The Doctoral Deficiency (5/5)
Fandom: The Big Bang Theory
Rating: PG
Part One * Part Two * Part Three * Part Four
"Oh, look," Sheldon said coyly at lunch. "Here's the schedule for Howard's thesis defense committee meeting. Thursday at 10? Hmm, I suppose that I am free, although it's funny they didn't consult me, just posted this on the intranet."
Howard, Raj and Leonard exchanged conspiratorial looks as Sheldon laid the printout beside his lunch tray, on top of a small pile of paperwork he'd brought with him. "Yeah," Raj said, "but, you know, the administrative assistants are all in their own OSHA workshop today so probably stuff is just delayed. Like my immigration paperwork!"
"That's not good," Leonard said sympathetically. Howard nodded and patted Raj on the back.
Sheldon gazed at Raj censoriously. "Really, Raj, you should be more on top of things. Speaking of 'on top', I'm pretty sure that this casserole is missing the promised au gratin so excuse me while I take my plate back."
The taller man rose from the table, heading off for another conflict with the kitchen staff while the other three worked through their cheeseless lunch trays without complaint.
"Dr. Hofstadter! Dr. Koothrappali! Mr. Wolowitz." Dr. Gablehauser loomed over their table with an affable grin.
"Hello, Dr. Gablehauser," Leonard offered. While the older man stood expectantly, he continued hesitantly. "What can we do for you?"
"Where's Dr. Cooper?" the department head asked, looking around the cafeteria.
"Oh, he's just getting his lunch fixed," Raj explained. "He won't be long, probably."
"No time for that," Gablehauser said. "Just tell him that I said 'Good work' on getting all those people corralled into these workshops. Without his clever plans, we'd have never gotten above the 10% compliance rate we've been stuck at for years. Now we're on target to be top in the faculty, maybe even university-wide."
"Wait," Leonard said, "you mean all those workshop notices were Sheldon's fault, er, idea?"
"Precisely," Dr. Gablehauser confirmed with an affable grin. "Personally, I never would have gone so far but Dr. Cooper said that was the way to get people to pay attention and it looks like he was right. He's a regular service star, now, between this big fix and that committee he saved our bacon on."
Leonard coughed while Howard looked up in alarm. "You didn't hear, Dr. Gablehauser? There was an equity problem with that committee so Dr. Cooper's off."
The senior professor appeared a little bit peeved. "He's off? Do I have to find another internal external? What an imposition-"
Leonard chuckled, "No, sir, nothing on your plate. The grad office made the replacement once the issue was raised with them, so everything's good now."
Dr. Gablehauser stared down his nose at Leonard with some indignation. "Well, at least I don't have to find a replacement committee member, but, still, I'd made all those changes to Dr. Cooper's annual review and now that's up in the air. Well! Must get back to my office and make note of that before my next meeting."
With that abrupt comment, he was off, just before Sheldon returned to the table with a plate of steaming casserole topped with unevenly melted cheese. "What did Dr. Gablehauser stop by here to say?"
Leonard, Howard and Raj exchanged careful glances. "Nothing much," Leonard said airily, leaning back in his chair as Sheldon carefully lowered his plate to the table. "Just commenting on what a big help your service work is turning out to be or something like that."
Sheldon darted glances at the three other men. "I suppose that serving on a doctoral committee is quite the onerous task. I'm just glad to be of assistance."
"Suuuuure you are," Leonard said before turning back to his tray.
Sheldon shot him a wary look but detecting no further signs of sarcasm, obviously wrote this off as one of Leonard's whims. When Raj started discussing the week's upcoming comic book releases, Sheldon was all too happy to add in his insights and the rest of the lunch passed with every sign of normalcy or what passed for it with these four.
"Dissertation committee day," Sheldon said with barely suppressed satisfaction. "I will finally have my say."
He carried with him that dogeared copy of Howard's thesis, plastered with Post-It notes and covered in red ink. Waving it in front of Howard provoked no histrionic response, however, obviously a disappointment to Sheldon.
The four men were all standing in the hallway outside one of the meeting rooms in the Arms Laboratory. Raj and Leonard had explained they were accompanying Howard "for moral support", an idea that Sheldon found plausible.
Still, he couldn't resist needling the engineer, at least a little bit. "I'm glad to see, Howard, that you've finally come to terms with my presence on your committee. Trust me, in the end, you'll see how useful it was to have a real scientist's perspective on these things."
