3. Biocompatibility
3
Biocompatibility
Biocompatibility: The ability of a material to interact with a living system without causing harm.
OLIVER
I set the box of donuts on the counter in the breakroom and checked my watch. I always avoided I-280—too many people on their phones or speeding, or both—and although my alternate route took me past the best donut shop in Silicon Valley, today, I’d hit a snarl of traffic, and it was after nine. Which made it doubly weird that no one was waiting for a donut. Was I the first one here? If so, I was going to have to give the team a lecture on punctuality.
In my office, I set down my satchel and hung up my jacket. Then I strode past the breakroom, where the donuts still sat undisturbed. I scanned my ID badge and pushed through the lab door. My hand froze, mid-reach for my white coat, when I saw something completely out of place in the center of the room.
Tessa Wright.
She stood at the center of a circle of my white-coated lab employees seated on metal stools. Her long hair hung over one shoulder of her black silk blouse, halfway to the high waistband of her black slacks. She made a sweeping gesture with one freckled arm. The bluish LED overhead light made her skin look even paler than usual. Why the fuck was she in my lab?
It had been ten days since I’d seen her at game night. Not that I was counting. And she hadn’t said a fucking thing to prepare me to meet her at my goddamn place of work.
I shrugged into my lab coat and stalked toward her. When she caught sight of me, she faltered, then she continued, “And I’m so looking forward to working with you all.”
Sadie clapped, then the rest of the group joined in.
My employees were clapping for an unauthorized person in the lab.
“What is going on?” I asked. On the surface, the words were perfectly reasonable. But they came out in a roar that bounced off the hard surfaces in the lab.
“Hello, Oliver,” Tessa said in a much quieter tone. “I’m sorry, I didn’t make the connection that Discovery Diagnostics was your company until…”
“Until you saw my name on the door?” I’d managed to lower my voice, but it still came out sharp as a hypodermic needle.
“Exactly.” Her shoulders lowered, and she smiled.
“What are you doing here?” All our trade secrets were inside the lab. Hence the flipping security scanner on the door. Suddenly, I noticed the white badge clipped to her belt loop. It had her name and photo on it.
What. The. Fuck was she doing with an actual ID badge? Was this a prank? I scanned the room for Andrew, but then I remembered not even my best friend had ever been allowed inside my lab.
She tossed her hair and planted her hands on her hips. “I work here now.”
“In my lab?”
“At Discovery. I came into the lab because this is where the magic happens.”
“It’s not magic. It’s science. And unless you’re hiding a PhD under all that”—I waved my hand at her red hair—“then you don’t belong in here.”
She drew herself up. “That’s not what Maya said.”
“Maya? You mean Dr. Perrell?” We were supposed to meet on Friday, but I’d been in the middle of an assay, and besides, I could do without the pressure she always put on me. The reminder of her twins’ expensive weddings and how much she needed the performance bonus. So I’d asked her admin to reschedule. Was Tessa the reason she’d scheduled the meeting?
“I’m your new chief operating officer,” Tessa said.
“No, you’re not.” The words rushed from my mouth like they could make it true. Simon was the COO. And even though he’d been gone for two years, not just anyone, and certainly not Tessa Wright , could take his place.
She squared her jaw. “Maybe if you got to work on time, you could keep up with what’s happening at your company.”
My cheeks blazed. Although most of my employees had moved to their stations, I knew every one of them was listening. “I bring in donuts on Monday,” I growled. Then, louder, I said, “Hey, everyone, donuts are in the breakroom.”
There were a few cheers, then a stampede to the exit. Only Sadie lingered, a line between her blond eyebrows as she watched us, not bothering to pick up the tray of vials in front of her. “There’s a gluten-free one in the small box, Sadie. Go grab it before someone else does.”
She couldn’t ignore a direct order, so she walked out. When we were alone, I said, “Don’t get comfortable. I’m going to have a talk with Dr. Perrell.”
Tessa crossed her arms. “Can’t wait.”
“Until then, if you’re going to be in the lab, you have to observe the safety protocols.” I pointed at the sign on the wall and read out the words. “‘All personnel and visitors must wear protective equipment at all times.’ That means put on a lab coat. And also, ‘Tie back long hair.’ So do something with that.” I waved at her hair again.
Deliberately, she tugged an elastic from her wrist and pulled her hair into a ponytail. “Happy?”
“Coat,” I said.
“Don’t worry. I’m not staying. I only came in to introduce myself. I have other departments to visit.”
