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It’s good to be back home, back to the city that never sleeps. As I exit the subway station, a falling leaf smacks me in the face. I brush it away and rejoice in living in a place with seasons again.
Not all agree. Nora’s words as I dropped her off at school earlier, replay in my head. “The cold sucks!”
Pretty opinionated for a first grader.
She’ll get used to the cooler weather. To not living on the beach a stone’s throw away from the ocean. To having to make new friends. To having been abandoned by her mother.
No, she won’t get used to that. But Nora is a resilient kid, and we needed to leave behind our old house. The place was a constant reminder of a life that’s gone.
As I walk down the street, the air is crisp and smells of the nearby Hudson River. Since we came back, even though I’m a New Yorker who grew up in the city, I can’t shake the feeling of being a tourist.
Well, it has been sixteen years, I remind myself. For Nora, twice a lifetime. For me, a phase.
The city hasn’t changed in all this time. New York is still loud, brash, and the biggest ball of nerves. Excitement is in the air, on the screens, on the billboards, in the subway, and on the streets where everyone is speeding somewhere.
“Love it!” I say to myself. I walk the extra few blocks to the new clinic where I started working at the beginning of September, eager to get a jumpstart on my workday.
The new job is another advantage of the move from California, besides seasons and having left. At Clinlada, I’ll finally be able to spend more time doing research. To expand my project on customized pharmacological protocols for different types of infertility and dietary supplement integration tailored to individual patients’ clinical histories.
But not on this very fine morning. With three of my colleagues attending a convention downtown, I’ll be holding the fort alone. No lab for me today, only patient visits.
I arrive at the clinic and make my way to the lobby. The glass doors open automatically as I approach.
“Morning.” I wave at the receptionist, Carla.
“Dr. Raikes, another early start?” she replies with a beaming smile. “Your first appointment isn’t until nine.”
Upbeat, always-cheerful Carla is the opposite of the sour, I-hate-my-job-because-I-want-to-be-an-actress receptionists we used to get in LA.
Another welcome change.
“Early bird catches the worm, right?” I knock on her desk and wave a friendly goodbye.
On my way to the elevators, I stare at the glass walls encompassing the lobby, feeling optimistic. The clinic occupies the entirety of a newer, low-rise building. The reception and administrative offices are on the ground floor. Examination rooms and patient wards are on the first. Labs and medical personnel offices are on the second and third floors, while the basement is entirely reserved for our cryopreservation facility.
At the last moment, I skirt past the elevators and take the stairs. The stairwell smells of disinfectant and cleaning products, but I enjoy the hospital-like sterile smell—the familiarity of it, the promise of a groundbreaking discovery just a gamete coupling away.
Despite being on patient duty, I skim past the first floor and continue on to the third one instead. I know I said no lab for me today, but I’m dying to check if Amada, my research associate, has finished processing patient data for our initial vitamin D trial.
She’s already in the research lab, working intently at her computer. White coat on, midnight-black hair streaked with pink up in a bun, concentrated brows pinched. Despite me being an early bird, Amada always beats me to the lab.
I tug my ID badge off my neck and press it against the magnetic holder attached to the lab door.
“Good morning, my protégé.”
Amada looks away from the screen and frowns at me, raising an arm to halt my advance. She stands up and walks toward me, handing me one of the spare lab coats from the rack beside the door. Next, she grabs the hand sanitizer dispenser from the metal column fixed on the floor and patiently waits for me to offer my hands.
I do, and she squeezes a generous dollop of bactericide on each.
As I rub my hands to spread the gel, I tease, “You know this is just a data processing room. No biosamples to contaminate here.”
Amada frowns. “It’s still a lab. You shouldn’t put your germs on my keyboards.”
I smile. “Fair enough. Where are we on patient sorting?”
Amada sits back at the desk with a proud smirk. “I divided them into the investigational group and the control group. As soon as each woman starts her cycle, we can administer the first dose.”
“That’s fantastic.” I raise a hand to high-five her, but Amada looks at it with an air of faint disgust before concentrating back on the screen.