Howard just grunted as he sat down on the bench outside the meeting room. Raj slumped beside him, pulling his messenger bag into his lap so he could pull out a book.
"Breaking Dawn?" Leonard asked, peering at the black, red and white cover. "Isn't that one of those Twilight books?"
Howard shuddered, remembering their close encounter with the Buffy fans outside the theater, but Raj appeared rapt. "It's a moving love story, Leonard. Really, and Edward is just so romantic, taking Bella off on this honeymoon to a tropical island. . . ."
"Wait, wait," Leonard interrupted. "Isn't he, like, a vampire?"
Raj nodded. "That's why it's so beautiful."
The others just stared at each other in non-comprehension as Raj sighed deeply. "Look, I'll lend you the books so you can see for yourselves. But I haven't finished the fourth one yet, so if you'll excuse me."
Sheldon looked at his watch. "Quarter to ten. I'm optimally early so I'll bid you gentlemen farewell and go in to carry out one more critical part of my service application-"
He pulled on the meeting room door, opening it wide and staring inside with horror.
"Dr. Dumbass! Why am I seeing you here?" Leslie's biting tones carried cleanly into the hallway.
Sheldon rallied quickly, appearing more annoyed than flustered by her sudden attack. "You’re obviously in the wrong place. Quelle surprise! I am here for the meeting for Howard Wolowitz's doctoral committee."
Leslie looked down at the thick bundle of papers in front of her. "You've found it."
"Oh," Sheldon said, shifting uneasily from one foot to another. "I, well, wasn't expecting you here."
Leslie did a double take at this. From either side of Sheldon's lanky form, Howard and Leonard could see her broad, predatorial grin. "You mean, you don't know?" she asked. "This is priceless."
"I don't know what?" Sheldon responded huffily, hugging his copy of Howard's dissertation tight to his t-shirt clad chest. "Look, I'm the internal external for Howard's thesis, so I'm supposed to-"
"No you aren't," Leslie countered smilingly.
"Yes I am," Sheldon retorted.
"You were," Leslie said, "but not any more."
Sheldon shot glares at Howard and Leonard, standing just behind him in the open doorway. "Look, they may have convinced you that Howard wanted someone else to be on his committee, but I can assure you that I was assigned to this post and am prepared to carry out my duties no matter what tomfoolery they've gotten you involved in. So if you'll leave, we'll all save you some embarrassment."
This last was said as the three faculty members from engineering, Howard's supervisor and readers, lined up behind Sheldon, obviously waiting to enter the room.
Leslie wasn't prepared to back down. "Tell me, Dr. Cooper," she said with clear relish. "What do you know of the university's equity policies?"
Sheldon appeared taken aback by the unexpected question. "Well," he replied, stalling for time as he obviously sought for a pithy retort, "Equity, from the Latin, aequitatem-"
Leslie snorted. "I don't need etymology, I need an understanding of the university policy on harassment."
"Harassment?" Sheldon repeated, rearing backward slightly. "I have no idea."
"Of course you don't," Leslie responded instantly. "But those of us who attended last week's equity workshop have a deep and clear understanding of these principles and your placement on the committee has been identified as leading to a hostile workplace situation with regard to gender equity. Therefore, the graduate studies department asked, and I agreed, to replace you on the commitee as of Monday. Which you would have known if you'd picked up your office mail this week, Dr. Cooper." The last was said with biting sweetness as the other faculty members filed in around him and Sheldon stood, dumbfounded, in the doorway.
"I don't, I mean, what's going on?" he said, struggling thoughtlessly against Howard's and Leonard's gentle handling. They coaxed the taller man across the hallway and to a seat on the bench beside Raj who barely noticed their presence, wrapped up as he was in his book.
"Well, you see, Sheldon," Leonard began, "we figured out something last week, thanks to those equity workshops that you'd roped us into."
Sheldon fixed Leonard with a shocked look. "You know about that?"
"Oh, yeah," Leonard said with a forced air of casual indifference while, inwardly, he gloried in Sheldon's dawning awareness that things in his life were going seriously awry.
Howard took over the explanation while Sheldon sat, shell-shocked.
"You see, my committee's all male and the equity workshops were quite enlightening in showing that this kind of single-sex grouping is precisely the way in which the patriarchy replicates itself," Howard couldn't suppress a smug smile at Sheldon's continuing bewilderment.
