None Of My Business... But

Work allows you to sink yourself into something else for a while, and you get a lot done as you **** yourself to not think about, well, anything for a while. You have an upcoming network change for BHC on Friday night, after regular business hours, and you do the documentation necessary for the Change Request. Good to know that if you totally screw up the core switch upgrade, you at least have a backout plan ready to go, even if that plan is just “panic, take out the new switch, put the old one back in, get laughed at by your peers on Monday”.

Jayne has a meeting and works partly through lunch, which spares you the awkwardness of seeing whether she wants to go grab something to eat with you. Luckily, you brought a few sandwiches so you are able to get a bag of chips and a drink from the vending machines in the break room (conversation definitely shifts when you walk into the room, and then resumes when you leave) so you just sit at your desk and eat your sad lunch. Then your chat client starts flashing, drawing your eye from a weird forum of videogame nerds arguing about hockey to your second monitor.

Jayne Hall: Zach, I’m busy with committee stuff now but this afternoon I have some time. Want me to pop over at, like, 2 and talk about our thing?

You: Yeah sure! Although ‘our thing’ makes us sound like the mafia (laugh)

Jayne Hall: heh ok see you at 2

You stare at the screen for a while, hoping for more but she’s clearly done now. Trying not to feel like her conversation with you was abrupt or weird - hey she’s clearly in the middle of something, she can’t banter with you sometimes it’s fine! - you go back to your peanut butter sandwich and idly browsing the Internet.

It’s just after lunch and you’re poking away at the switch config for your network upgrade this Friday. The config is solid and pretty basic, but you like to compulsively double check and make backups just in case. After your stress-related burst of **** productivity this morning, you’re really caught up on your day to day activities.

“Knock knock!” A cheerful voice calls out and you look up to see Karissa sticking her head in the door. She grins and walks in, looking around at your office. “Haven’t been in here in a while, I keep forgetting how big it is! And you get it all to yourself, so lucky!”

“Hey Karissa, how are you?” You ask as she walks over and sits in the chair set out in front of your desk, so you spin 45 degrees in your chair to face her as she adjusts the short skirt of her sundress. She’s looking down, clearly thinking about something, but you keep your eyes locked on her face and are rewarded when she looks up suddenly and smiles. Thank god you hadn’t been starting at her chest or legs.

“I’m doing really well Zach, thanks. And thank you again, so much, for what you did yesterday with Juniper. I am sorry I snooped on you and then you go and save me when you could have just let me pay for my dumbness.” The more she talks the more her pretty face screws up in sadness and regret.

Smiling gently you say, “It’s really ok Karissa. I’m glad to help, and I’m glad you knew it was wrong. Let’s not talk about it any more, it’s all over.” You’d really prefer she not tell you exactly what she did or didn’t see in your electronic health record, it’s better not knowing.

With a deep breath, she says, “You got it Zach. I’ll pay you back some day for your awesomeness, I swear.” She says it with all the gravity a 19 year old can muster. You appreciate it, she’s a great kid. Ok, she’s only 10 years younger than you and thinking of her as a ‘kid’ is clearly rude and inappropriate but her guileless face and eager cheerfulness are so damn... youthful!

Adopting a more serious look, Karissa says, “But that’s not really why I came over her. I notice Jayne is at the program clerk meeting so I can’t ask her. Uh, I’m not sure how to say this but, did you guys have a fight or something?”

“Er, why do you say that?” You know you sound guilty, and suddenly Karissa is looking at you with a stern expression.

“During lunch there was some talk among the girls in the break room. I didn’t hear the beginning, but a few of them were saying the LPN’s heard her yelling at you and then she kicked you out of her office and slammed her door. I said that can’t be true, but they said the LPN’s swore up and down it was and everyone heard it.” Now Karissa is frowning, clearly unhappy about what’s she’s heard.

You don’t know how to answer the question and your long pause clearly isn’t what the young clerk was hoping for. You look down guiltily at your hands and say, “Well it was here. She didn’t yell at me but she wasn’t thrilled with me. But we’re good now, it was just a - a misunderstanding. Really, we’re fine.”

“Fine? What does ‘fine’ mean? I guess it’s none of my business but why don’t you just ask her out already? It’s dumb she hasn’t asked you out either, it’s not like 1950 or whatever, but you can’t both be stupid about it. You’re single, just freaking do it!”

