"Hey Scott, what would you say to delicious, homemade dessert with your coffee tonight? One of the cardiac care nurses baked one of those chocolaty, hot, gooey cakes and brought it in to share. I think I can snag us a couple of slices when I go up there for our coffee."

My supervisor studied me for a thoughtful moment. "And just what were you doing up in cardiac so early?"

I explained how I'd come in early to visit the cardiac care nurses and pull a wonderful prank on them. They were all business that bunch, a tidy group who always cleaned up their lounge and set their personalized coffee mugs out on their table prior to starting their shift. I knew this because for years now, I'd been sneaking into their lounge to "borrow" cream for our 3 a.m. coffee break. It was really fancy stuff, far too expensive for either Scott or me to afford and really, how could it be considered stealing when you only took enough to put in two cups each night?

Tonight, I managed to pull off a world class joke. I snuck in early and carefully dropped a spot of super glue under each of their steaming coffee mugs. I was giggling so hard at the thought of what it would look like when one after the other reached for a cup, looped a finger through the handle, and tried to bring the cup off the table.

When I related this bit of pranksterism to my supervisor, he nearly collapsed with laughter as we envisioned the consternation there would be.

"I dropped the super glue up there somewhere," I gasped between peals of laughter, "but I don't think they'll dust it for fingerprints."

"Oh, they'll know it was us," Scott replied, "except for that new nurse. What's with her? She totally ignores me when I say hello."

Easily the most gregarious person on earth, Scott was wounded by the pretty new nurse's constant refusal to say hi, or anything else for that matter.

She didn't respond to greetings, questions, comments, or observations. The first few snubs we wrote off as shyness, but as days of unreturned greetings turned into weeks, she became an enigma with dazzling white teeth.

Soon, it was the focus of our existence to crack her silence, and we began trying more elaborate means to get a single word out of her. As one fruitless effort after another failed, we began to crumble.

"I think she's Russian, that explains it,'" Scott opined. "She isn't ignoring me, she just doesn't speak English, I'm sure that's what it is."

We tried everything, from loitering around the entrance of the hospital just to open the door and welcome her to work, to timing our rounds so we'd meet her head-on, face-to-face in the hall.

"I give up," I confessed. "I've tried everything. I'm just going to go up there and ask the head nurse tonight."

"Good luck," Scott sighed. "By now, she's probably not talking to us either."

Much to my surprise, the head nurse invited me into the nurses' lounge where most of her staff, including the new, silent one, sat catching up on paperwork. I studiously avoided looking at the coffee cups, still full of coffee - cold now - and stuck to the table. The nurses all seemed to be smirking just a bit, and that threw me off just enough that I opened the refrigerator and poured a generous dollop of creamer into Scott's cup before I realized how it might look.

"Are you two really too cheap to buy your own cream, or do you just like to steal ours?" the head nurse asked. "Tell the truth," she prodded and at that, the new nurse laughed and spoke, "He can't tell the truth, there's no truth in him."

"She speaks," I said, and as laughter pealed around the table, the truth dawned on me. "You pranked us."

"We sure did," the head nurse laughed. "Oh, did we ever have you two going," she continued as the nurses pounded the table and hooted. "Is she Russian? This is the best prank ever," she said as she wiped her eyes. "It's almost as good as me putting laxative in the coffee creamer."

When I returned to the department, I handed Scott his coffee. He took a long sip and then glanced at my cup. "Did they run out of creamer or something?"

"No," I said, suppressing a grin. "I've decided to drink mine black from now on."