Leonard took a little pity on his roommate. "In other words, we pointed this out to the dean who amended Howard's committee so that there's a woman on it. Leslie agreed to take over."
Sheldon rose from the bench, but it was clear that his thoughts were elsewhere. Before he could get too far, Howard pulled the much-battered copy of his thesis out of Sheldon's slack grasp. "You won't be needing this."
"Uh-huh," was all Sheldon said as he retreated.
Leonard and Howard looked at each other with wide grins.
"Score!" Leonard said, before assuming a look of some concern. "Look, I know that was satisfying to see Sheldon go down in flames but aren't you just going from the frying pan into the fire with Leslie. I mean, you two didn't part on the best of terms."
"Pot? Kettle? Black!" Howard retorted.
"Seriously," Leonard said.
Howard grinned. "Well, seriously, all I had to do was tell Leslie that Sheldon wanted nothing more than to tear down my dissertation and make me redo it. You know how she is about Sheldon. That turned her into my number one champion, it seems."
"Huh," Leonard said. "Really?"
"Really," Howard confirmed with a smug grin.
Leonard appeared less cheerful, a small frown knitting his brows. "It's just that, well, what happens when Sheldon figures out that we fooled him. Sure, Leslie replaced him on the committee, but that wasn't required by any equity or harassment policies."
Howard shrugged, seemingly unworried. "Sheldon'd have to actually attend the workshop and you know how good he is at avoiding things. I'm pretty sure we're safe. "
Leonard nodded uneasily, unable to escape his feelings of doom.
"Oh, oh, you guys," Raj said, wiping a tear of excitement from his cheek. "You won't believe it!"
"Raj, have you been paying attention?" Howard asked with some asperity. "We just put a stake through Sheldon's undead heart and rescued my thesis from his clutches."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Raj interjected. "No, what I mean is about the story, here. In Breaking Dawn. You'll never believe it."
"Believe what, Raj" Leonard asked, feeling quite at sea.
Raj smiled beatifically. "She's pregnant with his half-vampire baby. Isn't it the most romantic thing?"
"Oh, really," Sheldon groused, as he unlocked his office and saw a pile of envelopes and small mailers stacked untidily on his desk.
Hanging his two-tone jacket up so that the sleeves draped with perfect symmetry, he stalked around to his chair, sitting down in front of the messy assortment of university mail that one of the staffers had decided to deliver to his desk rather than leave in his box.
"This is just so annoying," he grumbled as he began to work his way down through the paper and cardboard.
Near the bottom of the stack, one large, manila envelope labelled "Urgent - Personnel" caught his eye. He opened the seal and pulled out a memo.
"Dr. Sheldon Cooper, you are notified that unless you attend the university Equity Policies and OSHA workshops as scheduled, your access to university benefits and research space, as an employee of the institution, will be suspended until you are deemed to be in compliance with the requirements as mandated by the state and federal accrediting bodies-. What?"
He flipped back to look at the address on the envelope and on the letter. While he tried to correlate this puzzling development, Dr. Gablehauser walked by Sheldon's open door.
"Excuse me," Sheldon called out, "Dr. Gablehauser? Dr. Gablehauser?"
The department head stopped and retraced his steps, poking his head around Sheldon's door. "What is it, Dr. Cooper?" he asked with visible impatience. "I have a meeting with possible donors."
Sheldon picked up the memo. "It's just this, summoning me to those equity and OSHA workshops."
The older man's frown dissipated. "Oh, yes! It was a good thing that Dr. Winkle noted you were one of the few faculty members who'd missed last week's workshops. We're close to having one hundred percent compliance, finally, on this front, thanks to your bang-up efforts at getting the rest of your colleagues on board. Well, except for Dr. Newton, of course, who's off at the rehab hospital, and one other, but we were able to get the office to put together a personalized workshop for the two of you, so I'll be able to count this as completing your service obligations for the academic year."
Dr. Gablehauser looked down at his watch and appeared on the verge of taking off, again, but something drove Sheldon to ask one more question. "Well, besides Dr. Newton, who missed the last workshop?"
Dr. Gablehauser smiled. "That'd be Dr. Kripke. So the two of you will have a wonderful time at the workshops. I heard that they’re introducing a role-playing session this week. Won't that be fascinating? Oh, well, gotta run!"
