Kutu II : Lady of Lice

Unlike the previous talk about kutus of the investment scheme sort, this post really is about lice. Nasty lil blood-sucking critters you'd find creepy-crawling all over the sad, abandoned vagrants on the mean streets. Just takes that one good-hearted samaritan to stumble over the poor fella and extend a hand to help.

And then we'll have homeless specimen #1213 dumped into our care. Otherwise known as the Lady of Lice.

Whereupon the nurses will come together as one.

Really. Whatever tragic consequences had led her to this point, this messy, dishevelled itinerant with lice in their midst seems to act as a rallying point to the starched-up matrons of nursing! It's an event all by itself. Each time the emergency alarm goes up and the sisterhood answers ( a couple of brothers these days! ), they all start marching along towards the insensible patient with shavers, scissors and soap.

Starting to suspect there has to be a Florence Nightingale Rulebook circulated amongst the older nurses ( probably handed through the generations in clandestine midnight meetings ), no doubt with the front page exhorting the golden rule that Thou shalt not suffer a Lice to Live! How else would you explain the senior nurses acting almost in tandem upon the unsuspecting soul as if in tacit agreement! As a dedicated team, they descend upon the hapless vagrant en masse, shut the curtains to prying eyes and precede with the relentless medical makeover.


Although I'd much prefer if this was the result of their work...
More hindrance than help, the curious doctors are adjured to stand clear as they attend to their work. I've seen their magic at work so I just stand by while the interns crowd around the rails trying to peek.

It's a hysterical scene shockingly reminiscent of the bath scene in My Fair Lady. The one where cooing flowergirl Eliza Doolittle is forced to shed her shabby genteel trappings at the behest of the redoubtable housekeeper amidst shrieks of horrified indignation! As the patient is liberally doused in a potent mixture of bleach, chemical solvents and industrial soap, torn clothes, bits of hair and lice are flung out at regular intervals along with suds and bubbles.

Then with a final copious dusting of minty talcum powder - rising like magic pixie dust to the air, the show's done. And then lo and behold, a new patient - the true Lady of Lice all cleaned and scrubbed with her hair fashionably styled - stands bemusedly in the place of the unbecoming hobo earlier.

Even her cheeks bloom rosy pink.

Now who says the nurses don't have magic of their own.