Rising Pressure, page 5
“Also, I think the district is fairly happy that I was able to help them close any backdoor hacks into their system. Without me, they never would have known how vulnerable they were. AND don’t forget that I wrote that program for you to monitor all of our phones and internet usage. You’re the most informed parents on the planet, thanks to me!” Martin grinned.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?” Addison asked.
“I was reading about a new key that has been developed to track computer key strokes on computers or laptops—even tablets! It allows people to know every email you send, every document that you type, everything!” Martin’s eyes were big.
“Those aren’t new. I read about them in my books all the time.” Liv rolled her eyes.
“Right, because everything in a crime novel is real and happens all the time.” Martin returned the eye roll. “These keys are electronic or digital. As in, they don’t have some sort of bug that they upload through physical access to your computer. It can be done remotely with the right sort of email attachment. All the anti-virus software companies are scrambling to make updates to block them.”
“Guess I’ll have to hold off on opening those emails from the Nigerian prince for a few more days. I’ve lived without his millions for this long.” Ryan joked, turning his attention back to the game. It looked like the Falcons were going to hold it together and pull out a win after all.
“Well, they certainly tried to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory today, but I’ll take the W.” Ryan said.
“I’m telling you, Dad. This is the year. Superbowl fifty-eight, here we come!” Joe pumped a fist in the air.
“What was it that your mom said earlier, about not getting ahead of ourselves? It’s September. We shall see.”
CHAPTER 8
Addison pulled her car into the faculty level and steered over to her assigned spot in the garage. It was nice to be able to park so close to the building. She was especially thankful for this perk during the scorching heat of the summers. She was just locking her car when she heard her cell phone ringing. She fished it out of her bag, trying to balance her keys and her coffee as she looked to see who it was. The lab?
“Dr. Fischer speaking,” she answered.
“Oh good. I caught you. It’s Eleanor. Umm, are you close?” Eleanor sounded out of breath.
“What’s wrong, Eleanor? I’m just walking out of the parking garage,” Addison commented, picking up her pace with concern.
“Oh, well. It’s…It’s Anthony again, I think.”
Addison sighed. “What now?” She cringed imagining what horror awaited her. Surely, she would have heard the fire alarms by now if that were the issue.
“Well, I think he was working over the weekend. He left his ice bucket out, which on its own isn’t a big deal, but this time, there are several samples in it. They’re just floating in room temperature water. They’re ruined, right?”
She grimaced and groaned. How could Anthony be so careless? AGAIN?!
“Yes, they are ruined. Do me a favor? Just leave them out for now. I want to see what was lost and take inventory. I guess I’ll be meeting with him again today.”
She sighed. It wasn’t a total loss, and the samples could be replaced. It was just continually frustrating to lose things to laziness and blatant carelessness. She rolled her eyes as she stepped onto the elevator in the main building. The doors were closing as a hand reached out to stop them. She cringed, remembering the stories about people getting hurt from old medical school elevator doors. Thankfully, the doors retracted for the daring soul. She looked forward, wondering who was in such a rush. It was Anthony. Of course, it was.
“Dr. Fischer. Uh, hi.”
“Anthony. Unfortunate timing it seems. I just spoke with Eleanor. Rushing back for some reason?”
His shoulders slumped and part of her regretted the underlying sarcasm with which she’d laced her words.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Fischer. I-I-I…” He stammered.
“Let’s go see what we can see, Anthony.” She held the door for him and followed him down the hall.
The red ice bucket was sitting on Anthony’s bench with five little tubes floating in it. Eleanor was across the room, sitting at her desk. She kept in fairly good shape by biking with her husband, Gary, and was about medium height for a woman. Eleanor had wavy brown hair with a little gray mixed in here and there. She kept her hair fairly short most of the time as it was rather thick and could get really hot in the Atlanta humidity.
Addison walked up to the bench and set her bag down. She removed a notebook and turned to an empty page.
“Let’s see what we lost here, shall we? Can you read the labels to me?”
Anthony slowly pulled the little microcentrifuge tubes from the water and dried them off on his pants. He read each label out while Addison recorded them in her notebook. Thankfully, two of them were inexpensive pharmaceuticals that they regularly used in the lab and one was actually an empty tube that he just hadn’t tossed when he finished with it. The others were DNA constructs, which would take a few days to replace. Unless Anthony could talk someone into sharing some of their reagents with him, he would not be doing any more experiments until the end of the week.
“Okay, so you lost one sample of the sodium channel and one of alpha9. I’m guessing that since you have an empty from another alpha9 sample that this was your last one, correct?” Addison asked.
“I’ll have to double check my box, but yeah, you’re probably right. No one else uses that right? We just have the master sample?”
“Yes, and I will get that for you because we need to be really careful not to lose all of it, or you’ll really be behind. Anthony, didn’t we just talk about not being so messy and irresponsible with supplies?”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Fischer. I really am. I was so excited about setting up my experiment and being ready to go for this morning that I just got distracted, I guess.” He apologized again.