All the way over at Arms Labs, perhaps even at the Cheescake Factory, Sheldon's anguished "NoooooooooooOOO!" rang in the ears of astonished listeners.
Epilogue
Beckman Mall was packed with bodies, eager to see friends and family members receive their honours at the Caltech Commencement. A sizable number of doctoral degrees were being awarded at this session. Sheldon, Leonard and Raj had joined the faculty procession, resplendent in their individual institution's doctoral robes although neither of the others could really compete with Leonard's MIT regalia in red velvet and dove grey.
In the swarm of candidates, Howard stood proudly in his own Caltech robes, dark blue with velvet trim and gold piping, waiting for his turn to be hooded. As the faculties were reading off candidates in alphabetical order, that meant a long wait in the sweltering heat. Finally, his turn came to step up and his name was announced.
Howard waited proudly as the blue and gold trimmed hood was draped over his shoulders. He bent his head forward to make the task easier on the tired senior faculty member when, from out of the crowd, a shrill woman's voice howled, "Ho-ward? Why are you slumping? Stand up straight!"
Howard whipped his head around to stare furiously into the crowd. "Are you happy, crazy lady?" he shouted before looking back and forth at the assembled dignitaries. "I, uh, I don't know who that could be. Honestly!"
"See," Sheldon whispered between clenched teeth. "If you'd let me stay on the committee, instead of pulling that absurd stunt to replace me with that harridan, we all would've been spared this."
"That's better!" Mrs. Wolowitz's distinctive voice voice shrieked. "Now smile!" Howard did so with patent painfulness, preparing to hurry out of the limelight. Behind him, among the seated faculty, Leonard dropped his face into one hand, wincing sympathetically at his friend's embarrassment.
The hectoring voice wasn't finished, however. "And you boys! Howard's school friends, up on the stage. You, there, in red! And the tall one! And the sweet little Indian boy! Don't forget, we're all having brisket for dinner. Seven sharp!"
Raj smiled blissfully at the thought of Mrs. Wolowitz's mouth-melting brisket. Sheldon stared off blindly, whether unaffected or simply feigning it, Leonard couldn't tell, as he slumped in his own seat and groaned. Maybe Sheldon had been right.
X-posted from Dreamwidth. (
comments there.)
Rating: PG
Part One * Part Two * Part Three * Part Four
"Oh, look," Sheldon said coyly at lunch. "Here's the schedule for Howard's thesis defense committee meeting. Thursday at 10? Hmm, I suppose that I am free, although it's funny they didn't consult me, just posted this on the intranet."
Howard, Raj and Leonard exchanged conspiratorial looks as Sheldon laid the printout beside his lunch tray, on top of a small pile of paperwork he'd brought with him. "Yeah," Raj said, "but, you know, the administrative assistants are all in their own OSHA workshop today so probably stuff is just delayed. Like my immigration paperwork!"
"That's not good," Leonard said sympathetically. Howard nodded and patted Raj on the back.
Sheldon gazed at Raj censoriously. "Really, Raj, you should be more on top of things. Speaking of 'on top', I'm pretty sure that this casserole is missing the promised au gratin so excuse me while I take my plate back."
The taller man rose from the table, heading off for another conflict with the kitchen staff while the other three worked through their cheeseless lunch trays without complaint.
"Dr. Hofstadter! Dr. Koothrappali! Mr. Wolowitz." Dr. Gablehauser loomed over their table with an affable grin.
"Hello, Dr. Gablehauser," Leonard offered. While the older man stood expectantly, he continued hesitantly. "What can we do for you?"
"Where's Dr. Cooper?" the department head asked, looking around the cafeteria.
"Oh, he's just getting his lunch fixed," Raj explained. "He won't be long, probably."
"No time for that," Gablehauser said. "Just tell him that I said 'Good work' on getting all those people corralled into these workshops. Without his clever plans, we'd have never gotten above the 10% compliance rate we've been stuck at for years. Now we're on target to be top in the faculty, maybe even university-wide."
"Wait," Leonard said, "you mean all those workshop notices were Sheldon's fault, er, idea?"
"Precisely," Dr. Gablehauser confirmed with an affable grin. "Personally, I never would have gone so far but Dr. Cooper said that was the way to get people to pay attention and it looks like he was right. He's a regular service star, now, between this big fix and that committee he saved our bacon on."
