Over a week went by since the incident and it was finally that time of the year: Late August. It was the final hurrah of summer before the kids went back to school. After work and before dinner, Gabby would stroll around her neighborhood. The buildings, small yards and chain link fences were bathed in golden orange as the sun set. It was an instance of beauty that she would thank The Lord and Lady for whenever she had a magical ritual.
On one of the Late August work days, Gabby was at her desk drumming up some correspondence on her computer. She was always writing letters to the government of New York City on behalf of the company for some reason or another. She had to be as polite as possible no matter how annoyed or happy (although that second one is less likely) the other guys at the fire house were with their requests.
She could hear the guys from upstairs:
"Hey, Peter," said Ray, "Want some popcorn?"
"Do you need to ask?" asked Peter, "Anytime is popcorn time."
"I feel like you could be Orville Redenbacher's spokesperson," remarked Winston.
Gabby heard Ray put the popcorn packet into the microwave and press the correct buttons before the humming started up. After about seven minutes of humming, she could smell smoke. She became alarmed enough that she stood up and froze. If she retained anything from the fire safety lectures from her school days, it was that one should never go toward the source of the fire. They should find the nearest emergency exit and get the hell out of there. However, none of the other guys had resorted to doing that yet, so she just had to wait.
She heard coughing as the hum of the microwave stopped and the door popped open.
"Ray!" said Peter, "You burned the popcorn! How long did you put it in there?"
"Ten minutes," said Ray.
"That's way longer than what the box says!"
"I wanted to make sure all the kernels were popped. Some take longer than others and I wanted to let those ones take their sweet time."
"Popped popcorn doesn't have the patience that you think it does, Ray."
Good. Crisis averted. No need to evacuated.
But then the phone rang.
"Ghostbusters, what's your emergency?" said Gabby when she picked up the phone.
"GAAAAAH!" said the person on the other end. By this point, she was completely used to panicky calls. After all, they wouldn't make the call if they weren't panicked.
"Calm down, sir. Please tell me what your emergency is."
"Horns! Teeth! There are monsters in the warehouse!"
Oh boy. Another warehouse call. Ghosts seemed to love warehouses for some reason.
Gabby went through the emergency protocols and the boys eventually left with the Ecto-1. Once again, Gabby was alone in the building with Slimer. Now that the alarm had silenced, she could hear the clock ticking again. She went back to typing the letter.
However, she continued to smell smoke upstairs. She assumed that the guys didn't open a window or turn on a fan to get the smell out and that was why she was still smelling it.
But then a panicked Slimer flew downstairs and got her attention.
"Gabby!" said Slimer in one of his rare moments of verbal clarity, "Hezerbebebebebthehumida!" He waved his spindly arms as he said this.
"What is it, Slimer?" asked Gabby.
Slimer pointed upstairs. He clearly wanted Gabby to follow him, so she did.
Once she ran up the stairs and into the lounge area, she saw exactly what got Slimer into a tizzy: a fire had started in the trash can where somebody had thrown the burnt popcorn. The dancing flame was belching smoke and had just set off the fire alarm. Gabby thought about what to do. Any other person would use the fire extinguisher but she had her own idea of how to banish the flame.
She ran downstairs and grabbed her wooden wand from her bag.
When she got back upstairs, she aimed the wand at the flaming garbage can. She filled her head with thoughts about rain and greyness while swirling the tip of her wand.
"Pluvia nubes," she said.
The tip of her wand glowed blue and a tiny rain cloud appeared over the garbage can. From this cloud came a downpour that smothered the flame. As the rain came down, the flame hissed while retreating downward. The garbage can filled with rain water until the flame was gone.
All the while, Slimer floated there and stared at the strange occurrence with a dropped jaw. Gabby forgot that he was still there.
"Everything's all right, Slimer," said Gabby, "Don't tell anyone how I put out this fire." She then remembered that people often had a hard time understanding Slimer anyway. But then she wondered how she was going to explain how she put out the fire.
Then she realized that she could make it look like she put it out the non-magical way.
Once she dumped the water in the trashcan out the window (while making sure the trash stayed inside), she ran downstairs, broke the protective glass of the fire extinguisher, ran back upstairs and sprayed the foam into the already-damp trash can. There. Now it looked like she didn't use magic at all and the humans of the firehouse would be none the wiser.
When the boys came back from their ghostbusting mission, Gabby told them all about the garbage can fire and how she broke open the fire extinguisher to put it out. Egon understandably ran upstairs to see the damage that had been done, which thankfully was not much.
"Somebody didn't put the burnt popcorn under the faucet before we left," said Ray.
"It was an emergency, Ray!" said Peter, "It's not like we can ignore a person in distress."
"Heh…" said Winston, "A fire at the firehouse. In a little while, we can look back on this and laugh."
Gabby felt satisfied knowing that, for the first time, she used her magic to help The Ghostbusters and she got some good out of it. No demons running rampant. She didn't even need to use candles. Now she could go back to typing that letter.
