How to Resist Your Rival
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Rachel Dove
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CHAPTER ONE
A VERY WISE person once said that you should never meet your heroes. Given that Harper’s heroes were legends like Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin and Ada Lovelace, she’d never been particularly bothered by the saying. Firstly, it was impossible, given that they were all long dead. Secondly, she knew if she ever had some near-death experience and did get to meet them, she would not be disappointed.
Not that she really believed in heaven, or hell. If she did, she would have wished to see someone less famous, the one person she always thought about. Her brain didn’t work that way, she was saddened to discover within her layers of grief. So, no pearly gates or people watching over from clouds above. She felt their loss, and no white feathers crossing her path could convince her that she was any less alone in the world.
Her cynical brain just couldn’t make the connection to comfort that way. She stuck to the science. It was what she was good at. What she’d used to shield herself from the world, years before the loss even came. She didn’t trust many things in life.
What she did put faith in were things she could hear and see. Quantifiable answers to questions posed. She liked certainty, logic. In her house, growing up, they didn’t do Santa or the tooth fairy. Her mother kept her baby teeth for DNA purposes, not as a keepsake. She had even given her only child Franklin as a middle name. Of course, the kids in her class teased her mercilessly, but Harper didn’t care. She was already used to feeling like an outsider by that point.
She’d never had an interest in the usual things girls her age spent their energies on. She wore what she liked, getting serotonin from the clothes she picked out for herself, not just because they were on trend or the next big ‘must have’, but because they were comfortable. Looking different from her peers was as normal to her as feeling different. So she did her own thing, and grew a thick skin, which helped her bury herself into her passion all the more.
She wanted to walk her own path, and those paths often took her out on her own. That was fine. Her mother lived her life on her own terms too. It worked for them. Had.
Harper was a happy person. She avoided the dark as much as she could in life, her passions seeing her through the tough times. Science wasn’t just a vocation for her, it was her special interest and comfort blanket all rolled into one perfect package. She had her books, her brain, and her burning curiosity. She spent the night of the school leavers’ dance at home, studying. Happy to be there with her mum, not needing the anxiety of socialising with the peer group she’d stayed on the fringes of for most of her life.
She had her goals. Knew just where she wanted to be. Even the grief didn’t stop her, she just threw it onto her back with the rest of her baggage and kept running.
She was pretty much destined to be a scientist, whether she liked it or not. And she did like it, a hell of a lot. It had also helped keep her sane, especially over the last few years. She’d grown up listening to the stories of the STEM women who had trodden the path of greatness, and she focused on joining them. Blazing her own trail.
Someday, she hoped that some nerdy, bespectacled little girl read about her, and decided that she wanted to be a scientist too. It was what she daydreamed about. That, and snacks. Specifically, peanut-butter bars smothered in chocolate. Her brain fuel, and also the reason that her otherwise crappy day had just got worse. She was in a very uncharacteristic bad mood. Probably added to by the fact she was suddenly ravenous, and in need of a sugary pick-me-up.
‘Just give me it. I thought we were friends. Good friends. We spend time together. I, for one, cherish our little interactions. You’re right by my lab—we’re neighbours! I paid for that snack you’re withholding, fair and square.’ She banged her fist against the glass, but the bar didn’t move. ‘Come on, please!’
She tried to press the buttons again. The ones she pressed most days she was in the lab. Who was she kidding? Every day. Nothing. The little screen on the front of the vending machine mocked her.
Insert coins...
Insert coins...
Insert coins...
Insert coins...
‘I’ve inserted the damn coins already!’ she shouted at the machine, fumbling around in her lab coat for more change.
She was out. She’d saved just enough to buy her coveted bar. The peanutty goodness sat there, half hanging out of its spiral prison, leaning against the inside of the glass as if it were a rescue puppy, reaching for its eager new owner.
‘Cough.’
Bang. She slapped her hand on the glass.
‘It.’
Bang.
‘Up.’
Nothing. A tiny little jiggle, but the bar held fast. She leaned against the glass, her forehead feeling suddenly cold from the contact.
‘I swear,’ she whispered low and deep, ‘if you don’t give me what I paid for, I will go get my tools and dismantle you piece by piece. Don’t think I won’t.’ She slapped her hand against the glass, hoping that would somehow persuade the machine to play ball. It didn’t. She should have taken her intern Trevor up on his offer to buy her some in bulk the other week.
