Quality Control
“Waiter! I say, waiter! Young man, I’m terribly sorry, but I must complain about my dessert. You see, the wafer component of my ice cream cone is soggy. Look, I can peel it like damp cardboard! This won’t do, I’m afraid. Please, would you take this back to the chef, it’s simply inedible.”
“Yes, minister,” sighs the nurse who, with commendable poise, collects the offending sweet and turns away.
“Unacceptable,” heckles the minister. “I shall write a formal letter of complaint. No, no. I shall write to the Times. See if I don’t! Honestly, never in all my years. Dreadful service.”
The nurse — a recent addition to the staff here at Prudence Court — ditches the clammy cornetto into the waste basket by the door and slinks out of the dining room, leaving behind a thin whiff of stale cigarettes and fresh body odor. A ginger-haired kleptomaniac twitches in his chair, torn between the mangled gelato and the supervisory gaze of the remaining nurses.
The minister continues to mumble his disapprovals, but the show is over. Despite his relative inexperience, the nurse handled the situation effectively, and the other inmates turn back to their meals. In order to maintain my cover, so do I. Mustn’t jeopardize the mission, the nurse will surely get his due congratulations after his shift ends. Quality control must take priority, and secret vigilance is key.
I look at my own, measly cone. The minister is right. The chef should be ashamed of himself. I wonder whether the nurse will adequately convey the minister’s dissatisfaction, having discarded the material proof. I conclude that this was a serious oversight on his part.
“Excuse me,” I say to the mute albino sitting across from me, “I will return shortly.”
My chair farts a short scrape as I stand up from the dining table, drawing the attention of the nurses. “Please sit down,” one of them says.
“I only need a few minutes,” I respond, reasonably. “The new nurse dropped — ”
“Sit down, inspector,” interrupts the nurse.
I shoot a scathing look at the imbecile. Don’t blow my cover, you fool! I think. Fortunately, nobody picked up on his blunder.
“Excuse me, sir, but I don’t think you understand. I need to — ”
“I said. Sit. Down. Do it now!” The nurse unperches from his pedestal and assumes a menacing stance. I almost feel sorry for him; this confrontational attitude does not conform to the highest standards of company policy and simply can’t go overlooked in my final report. I shake my head disapprovingly as I retake my seat.
This is a textbook professional quandary. How am I to recover the decaying dessert and intercept the messenger nurse while evading the miscreant supervisor before me and also maintain my cover? Time is of the essence, or the wafer’s relative humidity may become attributable to normal atmospheric exposure, rendering the minister’s complaint invalid.
Perhaps my surroundings will provide some helpful resource. I scan the room discreetly, but all I see are dejected patrons with their melting conoid confections. Panic begins to creep up on me, and yet I feel a sense of relief, for I have always been praised for my grace under pressure, and my growing distress acts much like a deadline. My mind races and the answer becomes clear to me in an instant; it’s simple mathematics. There are twelve guests including me, and three nurses with only two arms and one baton apiece. I need to create a small stampede to divert the nurses’ attention, so I might slip out unnoticed.
The inmates’ varying mental illnesses necessitate a reasoned plan of action. A distressed cry of ‘Fire’, for example, will only serve to confuse everybody and draw attention to myself. No, the desired reaction must be instant and overwhelming.
Pondering stratagem, my eye falls on the blunt cutlery left over from our insipid but aspirational second course of green pea soup. I look up to see the mute albino, looking at me. We make eye contact and I can tell that he knows what I am thinking. We make a wordless pact. He returns my nod to indicate that he understands and accepts the danger. I hand him my spoon.
“I will not forget you in my report,” I whisper.
He turns his attention over my shoulder to his target and awaits my cue. I steel myself for the burst of action to come, and declare vigorously;
“I said, my ice cream cone is soggy!”
The dining room erupts. Roaring, the minister and an impulsive masturbator each flip their tables over, clattering their metal trays over the cracked tile floor. The inbred twins’ piercing shrieks set off the rest of the guests. The nurses are frozen, presumably in awe of the inevitable wave of violence, which happens quickly.
My mute albino assassin launches himself over our table toward the belligerent nurse. His naked foot accidentally kicks my ear, but he is quick to recover and deliver his assault. Just in time, I turn to witness his heroic dive, crashing the soup spoon down into the nurse’s collarbone with all his momentous advantage. It is a perfect strike. The nurse is knocked back, hits his head on the exposed masonry behind him, and goes limp. The other nurses are on their feet, but their batons are too slow for the rush of lunatics, who hurl their trays, their chairs, and then themselves, at the institutional personnel.
The mute albino picks himself up. He is glorious. For a moment, the scene is worthy of the renaissance masters; the victorious angel standing over his vanquished subjugator, preparing to rejoin the fray and sway the battle in favor of the divine side.
I decide that the time is right to make my covert move. Crouched, I flit unseen toward the wastepaper basket and successfully recover the cornetto.
Just then, the messenger nurse comes barreling back into the dining room, eyes bulging, and reeking of cigarette smoke. I am still low to the floor, so he doesn’t immediately register my presence. I make a snap decision to trip him if he should rush to the assistance of his companions or jump him if he turns to get help.
He turns, so I lunge after him, but he is fast and has the advantage of the heavy door swinging shut, costing me a valuable second. His back is to me as I enter the hallway. In his panic, he is uselessly slapping at the tempered glass box housing the emergency alarm, totally ignorant of the fire extinguisher at his shins. I sprint and shoulder barge him in the back, and he wallops the wall in front. As he crumples, dazed and winded, I snatch up the fire extinguisher and bring it hammering down three times on his forehead. I realize, too late, that this will be tricky to explain in my report.
