Chapter 1 - Bridget #3
After that strange night, or fever dream, Nathan and I went back to quietly ignoring each other.
We worked on expanding the research to confirm it wasn’t just one donor’s cells that showed mutability.
And I’d been a named author on the paper that led to Dr. Nielsen being profiled in Scientific American as “a visionary researcher.”
And now, here we were, recruited away from academia by Lisbeth for a study on the effect of Omega stem cell therapy in an orthopedic context.
Further testing was required before the data could be applied in human trials for direct bone marrow transplants, but orthopedic therapy was an ideal testing ground.
HLA compatibility wasn’t required in these cases, but it led to much better outcomes.
“It’s a chance to do real, tangible good,” Lisbeth had said when she called me about the opportunity. “You can go back for your Ph.D., but there’s a limited window to be on the ground floor of this research.”
She was right, of course, and it would be nice to make some actual money, even if it meant leaving my comfort zone.
But I’d expanded my comfort zone before. The Fairview University labs had once felt inhospitable and scary, but I’d made myself at home there eventually. I could do the same here.
As I signed my name on yet another document without registering what it was, I promised myself I wouldn’t let Nathan intimidate me this time around.
He may have been the one with “Senior” in his title, but I wasn’t a timid grad student anymore.
And I’d make sure he didn’t dim Anvi’s obvious enthusiasm by being a dick, either.
We spent the day calibrating equipment and making sure we were prepared for the first scheduled batch of donor cells.
To my surprise, Nathan helped with the menial work rather than delegating it all to us minions.
Anvi chattered throughout the afternoon, telling me all about her tight-knit family, her cat Bili, and her obsession with a band called Jinx.
We eventually made our way into the cleanroom.
I liked my new lab coat, emblazoned with the clinic’s logo in blue on the left breast, and small enough that I wasn’t swimming in it.
The nitrile gloves also came in more than just “large” and “huge” sizes.
With our hair covers and safety goggles, we looked like extras in CSI as we did checks on the sterile equipment.
The fans in the biosafety cabinets, and the hum of the incubators and freezers, created a white noise that always relaxed me.
“What about you? Who’s your favorite band?” Anvi asked after a long-winded explanation of why Jinx was the most underrated pop group ever.
“Oh, I’m not really a music person,” I said, distracted. The biosafety cabinet was different from the model I’d worked with before, and the sash was proving difficult to open.
“What?” she squawked, sounding scandalized. “You don’t like music?”
“I like it; I just don’t really have strong feelings about it.” I should have told her I liked everything, like I usually did. “I’m not a total weirdo, though. I love movies.”
Anvi looked relieved. “Oh, me too! What’s your favorite movie of all time?”
I smiled at the question. “Probably The Philadelphia Story,” I said, finally finding the catch and sliding the glass door up. “Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart? Can’t beat it.”
“I’ve never even heard of that.” Anvi wrinkled her nose.
“It’s from 1940, but I promise it’s really good.”
“Oh, ew,” she said with a laugh. “Hard pass.”
I laughed too. “Okay, how about The Princess Bride? You’ve seen that, right?”
Anvi shook her head, staring at me from one of the incubators she was temp-checking with an ambient thermometer. She moved to the low-temp freezer next, opened the door, and thought for a moment. “I’ve seen The Princess Diaries with my older sister?” she offered.
“Okay, well, that is a 2000s classic. I also know every word to Mean Girls.”
“Close that door,” Nathan said abruptly. Anvi jumped and slammed the freezer door shut. “Even leaving it open for 20 seconds can raise the temperature significantly.”
“Sorry,” Anvi said quickly.
“It’s fine,” I said, and glared at Nathan. “Do the temp check. You’re doing great.”
We lapsed into silence after that. Nathan seemed completely unaware that he’d been rude.
At around 4 p.m., Nathan looked up from his running list of missing supplies. “Good work today. We’re in good shape for tomorrow. You can head home.”
Anvi cheered, and we removed our PPE in the anteroom. “Do you want to go for a drink?” she asked as we walked back to the office area.
“Who? Me?” I asked, surprised.
Anvi laughed brightly and pulled on her backpack. It had glittery, brightly colored patches. My plain black bag seemed positively depressing by contrast. “Yeah, duh, both of you guys. Shouldn’t we, like, celebrate?”
I looked at Nathan uneasily. He seemed uncomfortable, too. “Um, maybe another time,” I said. Anvi’s face crumpled. “Sorry, I’m just really tired.” Which was also true, even if my main motivation was escaping Nathan’s presence.
“Okay, fine. Pinky promise?” Anvi held her pinky out to me.
“Pinky promise,” I agreed, wrapping her finger with mine. Was this what having a younger sister was like?
“You too,” Anvi said, holding out her pinky to Nathan. His face was so severe I thought he was going to yell at her, but he conceded the pinky promise.
“See you guys later, then,” she said, breezing out into the hallway.
Nathan and I were left alone. Lisbeth had disappeared much earlier, saying something about lunch meetings with funders.
I took a deep breath and remembered my earlier resolve to not be intimidated by him. Even if he was, by definition, intimidating. “You shouldn’t be so hard on her.”
Nathan furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”
“The freezer door thing. You didn’t need to snap at her.” His eye contact was too intense, so I turned away to pack up my bag.
He was quiet for so long that I thought he’d left the room. But no, he was there, still frowning. “She needs to keep those doors closed as much as possible. Perhaps she hasn’t worked with a low-temperature freezer before, so I told her to be careful.”
“No, you just told her to close the door. And the way you said it was not nice,” I said, exasperated.
“I didn’t realize simple instructions needed to be ‘nice,’” he replied with a hint of annoyance. “This is a private research facility, not the university. The equipment needs to be treated with care.”
“She knows that. We all know that. So next time, just… be nicer.”
He stood still, and his expression moved inward, as if he were absorbing what I’d said. “Okay.”