Page 80 of Conspiracies and Chemistry

But I understood what she meant when she asked if we were done and flew out of Dr. Perrell’s office like she was being chased by an orc. She needed space. I couldn’t give back her privacy or her gossip-free life, but I’d give her space to think.

I was glad she hadn’t come to the lab. The people who hadn’t been in Dr. Perrell’s office thought it was funny that Tessa and I were together. Some cuffed me on the shoulder like I’d done something great. Others gave me sly smirks as they passed like they’d known all along.

Every time the door opened, I looked up, searching for her. Which made it difficult for me to focus on the trial results I was trying to analyze. They didn’t conform to the pattern we’d seen in the other tests, but I knew it was because my mind was hovering outside Tessa’s office, hoping she’d rejoin me and we’d be good again.

“Hey,” Sadie said sometime after lunch. Not that I’d eaten anything. I sat at my workstation, my phone beside me in case Tessa left her office or texted me.

“What’s up?” I looked up from the nonsensical results.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Sadie said. “I should’ve been more chill about you two. I…you know.”

“I know.” Of all the people in the lab, only Sadie seemed to have any negative emotions about our outed relationship. As my almost-sister, she’d expected to be in on my secret. “It’s okay.”

“Is it?” She glanced around the lab. “Or is she feeling some sort of way about it and hiding?”

“She’ll come around,” I said. She had to. What we had was too special to be ruined by a snarky social media post or censure from the CEO.

“I hope so.” She squeezed my forearm. “I was so glad you two were getting along. The lab runs so smoothly now.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” As COO, Tessa had made positive changes. We no longer ran out of supplies. And communication was better, so we knew what everyone was working on. I’d never wanted Tessa here to begin with, and now I didn’t know how I’d live without her.

But thinking about Tessa made me restless, so after Sadie settled at her bench, I went to Yujun’s workstation, where he hunched over his laptop.

“Afternoon, Yujun. Are you feeling okay?”

When he snapped up his head, his face was pale. “We need to talk.”

“I’ve got time.” I waited.

“In your office.”

Shit.Was he upset about the distraction Tessa and I had created? Was he tendering his resignation? I couldnotlose him. Not when we were so close to successfully finishing our clinical trials and getting the cancer test on its way to approvals. My mind spun with worst-case scenarios. The lab would be chaos. No one would know where to find microtiter plates. Or the buffers and reagents we used on a daily basis. Work would stop. Dr. Perrell would bepissed.Numb, I led the way to the door, took off my lab coat, and held the door for Yujun. We walked to my office in silence.

Yujun waited for me to close the door but didn’t bother to sit. “We screwed up, Oliver.”

A chill dribbled down my chest to my stomach. “What happened?”

“The samples were mislabeled. We accidentally used the endometriosis patients’ samples in the ovarian cancer patients’ tests. The test results are invalid.”

“Wait.Allof them?”

“No, only the batch from last week.”

No wonder I couldn’t make sense of the results today. I had a moment of relief before my shoulders tensed again. We were supposed to finish the analysis this week, and now we wouldn’t.

Things had been going so well that I’d gotten overconfident. I’d spent last week planning our spa weekend and then actually abandoning the lab on Thursday and Friday while I should’ve been double-checking the samples. This was my fault.

“It’s my fault,” Yujun said. “I let myself get complacent and didn’t validate the samples.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said. “I should’ve checked too. But we can salvage this. It’s only a week’s worth of samples. We can invalidate those tests and use the spare samples.”

He winced. “The fridge shorted out over the weekend. We lost the samples that were in there. It wouldn’t have been a big deal since we were so close to the end, but…” He held out his hands, empty.

“Without those samples, the test is incomplete. Can you call the study coordinator and see if she can get the participants to come back in? Or else make some calls to see if anyone has samples they can lend us?”

“I’ll do that. I’m really sorry. I?—”

“It’s not your fault.” I patted his shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.” Even I knew it was a lie.

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