Damn me and my independence, leaving me to grapple alone with rogue machines.
Clearly, she was spending too much time with objects, and not enough with people. ‘Come on! I paid, and it’s my last chunk of change!’ she whined, before realising that this particular machine wouldn’t pick up on her tone of voice. Even knowing this, the next time she spoke, her voice was a low, threatening rumble.
‘I will turn you into something awful. Like a meat-grinding machine, or one of those grabber machines they get in the arcades. Do you want that? People breathing over you all day long, kids licking your glass? Eh? ’Cos I’ll do it. Give me the damn snack!’ She kicked it, and all that produced was a stinging big toe. ‘Ouch! One last chance, and it’s arcade time for you, buddy!’
‘I don’t think the threat of dismantling will scare a machine, somehow.’
A deep, sarcastic voice behind her made her jump, and she headbutted the glass to boot.
‘Ow!’
Recoiling from the impact, she fell backwards, straight into a pair of solid arms. Looking straight up, she saw two rather large and unimpressed-looking jade eyes glaring down at her. Whirling around, she extricated herself from the arms and folded her own over her lab coat.
‘Sorry! Thanks, for—er—catching me.’
Dominic Nash.
Of all the people she could bump into. Literally. His brow was lifted, and he was now looking beyond her at the vending machine with interest. He didn’t come down here. Ever. He was normally in the next block, in the neuroscience and neurology department—when he wasn’t seeing patients, or protecting errant machines from human attack, apparently. She’d never seen him anywhere near her robotics department before.
The man was a double threat—neurosurgeon and neuroscientist. Which, along with the fact that he worked in the same university, was exactly the reason that she knew just who he was. She’d done her research on him, dug deep into his credentials, and the work he’d published so far. Which was a little harder than she’d expected it to be. The man was a bit of an enigma away from the university and hospital. Trevor was in awe of him, like the rest of the staff around here.
The guy was not someone you forgot, once you learned about him. It was rather a shame that Harper herself didn’t have that persona. From the look on his face right now, he obviously didn’t know her from Eve. Which she found irritating, even though she shouldn’t.
Why would he know who I am? You keep your lab office shut tighter than Fort Knox.
Trevor didn’t even share the same space. He had his own area, away from the main lab. The man in front of her knew everyone and anyone in the place, the total opposite to her. Hell, even her line manager kept his interactions with her ghost-like.
She figured that he preferred it that way, too. Harper wasn’t a woman who relinquished control. She could work well with people, but with her work, she didn’t like too many cooks sticking their spoons in. The man scrutinising her with his eyes right now was the only spoon she’d coveted.
Maybe this is my shot, she mused.
‘Sorry if I startled you. These machines get worse every week, I swear.’
He shrugged, as if catching a ranting scientist was just a normal part of his day. ‘I didn’t realise anyone was still down here—it’s pretty late.’ She was normally on her own at this stage, making use of the quiet time to finish her work, away from the distracting chatter of colleagues, the constant ringing of phones and pinging of devices. She worked better alone, beavering away with her music on loud. Which was why she’d felt safe enough threatening machinery, before being interrupted.
‘Yeah, well. I like the quiet. Less people about. I get more done.’
Why she felt the need to explain her workaholic ways she couldn’t fathom.
‘Hmm.’ It was barely a reply. ‘Me too. I was down here getting some supplies.’ Her eyes fell to the box beside him that she hadn’t clocked before. Full of stationery, notepads. Research folders. Here in the bowels of the building, she got to be next door to all the exciting rooms. The janitor’s was right beside hers. ‘I heard a strange high-pitched noise and came to see who was threatening to destroy one of the machines.’
She blushed furiously. She never could hide her embarrassment. Her stupid, glowing-like-a-tomato face gave the game away before she could attempt to recover. She lowered her chin, hiding behind her thick, long curls a little more.
Thank God for unruly hair in situations like this.
He was looking her up and down, and she saw him scrutinise her name tag. ‘Harper Wilson. Robotics division, eh? Is that how you speak to all the machines in your lab?’
