Just simile first

When a patient was wheeled into our emergency room, I was the nurse on duty. "On a scale of zero to ten," I asked her, "with zero representing no pain and ten representing excruciating pain, what would you say your pain level is now?"

She shook her head. "Oh, I don't know. I'm not good with math."

There were only two cars at the end of my exit ramp, but no one was moving. Clearly the first driver was too timid to blend into the flow of traffic. Opportunity after opportunity passed her by, and cars piled up on the ramp. Finally, the driver moved, spurred by an exasperated motorist at the end of the line, who yelled, "The sign says yield, not surrender!"

Since maternity patients at the small hospital where I work must travel 50 miles to another hospital for the actual delivery, they often check with us first to verify that they are, indeed, in labor.

One morning, a pregnant woman walked in, and we confirmed that delivery was definitely imminent. So a nurse called her husband at home, getting him out of bed. "Your wife's about to give birth," she told him. "You need to go to the hospital."

"Okay," he said groggily. "I'll wake her up and tell her."