Institution Inspector No. 23
by Michael Fowler
Sam Zed here, government
institution inspector no.
23. I pose as a resident in certain federally funded nursing homes, treatment
centers, and halfway houses to verify service for accreditation and continuation
of funds. Due to my age, mid-50s, and ability to appear non compos mentis,
severely drug withdrawn, chemically poisoned and shellshocked, or any of these
stress-outs in any combo, I am a plausible plant in most facilities from VA to homeless
shelters with my concentration being the three types I mentioned. I record my
notes on a secret device that if need be, I can stick in my mouth or shove up
my ass.
One
recent evening I installed as a resident in
Asbestos Manor Care Center, a skilled-level facility mainly Medicaid-funded
with a bad rep for resident mistreatment by bullying, undereducated staff and
medicos from the bottom fifths of their outsourced classes. I was wheeled into
admission with my bad hair waving every which-way and a two-day’s beard by
Agent B, a stunner from my department with long legs. B posed as my legal rep
and signed over my alleged retirement stipend from a job hosing bottles at a
soft drink company for thirty years. B told the facility brass that my mind was
tabula rasa from years of Benzedrine inhalation but I was complacent as
a stuffed toy. She added that I only had a single suitcase since my apartment
on the river was recently flooded and the former landlord, who had changed my
diapers and played simplified chess endgames with me, had drowned. All the bases
were covered down to my fake ID.
I
did the Diogenes (crooked a little finger in
parting) to Agent B after she and a nurse parked me in my single room on the
third floor where I dwelt with other incorrigible veggies and halfwits. I made
a few moronic noises and then was abandoned by everyone. I stood in the hall outside
in my underwear and crapped to see how long it took before someone cleaned me
up, a critical experiment. I made a point of sticking my bulging, oozing rump
out so you couldn’t miss it if you cared to see it, but the elderly nurse aide
who strolled by on her way somewhere didn’t bend an eyebrow. But from what I
saw the other denizens were in just as bad shape and maybe she was tending to
one such loser, so who was I to demand her sole attention? I might add that although
I styled myself a whistleblower, I wasn’t out to get down on anyone unfairly
and considered myself a straight shooter.
With my nasty britches on and nothing else, I
strode behind the aide until I saw what she was about. A new old man was moving
in down the corridor from me, who as soon as he was left alone hobbled to his
dresser and tried to change into pajamas. With the old aide gone, I slipped in,
leaving the door wide open, and still in my poo pants knocked him cold with my
favorite wrestling moves, the Coco-bop and the Sleeper, lifting his nifty cufflinks
and shoe trees for good measure. I couldn’t help but wonder where was anyone to
prevent my gross mistreatment of this unfortunate senior? Would no one stop my
vile depredations? Still, I bore the staff no grudge. There were some twenty
rooms on this floor alone, all of them occupied I understood, and an inadequate
staff with barely a high school education and stuck in a dead-end job with lousy
pay could hardly be expected to curb every errant miscreant. I didn’t even
report the intrusion on my device, though I’d been known to report my own wrongdoings
if it seemed helpful.
I
went the first night with my finger on the
emergency light. No one ever came in to check on me. Oh well, par for the
course. I slept the untroubled sleep of an infant.
The
next morning a mountain of flesh in an
aide’s outfit strapped me into a highchair and abandoned me until my oatmeal
was like ice. Then she returned, sat beside me, and spooned a few cold curds
into my mouth. As I dribbled it out onto my hospital gown and made repulsive
sputtering sounds, she painted her nails. Not everyone on the floor required
hand-feeding, but those of us who did, did not get royal treatment. One scrawny
oldster who flung her tray on the floor, dousing the aide trying to feed her
with orange juice, got a wicked slap to the puss. Well I didn’t blame the aide
in the least. That kind of behavior was inexcusable and anyway the
cartilaginous old citizen absorbed the slap like a pro.
When
my meds came after the meal–1,000 mg of
powerful tranq instead of the 25 mg I was supposed to get–I put it down to a
simple clerical error that I didn’t bother to report. I was amused when before
I could palm the pills in my expert way, an aide had swiped them for her
personal use or perhaps their street value.
After breakfast I stood
nude in the corridor
outside my room, wondering who was going to shave and shower me. A number of prissy
female residents on the far side of senile clubbed together in a nearby atrium
and pretended to be at a posh resort in fine company instead of a dump to
finish decomposing and die. They muttered to each other that something needed
to be done “about that disgraceful man” who was an unpleasant reminder of their
true surroundings, but no one said a word to me. I felt quite free to pee also,
and did so, careful not to become aroused while exposing myself since this
might indicate a suspicious level of sentience.
Finally
a hip-hopping orderly in headphones
came by, one of the few males I’d seen on staff, and stopped at the sight of
me. He pulled a blade out of his pocket and held it to my throat, careful to
avoid my stream. It was all I could do to keep from running dry.
“Where
yo pants, motherfucker?” he said. “I’ll
carve yo nasty face to the bone if I see you like this again.” And then he
left. My heart went out to him, since he certainly had one awful job to do.