‘Just the ones that withhold food,’ she quipped. She threw him what she hoped was a cute but sheepish smile through the red hue of her embarrassment, but his face remained as unreadable as a lump of granite. When she’d looked up his credentials on the work intranet, she’d thought his staff photo was just an unfortunate snap, making him look a little soulless. Now she could see the real-life version, she knew it was deeper than just an off day. The man was a lump of unfeeling stone. His face didn’t even try to crack a smile. Wow. Normally she’d get a smile back. She was a pretty happy person when she wasn’t clamouring for stolen snacks. She usually cheered people up, but he was a tough crowd. ‘And it’s Dr Harper Wilson.’
‘Harper...’ he said again, his brows furrowing atop his narrowing eyes. ‘Harper...have we met?’
Have we met? Ha! As if.
He was the star around here. She was lucky if the security guard on the front door recognised her most days. Still, she did normally keep long hours, usually entering the building with her head deep in a book. She barely looked up from her work. She had heard that Dominic was the same, but his department were the rock stars. Neurology brought in the kudos with the big cases, the forefront of their work being just as ground-breaking as hers, but the dean of the university was a bit of a press hound. Her work was getting there, but she wasn’t saving lives yet. She knew her department still had a way to go before she relinquished herself to being part of his PR machine. When her time came, she wanted her work to be the news that everyone wanted to talk about.
Being a figurehead for some publicity stunt made her nervous, and her need for control over how her work would help the world, not just their corner of the lab, had left her keeping the dean’s big ideas at bay, for the most part.
Robotics is every bit as sexy as neuro anyway, she huffed in her head.
Derek Shepherd and his dreaminess had a lot to answer for. Harper had always preferred Torres, personally. She doubted this bloke had ever binged a box set, let alone Grey’s Anatomy, which he’d probably pull apart for its improbabilities. He looked too wound tight to Netflix and chill anything. TV Doctors, she scoffed. They were never like that in reality. Although, taking in the specimen before her, she had to admit it wasn’t that far off the mark. Given the current company she was in.
‘Er—no,’ she started, giving the machine another ineffectual bang on the glass. ‘We haven’t met before... I did email your secretary though.’
Several times. With as yet no reply worth having.
‘I’m working on a large research project, and I did want to arrange a meeting to discuss a possible collaboration.’ Nothing. His fixed expression was still in place. ‘That’s probably how you recognised the name. I was hoping to get an audience with you before the conference.’
‘Conference, sure.’ Was he just repeating cherry-picked words from her garbling now?
‘Yeah.’ She nodded, trying not to let her emotions show on her face. ‘Yes.’ He had to be aware of the conference—he helped chair the thing every three years. He was one of the big guns around here, so landing him would be like Richard Dreyfuss rocking up to the thing with Jaws’s head tucked under his arm. And one thing Harper needed for her career, and her bank balance, was a bigger boat. ‘The tri-annual STEM conference... I have a project to submit.’
‘Project?’ Another brow-lift with his bemused repetition.
Man, he was tall.
She was already craning up to meet his eyeline; the brow was a bit much. He made her feel...small. Which was something she was used to, being five feet five, but right now she felt positively tiny beside his six-foot-odd frame. And feeling slightly the way she’d felt when she was a kid, playing dressing-up in the white lab coat her mother had bought her one Christmas. As if he was a more adulty adult. She tried to shut down her busy thoughts and focus on her words.
‘Well, yeah. Yes.’ She almost tried to smile again but couldn’t risk the neck ache to aim it his way. ‘The Wall-Walk Project?’
She thought she saw something spark when she told him the name of her project. Just for a second, she’d spotted a flicker of recognition, but whatever it was soon passed. His face turned back to stone before her very eyes. His tone was flat when he spoke. Uninterested. As if he hadn’t a clue that he’d just ended the tiny glimmer of hope that she’d been keeping close to her chest since he’d caught her threatening to commit mechanical murder.
‘Ah, right.’ He pressed his lips together till they all but disappeared. ‘I already told Teresa to pass on that.’
‘Oh.’ Harper’s brows dropped till they matched his. ‘She didn’t inform me.’
No reaction from Granite-Face. He wasn’t in the slightest bit fussed. She could see it written all over his aloof, lofty face. Harper felt as if she’d shrunk another foot. She was so close. For the last three years, she’d been priming her work for this conference. Knowing that the independent funding pot at the end of it would enable her to keep control of her project and see it out in the world.
The whole world. That funding for the clinical-trial component was dependent on getting a neuro specialist on board, ready to hit the ground running if—no, when her project progressed to the final. Going there without a neurosurgeon already in place was a risk, but she’d stuck to her guns on wanting the best. The best being the man who’d just crushed that dream in his stony, rock-like fist.
