You Don’t Mess Around With “Jim”

I got a devilish streak in me when one of the usual suspects rolled into Room 6.
Jim used to drink a lot, but eventually time got the best of him and he had taken up residence in a nursing home. I didn’t know him, but the nurses knew him for a long time. Apparently one of his pet peeves was that he disliked Tylenol. For years when a doctor or nurse told him that he would be given Tylenol for his pain, he would protest loudly. “That stuff doesn’t work on me! You may as well just give me WATER.”
On this visit, Jim was a little “feisty” when I was trying to examine him. He appeared confused and didn’t give a very good history. Half the time, he didn’t answer me at all. I thought he was completely out of it until he swatted my hand at one point when I tried to listen to his heart. So I figured I would see how alert he was.
I told him “Jim, you have a fever. I’m going to have the nurses give you some Tylenol to help that.”
All of a sudden a voice from above us says “You’re going straight to hell, Dr. Whitecoat.”
Realizing that we were in a Catholic institution, Jim looked at me and said “See, you better not mess with me and that Tylenol stuff. The Big Guy is watching you.”
I gave him Motrin instead.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the voice we heard was not the “Big Guy”, but was instead one of the nurses who overheard our interaction and piped in her two cents over the intercom.