We won’t name the city or the hospital where the following bizarre incidents occurred, for reasons which will become evident to the reader in a moment.

Mrs. Livingstone passed away Sunday morning about 9 a.m. She’d been in a coma that resulted from injuries sustained in a traffic accident, but doctors fully expected her to survive.

Although puzzling, the case was unremarkable except for the fact that Mrs. Livingstone was the ninth patient to die for reasons unknown. All nine patients died in the Intensive Care Unit, in the same bed (the death bed), on the same night of the week, at approximately the same hour of the day.

Weird, you might wonder? Indeed! But at the hospital’s mortality and morbidity conferences following these deaths, health professionals had more questions than answers.

One of the doctors described the mysterious deaths to a city detective with whom he frequently played handball.

The detective was intrigued.

"Always on a Sunday?" the detective asks. "On the same floor? The same bed in the same ICU? At approximately the same time?" The detective suggested a stake-out by members of the hospital staff.

Doc asks the detective if he’d join him in the stake-out.

"Well, as far as we know it’s not exactly police business," he says in true Columbo fashion, "but what the heck, maybe I can help — unofficially."

The first two Sundays there is no extraordinary activity in the ICU. But on the third Sunday the mystery is solved.

Doc and the detective watch as Norman, the fourth floor custodian, comes down the hall with his buffer. Norman reaches under the patient’s bed (the death bed) at the end position in the ICU and plugs in his buffer — after he unplugs the cord to the patient’s life support system.

Doctors gather at the next M&M meeting to discuss the ramifications of the circumstances. The hospital attorneys say there’s no criminal intent, but there’s clearly liability for each death.

The flow of information from that hospital — located far, far away from here — shuts down. Norman is relocated to a job in another city and the hospital’s security system undergoes a major overhaul.