In this medical fiction, Hildi’s misfit cookies spark a unique friendship with chef Mindy, and dramatic kitchen confrontations build a bond beyond baking.
This medical fiction tale is one of a collection of stories that are like “Final Destination” meets “The Monkey’s Paw” (W. W. Jacobs, 1902). As such, they are tragedies that appeal most to readers who enjoy the inexorable pull of a story arc that leads to doom. The technical details surrounding the event are drawn from real cases in the US OSHA incident report database or similar sources and are therefore entirely realistic, even if seemingly outlandish.
Hildi was not the baker her grandmother had been but, as an avid auntie to three middle-school girls, she was always willing to help out as best she could. When she baked Jolly Jammer cookies for the girls’ fall school celebration, she drew sneers and gossip from some of the mothers. Slightly overdone with strawberry jam oozing out of the little eye holes and mouths of the top crust, the cookies appeared to have some hemorrhagic disease. The kids, however, thought them the best thing ever. Hildi’s “diseased” cookies soon disappeared completely, while most platters of fancier offerings sat untouched.
It was cookies that brought Hildi and Mindy together. Mindy’s expertly made, chocolate-dipped shortbread finger cookies had also vanished from the platter, but not before Hildi sidled up and guiltily snuck two for herself. Mindy caught Hildi in the act, laughed, and introduced herself.
Embarrassed by both her petty larceny of Mindy’s lovely cookies and by the lackluster appearance of her own cookie contribution, Hildi sheepishly admitted to Mindy that baking was not her core competency. She bypassed the fact that she ran a hospital pathology lab and morgue, instead expounding upon her passion for making knives. Mindy admitted that she was, in fact, a chef by profession, but would be utterly hopeless at making knives. Mindy could have also added that her boss in the hospital kitchen, Baxter, was a tyrant, but that became amply evident to Hildi later. By the end of their first conversation, Mindy had promised Hildi a tin of cookies and described her ideal chef’s knife, and Hildi had sketched it and explained how it could be made. The two made a date to see each other again to discuss baking, knives, and old movies, and they parted as friends.
Mindi’s unmentioned boss, Baxter, was an unhappy and unfulfilled man who enjoyed spreading his misery. In fact, the only thing that cheered him up was making someone else more miserable than himself. The causes of Baxter’s morose moods were legion, but the leading candidates were his hatred of his job, his dislike for his own boss, and his irritation with his staff. He also hated the way sports had become so “woke”, and politicians so sleazy.
Years earlier, when Baxter graduated culinary school, he’d had a plan: a year of scut work to become a junior chef; a few years traveling the world and working in European kitchens; and a triumphant return to open his own top restaurant. He imagined his restaurant in top reviews, receiving a first Michelin star, then a second, followed by multiple issues of Food & Wine featuring his photo on the cover, a permanent column in Bon Appetit, and yet a third Michelin star.
Visualization of goals may assist with attainment, but goals are only achieved through great effort, significant amounts of assistance from strangers, and considerable luck.
Unfortunately, Baxter tended to be an irritable young man, huffy and sarcastic, which seldom invites the help of strangers, and also tends to sour one’s luck. Accordingly, Baxter’s supervisors tended to assign him the most menial and unpleasant tasks, gifting choice jobs that brought visibility and recognition to other, more pleasant kitchen porters. Where one kitchen porter might be given the job of helping prepare chocolate sauce and be immersed in those redolent scents and pleasurable tastes, Baxter would be tasked with removing stinking goose entrails, skinning bovine kidneys, or scrubbing carbonized fat from large cast iron pots.
The stinks and smears that filled Baxter’s life fixed a glum, sour look on his face and caused a slump in his stance. He also stank a bit, which seldom attracts good fortune. Instead of years abroad soaking up culture and experiences, visiting French wine districts, working for renowned chocolatiers, and developing his own fusion recipes, Baxter went from one nasty kitchen to the next. The more time he spent in the bottom ranks, the more he lowered his goals.
This explains why, when Baxter finally got his big breakthrough, it was not due to culinary expertise, but rather to extortion. While glumly scouring a cooking pot, Baxter overheard the restaurant’s sous-chef bragging on the phone to his girlfriend that he’d stolen one of the restaurant’s secret recipes. A few broad hints from Baxter to said sous-chef secured him a stellar letter of reference and an introduction to a bigger kitchen—a hospital kitchen rather than a fancy restaurant—but still a big step up.
As soon as Baxter had underlings of his own, he made their lives miserable. Naturally, management interpreted this as a sign of leadership. They might personally think him a stinker, but the fact that he persecuted his staff was seen as a good thing. For the next three decades, Baxter stayed in that same kitchen, progressing upwards as people above him moved up and out.
Now 53 years old with no sign of magazine covers, Michelin stars, or writing gigs in the offing, Baxter focused on nurturing a sense of grievance and honing his anger towards everyone in general, and his boss in particular. The one thing that stood between him and his being named head chef was the woman who currently held that position, and whose friendly nature, people skills, and vast understanding of the varied factors of running a hospital kitchen made her popular, respected, and sought-after. The fact that she regularly received offers to lead kitchens at bigger and fancier places only made Baxter hate her all the more. When she was featured on the cover of Bon Appetit and received special recognition from Michelin, his blood boiled, and a small vessel in his left eye burst.
