight-page form bearing the name of one of my patients. A cover letter tells me I have to fill out the entire form, describing in detail the patient's mental condition, since her family is pursuing emergency guardianship in court. The cover letter goes on to state that my patient must be examined by a doctor, a psychologist and a social worker before being declared incompetent to conduct her own affairs.

WTF? The lady in question doesn't need a social worker or a psychologist: she's been comatose from a massive stroke for over a month. (Her aging baby sister, touchingly, spends most days at her bedside, nagging at her to wake up and stop letting her tongue loll out of her mouth.) Someone in the downtown government building has obviously screwed up. Huh. Maybe if I tell them so, they'll let me off the hook for the eight-page form.

Outside the door of the hospital, I blink in pain. It's a bright, breezy twenty degrees, and my eyes burn with fatigue and I realize I no longer care about anything. (I actually stopped caring shortly after sunrise, which was several patients ago. Hopefully the patients didn't notice.) Shivering violently behind the wheel, I fumble with my cell phone and punch the phone number from the cover letter: For questions, please call... Three rings later, a baritone answers on the other end of the line.

Baritone: Swing coconut.
Me (gaping in confusion while sprinting through a yellow light): Is this, um (here I fumble with the forms) the, the County Attorney's Office for Mental Health Issues?
Baritone: Yes.
Me (increasingly baffled): Wow, that's funny. When you answered the phone I thought you said "Swing coconut."
Baritone (very gently): Yes. May I help you?

What? Oh, I get it. It's a mental health department. He thinks I'm crazy. This man who answers his phone with the words, "Swing coconut" thinks I'm crazy.

This strikes me as so hilariously ironic that I begin to giggle helplessly.