Page 27 of Doctor Bossy

She looked to the side and hesitated for a long time before she admitted, “I think I’m in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“The criminal kind,” she said plainly, and it shocked me. “I gambled with the wrong people. And…I think they might be after me. You have to help me, honey.”

* * *

I wasin a daze for the next few days, so much so that when Marco came up to me, it took me a while to understand what he was saying.

I blinked at him. “What?”

He smirked at me. “Damn, you’ve been somewhere else this whole time I’ve been talking? But I get it. Everyone here’s pretty exhausted.”

“Yeah.” I glanced around at the tired faces moving around the lab. Three days ago was the university’s lab evaluation, and while I think we all did pretty well in showing the safety standards for the labs, what followed was a long day of running around making sure that the final chemicals needed to make the next batch of Terradol pills were ready to be sent to the analysts at the university.

But that wasn't what occupied my mind today.

Instead, I was thinking about my mother and everything she had told me about the recent round of criminals she gambled with and how she owed them tens of thousands of dollars.

How the fuck does she expect me to pay that?I thought as anger spiraled through me.She knows I don’t make that kind of spare change. Why does she keep doing this to me?

And then she’d had the nerve to suggest I move home to cut down on expenses.

Never. I’d rather die.

“Hello?” Marco snapped his fingers in my face. “Anyone home?”

I blinked. “Sorry, Marco, I’ve been thinking about a lot of things lately. What did you need?”

“Some of the carbitol tubes. Clear liquid. I left it on my desk a few days ago, and now I can’t find it. Have you seen them?”

“No, I don’t think I—” I instantly shut up as the memory flashed through me. I remembered Leila looking frazzled and me offering to help with mixing some of the reactants meant to activate the major elements of Terradol. She’d asked me to take some of the ethanol tubes from Marco’s desk and mix it with magnesium. But looking back, I was too distracted and never quite checked to make sure the tags said ethanol. “Wait, did you say carbitol?”

My heart was beating with growing panic.

“Yeah,” he said. “Have you seen them? I need them for another project I’m working on.”

I turned to him, the horror of what I’d done finally dawning on me.

Oh, God.

I fucked up.

12

GRIFFIN

The call from the analytics department of the university’s IRB came much later than anticipated.

Everything had gone according to plan on the day of the evaluation, with the inspector giving us a full star rating on our lab techniques and etiquette.

I expected to hear back during the beginning of the week about whether or not the formula was ready for the next phase of testing. I knew in my heart that it was, but perhaps the chemists would find something wrong with the formula and deny the next stage.

And every day without the call, I started getting a bad feeling that it was the latter.

After a few days of waiting, the work phone finally rang.

I picked it up. “Hello?”

---