‘Sorry.’ He added a dismissive shrug to his rebuttal. ‘I’ll let her know in the morning. She must have missed it off the pile of rejections.’ Same dulcet tone, no hint of inflexion or regret. He was already turning away from her, and she reached out for his arm. Or rather, reached up for it from her Hobbit-akin position.
‘Can I ask why?’
He looked down at the hand on his dark blue suit, and she pulled it away with a flourish.
‘I’m not taking on any more projects at the moment. I told the dean I wouldn’t be chairing the conference this year or taking part in any clinical trials. I took a step back from my chair duties. I’ll make sure you get a formal reply in the morning. Goodnight, Dr Wilson.’
He only took two steps.
‘Why?’ she asked, her voice a little squeaky now. She needed him. Badly. Well, not specifically him. She needed a neuroscientist who was also a neurosurgeon. Someone who understood the brain, the nerve endings and could install the device she needed implanting for her project to work as she hoped. Other countries had been doing similar trials already, but Harper’s hardware and approach had not been picked up on.
She knew she was ahead of the game, and it only added to the itchy, uncomfortable feelings of frustration she felt coursing through her body. The fact that he was the neuro god everyone wanted was the reason she’d emailed his secretary every day for the last two months. Twice on the weekends. ‘You stepped down from your chair, but that means that you can compete now, right? I know you have input into some of the neuro projects after the event. No chair, no conflict. I would have thought this would be the perfect time for you to collaborate, since you could do it fully. Put your name to the research. So yeah—I’m afraid I have to ask again. Why?’
He turned to face her, taking a step closer. She took an instinctive step away and felt her back touch the vending-machine glass. ‘Why what?’
‘Why are you not taking on any projects? The Wall-Walk Project is really going to revolutionise the future of—’
‘Dr Wilson—’
‘Harper, please. Dr Wilson was my mother.’
He pressed his lips together, so that they almost disappeared. He seemed to do that a lot.
Perhaps he doesn’t know how to smile.
Normally, a person like him would be a good mini-project for her. She always liked to spread some cheer, but she felt like Cindy Lou meeting the Grinch. She wasn’t sure a Who song was going to crack his green armour.
‘Fine. Harper. I have no interest in collaborating at the present time. I’ve cut back on commitments this year. I’m sorry, the answer is still no.’
His tailored dress shoes started to turn away, and Harper felt her irritation rise further.
‘Did you even read it? My proposal?’ She expected him to walk away, but he stopped in his tracks. She kept talking. ‘I know you’re busy, but I really think that we could make—’
‘I’m a little more than busy. I decided to focus on patients this year. Which is why I now have a blanket policy not to take on any further work. I just finished working on—’
‘I know what you’ve just finished work on. A clinical trial to cure degenerative brain diseases.’
His impressive dark brows lifted in surprise. ‘How do you—?’
She rolled her eyes, pushing her glasses further up her nose when they dropped down. ‘I read a lot, I follow the research I’m intrigued by. You might not show an interest in other people’s work, but I take the time to lift my head up from my own ass sometimes.’
Oops. Her tiredness and lack of snacks was making her a little snarky. Did I really just say that?
Something about this man pulled the sunshine right out of her.
‘Respectfully.’ She gave him a little smile then, to dismiss him. Maybe even to show him how to do it, so he might take the plunge for himself one day. She had a feeling getting Mr Grumpy to crack his face would be an even bigger achievement than winning the competition.
She turned back to the vending machine, rolling up the sleeve of her lab coat to attempt an extraction. This was why being a veterinarian had never appealed to her since that fleeting summer in primary school. Putting her hand into tight spaces had never interested her. She went to squat in front of the tray flap, ready to reach for her prize. A second later, she saw a flurry of movement in the corner of her eye. Dr Nash’s meaty fist slammed against the glass, and the peanut bar teetered, and dropped into the basket below.
She whirled around, but he was already heading back through the door up the hall, box in hand.
‘Thank you!’ she called, but all she got in response was the slamming of the door. ‘Dr N-ass.’
She gestured a rude finger towards the door and dived into the machine to retrieve the best part of her day.
When she got back to the sanctity of her lab, she was still fuming at her encounter. She was not feeling herself. The only hand gestures she normally handed out were cheery waves and the odd high five.
