By Edward Hyde
This short story won second place in the "short story contest" by Sponge, Fall, 2013 in the University of Utah. (http://thesponge.eng.utah.edu/issues)
It was a gloomy October day in Salt Lake City and Vy reached her lab early
morning at 8.
"Hi", she greeted Spencer, who sat next to her desk
at one corner of the lab. That corner was relatively darker than
other parts of the lab.
"Good morning Vy. Dr. Jekyll was looking for you half an hour
ago", Spencer told her while watching Ultimate Frisbee game on YouTube.
"Ah! He talked with me for two hours last night. What does he want now? I
just want to get out of this lab; tomorrow if possible." She sounded
frustrated and nervous at the same time. Her PhD committee was going to meet at
2 PM that day to decide on her defense date. In last few weeks, she experienced
bipolar mood swings ranging from the despair of failure to the hope of future
happiness.
"Hang in there, Vy. You will be fine. You've worked hard for the last
6 years; now it's only a matter of a few months!", he tried to calm her down.
While writing her thesis, she'd appeared for interviews in chemical industries.
Two weeks ago, a company in San Diego offered her a job. This bought her three
months' time to defend her thesis and join the company. This would not make Dr.
Jekyll happy as he wanted her to take a post doctoral position instead of an
industrial job. She lost whatever interest she used to have in academics during
sixth year of PhD.
Professor Jekyll's bacteriology lab was placed at one end of the new Skaggs Pharmacy
Building. He chose that spot carefully in order to stop the smell of stinky
bacteria from spreading.
"Vy, did you culture bacteria last night?" Marie Antoinette, a post doctoral researcher rushed from the Biochemistry side of the lab and asked
urgently.
"Yes, I did. Why?" Vy replied.
"It got spilled from
the incubator and now, the whole place stinks like skunk. Dr. Jekyll was mad at
this." Vy ran to the culture room without saying a word and
started to clean the mess immediately. It took her almost two hours to clean up
the yellow colored spill. Once done with cleaning, she started to work on the
power-point slides of her presentation.
Suddenly, Dr. Jekyll opened the lab door at the far end and shouted,
"Vy, are you in yet?" She sprang from her chair and hurried to her
working place. He found her at the edge of the work desk where she started to
label random vials with a black sharpie.
"When are you going to show me
your power-points? I came this morning looking for you, but, you were not
here." Before she could reply, he started again, "And the bacteria
spill is not acceptable to me. This is not professional." Her face became
pale and a few sweat drops gathered on forehead. Then, a cruel silence
followed.
Spencer walked gingerly towards them and interjected, "Vy, you
have a phone call." She was relieved at Spencer's intervention though angry with Marie Antoinette, who had probably reported her crime to Dr. Jekyll.
The phone call was a hoax. This was a common practice in the lab to save a
student from the firing line of Dr. Jekyll. "Aha, okay.......okay. Sounds
good.......Amm, okay," Vy responded to the dead phone call. Having
realized that Dr. Jekyll was not around, she stopped talking to the phone and
went back to her desk to give the final touch to her presentation.
At noon, Dr. Jekyll walked in and demanded that Vy show him the slides.
"It is almost four weeks since we submitted the paper. I hope it will be
accepted. Once you submit your third paper, you should be able to
graduate," Dr. Jekyll spoke as she was changing the slides for him. She
frowned and released a deep sigh.
"I am running the last experiment and
will be done writing the paper in December. I would like to defend before
Christmas", she started with some temper but ended with almost pleading. Deaf to her voice, he asked her to make a few changes and wished her
luck.
The meeting was started at 2 PM. Her eyes were bright but uncertain. Five committee members were seated at a rectangular table. Dr.
Jekyll started the proceedings by introducing her to the other committee members.
Halfway through her presentation, one of the members stopped her to ask the
mechanism of bacterial infection. Then, a deluge of questions followed and the
committee suggested more experiments. It was one of those days when her answers
were all over the place. After much deliberation, they decided that she would
graduate sometime in the Spring semester. She walked slowly to the lab and sat
down with her face on her hands.
"Oh, no! The reviewers have rejected my paper", Vy spoke softly
while still reading on her computer screen.
"I am sorry. You are a fighter
and you will fight back hard," Spencer made an effort to keep her
spirits up. The lab door at the other end opened fast and Dr. Jekyll walked straight
to her desk, probably to give her lectures.
Vy tried her best to hold back tears. Outside the lab, it started to pour
heavily from the gloomy heaven.
