Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(45)

“We’ve had break-ins before.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Bob is generally laid-back, but he, more than anyone, relies on the equipment. He’s a phage biologist—he looks at a kind of virus that infects bacteria—and runs reams of data that is important for future clinical applications. I shove my hands into the pockets of my lab coat and fiddle with the loose strings inside them. Shit.

This isn’t the first time.

It’s inching close to the tens column for number of times.

“Show me,” Bob says, turning toward the doors.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if you want to hold on to your lab badge, come show me how you think you’re arming the alarm.”

Double shit.

“Sure.” I slide off my stool and follow him through the double doors, the whoosh of air from the lab blowing back the wisps of hair that have fallen from my ponytail. The lab is kept at a slightly higher pressure than the air outside to discourage too much contamination from wild microorganisms.

But whooshes of air won’t keep out bad guys.

We reach the locking steel door.

“Okay, arm it.” He opens the door and stands in the exterior hallway outside the lab. I hold open the door at the angle I hope is correct and try to look directly at where the contact bar should be.

Jesus.

I knew; I just knew the contact bar was there, that I should be able to move my head to see it, but I can’t. No matter what angle I look, my peripheral vision doesn’t connect.

It turns out, peripheral vision is something people use a lot. For example, the inventor of this door alarm absolutely depended on a person’s having regular peripheral vision, just to make his invention work.

The inventor of this door alarm was not thinking about me, what I can see.

I’m not supposed to say, anymore, what I can’t see. My doctor informs me it’s not a positive perspective.

I try to subtly experiment with the door, pushing it in a few inches, pulling it toward me, to test if I can hear the contact bar snick over the plate, but the surfaces are too smooth, or the noise from the air lock is too loud.

So I do what I always do. I guess, and then put in the code. Pull the door shut, make sure it’s locked.

“You didn’t get it.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry. I’ll try it again. Hold on.” I start to slide my lab badge into the keycard lock, and suddenly Bob is right next to me. I hadn’t seen him move beside me. He puts his hand on my arm.

“Look. It’s not your fault. There’s no way you can get the code in at the pad and angle your head in any position to see—”

“Okay.” I shove my hands into my lab pockets again and feel uneasy with him standing next to me. I can feel him moving, but I don’t know what he is going to do.

The freaking-stupid thing is that Bob? He wouldn’t ever do anything. It’s just—

When I can’t see him, have no hope of seeing him, standing right there next to me, a little bit behind me, out of my limited periphery, suddenly it’s like my brain decides he’s a saber-toothed tiger and why aren’t I running, exactly?

I turn my head to look right at him, and there he is, right where I left him.

Not a tiger.

He has that worried-about-you face that everyone has been making at me lately. He blows out a breath.

“I’m going to ask Melissa to put some kind of sound indicator on the contact plate.”

I look back down at my shoes. They’re new, hard-leather, closed-heel clogs, perfect for the lab. They would be plain black, but they’re a gift from my mother, and so she painted an Escherichia coli on one toe and a microscope on the other.

The E. coli is smiling and wearing a little fedora.

“Right.” The microscope had not been anthropomorphized, but she painted a little sprig of daisies next to it.

“Just—tell us, Jenny. We’re on your side.”

“Okay. I’ve got to shut down my program inside the lab.”

I stare at the fedora. She’d painted a little patch on the hat, shaped like a heart, as if the bacterium wearing this hat is a friendly, gentlemanly hobo.

I keep looking down, counting the brushstrokes on my toe paintings, reassuring myself with the acuity of my narrower field of vision, while at the same time willing my heart to slow down. Telling my heart, Look, the whole world around you is still there. It just seems like it disappeared.

But my heart is stupid and can take in only the first and simplest messages my brain gives it, in this case, from my eyes.

And as far as my eyes are concerned, the world is crumbling all around me, and what’s hiding in that nothingness isn’t friendly.

So my heart obliges, gets me ready to fight, or to fly.