You’re a little taken aback by her passionate, and honestly pretty understandable, confusion. She shifts forward in her chair and continues, “I am really sorry about my snooping, but I have to just say one thing and then I won’t say anymore - is this because of last year? I really hope that’s not the case! I mean I know it’s none of my business.”

A little defensively, you say, “Well no it isn’t any of your business.”

Nodding in agreement, Karissa continues, “I know. But still, I just wanted to see if that’s why. Because that would be a really silly reason!”

Staring at her for a few seconds you finally say, “Normally when someone acknowledges something isn’t their business they stop their line of questioning.”

“Well yeah but I’m still curious so I’m still going to ask. I’m just letting you know I understand why you might in theory not answer. But just tell me!”

Groaning, you realize this young woman simply lives in a world where people just can’t deny her, and dammit her attractiveness and clearly good natured concern for your happiness is working on you too.

“Look Karissa, maybe the hospital is part of it. But it’s against the rules, we’re not supposed to fraternize at work and I’m sure Jayne wouldn’t just ignore that.”

“Fraternize? What the hell are you talking about Zach?”

Rolling your eyes, you mutter, “They probably talked about it the same day they went over patient data privacy regulations.”

“Oh ha ha very funny. Look, if you say Jayne isn’t mad at you that’s great. But if you did make her angry at you and I find out I’m going to come back here and kick your ass. Got it?” Karissa bounces to her feet and cocks a tiny fist at you, looking like the cutest kitten you’ve ever seen about to attack your sock.

“I am scared straight,” you say mock seriously.

As she turns to leave, Karissa laughs and says, “Good. I’ll make sure the clerks know to shut up about you guys. If their gossipy nonsense got between you two I’d have to really kick some asses.”

Watching her leave and only barely glancing at her ass as she does you wonder about her TAM scores. But you shake your head, checking TAM like that would seem almost disrespectful considering she came to see you as a friend. You ignore the impulse and return to your work.

Not even an hour later you bump into Jayne returning to her office. You had lucked out and been able to go to the bathroom on the first try and she came out of the stairwell just in front of you.

“Ah, Zach. Good timing, let me drop off my stuff in my office and I’ll come see you about our thing?”

You agree and walk past her office to yours, wondering if she seemed less friendly than normal. You try to parse every little thing about her facial expression and tone until you angrily tell yourself to stop. She’s talking to you again and seems friendly enough. Just stop being a weirdo and maybe things will go back to normal.

Five minutes later Jayne is in your office, sitting in the seat Karissa had been using. Nodding at her, you jump right into it, saying, “Now I have two leads so far. The company name, Panopticon, and the box with the SB2-07 written on it.I tried googling that but it could be anything. We could also check the SGI server more thoroughly, just to see if anything is on it at all.”

“Wait, where did you see SBoh7? Dash something?” Jayne asks.

“It was written on the side of the box the old mouses and keyboard were stored in. SB2 dash zero seven. It’s tough to search for because I think American states use SB to mean a state bill because every state has a SB207. I also saw it used for random machine parts and other stuff like that, nothing that seemed relevant.”

“Sub basement!” Jayne says excitedly, “That’s where I heard SB2 before! There is a second half level of basement under the building. It could be there!”

“That makes sense! Writing the room number on the box of stuff being moved, it never occurred to me it,” you admit.

“Why would it? No one ever uses the basement and the main part of it is just called B1. You can’t even get to the sub basement from the elevator so it’s not listed there. Only the one stairwell goes all the way down, and it’s all locked up even more than the regular basement.”

Thinking about an exciting quest to a subterranean cavern with your trusty party (would Jayne be a healer? That would be handy but you think she’d prefer to be an archer or maybe a rogue) you ask, “Can you get us into it to check it out?”

Grinning, she replies, “Hell yeah Zach, I have the full set of building manager keys in my office. Uh, forget I said that I don’t think other people are supposed to know. But let me grab them and we’ll head there now. Thank god you just went pee so we won’t need to make any potty breaks on the way down.”

Rolling your eyes so hard your whole head moves, you say, “Very funny. Go grab your secret keys and let’s go.”