Gabby swallowed up her fair share of ghostbusting stories from the guys: A vampiric ghost imbibing at a blood bank, a ghost with a shovel tearing up a backyard, a demon bull in a literal China shop. All of these ended with the ghost either getting trapped or tricked in some way. She wished that she could at least get photos of these exciting ghostbusting jobs, although it was highly doubtful that the ghosts and demons would even show up in photography.
The occasional story about Janine and Egon's baby was also welcome. Unlike those ghosts, she was shown photographs of Casey, although by this point, she had yet to see this baby in person. The stories about him were a respite from the scariness that was the paranormal activity in New York City, a reminder that life could still be cute and cuddly despite all that.
Usually, whenever any of the guys watched Casey, it was only for ten-to-fifteen minutes at a time. It was normally when Janine had to do laundry, take a shower or get something at the store when her mother wasn't there to watch him. However, Winston had just been given the monumental (paid) task of watching him for the afternoon while Debby treated Janine to a shopping trip. Janine double-checked to make sure Winston had everything he needed to do the job. She gave Winston the number to Casey's pediatrician no less than three times even though she would only be gone for a few hours. Winston assured her that everything would be fine…
…and it was.
Winston and Casey spent that afternoon listening to sports radio. Winston introduced Casey to baseball and the valuable life lessons that it taught, including the topical lesson that he should not strive to become like Pete Rose, no matter how well he played back in the day. Casey didn't cause too much trouble (How could he? He couldn't even sit up on his own yet). Sure, he cried at certain points, as little babies are wont to do, but it was nothing that couldn't be solved with rocking back and forth, jingling keys or a diaper change. In fact, Winston did such a good job that when Janine came back with her many shopping bags in tow, she hugged him and squealed for joy, although she had to do so quietly since Casey was peacefully slumbering in his carrier.
Gabby wasn't surprised. Winston struck her as being pretty level-headed and dependable. Janine would trust him with looking after Casey more than she would trust Egon. After all, Egon just didn't know the child that well. He was just so busy.
Later on, when business was a bit slow, Gabby was paged from the top floor.
"Gabby?" said Egon.
Gabby pressed the button.
"Yes?" she responded.
"Can I please see you on the roof of the firehouse?"
Oh no, thought Gabby. Why did her supervisor want to see her? Was she in trouble? Did he somehow find out about her demon-summoning? Why did he want to see her on the roof?
"Oh, and you should probably bring a notepad, pencil and calculator just in case."
On second thought, maybe it wasn't going to be so bad. After all, why would he need her to have those things while he was disciplining and/or firing her? But then again, why would he need her to bring those things to the roof? She was sure that the eccentric man had his reasons.
When she made it up all those flights of stairs, she found Egon standing in front of a wheeled chalkboard with a proton pack next to him. He was in a thinking stance while nodding his head. The wind was blowing the curl on his pompadour out of its normal shape, of which he didn't take notice.
The chalk board had an elaborate math equation that didn't yet have an answer. All those numbers and symbols took Gabby back to her college days. She didn't think she would have to see or use that kind of math for a long time and many temp jobs after graduation and yet there it was, staring her in the face.
"You wanted to see me, Egon?" she asked.
"Yes," said Egon. He paused for ten seconds to think some more before continuing. "Right now, I'm working on improving my proton packs by making the streams faster and the equation that I've written down here should help me in this endeavor. I brought you up here because you're educated in this field and I think it would be good to have a second pair of eyes to make sure the equation looks correct."
Gabby should have been flattered that she was chosen to do this but was more taken aback. Why did he want her to do this? Was he feeling okay?
"Are you sure you don't want somebody like Peter to double-check your work?" she asked, "I feel like he'd be more qualified."
"He's busy doing his own thing. Also, it's not like I'm asking you to formulate the entire equation. I just want you to check it over."
"Okay…" Gabby looked over at every number and symbol on the chalk board, doing some calculations in her head while using the calculator in her hand for others. By the time she got to the middle, something didn't seem right. She took her time trying to figure it out even though she felt pressured by Egon's waiting. She eventually figured out what was wrong.
"I don't think there should be a one here," she said when she pointed to that particular place on the chalk board, "I think it should be a two."
Egon then looked at the chalk board, analyzing the specific critique of hers and applying it to the entire equation.
"That's precisely why I brought you up here, Gabby," he said as he erased the one in the equation. I wouldn't have caught that if there wasn't another person here. You probably prevented a potential explosion from happening in a future proton beam test. I wouldn't know. Frankly, I wouldn't want to know. I may call you up in the future to help me with my technology. Would that be okay by you?"
"Definitely!" Gabby was overflowing with pride, although she tried her best to suppress it in her professional environment. She may not be a ghostbuster but she was contributing to the innovation of ghostbusting. She was now doing more than just phone calls and paperwork. She was actually putting her college degree to good use. The next month was going to be a good one.