This Weekend at Bernie’s preboot is horrific.  An Iowa mortician found a live 66-year-old woman gasping for air inside a body bag sent to his funeral home by a nearby Alzheimer’s care facility last month, costing the company a $10,000 fine and confirming the adage that it never hurts to check one more time.

According to NBC News, the woman was admitted to hospice at the Glen Oaks Alzheimer’s Special Care Center in Urbandale December 28th suffering from “senile degeneration of the brain.”  During early morning rounds on January 3rd, a nurse checked the unnamed patient and found no signs of response, with the woman lying in bed, eyes open and pupils fixed.  The nurse saw no signs of breathing and could not locate a pulse or a heartbeat using a stethoscope.  Believing the patient to be dead, the nurse contacted her supervisor and the patient’s designated family member.

But there was a problem.  She wasn’t dead yet.  The mortician on call put the patient in a cloth body bag on a gurney around 8 a.m. and observed no signs of life.  After around five minutes to exit the facility, a ten-minute drive to the funeral home, and form processing for around five minutes, the staff of the funeral home opened the bag to find the woman gasping for air.  EMTs called to the scene found the woman breathing but unresponsive.  She was taken to a local hospital where she was treated and released back to the hospice facility, where she died with her family–who undoubtedly now know more lawyers than at any other time in their lives–by her side.