Bigfoot Crazy

James Williard sat at his chief technologist's desk in the laboratory office at Wellman Memorial Hospital thinking dark thoughts. Mostly, he wondered why he had ever taken this job in the first place. He stared at the disordered stack of papers cluttering his desk and tried to make himself get interested in them. It was no use. Shuffling papers wasn't his idea of an exciting way to make a living, even though as chief technologist there were some fringe benefits involved. One of the fringe benefits tapped at the closed door, then entered without being asked.


Williard started to douse his cigarette then held off when he saw who it was. Trisha Knight closed the door behind her then came over and plopped down in his lap. "What if Mr. Elkins catches you smoking in here " she asked, plucking the cigarette from his hand and putting it between her lips.


He took the cigarette back from her after allowing her to inhale, then used the last of it himself, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs. "Fuck him. If he gives me any shit, I'll tell his wife where he was yesterday when we were supposed to be discussing the budget." The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals had recently decreed that most sections of the hospital, including the laboratory, should be smoke-free. So far, Williard had gotten away with ignoring the regulation but he didn't know how much longer that would last. Civilian hospitals, he had come to find out, were hothouses of politics and had more snitches per square yard than a prison exercise yard.


"Where was he " Trisha asked. She leaned her head forward and nuzzled his neck, hoping Williard would reveal a juicy tidbit of gossip about Dean Elkins, the hospital administrator.


"Interviewing a nurse," Williard said.


"Oh, that. Everyone already knows how he does his interviews."


"Don't listen to everything you hear." He removed Trisha's arm from around his neck. "Go 'way now. I've got to work on these OSHA regulations."


She pouted. "Don't you even want to know why I came in to see you "


"I already know, but I haven't got time right now." Williard was wishing that he had never hired her. Or, more accurately, that he hadn't gotten carried away with her bust measurement and let her seduce him into a series of nooners the last several weeks. She was already beginning to hint that she was expecting special treatment in the matters of call duty and weekend scheduling, something the other techs would almost certainly resent if he acceded to her veiled suggestions. He knew now that he should have at least kept their liaisons out of the lab where it was impossible to keep secrets, but after Terry, his live-in girlfriend had left him, he had let his gonads get in the way of his good sense.