Look what i found! I wrote this some time back... completely forgot about it, too.
Maybe I have precocious Alzheimer's...
It all started Tuesday morning. Grissom was looking for me. Since the DNA girl on days had called in the day before I had a damned good idea what he wanted, so I ducked him at the end of shift and slipped out to my car. Damn if Grissom wasn't leaning up against it.
"Greg!" He smiled and walked toward me. "How would you like to work a double again today?"
I shook my head. "Sorry Griss; can't today. I have something I have to do."
Grissom gave me his best scary-frown. "More important than the lab, Greg?"
I looked away. "I do my share, Grissom, most of it in DNA."
He shrugged. "We all have to do overtime, Greg."
"Yeah, well, everyone else gets paid for it. When you stick me in DNA I'm basically slave labor."
Grissom sighed, and I realized with a twinge of guilt his sense of fairness made it impossible for him to argue. "I'm sorry, Greg. You're right; it's not fair for you to have to work for free. I'll see what I can do to change that. No more overtime in DNA until it's straightened out."
Out little conversation cost me the time I needed to stop for breakfast, so with no small amount of self-pity I spun tires on my way out of the parking lot. Working two jobs sucked, I thought glumly, but considering my predicament I had little choice in the matter. I pulled into my parking space and turned off my car. Hospital food, glorious hospital food for breakfast - and let's not even mention the brake fluid they call coffee.
A few hous later I was running the morning's blood chemistries when I heard loud voices in the hall outside. The voices got louder and were now punctuated by thumps. I called security, then glanced out my little window to see one man smash an ashtray down on the head of another, then run away from the man. I stepped out to check on the now-unconscious man in the hall. He was alive and breathing, and moments later the security guard and one of the ER doctors wielding a stretcher were loading the victim up and taking him to the ER.
An hour later my supervisor paged me and told me I needed to go to the lobby to talk to the police. Ashtray man was going to be fine, but he was now claiming his assault was the direct result of poor hospital security, so the hospital had called in the police investigators and I needed to step out into our little waiting room and talk to the nice people.
A sick feeling parked itself in the pit of my stomach as I stepped out into the lab lobby. Oh shit.
"Greg! This isn't your case." Sara frowned as she looked me over, awareness finally registering when she saw the hospital ID on my chest. "What the..."
"You're the hospital lab guy." Nick shook his head and sighed. "Man, Griss'll give you all the overtime you need. WHY are you doing this?"
"Because, Nick, while I can and do work overtime on a regular basis, all mine is unpaid service to the DNA lab. I need money, not an opportunity to volunteer."
"That's not fair." Sara's voice was indignant. "They can't do that to you."
"They can and they do." I sighed. "Doesn't matter. I found my own solution to the problem."
"What do you need the money for, man?" Nick was still pissed, I could tell because his voice still had that little whine it had when things were not going his way. "You should try living within your means."
"Shut up, Nick," Sara shot before I could even reply. "We get time and a half for our overtime, and besides, it's not any of our business why he needs the money. You need not to judge him when you have no idea what his situation is. We are here to process the scene. Let's do just that." She looked back at me. "So tell me what you saw..."
I was interviewed, and I ended up going home in scrubs at the end of the shift because they took my clothes back to the lab to process. I dreaded the conversation I was going to have with Grissom over this, but since the lab had no rule against second jobs I doubted I'd get in any real trouble over it. I needed to call Sara and tell her what the situation was. Even though she hadn't asked she deserved to know.
She was sitting in front of my apartment when I got home. Evidently the "not any of our business" speech applied only to Nick, because I could tell from her expression she was wanting some answers...