‘Well, you’ll never believe who I just spoke to.’
She slumped down on her rickety chair and pulled angrily at the arm to sit under her desk, which was held together by layers of masking tape.
‘Only Dominic Nash. The actual Dominic Nash.’
She paused to let the drama fully sink into her willing audience, Johnny, the robotic arm she’d made.
‘I mean, no wonder his personal assistant is so curt. I would be a misery too if I had to work under him every day. I couldn’t do it—Teresa is a saint. I’d have to glitter bomb his office or something. Try to knock something loose. He’s wound so tight, I doubt he’s ever had fun a day in his whole life.’
She had nothing in common with human beings like that. Hell, she’d had the worst few years of her life and lived through them. If she hadn’t kept her joy, well...she might not be sitting here now. Maybe she’d have been so low that she’d have applied to be his blooming PA. Or joined the typing pool for Satan himself. She ripped open the peanut bar, taking a large bite and waiting for the sugar rush to pull her out of her bad mood. It failed, which just irritated her further. He’d gone and ruined her favourite go-to pick-me-up. Damn you, Neuro God.
‘It makes sense now. I thought Teresa just thought I was a bit weird.’ It wasn’t the first time she’d been told that. Once people got to know her, they often took the time to tell her how weird they thought she was on first meeting. So what? She had ADHD. Her mother had figured that out pretty quickly. They’d done the work, and she was fine with it. Liked it, even. It was part of her, just like her ability to hyper focus had helped set her on her career track. It was in her circuitry, her DNA.
Aside from the fact she looked like Hagrid whenever her hair got any kind of moisture in it, she loved who she was. Under Dr Nash’s gaze just now was the first time she hadn’t liked herself for the longest time. It made her dislike him all the more.
She was a little overly cheerful sometimes, sure, and she talked at hyper speed when she got excited. Overthought just about everything, but she was good with it. Her emotions were felt in full force, and her friends loved her for it. Her best friend, Meghan, told her all the time that her heart was full of joy.
She leaned into the good parts, took her meds to combat the negatives, and organised her life to work for her. The meds were not a cure—they just kept the scattered thoughts away and helped her focus. She got it, understood more than most how lucky she was to be doing the job she did, firing her passion and her neurons to change the world.
So should he, given that he was literally trained in the workings of the brain. Perhaps she should send him a leaflet on it.
They should make leaflets about not being a joyless prat too, but hey ho. One world-changing project at a time. You can’t solve all the world’s problems at once. Stick to your goal.
She played back interactions with people in her head like a mix tape all the time. Masking her reactions was something she’d spent a long time learning not to do, but society still required it at times. She kept herself to herself, lived her life how she liked it. She ran her memory banks back to the day she’d gone to his office and met Teresa in person. She could still see the look his PA had shot her when she’d rocked up, biscuit tin in hand.
‘It makes sense now. She’s miserable by proxy. No wonder she turned her nose up at the homemade cookies we gave them.’ Johnny just listened at first, and then its fingers moved, turning into a thumbs-down sign. ‘I know, right? We put a lot of effort into those.’ She had worked late to get them perfect, right down to the pink jelly brain designs she and Johnny had iced on the top. All that effort. If she’d known what sort of man Dr Nash was, she would never have bothered. ‘Why did he have to be the best, eh? He’s just...just...insufferable.’
Harper glanced out of the window when she heard the rain start to pelt down. It was dark, as per, and, as usual, she’d not even noticed. It was always dark when she left work. Or arrived, for that matter. Half the time it was like that even in the height of summer. She sighed dramatically, chewing on the peanut slab like a bear attacking a fleshy pink salmon.
Once she’d finished and thrown the wrapper in the bin, pretending it was Dr Nash’s head, she tried to shake it off. Firing up her computer with a waggle of the mouse, she brought up her email screen and searched for his name. Forty-two emails were unanswered. Forty-two. The ones she did get replies to were short and to the point. Every time saying the same thing, that the project proposal had been passed on to Dr Nash for consideration, and if he was interested he would be in touch. Except he hadn’t been in touch, and Harper was running out of time.
The competition was for projects ready for clinical trials, and without a neurosurgeon on board, it made her application much weaker. Putting all her eggs in Dr Nash’s basket, she thought he would have jumped at the chance to work on something so close to home, but now all she felt was embarrassment for having put the odious little twerp she’d just had the displeasure of meeting on such a pedestal. Even Trevor had egged her on, so she knew it wasn’t just a good idea to her.