Leonard coughed while Howard looked up in alarm. "You didn't hear, Dr. Gablehauser? There was an equity problem with that committee so Dr. Cooper's off."
The senior professor appeared a little bit peeved. "He's off? Do I have to find another internal external? What an imposition-"
Leonard chuckled, "No, sir, nothing on your plate. The grad office made the replacement once the issue was raised with them, so everything's good now."
Dr. Gablehauser stared down his nose at Leonard with some indignation. "Well, at least I don't have to find a replacement committee member, but, still, I'd made all those changes to Dr. Cooper's annual review and now that's up in the air. Well! Must get back to my office and make note of that before my next meeting."
With that abrupt comment, he was off, just before Sheldon returned to the table with a plate of steaming casserole topped with unevenly melted cheese. "What did Dr. Gablehauser stop by here to say?"
Leonard, Howard and Raj exchanged careful glances. "Nothing much," Leonard said airily, leaning back in his chair as Sheldon carefully lowered his plate to the table. "Just commenting on what a big help your service work is turning out to be or something like that."
Sheldon darted glances at the three other men. "I suppose that serving on a doctoral committee is quite the onerous task. I'm just glad to be of assistance."
"Suuuuure you are," Leonard said before turning back to his tray.
Sheldon shot him a wary look but detecting no further signs of sarcasm, obviously wrote this off as one of Leonard's whims. When Raj started discussing the week's upcoming comic book releases, Sheldon was all too happy to add in his insights and the rest of the lunch passed with every sign of normalcy or what passed for it with these four.
"Dissertation committee day," Sheldon said with barely suppressed satisfaction. "I will finally have my say."
He carried with him that dogeared copy of Howard's thesis, plastered with Post-It notes and covered in red ink. Waving it in front of Howard provoked no histrionic response, however, obviously a disappointment to Sheldon.
The four men were all standing in the hallway outside one of the meeting rooms in the Arms Laboratory. Raj and Leonard had explained they were accompanying Howard "for moral support", an idea that Sheldon found plausible.
Still, he couldn't resist needling the engineer, at least a little bit. "I'm glad to see, Howard, that you've finally come to terms with my presence on your committee. Trust me, in the end, you'll see how useful it was to have a real scientist's perspective on these things."
Howard just grunted as he sat down on the bench outside the meeting room. Raj slumped beside him, pulling his messenger bag into his lap so he could pull out a book.
"Breaking Dawn?" Leonard asked, peering at the black, red and white cover. "Isn't that one of those Twilight books?"
Howard shuddered, remembering their close encounter with the Buffy fans outside the theater, but Raj appeared rapt. "It's a moving love story, Leonard. Really, and Edward is just so romantic, taking Bella off on this honeymoon to a tropical island. . . ."
"Wait, wait," Leonard interrupted. "Isn't he, like, a vampire?"
Raj nodded. "That's why it's so beautiful."
The others just stared at each other in non-comprehension as Raj sighed deeply. "Look, I'll lend you the books so you can see for yourselves. But I haven't finished the fourth one yet, so if you'll excuse me."
Sheldon looked at his watch. "Quarter to ten. I'm optimally early so I'll bid you gentlemen farewell and go in to carry out one more critical part of my service application-"
He pulled on the meeting room door, opening it wide and staring inside with horror.
"Dr. Dumbass! Why am I seeing you here?" Leslie's biting tones carried cleanly into the hallway.
Sheldon rallied quickly, appearing more annoyed than flustered by her sudden attack. "You’re obviously in the wrong place. Quelle surprise! I am here for the meeting for Howard Wolowitz's doctoral committee."
Leslie looked down at the thick bundle of papers in front of her. "You've found it."
"Oh," Sheldon said, shifting uneasily from one foot to another. "I, well, wasn't expecting you here."
Leslie did a double take at this. From either side of Sheldon's lanky form, Howard and Leonard could see her broad, predatorial grin. "You mean, you don't know?" she asked. "This is priceless."
"I don't know what?" Sheldon responded huffily, hugging his copy of Howard's dissertation tight to his t-shirt clad chest. "Look, I'm the internal external for Howard's thesis, so I'm supposed to-"
"No you aren't," Leslie countered smilingly.
"Yes I am," Sheldon retorted.
"You were," Leslie said, "but not any more."
