"ask not for whom the bell tolls..."

Imagine my surprise a few days ago:

I had just finished my exercise routine at “the gym” (I don’t know that it quite rises to the level of a “work out”) and was walking out of the building. (Note: I take my lunch in the office so that I can go to the gym some days; I am getting in shape so I can serve as Coroner on into the future) As I walked into the lobby there stood one of my deputies with several local police officers. Really, that isn’t something you want to see after working up a sweat and pushing your heart rate up. Particularly since I have often “preached” that you are born with only a certain number of heart beats, use them up and it’s on to death. When you see something like this you can kind of flash on one of those movies where the character out-of-bodies at death and sees folks coming for his mortal remains.

But they had not come for me. It was part of the investigation of an individual who had been pronounced dead at a local hospital. An acute myocardial infarction, 52 years old, continued inducement for my staying in shape (although his was not related to working out at the facility, he had stopped to use the public restroom).