With the dean constantly banging on about raising the profile of Eversholt Hospital, and his university, she had thought it would be a no-brainer for everyone. The indignation she felt at the new obstacle filled her with rage. Her meds had worn off too, leaving her an anxious, tired and rather moody scientist.
‘Yeah, right,’ she fumed. ‘As if!’
Be in touch. Huh. He hadn’t even bothered to read it.
‘And—’ she jabbed her chocolate-smeared finger at Johnny ‘—if he’s not even taking on projects, then why not just announce that? It would save the long-suffering and perpetually pinch-faced Teresa some work, at the very least. She might have actually had the time and energy to raise a smile at baked goods. Just saying.’ She crossed her eyes in Johnny’s direction, and the hand gave her a thumbs-up. ‘Exactly, you get it.’ That was it now, she’d be in a mood for the whole night. She felt a fresh wave of tiredness wash over her. She needed to get it out somehow. Shake the Dr Nash effect right off her troubled back.
Her mother, who had been a force of nature, had taught her from an early age to deal with her feelings. Harper had always struggled with it, and hid herself away from the world in books, and later in science and research. She had notebook upon notebook at home, all stuffed with scribbles and rants. Clever takedowns that the ‘popular’ girls at school and university would never see. Witty retorts to their catty, stupid comments about her bright, eclectic clothing. About the fact her face was always in a book, and that she was never necking a shot glass or sucking face with a spotty guy or flashy future banker. She saw their looks, their eye rolls, when she spoke about her interests. She wasn’t like them, she knew. Her mother taught her that being different was not only okay, but it was also pretty cool to be unique. It was that mantra and her coping strategies that had stayed with her long after her mother passed.
She wrote her feelings down when she couldn’t express them. There were even a few notebooks recording her loneliness and despair while she’d sat at her mother’s bedside towards the end of her life. It was cathartic. It quelled the rage inside Harper that she never quite let out. She giggled to herself when she thought of her recent interaction.
‘I grabbed his arm,’ she giggled to herself. ‘I can’t believe I did that.’ Other than to vending machines, Harper was pretty much a mouse. ‘And I implied he was up his own butt! Me! Ha!’ She looked across at the photo of her and her mother, the one sitting on her desk, in pride of place.
She opened up a new email to d.nash@ facultyneuroscience.eversholtuniversity.org and started to type.
In the subject line she wrote:
Awesome proposal you will probably never read. again.
She started to feel better.
Clicking her cursor on the main body of the text, she began.
Dear Dr N-ass—aka. Granite-Face,
Please find attached my proposal, entitled the Wall-Walk Project.
This project will revolutionise the future of medicine and in particular help people in poorer socio-economic geographical locations to live with greater mobility and dignity through the use of robotic prostheses, linked to the impulse receptors in the brain to ensure that the limbs work successfully.
The project will have a two-way connection from the prosthesis to the body, helping the prosthesis to anticipate the user’s directions, and give the patients the feedback required to feel connected to the prosthesis.
Currently, the prostheses on the market do not have the ability to anticipate the feel and weight of items, which can result in problems for the patient in terms of using the prosthesis and to have a full life.
My prostheses will use the newer technology of 3D printing to produce lightweight, less expensive working parts, cutting down on costs and therefore opening up the breadth of patients who can have access to these life enhancements.
This project will, in time, enable full function of limbs, helping the human race to be able to evolve without the substantive costs that similar projects face.
In modern society, and in underdeveloped countries in particular, the types of innovations the Wall-Walk Project seek to work on, and excel in, are simply not options, even before cost is considered. As such, this grant would also tick the boxes of inclusivity, which I know, from the recent research projects carried out by the sociology department, the University of Eversholt would be very excited to hear of.
I have, of course, read the recent university in-house newsletter. I attach a copy, in case it didn’t make the gauntlet of obstacles you provide your personal assistant with.
This project is the product of hours, nay, years of work by me, sacrificing any semblance of a social life. Months of begging for grants for my lab. Did I mention the lack of social life? To the point where I speak to machines more than actual humans? I count your PA in the robot category too, by the way.
So, no social life, years of begging. No life at all, actually. This has been my sole goal in life for as long as I can remember. Yours, apparently, seems to be committed to arrogance and an aversion to emails. Interacting with humans too, perhaps.