Meanwhile, Hildi and Mindy had discovered they worked at the same hospital and, in the three years since the school “bleeding zombie cookie” incident, their friendship blossomed. While Hildi had yet to improve her baking skills, she’d certainly progressed in her metalworking expertise. Mindy now possessed a full set of beautifully handcrafted knives, courtesy of Hildi, that she used at work and home, and which she kept in a leather roll bag. Mindy’s boss’s boss, the hospital kitchen’s head chef, ordered a personal custom set from Hildi, then started an annual tradition of gifting kitchen staff members custom knives made by Hildi as recognition for outstanding work. Initially the kitchen staff experienced a slightly creepy feeling when gifted very efficient and extraordinarily sharp knives made by the hospital pathologist and morgue manager, but Hildi soon became such a familiar face, and the knives were so incredible, that those feelings quickly dissipated.
Hildi and Mindy were compatible in many mutually supportive ways; while they were both very creative, Hildi was a linear and detailed thinker, and Mindy was more spur of the moment. Hildi’s creativity produced a new knife over a period of several days or weeks, where a new dish from Mindy was a question of minutes or hours. Hildi’s job had its ups and downs, but generally she was her own boss, set her own routine, and managed the goals and objectives of the pathology work and the morgue. Mindy, on the other hand, had to deal with Baxter. The kitchen work itself was enjoyable and gave her a sense of accomplishment and meaning, and the head chef was inspirational, but Baxter was an evil tyrant.
It seemed like whenever the head chef recognized Mindy for something, Baxter would make a point of criticizing her or messing with her work. In her quarterly appraisals, Baxter would refer to her as “outspoken and aggressive,” and would dwell on her every tiny misstep. He once berated her in front of the entire kitchen staff when she’d misunderstood how he wanted a red-wine reduction done. Sneering at her, he’d loudly asked, “You don’t know this? Listen, my 10 year old niece knows this. How about your colleagues over there, are they stupid like you? Or will they understand at least some of what I say?” Mindy had burst into tears, which simply resulted in more sneering and a statement that she was a “cute girl” but “a bit thick.” Baxter also regularly altered menus without warning, forcing Mindy to scramble to make changes and rearrange her schedule, or he suddenly canceled previous orders, leaving her to abandon half-finished work. This reflected poorly on her performance, but complaining or pointing blame at Baxter would only look like an excuse for her own incompetence.
When Mindy had nights like that, Hildi would come to her rescue by making the only thing she could create in the kitchen with expertise: hot chocolate cocoa with crushed mint and cinnamon. On those nights, they would snuggle up together under a blanket, sip their fragrant hot cocoa, and watch old movies.
One Friday afternoon when most of the kitchen staff were off until the night shift started, Hildi heard yelling coming from the kitchen next door to her lab. She paused her work, and was about to resume dictation when she clearly recognized Mindy’s voice raised to a shriek. It appeared Mindy had simply had enough of Baxter making last minute menu changes that threw Mindy’s kitchen work into chaos. She’d wanted to get home earlier than usual, but now those plans were in tatters. Mindy had made an uncharacteristically heated remark to Baxter and he’d responded by tearing into her character and work with a level of bile that frightened and angered her,so she accused him of being a cruel bully. Baxter sneered and stated that he didn’t want her around anymore. That he’d known she would fail as a chef from the day he’d met her, that she was just another stupid woman, and to pack her things, clock out, and find another job.
Mindy let out a roar and pushed him in his chest with both hands. Baxter cocked a fist near her face, making her flinch. Hildi rushed from her lab into the kitchen where she saw the back of a large man with his fist raised, poised to punch Mindy. She reacted instinctively, giving him a solid kick in the rear. Baxter bellowed in fury, stumbled to regain his balance, then spun and charged at Hildi, who reacted in much the same instinctive way, landing a hard kick to his nether regions. Carried by his momentum, Baxter collapsed on top of Hildi and she found herself pinned under his weight. Expecting further attack, Hildi squirmed out from under him, freeing herself.
Mindy grabbed Hildi’s hand and pulled her to her side. Standing close together and clasping each other’s hands, they stared at Baxter waiting for him to rise and attack them. He lay perfectly still for what felt like a lifetime, but barely a minute had elapsed before Hildi approached him and expertly rolled him over. She then saw that her large Mayo dissection scissors were embedded in his chest up to the handles. Hildi couldn’t remember leaving the morgue with them still in her hand, but the neon pink handles of her custom scissors were both clearly visible and identifiable.
It didn’t take Mindy and Hildi long to decide on a course of action, nor did it take long to load Baxter’s body on a scoop stretcher, put him on a morgue trolley, and transfer him to a slab. Next, Mindy called the head chef in tears and informed her that she’d had a huge fight with Baxter who’d then screamed that he was quitting and had walked out. Chef calmed Mindy, provided instructions on finalizing the menu for the following day, confirmed that the night orders had gone out, that special requests had been put in the order bin, and that Baxter had been clocked out.
By midnight, the kitchen was sorted, Baxter was off the clock and out of the roster, and his head was frozen and on its way to a medical school for a dissection class. Hildi had packaged his organs and they were ready to be sent to a range of pathology schools. The rest of him was in a lined cardboard box on its way to the crematorium.
That night was a double chocolate cocoa and rum night and, after a long hot shower, Hildi and Mindy cuddled up on the couch, sipped their drinks, and watched old romantic movies until they drifted off to sleep together.
The post Medical Fiction: Cookies, Cutlery, and a Kitchen Crime first appeared on Physician's Weekly.