A Story With Legs

Pretty busy day today, but I wanted to point out this quick story I noticed on Boing Boing, although what caught my eye wasn’t the reason for its originally being posted:

“I first went to the health clinic, but it was closed. So I rang the medical help line and they told me that it shouldn’t be closed, so I went to emergency and sat there,” the man named only as Jonas told the newspaper.

After an hour-long wait in a treatment room, he lost patience and proceeded to sew up his own wound.

“They had set out a needle and thread and so I decided to take the matter into my hands,” he said.

But hospital staff were not as impressed by his initiative and have reported the man on suspicion of criminal dispossession (egenmäktigt förfarande) for having used hospital equipment without authorization. – The Local

The original post used a slightly different term to describe what the hospital had reported him for, although I think “criminal dispossession” sounds just as odd on the tongue.

I hate to see such motivation be knocked down: this guy is busy doing his own renovations, his own medical work – he’s a real go-getter, the kind of man who’ll go far in this company – and I think calling in the police is just a bit of jealousy on the hospital staff’s part, jealousy that Jonas was moving in on their territory. Either that, or they’re trying to cover for the fact that they were supposed to be open, but were instead busy in the back trading Pokemon cards*.

My point though, is that Criminal Dispossession sounds like a disturbingly vague kind of thing to be charged with – is he being accused of stealing the needle and thread?

*I can only assume it was Pokemon, and not getting into the high-end anesthetics