WIP Wednesday

It's Been a Minute

The prompt was “Fantasy Medical Drama”.

I wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity like that…

Doug dropped into the swivel chair in the break room across from me, the one that always seemed to have a screw missing somewhere. It tilted a little bit left today, and he barely managed to get his cup of coffee away before it spilled down his scrubs. It still managed to get all over his hands, and the paperwork he was carrying.

"GOD—" Doug bit his lip, struggling to save his last bit of professionalism. He looked like he'd had a rough day already, and it wasn't even noon.

I nodded at the pages he was trying to sponge clean with a tissue-thin paper towel. "Paperwork jungle?"

"McNightly found a typo on the last set." Doug's snarled reply lacked any real oomph, as if his anger dissipated with each spoke word. He rubbed his eyes. "I spent half an hour arguing with the shriveled-up old prune. 'Nae, Nae, Master Goodwin, 'tis not me place to change the rules of grammer.' Smug bastard was smiling the whole time."

"Well, yeah." I shrugged. "I hardly ever see him on the floor since you started. You've become one of his favorite snacks."

Doug looked at me like I'd grown a third head. Which isn't unusual in our line of business, mind you - cephalic hydraitis is nothing to laugh at - but it is a little out of the ordinary.

"What are you talking about, snack?" His eyes got wide as he sat bolt upright. "You mean, like how Mike talks about his boyfriend? Oh, please, no, no—"

"Easy, easy!" I held my hands up. "Not that kind of snack. You know he's one of the, uh, special staff, right?"

"Duh." Doug slumped back in his chair. "The way he looks, his accent, how he has trouble with any technology invented after 1850. Obviously a vampire." He grimaced. "Ewww. Do you mean he wants to..." he tapped two fingers on his neck.

"No. Did you read the orientation paperwork yet?"

"Uh, some of it."

Which meant none of it. I shook my head. "Kids these days. No, you don't get to complain about this one, it's right in there. McNightly is an *emotional* vampire." I nodded as I saw realization dawn.

"That son of a bitch." There was real anger in Doug's voice now. He was halfway out of his seat. I reached over and pushed him down, gently.

"Stop. If you go storming in there, pissed off, you're just giving him another free lunch." I considered Doug. "Well, at this point, one of those really expensive Cheescake Factory desserts."

"What do I do?" Doug buried his head in his hands. "I can't take this anymore, and it's only been three weeks!"

I leaned over and took the paperwork, shaking off the last remnants of the coffee. "First thing, you let me take this up to McNightly. I'll let him know that I'll be doing your discharge paperwork for the rest of the week."

"You would? I mean—thank you." Doug's gratefulness was almost comical.

"Don't thank me, you get the next medusa we have to deal with." He looked confused until I said, "Everyone has their willies, OK? Mine are snakes."

"OK. OK. You got it. ANYTHING to keep from having to deal with that... that..." Doug shuddered.

"Don't worry," I said as I stood up. "I'll go get this squared away real quick for you." And, I thought, have a talk with McNightly about HR's rules about feeding on the staff. Just imagining dealing with HR, even to file a complaint, made me shiver. Sure, we had an emotional vampire working in discharge, zombies in the morgue, and a basilisk on hand just in case a demigod had a bad reaction to general anesthetic... but nobody, and I mean NOBODY, wanted to wake whatever it was that was slumbering in the HR department. Not if they knew what was good for them.

The Business of Writing

A mid-week update on my three major commitments: to write, to edit, and to read.

I’ve been… absent for a while, I know. Dealing with my father’s last requests have been wearisome and time consuming.

(That’s the fancy way of saving it, that makes it sound all mysterious. Oooooh! “Planning his wake and picking out his gravestone” doesn’t have nearly the same sort of ooomph.)

On top of that all, I’ve been working to complete Blue As Sky, with a goal of having a clean first draft handed off to the publisher by January 1st or thereabouts. I’m stil working on that 2k per day. That’s been somewhat hampered by a week off over Thanksgiving. Not for eating turkey, unfortunately. I spent three days more or completely down for the count because of a stomach bug. On the plus side, mild fever dreams make for really entertaining story ideas!

Other Stuff

It looks like I will be talking on a more significant role at FamilyLife. More on that next month, maybe. We have a strategic planning meeting coming up, and I have a few things I want to see us working on.

Car wise, since the last update, we have bought two cars. Yes, you heard that right. The one was kind of planned. The other? Well, my car went into the shop for repairs after a deer collision. Two weeks later, we got notice from the insurance company that they were going to write it off as a total loss. Whoof. So we now have two new cars in the Robb household, which is nice. I had to write a couple of very large checks, which wasn’t. Especially since Spring semester tuition for the girls is also due.

Wakes, car troubles, daylight savings time. Bleah. I am going to be very, very happy when this week year is done. In the meantime, I’ll be doing my best to cultivate a spirit of Thanksgiving. Even though I didn’t get to actually participate in it this year.