It was still too early to leave for work, but I did anyway. I tried to convince myself it wasn’t so that I might steal a few moments with Bridget alone.
When I arrived and saw her hunched over the countertop, my stomach swooped with joy.
She looked up when I entered and gave me a triumphant smile. “Ha. I finally beat you here.”
My lips twitched despite my valiant effort to keep from smiling back. “I wasn’t aware we were competing.”
Bridget compressed her full lips, fighting another smile. “Yeah, okay. Sure. Keep telling yourself that.”
She was beautiful in a way that reminded me of a mythical creature, like a fairy or pixie. Her skin was fair and smooth, with a pink undertone that rose to the surface whenever she was embarrassed or angry, and suited her wide blue eyes, fringed by impossibly long lashes. She had blonde hair, long andstraight and glossy, that she usually kept in a ponytail while we were in the lab.
When I was younger, I’d dreamt of being a writer. I’d spent hours writing stories about princesses and knights who embarked on dangerous quests and fell in love. Bridget looked a lot like those princesses I’d imagined.
My mother, whenever I showed her one of my stories, would sigh and mutter in Tagalog. “Ito na naman? This again, Nathaniel? Get your head out of the clouds.”
Bridget took a sip of her tea, and my heart throbbed with pride that she was still using my present. I’d also been sneakily refilling the tea bags whenever they got low. “I was about to go and feed the needy babies,” she said, jerking her head towards the incubators. “And I think a few of the MSC plates need to be passaged. They’re at about 80% confluence.” If we didn’t split the cells into new plates, they would become overcrowded, stressed, and stop growing, or differentiate in ways we didn’t want.
“Youthinkthey need to be passaged?” Bridget had a tendency to use qualifiers — “I think” or “maybe” or “in my opinion” — that she needed to break. I knew she said nothing she didn’t believe, but others, sadly, would take any opportunity to tear her down, as evidenced by Dr. Davis. I also knew it made her angry, but I could handle that if it meant she was better prepared for a more hostile lab environment.
Sure enough, Bridget’s cheeks flushed with anger. “They need to be passaged. I’m sure of it.”
I bit back my instinctive praise. “Anvi can help you later; she needs more hands-on experience. If she makes a mistake with passaging, the consequences won’t be as dire as with marrow samples.”
Bridget huffed. “Why do you assume she’s going to make a mistake?”
Sometimes, the way Bridget responded to me was baffling. Of course, I didn’tassumeAnvi would make a mistake, but even bringing up the possibility was apparently a damning offense. “I don’t. But she might, and this is a lower stakes way to get some practice in the biosafety cabinet.”
Bridget huffed again, and we lapsed into silence until Anvi herself arrived.
Later that day, the blood samples from the subjects arrived. The same nurse who’d escorted us to Andrew St. James’s exam room delivered them to the lab.
I frowned at the memory of that day, and the nurse’s smile dropped from her face before she turned away.
I was grateful that we hadn’t been present at his blood draw. His obvious interest in Bridget put my hackles up, and her apparent reciprocation made me so jealous I felt ill. My only consolation was that if a relationship between a senior research associate and his direct report was out of bounds, a relationship between a researcher and a study subject was even more so.
As a first-generation Alpha, I had never spent much time with other Alphas, and all the unspoken dominance struggles were confusing and exhausting. All I knew was that the thought of him and Bridget together filled me with a quiet rage.
“It’s assay time!” Anvi said cheerfully when she saw me with the tray of samples.
I cleared my mind of Andrew St. James. I couldn’t deny I was nervous, and it looked like Bridget was too. It was all well and good testing HLA compatibility in a theoretical sense, but this was our first big test of whether the Omega stem cells would react the same way, and show the same mutability, in a real-world application.
The clinic’s other lab was running a standard CBC with differential to look for an overall immune response, but we’d bespecifically looking for antibodies against foreign HLA markers. If the checks were negative, then the subject’s immune system hadn’t reacted as if the Omega stem cells were foreign cells, and we’d be one step closer to proving this was a valid treatment option.
Lisbeth joined us in the lab, anxiously watching us work. This was a critical moment for the overall success of the study.
After a few hours of testing, we had ten negative PRA panels, and Bridget was ecstatic.
“Hell yes!” Bridget said, punching the air. She linked hands with Anvi and jumped around in a circle, cheering. I had to look away to hide my smile.
Lisbeth was grinning. “I have to call Patrick,” she said breathlessly and scurried out of the lab.
“This is so cool!” Anvi looked at us with wide eyes. “I feel like a real scientist!”
Bridget laughed, and my heart contracted. “Youarea real scientist!”
Anvi left to call her sister, leaving Bridget and me alone, side by side at the island countertop. She was still smiling radiantly. “Congratulations,” I said, keeping my voice controlled, my reaction to her proximity contained.
She studied me, her smile faltering. “Don’t you celebrateanything?”
