Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(58)

I’ve thought of that, too. What are you thinking?

I’m really tied up at work, there are some things I need to figure out here.

But it gets quiet, probably for you, too, when the University’s winter break more officially starts, which this year is the 21st. So maybe a couple days after that? Unless you’re traveling somewhere?

I’m not traveling. My mom decided to fly in Christmas Day and stay through the New Year.

Christmas Eve’s Eve?

Ha. Yeah. I know where you live, of course, but we could meet someplace neutral since it will be our first time meeting in person. The mashed-potato place, Potato Mountain that’s across the street from the corner store?

11 a.m.?

December 23, 11 a.m., you and me and mashed potatoes.

My hands feel a little shaky, and I can’t really see why I shouldn’t meet this person. He works on the same campus, he lived here six years and my landlord maintained he was a “good guy,” though I didn’t want details.

Our chemistry, while pixilated, is obvious.

He is well rounded—has an artistic hobby.

He has been keeping me company all this time when I hadn’t wanted to keep anyone else’s company. I called my mom. I dutifully called and emailed my friends from home, though it was a struggle because they were worried and their worry and questions made me uncomfortable and a little more depressed and just … weary. This last week I’d noticed that my colleagues had piled in one car together, laughing, to go to a pub they’d invited me to, as well, and I had very politely turned them down and come home to talk to C about his pictures.

The campus was so quiet.

I had kissed my OT today.

Deal.

When I tell him good-bye and shut my laptop, I’m glad I turned the lights on like Evan’s always telling me to do. Because I need to see everything right now, and not be in the dark. My life used to be simple.

The little house I shared with my mom and our coffee brunches with a view of the sound.

The hours at the bench figuring out how small things get messed up and then live anyway.

Clear days when I took my bike on the ferry to Bainbridge and could see Mount Rainer.

So I’m really glad the lights are on, right now.

I’m glad the snow will fall all night long, all over this day where I was blind in about a hundred different ways and none of them had to do with my vision.

Then everything will look all new tomorrow.

I’m sleeping with the lights on, too.





Chapter Six


Whiteout


I’m starving.

I’ve had four meetings today, and then had to write a surprise project summary for a grant application. I got an email from a peer-review committee requesting some information about the numbers in the results section of a paper our lab submitted last year. I wasn’t even here then, but since numbers are kind of part of my job, or at least certain kinds of numbers like these, I’ve had to sit down and at least figure out what I’m going to ask everyone for, probably at another meeting.

The thing about science is that there is that whole methods part. And the part about how whatever you do has to be repeatable. Also, money. Which means that if you’re a scientist, you’re also kind of an administrator.

I’m new around here, with the least amount of administrative experience, which paradoxically means I am the one doing most of the administrative work lately. My science wasn’t quite ready to go when I was brought on, but everyone else in the lab is in the middle of projects.

So I am the designated project manager.

Also, my funding could be a little better for what I want to do, and the best way to lock in funding for the middle of my project is to find grant money for it now.

LSU’s lab is actually a great one, very low drama with great people, but after the years of doctoral work doing pure science and a year postdoc with University of Washington doing the same, I miss … well…

I miss science.

I look out of my office door, longingly, at the ESEM, where I can see it through the double-walled glass of the lab, across the hall.

“I miss you, ESEM,” I whisper. “I love you.”

“Who do you love?”

Now I am not looking at my ESEM, I am looking at a coat, buttoned onto a man, who is now standing in my doorway. I look up.

Evan, my occupational therapist who I have sort of kissed, is looking down at me in my chair and giving me the Mona Lisa.

“I love my microscope,” I answer, and I sound entirely unflustered, which, point to me.

He holds out two greasy paper bags. “I have some lunch.”

I try to slide my feet off the desk but my rolling chair scoots back too fast, and then, my ass hits the ground.

Hard.

Point to Evan.

“Holy shit.” He laughs and reaches out his hand. I grab it and he pulls me up while I let my mind go blank, a handy skill for the frequently embarrassed.

“Are occupational therapists supposed to laugh at their clients? It seems kind of cruel.”

“You caught me off guard. I’m a sucker for pratfalls and that was a great one.”

I hold on, tight, to my chair as I sit back down, and then I pull one of the guest chairs next to my desk with my foot. “Sit down. You brought me lunch? Here?”

He sits down, looking around. My office is pretty spartan because I would always rather be in the lab, but I have managed to get my books in here, my journals, a few pictures, and of course my collection of plush microorganisms and iconic cells.