When she brushed past me, I caught a whiff of peppermint and something herbal that cut through my jumble of thoughts. I knew what I had to do: clear up this confusion with Dr. Perrell and get Tessa Wright out of my lab and off my campus.
She was a distraction I couldn’t afford.
D r. Perrell was on the phone when I knocked on her office door, but she held up two fingers, then beckoned me in.
“I don’t care what Piper said. It’s two hundred people. I can’t spend two-fifty per person on lobster.”
I sank into the chair closest to her massive mahogany desk and checked my phone. I answered a text from Yujun about which micropipettes I wanted him to order, then a text popped in from Sadie.
Sadie
You okay?
No one in the lab could’ve missed my argument with Tessa, but Sadie would’ve figured out why Tessa’s invasion hit me so hard. Like her brother, she was empathetic. Though I hoped she hadn’t picked up on all the reasons Tessa’s unexpected appearance had thrown me off.
I’m fine. Are you?
I never actually worked with him, so it doesn’t feel strange to me that she’s taking his place.
She was right. It was one hundred percent a me problem. I still didn’t like it.
Dr. Perrell wrapped up her call exactly two minutes after she’d beckoned me in. She was like that: precise and predictable. Nothing like Simon, whose every decision had come from his gut and who’d walk straight out of a room if it had the wrong vibe. No, she was like me, a scientist through and through, focused on data and results. We should have gotten along great.
“I know you’re surprised,” she said. “I’d hoped to talk to you about it last week.”
I crossed my arms. “You mean after you’d already hired her?”
“We’ve been trying to hire a COO for over a year, Oliver. You haven’t liked any of the candidates.”
Because they weren’t Simon. “So you didn’t bother to consult me?”
“I saw an opportunity, and I took it. Tessa is passionate about our research, and she has a background in entrepreneurship.”
“Oh, does she?” I was being a dick. But a switch had flipped inside me when I’d passed Simon’s old office next to Dr. Perrell’s and seen the new sign with her name on it.
“She founded Red Rover. Do you know the company?”
“She did?” Everyone knew Red Rover. Their signature red insulated bags showed up in our breakroom at least once a week with pizzas or Chinese food. Once, when our regular shipment was delayed and we’d run out of stubs for our electron microscope, Red Rover had brought us a box just in time to continue our assay. And during the pandemic, they’d been the only place in town you could get the good toilet paper—at ten times the regular price. Someone must have sold their soul to get a steady supply and made a mint on it. Was it our new COO? Simon was brilliant at business, but he’d never have done anything predatory. Simon would?—
“Tessa has exactly the experience and energy we’re looking for,” Dr. Perrell said. “We’re lucky to get her. And we need her, especially now.”
“Why especially now?”
“Oliver.” She pulled off her black-rimmed glasses and set them on her desk. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she closed her eyes.
I straightened my glasses. Whenever Dr. Perrell did that, she was about to hit me with a truth bomb.
Her dark eyes flew open. “You are running late. We were supposed to have started the clinical trials for our ovarian cancer biomarker test by now.”
“It’s not ready,” I snapped. Like I didn’t know I was late. The board reminded me every quarterly meeting, and Dr. Perrell responded to each of my monthly status reports with another reminder. She didn’t have to add to my burden of guilt by bringing up her daughters’ upcoming weddings. “You know the risks of going to trial too soon. Of rushing a test to market.”
“There’s also a risk of never releasing a product,” she said.
“I’m not saying we’ll never release it,” I argued. “We’re doing everything we can to meet your timeline. We pulled everyone off their other projects to work on this.”
“Which only means that everything is riding on your success. Look at this.” She swiveled her monitor so it faced me.
She’d pulled up a press release, dated today. Greenwich Biomedical Announces Ovarian Cancer Treatment.
I scanned the article, then leaned back in the chair. “Good that they have a treatment.” Maybe it’d work better than what they gave Grandma Vee.
“The market is hungry for tests like ours. It’s only a matter of time before someone else makes it to market with one. And if they beat us, we become irrelevant.”
“If we release a faulty test, we’re worse than irrelevant,” I growled. “We can’t risk launching before we’ve thoroughly tested and achieved the certainty we’re looking for.”
“We’re looking for strong results, of course, but certainty? That’s unreasonable. And expensive. Plus, we don’t have that kind of time. We have to launch by the end of next year, or you won’t like the consequences.”
That gave us a little over a year to work. It’d be tight, but if we worked very hard, we could hit our quality targets. “We’ll get the work done,” I promised.
“I feel more confident about it now that Tessa is here,” she said.
I wished I agreed with her.