Feather Shedder

"I'm dying", she said. "I need to be admitted so I can spend my last days in comfort."

I eyed her dubiously, a thirty-something year old woman who looked unkempt and smelled rather noxious.

"What makes you think you're dying?" I asked.

"I saw it in the newspaper," she said. "It announced I was dying."

While I searched for an appropriate response, she dug a piece of paper out of a pocket. Unfolding it, she handed it over to me.

"See?" she said. "It clearly says I am dying."

I perused the ragged piece of paper:

SALE! SALE! SALE!

TIME IS RUNNING OUT!

IT ENDS IN ONE WEEK!

"I don't understand," I said. "Where does it say you're dying?"

She sighed impatiently and pointed at the words. "Don't you see?" she said, as if speaking to a child. "Time is running out! I'm going to die in one week!"

I scratched my head.

"Hmmm. Are you feeling ill? Is anything out of the ordinary happening?"

She bit her lip. "My body is collapsing."

"Oh."

"I'm telling you - there's something terribly wrong with me!"

"Can you describe what's happening in your body? It might help me understand better."

Wringing her hands, she stood up and began pacing about the small examination room. "I'm shedding feathers... everywhere I go I'm shedding feathers. And I'm passing out often. And when I use the bathroom, I'm pooping feathers!"

"Feathers."

"Yes! It's a sign! When angels die, their feathers start falling off! That's what's happening to me!"

"You're an angel?"

"Are you one of them?"

I frowned. "One of whom?"

"Them. Are you one of them?"

"I'm not sure. Tell me... have you been taking your medications lately?"

"No, I won't take them! I'm supposed to take my medications as cold fusion monotherapy, and my medications are warm so it's poison."

"I see."

I pondered the situation for a moment, and then a brilliant idea seized me.

"Listen, I think I know what we should do."

"You think I'm crazy, don't you?"

"No," I lied smoothly. "I don't think you're crazy, but some of the things you're telling me sound quite unusual. I think that the best thing to do would be to have the psychiatrists declare that you're NOT crazy, and once they see you and decide you're not crazy, maybe we can look into finding you a nice place to spend the last days of your life in comfort. But, you see, this would be difficult until and unless the psychiatrists declared that you aren't crazy first."

Even as the words left my mouth, I was uncomfortably aware that I didn't make sense to my own self. I hoped she wouldn't pick up on it.

"Oh," she said. "So if I see the psychiatrist and they realise I'm not crazy then I can get some help?"

"Yup."

"Okay," she said.

So we sent her to the psychiatric hospital, where they admitted her and medicated her such that the problem of her feather-shedding resolved.