“I think we need to make a reminder poster. I know it seems silly and, well, juvenile, but we need something that says, “ANTHONY! STOP! DID YOU PUT ALL YOUR THINGS AWAY?!” She spread her hands apart and spoke the words slowly and deliberately.
Anthony grinned. “I guess you’re right, as usual. I’ll start on that after I set up the DNA constructs.”
“Let me grab those for you really quick. Eleanor has some sharpies that you can use and the main office will have large paper.” Addison said as she walked out of the lab.
She sighed as she reached her office. She wasn’t sure if recommending Anthony to the Strydent lab as a future postdoc would reflect well on her or not. The kid was a hot mess sometimes, but he did good work. Speaking of, she was so intent on figuring out what needed replacing, she didn’t ask if he had set up the experiment when he came in over the weekend. She grabbed the office phone to check back in with him. Eleanor answered.
“Hey Eleanor, is Anthony nearby?”
“He sure is. Anthony—it’s Dr. Fischer!” She called out. Addison twiddled the old school phone cord in her fingers while she waited.
“Yes, Dr. Fish?”
“I realized when I got back to the office that I hadn’t asked about your experiment. Were you able to get one set up for today?”
“Oh! Yes, I did! As soon as I get these cultures going—AND the poster set up—I’m going to start getting my cells ready for the experiment. Did you have a question about it or something?”
“Not really; I’m just excited to see how it goes. Keep me posted.” She hung up the phone and pulled her laptop out of her bag. She needed to get ready for her phone call with Emmitt.
CHAPTER 9
Emmitt spent the weekend drawing up talking points and plans for his phone call with Addison. “Dr. Fischer.” He grumbled to himself.
“Easy. We want her on our side, remember, Emmitt?” He admonished himself. “Great, now I’ve resorted to talking to myself. Get it together!”
He looked through his outlines and lists. He had a meeting planned with Laina to go over his proposal and her role as the potential postdoc. She had been with his lab for over six years now and was someone he trusted. As much as he was willing to trust anyone. Laina didn’t quite know everything about his lab and his history, but she was motivated and willing to make things happen. Emmitt had learned early on that not everyone was capable of seeing the big picture like he was and had to frequently replace his lab technicians when they got too curious. He was hiring them for their loyalty as much as their intelligence.
Emmitt thought back to his first experience with a lab tech that had taught him to be more guarded in his approach to lab personnel. The man was young. He had expressed hopes of one day attending graduate school himself but wanted to get some lab experience first. See where his interests were and what kind of work he was going to enjoy the most. Mike was obviously smart. He could follow the logical concepts of Emmitt’s projects easily. He got too curious though. He started questioning why Emmitt insisted that all of the experiments use the specific reagents designed by Emmitt within Emmitt’s lab. He had suggested experiments that would have revealed that Emmitt’s graduate studies had a major flaw. A flaw that only Emmitt was fully aware of still to this day. A flaw that could have brought the whole plan down in flames. Mike had to go. Emmitt had written a letter to the graduate school dean at a nearby school, suggesting that Mike be admitted with a full stipend. Mike was elated by the opportunity and Emmitt had convinced himself that he had Mike’s best interests at heart.
The next lab tech didn’t last as long as Mike. The woman was way too smart for her own good. She had worked in another lab previously and had it in her head that there were certain policies and standards that every lab needed to abide by. “Pfft,” thought Emmitt. “No, we do NOT need to establish a baseline background standard to compare our results to before doing more in-depth experiments. It has already been done. I did it in grad school. Stop pushing me, WOMAN!” He felt himself getting angry about it again just thinking about it. She was fairly unrelenting in her statements, almost demands. He was right on the edge of firing her when she gave him her two-week notice. He gave her a two-week vacation as a parting gift. Good riddance.
He ran his finger down the list, mentally checking things off as he looked through it. He knew Laina would be on board. He thought about the talking points that would convince Dr. Fischer. He felt like she was genuinely interested and it wouldn’t take much to get her to agree to Laina joining the lab, at least temporarily. He glanced at the handwritten list again:
Laina needs to broaden her exposure to new techniques.
Laina needs to show that she can succeed in other environments outside of the university in California.
Laina needs experience leading a project without my close supervision.
All of these were true, more or less. This experience would benefit Laina’s career in the long run, but Emmitt found that as just a bonus. Laina was going to provide the stepping stone he needed to get his drug trial back on track and into the phase 3 studies. With HUMANS! He could almost imagine the accolades once he achieved his goals. Laina saw that some sacrifices had to be made in order to reach the heights and dreams that you desired. Emmitt knew she was willing to cut a few corners to get there too. He sent off a quick email to Laina, asking her to be on hand in case Dr. Fischer wanted to include her at the end of their phone meeting this morning.
