A flash in the pan

 The midwives were busying themselves on the ward

The porters were portering, and the waiting patients looked bored

Nothing much was happening, it was the usual rap

When a certain tap-tapping began to tap

The matron cried "Ahoy there! I smell smoke between the sheets,

Either some aberrant's been smoking or there's a fire on the beat."

Just then the fire alarm rang out, a wailing, chilling sound 

And it stopped the matron somewhere abouts in the middle her round

 

The hospital crew acted bravely to carry out the matron's orders 

She told them to remove the mothers to safty in out-the-way borders

Down the stairs they went flying, like refugees they were sighing

But lucky they were to be evacuated in the nick of time from the scene

as smoke circulated around the bedpan macerating machine

Just then the fire brigade rocked up with their hard hats and their hoses

And they told all those locked up to hold on tight to their noses

And they stormed right up the stairwell, to fight the fire, and quell its flame

But none of them were to know then the bedpan by its burning name

The new mothers stared on with the look of those who had been stunned,

As they held their babes in arms took on the look of Mary or of nuns

But stern they were of will to survive this great ordeal

Hoping in their hearts that they might soon get a meal

Though the babes in arms were yet crying, 

the mothers charms they still kept trying

Until a calm had settled down upon the congregation

When a man decided to have a myocardial infarction

So as the midwives were treating this unfortunate chap

The firemen were charging through for a second lap   

 

The matron then in her most commanding voice

called for calm and order as if they had no choice

So in the end nirvana was again restored

And the patients kept on waiting and the waiting ones got bored

And the man who had been waiting to be seen

Now he had been seen he couldn't wait to leave

And as the last of the bedpan flames were quenched

The sad looking macerating machine was drenched

And luckily nobody's mother's waters broke

So they all trudged back up the stairs thinking what a joke

Because you know they say it never rains but it pours

Which is what they should write on the A and E doors

And all these things were sent to try us

Including bedpan macerating machine fires

And so before you ask if you can use the can

You better be sure it's not for a flash in the pan