Chapter 1
Friday 7:32 a.m.
I bend forward and focus closely on the small plastic Eppendorf tube between my thumb and index finger. At the bottom are a few microliters of a transparent liquid.
I sigh and close the tube.
This had better work.
I walk to the other side of the laboratory, passing three rows of workbenches. No one is around yet, so everything is quiet. I like to work like this. It helps me focus.
I stop in front of the laminar hood, so large it’s covering most of the side wall. Through the front glass, I can see purple light reflecting off the smooth metal work desk and several glass bottles and tubes in the back, sterilized and ready to be used. The machine is on, and there is a constant humming sound coming from the top part, a large metal container with the aeration and filtering systems that keep the work area clean.
I switch off the UV light and turn on the bright neon light at the same time, then pull the empty tube stand closer and put my Eppendorf tube inside. As I turn around, I almost bump into Frank. “Oh, sorry! Good morning!”
“Buongiorno! Come sta?” he says.
“Good, good. And you? How come you’re up so early?”
He waves his hand and heads to his workbench. “I need to do the antibiotics treatment. The protocol takes a while, so I wanted to start early.”
“Are these for your Streptococcus strains?”
“Si. And then I need to stain them, then image them. Might need your help there, actually. Staining is a pain in the neck. At least for me.”
“Sure, no problem. Just tell me when you get there.”
“Va bene, grazie! And how about you?”
“Well . . . I’m doing the very last step,” I say, walking to the small incubator under my lab bench. “Once again. Let’s see how it goes this time.”
“Hey, good luck with that!”
“Thanks,” I say, then kneel down and open the small door, the warmth and classic incubator smell flooding the air around me. Inside, a large Erlenmeyer flask is swirling in a fast rhythm. I stop the rotation then grab it at the bottleneck and pull it out. The glass cone snaps out of its holder.
Inside is a murky beige liquid, still moving from the recent rotation.
Hello, girls! Ready for the big experiment?
I carry the bottle to the laminar hood.
Frank sits next to me, watching through the glass. “Is that the blocker?” he asks, pointing to the small tube.
I nod, then pull some latex gloves out of my lab coat pocket and put them on.
“You think it’s going to work this time?” he asks.
I shrug as I take the small Eppendorf tube I prepared and put three microliters of the reagent into one of the sterile Erlenmeyer flasks, add a milliliter of bacterial suspension, then top it up with fresh food medium. “It might. But then again, I thought that the last six times as well.” I laugh.
“Well, you always need far fewer tries than anyone else I know to get a publishable result. You must be doing something right—”
“Good morning!”
I turn around. “Hi, Miya!”
Frank stands up and meets Miyako halfway. “Ciao, bella! Had a good sleep?” he says, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her on the top of her head.
“Perfect. Hey, why didn’t you wake me up?”
“Ah, you looked so peaceful. I couldn’t.”
Miyako rolls her eyes. “I’ll never be able to use you as an alarm clock.” Then she comes over to me and leans her hip on the metal laminar desk, looking through the glass at the flasks and tubes I’m working with. “What’s that?”
“That’s the blocker experiment,” says Frank before I manage to answer.
“Nice!” she says.
“Yeah. Well, let’s hope it works this time,” I say.
“Knowing you? Sooner rather than later, I’d say.” She pushes away from the laminar desk. “Even if it’s not your darling Bacillus strain anymore.”
“At least now that she’s working on Streptococcus,” Frank adds, “I can get some tips for my experiments! Who’d want to work on Bacillus, anyway?” Frank winks at me.
I raise my eyebrows at him. “Me! If I want to study endospores—and I do—then Bacillus is the best strain for me. How can I study endospores if I work on Strep, you tell me!”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Perhaps you can get one that has a mutation for making endospores?”
“Strep with endospores? Seriously?” I turn back to my experiment. “That’s science fiction right there.”
I’m sure Frank has a response for me, but he doesn’t have a chance to voice it. Instead, Miyako jumps in. “Hey, shall we go and grab a coffee in the cafeteria?”
I turn to her. “Didn’t you just get here?”
“Well, no . . . I had a few minutes to, you know, check my email. And checking emails always makes me sleepy, so yes, I need a coffee.”
I sigh, but after a second, I say, “All right. Give me a few more minutes.”
“Great,” she says, then scoops up Frank’s arm under his elbow and pulls him toward to the door.
“Don’t I get a say?”
Miyako stops and looks at him for a moment. Then, slowly, in a low voice, she says, “Do you want a coffee?”
“Of course.”
She looks at me and shakes her head.
Frank says something melodic in Italian, then stretches his arm to her and wraps his fingers around hers, tangling their two hands together more than seems physically possible.
I shake my head and smile, turning back to focus on my work. I put away the pipette and then use a black marker to label the bottles.
Negative control.
I push the bottle away from me and pick up the other two, the ones I treated with the reagent. “Concentration one,” I whisper. “And concentration two.” Good!
I take the bottles back to the incubator and start the rotation, then close the door.
Do not fail me! I’m counting on you.
I stand up and take off my lab coat, placing it folded on my lab bench, then walk out the door.
The fourth-floor hallway is painted dark red, scientific posters from previous conferences hanging every few meters on both sides between the labs. The doors are all open as I walk by. I hear music from a local radio station coming from the lab on the left; several people are chatting in the lab on the right; laugher coming from the lab at the end of the hallway. It all echoes down the corridors and the institute now feels alive.
I turn right to enter the office, a small ten-square-foot room with four desks, four office chairs, and a large window in the back showing only gray: the wall of a neighboring building.
David is standing next to my desk, paging through my lab book.
“Oh, David, hi!” I say, a bit surprised to see him in my office.
He turns and closes the book at the same time. “Jane, there you are! Listen, how are your experiments doing? Do you have anything on the blocker yet?” He puts the lab book on my desk.
“No, not yet, but I’m running the experiment right now.”
“Great! That’s great, Jane.” He’s nodding, stroking his gray mustache while he talks, looking down at the floor. Then he looks at me. “When do you think you’ll know the results?”
“In a day, day and half. I’ll come in on Sunday morning to check.”
“Call me when you get the results, will you?”
I have to smile at his fervor. He’s more enthusiastic about this experiment than I am! “Yes, if it works, sure, I’ll call you.”
“No, no, no! We don’t have time for it to not work. We are out of time. It needs to work. Come on!”
I laugh. “David, I am doing my best.”
He sighs, then puts his hands on my shoulders and closes his eyes for a moment. Then he opens them and smiles. “I know you are. I’m sorry.”
He loops around me but then turns back one more time. “Don’t forget to call me . . . if it works!”
I look back at him as he disappears behind the door.
Okay, I think that was overdoing it a bit. I know he’s a bit crazy over science—but so am I!
I shake my head, half smiling, as I pick up some coins from my pencil holder and head to the cafeteria.