Sheldon shot glares at Howard and Leonard, standing just behind him in the open doorway. "Look, they may have convinced you that Howard wanted someone else to be on his committee, but I can assure you that I was assigned to this post and am prepared to carry out my duties no matter what tomfoolery they've gotten you involved in. So if you'll leave, we'll all save you some embarrassment."
This last was said as the three faculty members from engineering, Howard's supervisor and readers, lined up behind Sheldon, obviously waiting to enter the room.
Leslie wasn't prepared to back down. "Tell me, Dr. Cooper," she said with clear relish. "What do you know of the university's equity policies?"
Sheldon appeared taken aback by the unexpected question. "Well," he replied, stalling for time as he obviously sought for a pithy retort, "Equity, from the Latin, aequitatem-"
Leslie snorted. "I don't need etymology, I need an understanding of the university policy on harassment."
"Harassment?" Sheldon repeated, rearing backward slightly. "I have no idea."
"Of course you don't," Leslie responded instantly. "But those of us who attended last week's equity workshop have a deep and clear understanding of these principles and your placement on the committee has been identified as leading to a hostile workplace situation with regard to gender equity. Therefore, the graduate studies department asked, and I agreed, to replace you on the commitee as of Monday. Which you would have known if you'd picked up your office mail this week, Dr. Cooper." The last was said with biting sweetness as the other faculty members filed in around him and Sheldon stood, dumbfounded, in the doorway.
"I don't, I mean, what's going on?" he said, struggling thoughtlessly against Howard's and Leonard's gentle handling. They coaxed the taller man across the hallway and to a seat on the bench beside Raj who barely noticed their presence, wrapped up as he was in his book.
"Well, you see, Sheldon," Leonard began, "we figured out something last week, thanks to those equity workshops that you'd roped us into."
Sheldon fixed Leonard with a shocked look. "You know about that?"
"Oh, yeah," Leonard said with a forced air of casual indifference while, inwardly, he gloried in Sheldon's dawning awareness that things in his life were going seriously awry.
Howard took over the explanation while Sheldon sat, shell-shocked.
"You see, my committee's all male and the equity workshops were quite enlightening in showing that this kind of single-sex grouping is precisely the way in which the patriarchy replicates itself," Howard couldn't suppress a smug smile at Sheldon's continuing bewilderment.
Leonard took a little pity on his roommate. "In other words, we pointed this out to the dean who amended Howard's committee so that there's a woman on it. Leslie agreed to take over."
Sheldon rose from the bench, but it was clear that his thoughts were elsewhere. Before he could get too far, Howard pulled the much-battered copy of his thesis out of Sheldon's slack grasp. "You won't be needing this."
"Uh-huh," was all Sheldon said as he retreated.
Leonard and Howard looked at each other with wide grins.
"Score!" Leonard said, before assuming a look of some concern. "Look, I know that was satisfying to see Sheldon go down in flames but aren't you just going from the frying pan into the fire with Leslie. I mean, you two didn't part on the best of terms."
"Pot? Kettle? Black!" Howard retorted.
"Seriously," Leonard said.
Howard grinned. "Well, seriously, all I had to do was tell Leslie that Sheldon wanted nothing more than to tear down my dissertation and make me redo it. You know how she is about Sheldon. That turned her into my number one champion, it seems."
"Huh," Leonard said. "Really?"
"Really," Howard confirmed with a smug grin.
Leonard appeared less cheerful, a small frown knitting his brows. "It's just that, well, what happens when Sheldon figures out that we fooled him. Sure, Leslie replaced him on the committee, but that wasn't required by any equity or harassment policies."
Howard shrugged, seemingly unworried. "Sheldon'd have to actually attend the workshop and you know how good he is at avoiding things. I'm pretty sure we're safe. "
Leonard nodded uneasily, unable to escape his feelings of doom.
"Oh, oh, you guys," Raj said, wiping a tear of excitement from his cheek. "You won't believe it!"
"Raj, have you been paying attention?" Howard asked with some asperity. "We just put a stake through Sheldon's undead heart and rescued my thesis from his clutches."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Raj interjected. "No, what I mean is about the story, here. In Breaking Dawn. You'll never believe it."
"Believe what, Raj" Leonard asked, feeling quite at sea.
Raj smiled beatifically. "She's pregnant with his half-vampire baby. Isn't it the most romantic thing?"
"Oh, really," Sheldon groused, as he unlocked his office and saw a pile of envelopes and small mailers stacked untidily on his desk.
