“Please. I…I need a doctor.”
He flipped his notepad shut. “Would you like to make a statement of regret?” Then he gave her skirt a glance as if the fabric alone was an obvious invitation. “You stabbed the man. It’ll go better for you if you show some remorse.”
She looked back at him, hollow eyed. “You…you misunderstand, Officer. He attacked me. I…I defended myself. I need a doctor.”
The officer exhaled. “No statement of regret, then?” he said, clicking his pen shut.
She stared at him, her mouth slightly open, her body trembling. She looked down at her thigh where Meyers’s handprint was outlined in a light purple. She choked back the urge to vomit.
She looked up in time to see him checking his watch. That small movement was all it took. She reached out and snatched her ID card back from between his fingers. “Yes, Officer,” she said, her voice as taut as prison wire. “Now that I think about it, I do have one regret.”
“Much better,” he said. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He clicked his pen back open. “Let’s hear it.”
“Pencils,” she said.
“Pencils,” he repeated, writing it down.
She raised her head to meet his eyes, a rivulet of blood coursing from her temple. “I regret not having more of them.”
* * *
—
The attack, or “unfortunate event,” as the admissions committee called it just before they formally rescinded her admittance to the doctoral program, had been her doing. Dr. Meyers had caught her cheating. She’d tried to change a test protocol to skew the experiment’s results—he had the proof right here—and when he’d confronted her, she’d thrown herself at him, offering sex. When that didn’t work, a physical fight ensued and before he knew it, he had a pencil in his gut. He was lucky to be alive.
Almost no one bought this story. Dr. Meyers had a reputation. But he was also important, and UCLA had no intention of losing someone of his stature. Elizabeth was out. Her master’s was complete. Her bruises would heal. Someone would write her a recommendation. Go.
That’s how she’d ended up at Hastings Research Institute. And now here she was, outside the Hastings lounge, her back pressed against a wall, sick to her stomach.
* * *
—
She looked up to find the lab tech peering at her. “You all right, Zott?” he asked. “You look kind of funny.”
She didn’t reply.
“My fault, Zott,” he admitted. “I shouldn’t have made such a big deal about the beakers. As for them,” he said, tipping his head toward lounge—it was clear he’d overheard the conversation—“they’re just being fellas. Ignore ’em.”
But she couldn’t ignore them. In fact, the very next day, her boss, Dr. Donatti—the one who’d called her a cunt—reassigned her to a new project. “It’ll be a lot easier,” he said. “More your intellectual speed.”
“Why, Dr. Donatti?” she asked. “Was there something wrong with my work?” She’d been the driving force behind her current group research project and as a result, they were close to publishing results. But Donatti pointed to the door. The next day, she was assigned to a low-level amino acid study.
The lab tech, noting her growing dissatisfaction, asked her why she wanted to be a scientist anyway.
“I don’t want to be a scientist,” she snapped. “I am a scientist!” And in her mind, she was not going to let some fat man at UCLA, or her boss, or a handful of small-minded colleagues keep her from achieving her goals. She’d faced tough things before. She would weather what came.
But weathering is called weathering for a reason: it erodes. As the months went by, her fortitude was tested again and again. The only thing that gave her any respite at all was the theater, and even that sometimes disappointed.
* * *
—
It was a Saturday night, about two weeks after the beaker incident. She’d bought a ticket to The Mikado, a supposedly funny operetta. Although she had long looked forward to it, as the story unfolded, she realized she didn’t find it funny at all. The lyrics were racist, the actors were white, and it was blatantly obvious that the female lead was going to be blamed for everyone else’s misdeeds. The whole thing reminded her of work. She decided to cut her losses and leave at intermission.
As luck would have it, Calvin Evans was also there that night, and had he been able to pay attention, he might have shared all Elizabeth’s opinions. But instead he was on a first date with a secretary from the Biology Division, and he was sick to his stomach. The former was a mistake: the secretary had asked him to the operetta only because she believed his fame meant he was rich, and he, reacting to her eye-watering perfume, had blinked several times, which she thought meant “I’d love to.”