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Gosh, these Generation Z folks are a tough bunch.
I drop my arm to my side and continue the conversation. “And we already have all the test doses?”
“Yes, sir,” Amada replies, without averting her eyes from the screen. “Made the placebos myself with organic olive oil; the least we can do is give the women quality dressing if not real vitamins.”
“All right, good, I trust you.”
“Thank you, Dr. Raikes,” she says, just the hint of an eye roll audible in her voice.
Amada keeps typing on her keyboard.
“Hey, if you don’t mind, could I ask you something?”
Amada shrugs, keeping her eyes on the monitor. “It’s a free lab, you can ask me whatever.”
“Was individualized fertility protocols research your first choice?” I know it wasn’t, but I’d rather not put her on the spot if she doesn’t feel comfortable telling me.
Amada pauses. She types in a few more characters and then looks up at me. I smile, but she frowns. “No. I’d applied to the cryo lab, but the post went to a dude with a fifth of my qualifications and an appendage for a brain.”
Exactly as I’d put it. I couldn’t believe my luck when Dr. Hendrix, the cryogenic lab head, passed Amada over in favor of an average scientist.
I knock on the desk. “I promise you’re going to have much more fun with me. Hendrix would’ve kept you on a short leash. Any discovery you made would’ve been filed under his name. But with me, you’ll be free to expedite, decide, and propose your own trials. Make progress, and it’ll be your name at the end of the research paper. I’ll make your time with me worth your while.”
Amada studies me dubiously for a few seconds. “You’re saying you’d let me be first signature on the publications?”
I shrug. “Your project, your discovery, your academic title at the place of honor.”
The first genuine grin since we started collaborating spreads on her lips. “I can have my own trials?”
“Write me proposals, and we’ll see what funding we can set aside.”
Amada nods and turns to the computer monitor again, getting back to work, the “we’re going to be a great team” effusions clearly over.
Even so, I wrestled a grin and a nod out of her. In no time, she’ll be high-fiving me.
I leave the lab and head back down the stairs.
When I get to the second floor, I make a quick stop in my office to check my messages. With the clinic only having four doctors, including me, we each get a private office. Another perk of the new job.
Messages checked, it’s time to start my rounds. I change into light-blue scrubs and wash my hands at the sink, singing “Happy Birthday” twice as I lather up before I rinse. A clean white coat is the last piece of my doctor’s uniform.
Time to meet some patients.
3
MARISSA
The cab driver drops me next to a newsstand, the front display lined by several copies of the same women’s magazine, its headline splashed in red ink across the cover: Why Teenage Heartbreak is Good for You.
“Yeah, right,” I scoff, closing the cab door behind me.
The universe must be trying to poke fun at me considering how, after getting my heart broken at eighteen, I’ve never had a relationship that’s lasted more than a few months. In fact, I’m so chronically single I’m presently headed to a fertility clinic to have a baby on my own before my biological clock ticks past its expiration date.
I know people have kids at any age these days, but my gynecologist has reiterated multiple times that biology hasn’t caught up yet. That thirty-five is still the watershed between good eggs and potentially low-quality eggs with increased risk of miscarriages and chromosomal abnormalities. And since this year has been my last birthday on the right side of thirty-five, here I am.
And I’d better hurry as I’m barely on time for my 6p.m. appointment. Dr. Townsend, my doctor, must hate me for always requesting the latest possible slot, but the trek from Brooklyn to Manhattan isn’t short, and I usually never leave the office before eight or nine in the evening. Six o’clock is already a stretch for me.
As I pass through the automatic glass doors of Clinlada, the usual doubts assail me. Am I doing the right thing?
