Chapter 20
HEATHER
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There’s a soft tap on my bedroom door. “Heather? Are you okay, honey?”
The door opens and my mother hovers outside.
Lying on my bed, I fling an arm over my eyes as light from the hallway invades the darkness I’m hiding in. “Mom, please, shut the door.”
With a quick apology, she eases into the room, allowing in only a tolerable amount of light. “Dinner’s ready.”
“I’m not hungry.”
The mattress dips as she sits on the edge of the bed. “Migraine?” she asks sympathetically.
“Yes.”
“Have you taken anything?”
“Some aspirin.”
“Hasn’t helped, huh?”
“Not much.” It dulled the pain in my head, but didn’t touch the ache in my heart.
My bed creaks as my mom stands and leaves the room. She returns with a wet washcloth, which she places on my forehead. Her kindness causes tears to prick my eyes.
“Your first day on the job, I imagine it was a little overwhelming,” she comments, probing gently.
“A little.” I grimace at the understatement.
“You want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“All right,” she says, a thread of hurt tangling her words together.
Now I’m upsetting my mother. Another black mark in a day thick with them. “I guess it’ll take time to get used to the work,” I say, a peace offering.
She gives my arm a gentle squeeze. “The first day is always the worst.” After a strained stretch of silence, she stands. “Would you like me to dish you up a plate of food for later?”
I can’t imagine anything getting past the compression in my throat, but to lighten the worry in her voice, I agree.
She leaves and I stare sightlessly at the play of shadows on the ceiling.
The faint murmur of my parents’ voices drift up the stairs.
They’re so proud of me. It’s my first paying job, and their thoughts shine so luminously on their faces.
Their daughter, so industrious, so enterprising, so determined.
So deceitful.
Sitting up, I bury my face in my hands. The smell envelops me again. The smell of blood and feces and fear. Oh, those poor animals. I clamp down on the impulse to wash my hands. I’ve already scrubbed them so many times my skin is raw.
The longing to find escape in sleep is overwhelming, but there’s work to do. I open my laptop and begin to type. Justin emphasized the importance of a daily diary, how vital details can be forgotten if not noted as soon as possible.
I jump when my phone buzzes with a text.
Justin: Take your dog for a walk.
Heather: I don’t have a dog.
Justin: I don’t care. Invent one. I’m on the street outside.
I consider ignoring him, but it’s my guess Justin will keep hounding me until I give in. I close my document, not bothering to password-protect it. My parents never ferret through my things, trusting me that much.
My steps are brisk as I stride down the street, a chill wind stirring the dead leaves clumped around the storm drains.
Justin is lounging against a streetlamp. He straightens at my approach. “How’d it go today?” he asks without preamble.
I’m unable to meet his gaze. “Fine.”
“That bad, huh?”
I swallow thickly. “Yes.”
A cloud of insects buzzes over our heads. Silence swells between us.
“You quitting, TT?” he asks softly.
Yes! You’re right. I’m not the best person for the job. There’s no way I can handle this kind of ugliness. Not day in, day out, for a whole month. I just can’t.
What stops my confession is the bite of disappointment in his question. I anticipated triumph, yet he surprised me with the weight of expectation. I bite the inside of my lip. “No, I’m hanging in there.”
“Good. Let’s walk.”
I fall into step beside him. I’m wearing sweatpants and a faded hoodie. Unlike me, Justin oozes coolness in jeans, jacket, and attitude. I shouldn’t care what I look like, but I do. I sigh. Sometimes I’m that shallow.
Prompted by Justin’s questions, I tell him everything I typed into my log notes. I dart occasional glances his way, trying to discern the effect of my words, but his handsome face remains inscrutable. Only the clenching and unclenching of his hands betrays the measure of his anger.
“Who’s commissioning the drug-safety study?” he asks when I finish.
I give him the name of a large agricultural company.
“What are they testing?”
“A weed killer. The monkeys are expected to die slowly over several days.”
Justin doesn’t respond right away. After a moment, he says quietly, “Kane was right not to assign me. I probably would’ve punched a few faces.”
“It was a struggle to hide how upset I was,” I admit.
My confession, however, doesn’t lead to a bonding moment. Instead, Justin says curtly, “If you feel the need to cry or puke at work, you head to the bathroom. If your colleagues see you upset, they might suspect something.”
I stiffen. “I’ll keep my feelings in check.”
Doubt laces his tone. “You have any idea how transparent you are?”
“I think I’m pretty good at hiding how much you annoy me,” I retort.
His grin softens the angles of his face. “Always an answer.”
With a start, I realize the time. “It’s late. I have to go.”
“Daddy tightening the noose?”
“It’s called concern, Justin. It comes with love.”
“I wasn’t born with four legs so I wouldn’t know.”
His admission, and the bitterness underscoring it, startles us both. Maybe it’s the cloak of darkness loosening his tongue, spilling secrets the heart keeps close.
“I’ll say goodbye here,” Justin announces. “Wouldn’t want Daddy running outside with a shotgun at the sight of me.”
“When do we meet again?”
“Friday after work.” He names a coffee house close to SolomiChem.
I nod, feeling his eyes on me as I walk away.
The moment I open the front door, my dad calls for me to join them.
Suppressing a sigh, I sit next to my parents on the couch in the living room.
Fortunately, I’m not expected to chat, simply to sit and listen to Karina play some piece by Bruch.
The music is haunting, and I try hard not to replay the day in my head.
When my sister finishes playing, I excuse myself and retreat to my room. I click on the SolomiChem file.
[EXTRACT FROM HEATHER’S LOG NOTES]
My first day working at SolomiChem. After an introductory lecture on company policy and safety procedures, I’m given my first assignment. A consignment of monkeys has arrived for a drug-safety study and I’m to assist in settling them in.
When I enter the room housing the monkeys, I see ten cages stacked together, roughly four monkeys crammed into each cage.
Most of them are mothers with their infants still clinging to them.
Some of the monkeys are screaming, rattling the cage bars, but many of them huddle as far back as possible in their cages.
They all look terrified.
When we try to remove the infant monkeys from the cages, it’s pandemonium.
The mothers hold onto their babies with such desperation we have to forcibly separate them.
The infants are taken out of the room. A senior researcher tells me the male babies are assigned to another drug-safety study, while the females are sent to a breeding colony where they’re warehoused until they can be impregnated.
I rub my eyes, the sheer hopelessness of the monkeys’ plight pulling at me. I’m right to expose this, I know I am, but I can’t help wondering how on earth I’m going to last a month at SolomiChem.