Hanging his two-tone jacket up so that the sleeves draped with perfect symmetry, he stalked around to his chair, sitting down in front of the messy assortment of university mail that one of the staffers had decided to deliver to his desk rather than leave in his box.
"This is just so annoying," he grumbled as he began to work his way down through the paper and cardboard.
Near the bottom of the stack, one large, manila envelope labelled "Urgent - Personnel" caught his eye. He opened the seal and pulled out a memo.
"Dr. Sheldon Cooper, you are notified that unless you attend the university Equity Policies and OSHA workshops as scheduled, your access to university benefits and research space, as an employee of the institution, will be suspended until you are deemed to be in compliance with the requirements as mandated by the state and federal accrediting bodies-. What?"
He flipped back to look at the address on the envelope and on the letter. While he tried to correlate this puzzling development, Dr. Gablehauser walked by Sheldon's open door.
"Excuse me," Sheldon called out, "Dr. Gablehauser? Dr. Gablehauser?"
The department head stopped and retraced his steps, poking his head around Sheldon's door. "What is it, Dr. Cooper?" he asked with visible impatience. "I have a meeting with possible donors."
Sheldon picked up the memo. "It's just this, summoning me to those equity and OSHA workshops."
The older man's frown dissipated. "Oh, yes! It was a good thing that Dr. Winkle noted you were one of the few faculty members who'd missed last week's workshops. We're close to having one hundred percent compliance, finally, on this front, thanks to your bang-up efforts at getting the rest of your colleagues on board. Well, except for Dr. Newton, of course, who's off at the rehab hospital, and one other, but we were able to get the office to put together a personalized workshop for the two of you, so I'll be able to count this as completing your service obligations for the academic year."
Dr. Gablehauser looked down at his watch and appeared on the verge of taking off, again, but something drove Sheldon to ask one more question. "Well, besides Dr. Newton, who missed the last workshop?"
Dr. Gablehauser smiled. "That'd be Dr. Kripke. So the two of you will have a wonderful time at the workshops. I heard that they’re introducing a role-playing session this week. Won't that be fascinating? Oh, well, gotta run!"
All the way over at Arms Labs, perhaps even at the Cheescake Factory, Sheldon's anguished "NoooooooooooOOO!" rang in the ears of astonished listeners.
Epilogue
Beckman Mall was packed with bodies, eager to see friends and family members receive their honours at the Caltech Commencement. A sizable number of doctoral degrees were being awarded at this session. Sheldon, Leonard and Raj had joined the faculty procession, resplendent in their individual institution's doctoral robes although neither of the others could really compete with Leonard's MIT regalia in red velvet and dove grey.
In the swarm of candidates, Howard stood proudly in his own Caltech robes, dark blue with velvet trim and gold piping, waiting for his turn to be hooded. As the faculties were reading off candidates in alphabetical order, that meant a long wait in the sweltering heat. Finally, his turn came to step up and his name was announced.
Howard waited proudly as the blue and gold trimmed hood was draped over his shoulders. He bent his head forward to make the task easier on the tired senior faculty member when, from out of the crowd, a shrill woman's voice howled, "Ho-ward? Why are you slumping? Stand up straight!"
Howard whipped his head around to stare furiously into the crowd. "Are you happy, crazy lady?" he shouted before looking back and forth at the assembled dignitaries. "I, uh, I don't know who that could be. Honestly!"
"See," Sheldon whispered between clenched teeth. "If you'd let me stay on the committee, instead of pulling that absurd stunt to replace me with that harridan, we all would've been spared this."
"That's better!" Mrs. Wolowitz's distinctive voice voice shrieked. "Now smile!" Howard did so with patent painfulness, preparing to hurry out of the limelight. Behind him, among the seated faculty, Leonard dropped his face into one hand, wincing sympathetically at his friend's embarrassment.
The hectoring voice wasn't finished, however. "And you boys! Howard's school friends, up on the stage. You, there, in red! And the tall one! And the sweet little Indian boy! Don't forget, we're all having brisket for dinner. Seven sharp!"
Raj smiled blissfully at the thought of Mrs. Wolowitz's mouth-melting brisket. Sheldon stared off blindly, whether unaffected or simply feigning it, Leonard couldn't tell, as he slumped in his own seat and groaned. Maybe Sheldon had been right.
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