Frankly I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d slit my throat.
At
the night shift starting at eleven, everyone
went home and there clocked in a single lean, lanky nurse who remained at the
nurses’s station with a radio tuned low and read her novel without moving. I
studied her at a distance, then moved closer, but not close enough to make her
look up at me. I saw a morose woman of indeterminate age, deliberate and maybe
wise, her hair pinned back severely. Perhaps she resented being stuck in a
prole career by a bigoted society when she had as much brains as any nursing
home director, and had grown sour.
Then
I made a mistake. I played a little air
guitar to the music she had on, and looking up just then she caught me. I saw
in her deep eyes and firm chin that she drew a conclusion. But she did nothing.
I too did nothing, only shuffled off toward my room. There I typed my report on
my testicle-sized device before turning in. The sardonic night nurse did not
bother to check on me once, though as a new admission I might have qualified
for at least a peek. But maybe she did so as I slept. I gave her a high mark
for diligence in my report.
The
next morning passed as usual, and before
noon some staff announced a “picnic” for the residents. These staff showed very
little pleasure in the plan, about as much as did the near-comatose dozen men
and women residents affected, of whom I was one. We gaunt, ragged souls were
shunted onto the freight elevator and taken out back to a shady grotto. There a
huge frowning aide stripped us of our gowns and allowed us to disport ourselves
freely in nature as created by the Man with the Plan. It was a perfect day and
we oldsters made an impression, I’m sure, of Adamites a-frolic in the Garden of
Eden, except at one point the rapping attendant came out for a breath of air
and darted about punching a few of us in the stomach. Oh, not hard, not hard,
and I gave him points for forbearance in my write-up. He did not even slam all
of us, but only those who, like myself, had in his mind given him a hard time.
The
purpose of the “picnic” soon became clear
when the rotund aide grabbed a garden hose and began spraying us residents down
with the cold water on full. I personally found it refreshing, the day being
warm, and didn’t mind the water pressure in my ears and eyes and on my flapping
genitalia as some did who screamed as if fire were shooting from the nozzle
instead of cold water. This, I surmised, was my bath, though I still required a
shave, or rather I had already taken it in my head to grow a beard. So I
noticed had the other males, beards being popular and even de rigueur
here in the land of no shaves. We wandered around in the sun until dry, then
re-gowned and stumbled back on the elevator to upstairs. All in all a pleasant
outing, and I said so in my write-up.
That
night and the next one I retired to my
room precisely at eleven, but not at the same minute each night to avoid
arousing suspicion. There I slept or pretended to. In that way I avoided a
confrontation with the night nurse, whose name I learned was Carmela. But one
morning, as the day staff arrived and she prepared to go, Carmela took me by
surprise. Five minutes after she should have departed, she entered my chamber
as I sat naked in my chair, where I managed to deposit myself each morning
before breakfast and meds, and stood beside me. A chair next to mine was
unoccupied, but she knew better than to sit in a resident’s got-to-be filthy
seat. I did the Schiavo (gazed ahead blankly) as the dark eyes behind her
glasses watched me and her grin challenged.
“I
know you faking, darling,” she said. “What
you up to?” She threw a towel into my lap. “I don’t want to see your stuff
hanging out, neither, if you ain’t got Alzheimer’s.”
It
was a good bluff. I had given myself away
only a few times in my career, and had been forced to cover with elaborate
performances designed to indicate flickering mentality in an otherwise
incoherent persona. Caught making a phone call once, I wandered about a ward
picking up receivers and dialing numbers at random and chattering nonsense for
the better part of a week, perhaps never convincingly. But I had another method
that I thought to try.
“This is the house
that Jack built…this is the
rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built,” I began to recite
that long, dull ditty that my grandfather Walter, b. 1898 d.1970, told me as a
child and which I had recited to my own daughter until she no longer allowed
it, probably around age six. “This is the cat that ate the rat that ate the
malt that lay in the house that Jack built,” I droned. Carmela chuckled in a
mirthless way after I paused to feign memory loss.
“That’s
fine,” she said. “Tonight I’m going to
come and see you for the rest of that poem, and you can also tell me what a man
who don’t have to be here is doing here. Who you think you fooling, dear?”
When
I made no response, and even looked away
from her, she gave another low chuckle and then left. I sent a text message to
Agent B to come pick me up, and soon, no later than that afternoon. She was to
use the angle that a sister of mine in Mississippi had agreed to care for me.
My cover may have been blown, but my job here was done.
I packed my single bag and
dressed myself, leaving the staff to wonder which of them clothed me. Before I
went, I managed to wander over to the nurses’ station during a smoke break to
see if Carmela had recorded anything about me in the night. My chart was blank
for that time. She was a player for sure. I considered pegging her for verbal
abuse in my final report, but didn’t want to spoil the Manor’s perfect record.
What a terrific place, like a vacation resort, and I gave Carmela the highest
marks of anyone. Already my thoughts turned to my next assignment where anthrax
and microwaves had rendered me soft-spoken and modest and every previous
assignment had been mentally erased.
END
