Manicure pencil, serious syrup, and pounding Burt F. Smith's back

timeline_event

texture · prob. 6 Nov YDAU, morning

When: a morning near the end of Gately's overnight shift, prob. Fri 6 Nov YDAU.
What: Morning in the Ennet House dining room: Nell sits at the long table "whitening under her nails with a manicure pencil amid the remains of something she's eaten that involved serious syrup." When the stump-handed Burt F. Smith gets stuck in a purple-faced coughing fit at the table's far end, "Nell G. is behind him pounding him on the back so that it keeps sending him forward over his ashtray, and he's waving one stump vaguely over his shoulder to try and signal her to quit" — help indistinguishable from assault, in miniature.