CHAPTER 10
Addison looked through her notebook and leafed through the papers she had printed from the Strydent lab. She had printed out the university’s standard agreement regarding collaborations with outside institutions and read through it again to familiarize herself. She felt pretty confident that Dr. Watt would approve the request, especially since the proposed collaborator had been one of his students. She felt rather ignorant or naïve that she hadn’t realized that her own boss had mentored one of her former classmates, but that’s what happens when you lose touch with your hometown after graduation.
Checking her watch, she pulled out her notepad where she’d jotted down questions that she wanted to ask Emmitt. Some things could wait for future phone calls, assuming they did decide to collaborate, but others were more relevant to establishing some boundaries within their prospective interactions. Her graduate school advisor had started a collaboration with one of his former colleagues without setting any ground rules and it had ended badly for everyone. Doing the experiments was one thing, but deciding who was the first author and whose lab got the most credit became a huge fight. Thankfully, it hadn’t been her project that was caught in the mix, but she still remembered how hard it was on the postdoc who did have the project. His publication had been delayed significantly and other labs published similar results first, which sort of stole his thunder. She didn’t wish that on anyone. Hopefully, she and Emmitt could see eye to eye from the get-go and it would be smooth sailing.
She checked her email one more time while she waited for Emmitt to call. It made her feel silly, having almost first-date-like anxiety as she tried to busy herself in anticipation of the phone ringing. She had already confirmed that he was the one calling in, not the other way around, so she just needed to be patient—
“Hello. This is Dr. Fischer speaking.” She grabbed the phone on her first ring, still feeling a bit ridiculous.
“Addison—is it okay if I call you Addison?” Emmitt’s voice boomed through the office line.
“Yes, that’s just fine, Emmitt. How was your trip home?”
“It was easy, I mean, the traffic out here is other-worldly, but I made it back in one piece. Did you have a nice weekend? Get that student of yours back on track?” He ran his fingers through his hair, trying not to sound over-interested.
“That, well,” she paused. “That remains to be seen. So, how do we start this off? I haven’t done a lot of collaborations outside of our department, so why don’t you get the ball rolling here?”
“As you wish. As you know by now, my lab has established a strong structural correlation between our protein of interest, STABL, and the ion channel getting into the membrane correctly. We have done a few animal studies, but the pharma companies would like some experiments that show a functional effect on the cellular level before they are willing to start a drug trial in humans. That’s where you come in.”
“Okay, so you’re needing some voltage experiments using the wild type and comparing it to the identified mutations? Are you thinking an entire paper here or just a side story within a bigger story?” Addison asked as she put the phone on speaker so she could take notes more easily.
“Oh, I think this can definitely be a paper all on its own. I actually have a postdoc in mind for the work. I think it’s probably easier if I send her to you, so to speak, rather than trying to recreate your set up in our lab. Is that doable? We can figure out a way to share compensation if that’s an issue.”
“Oh, does she or he have experience with these types of experiments? I have an experienced postdoc, Juan, who could easily run all of these for us without the trouble of moving someone down here—”
“My postdoc needs some more exposure to other labs and techniques. She has great hands and picks up on things really quickly. I need to help her broaden her horizons.”
“Well, sure, but Anthony and Juan are more than capable.” She paused. “It just seems like an added expense for you to move her out here for a small project.”
“I get what you’re saying, but really, I think this is the right choice. She knows the rest of the project from top to bottom, so I think it is logical for her to continue with it.”
“Okay, I understand. I know there are some administrative hoops we would need to jump through, but it shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. As far as the potential paper goes though, I think we should both be up front with our thoughts and plans for that before we get too far down the road.”
“I know a lot of people get hung up on authorship and credit, but honestly I would rather do what is easiest for everyone and make it as little of a headache as possible. Since the experiments are going to be done in your lab, why don’t you take that last author spot? Laina—that’s my postdoc, she can be first author, since she’ll be doing the work.” Emmitt offered.
“That seems very reasonable.” She checked off a couple items on her list. “Would Laina be bringing all of her own reagents or what kind of arrangement do you foresee there?”
“Yes. This might sound kind of obsessive or controlling, but we always use our own reagents and materials in our collaborations. It just cuts down on any confusion regarding solutions or mutations. We will overnight those to you once we get a timeline established.” Emmitt tried to control his breathing, hoping Addison wouldn’t make any objections to this request.
“I don’t have a problem with that. There are a couple of standard wash solutions and things that we use for our voltage experiments; I can send you the make-up of those after we hang up. Everyone in my lab gets their own space in the freezer and we can definitely make room for Laina’s boxes too.”
Emmitt cringed a bit. “Well, um, again, this probably makes me sound a little crazy, but past experiences have led me to employ some rather high standards in regards to my reagents. I also have a couple of patents on some of my stuff, so I have to be very careful. Hopefully, it’s not too much to ask that Laina use her own freezer that will also have a coded entry for her use only.”
“Oh. Um, I mean, I think that will probably be okay. I do have an approval form that we need to run by the department chair before we actually get Laina down here and in the lab. I think we can find a place for an extra freezer if it’s not too large. What size are you talking about?” Addison grimaced. This seemed a little bizarre and paranoid.
