Swamped

"Excuse me," you interject. "I saw some strange slime earlier. Has that been cleaned up?"

"Yeah," says the nurse. "Well, I had to fill a jar with it because we weren't sure what it was, and the doctor said he had a sample but he might want more. But I mopped up the rest of it."

"All of it? There's a lot of beds here, it might have gotten under some."

"I check every patient's bed as I get to them. All clean so far."

"But what about unoccupied beds?" you ask. "You're not at full capacity, are you?"

"Well, no. You want to have a look?" she asks.

"I imagine you'll be busy with the patients." She looks a little guilty as you say that- ah, of course. She's just been standing around gossiping. "Although, I suppose if the bed has to be moved out of the way, that might be a bit much for me..."

"I can help with that!" Monty volunteers, before you can even ask.

"Now where do you think you're going?" Patterson says with a scowl.

"Boss, I gotta wait until we take the ice back. Might as well help out around here while I'm stuck, right?"

"It is a busy night," the nurse agrees. "Got a lot more patients than we usually do. In fact, I really ought to be getting back to work, I only meant to say hello..."

"Perhaps you can help out while you wait, too!" you suggest quickly. "I'm sure there's something you can do."

She glances at Monty's sandwiches.

"Well, we did bring these along. Maybe some patients are hungry, hmm?"

"Let me finish the one I got," Monty sighs. "That leaves two."

"Yeah, no sense giving someone a sandwich with a bite taken out of it. All right, Mary, you got any idea where I can find someone hungry?"

You and Monty walk off.

"Sorry about your sandwiches," you say.

"Eh, I'll get more. Best part of the job, honestly - plenty of sandwiches. There's usually a bunch left over from the evening shift, and if nobody has 'em they'll just go off."

"Well, really I just wanted to talk for a moment," you continue. You show them the note. "Mortimer handed this to me. I was wondering if it might be some sort of personal code, or if he found it."

Monty stares at the note a bit.

"This ain't Mort's handwriting. Think I got some idea what it says, though."

"Really? It looked like Kroskan lettering to me, but everything I thought of didn't work out."

"Oh, yeah, this ain't somethin' very well-known." Monty smiles a bit. "It's an old playwright trick for hiding their scripts. Not in common use any more, 'cause it used to take hours to break even when you knew exactly how it worked, but after a few centuries of that somebody figured out a shortcut."

"And you can read that?"

"Well, this is just some trivia I picked up, don't remember exactly how it worked." Monty glances at the paper a bit, then turns it upside down. "Oh, wait, that's right, it's faster this way. And then..."

There's a pause.

"I don't know that I have this right," they finally say. "It makes words, but I don't get what they mean."

"Well, what have you got?"