Had you taken the time to open any of the many, many attempts at correspondence I have sent to your personal assistant, you would know all this. By the way, you definitely owe her a pay-rise. Given her constantly clipped tones, and generally surly demeanour, she probably deserves much more than you are paying her. A woman who does not like homemade anatomically correct cookies definitely needs more joy in her life. Although, given the very short and rather unpleasant interaction we just had at the vending machine, I now understand why.
The only redeeming part of our ‘chat’ was the fact you rescued my snack, which I now need at least ten more of to redeem my own joy. In short, you ruined my day, and my snack time, and I wish you a very bad day.
May all your future interns be totally inept, every traffic light be red, and all of your lab coats be itchy.
I am now ordering sage sticks online to clear the vending machine area of the bad energy you spewed all over it. This clinical trial is dependent on a neurosurgeon, and I now realise that perhaps we are not the best fit.
Yours very insincerely,
Harper F Wilson
PhD—Pretty Hugely Disappointed
Robotics Division
PS Johnny hates you too, and his hand gestures are next level and very expressive.
She clicked the ‘attach’ button, added the proposal from her folder, along with the limited data she had been able to collect so far without the assistance of a neuroscientist, a copy of the newsletter, and clicked the button to consign it to her drafts folder. She had a special little sub-folder entitled ‘Rants’, which she used for circumstances such as these.
‘There!’ she said to Johnny. ‘That felt good. Fist bump me!’ Johnny curled into a fist, and she bopped her knuckles against his. ‘That showed him, eh?’ Johnny made a so-so movement. ‘Yeah, I know he’ll never read it. So what? It will make me feel better every time I read it, and I am going to order that sage.’
After she’d filled her online shopping basket, ordering not only a box of sage smudge sticks but also a box of peanut bars to be delivered to the lab, she felt better. A little vindicated. Her drafts folder was her little outlet. Sure, it mainly covered delivery men, Harriet Fowler, one of the perkier scientists who regularly put her down at work, and the local barista at the coffee shop—and that was only because she had been ordering her coffee and croissants there for a long time, and the bloke still never remembered her, never mind her order.
They’d never know, sure, but she did. That was all she needed. It kept her lid from popping off like an unattended pressure cooker. Something about Dominic Nash had just got under her skin. She was ‘hangry’, probably. She’d skipped dinner, of course. She’d been too focused on her work to break off and go to scavenge something to eat, and her sandwich stash from the canteen was long gone.
She brought back up her data screen, but the numbers blurred in front of her twenty minutes in. Her glasses were rubbing on her nose as she propped her nodding head up on her hand. She sighed heavily, checking her watch and realising for the first time all afternoon that it was Friday. She had promised herself the weekend off, given that the conference was looming the following week.
The big university STEM conference ran every three years, with first presentations in February and the final winner announced before the start of the September term. She’d been planning for two years, working hard to get her project in good shape. She needed the funding to pay for the clinical trial, but not only that, given that the funding was from investors and not the university itself, she needed the conference to go well so her goal could be achieved. She didn’t want to just make these prostheses available in the UK.
The under-pressure NHS in the UK would no doubt fund their patients, but she wanted to make more of an impact. Not every country had a healthcare system like theirs. The costs alone of medical insurance meant that these limbs would just be another way for Big Pharma to get the big bucks. She wanted to make a difference to people everywhere, regardless of cost or geographical location. The funding she wanted to attract was vital. She needed to get through the first round, blow the competition right out of the water. It needed to go right, so she’d blocked off this weekend months ago, to make sure she was well-rested and ready to go. She had to go over her presentation for the millionth time, and make sure that everything was in order. She’d seen fantastic ideas ripped apart by senior members of staff, and the medical community, just because of a misplaced word, or a piece of data that wasn’t fully confirmed.
One of her former colleagues had quit when a typo on his presentation had declared an incorrect cancer survival rate. He’d left not long ago for another position. She’d seen it before. Doctor burnout was adept at taking people down. Academics, and in particular science academics, were not generally known for their level of chill. Especially at work.
Locking up her office, she shoved her fraying old fabric backpack on her shoulders and headed out of the main doors towards her bicycle. As she pulled out of the car park, she saw that Dr Nash’s car was still there. She knew which one it was—the man had his own parking space.
‘Humph,’ she snorted. ‘And I thought I had no life.’
