“Thanks, and please send any relevant recent documents.”
“Certainly.”
It was clear Erica didn’t especially want Sheila to be on her board of directors, but why?
* * *
They brought some Italian takeout back to Sheila’s condo. Tony had, as usual, stayed at work until after seven. She would have stayed longer, but when she heard about Roy, she wanted and needed to be there for Sheila.
“I suppose I ought not to be surprised,” Sheila said, sadly. “He used to be a terrible smoker. He stopped years ago, but I don’t think that helps in the long term. He loves scotch and rare steaks, too. His blood pressure was astronomical, and he probably wasn’t consistently taking his meds. He was a stroke or heart attack waiting to happen.”
She was devouring a cannoli as she talked. Tony figured she was stress-eating, because it was unusual for her to be voracious. Such behavior made her smile, but she decided not to mention it to Sheila. Even the perpetually chill Buddhist had her limits and her right to not be perfect.
“You can run the company while he’s getting better.”
“Well, yeah, the senior partners and I can carry on. I hope they don’t veer off in any odd directions without talking to me. I don’t think they will.”
“But you are going to take his place on the board of GHS?”
“Yep. I don’t think Erica wants me there but too bad.”
“Why wouldn’t she? That’s nuts.”
“I don’t know, but I’ll probably find out in due time.”
Tony walked around to Sheila’s side of the table and hugged and kissed her.
“I need you,” Sheila whispered.
“I know. I’m here,” Tony replied, hoping she was up to the challenge.
* * *
“Tony, I would like you to meet Tan.” Sanjay indicated the young guy standing next to him with a deer-in-headlights stare.
“Hi, Tan. Nice to meet you.”
Tony had her hands full with ordering supplies and trying without success to coax consistent results out of the commercial analyzers. Without explaining why, Sanjay had ordered her to get them up to speed for testing diluted samples. But Tony grimly congratulated herself on being right. They going to use commercial analyzers until Leonardo was ready. If it was ever ready. Tony tamped down her thoughts on the implications of that.
“Get Tan oriented,” Sanjay said and, without another word, left the lab.
Tony showed Tan around and asked him a few questions, but he was not extremely forthcoming. She judged he wasn’t confident of his English skills. She’d worked around this before. All she cared about was if his lab skills were up to par. She left him to read some of the protocols she’d written up. Sanjay had asked her to to write them because that was how you worked in a clinical lab. People had to have the recipes to follow. She was still modifying her protocols for the Advia analyzer. She didn’t know what was going to happen with Leonardo. It was back with the engineering group, and she wasn’t in the loop to know what or how they were doing.
Shit. This place is a train wreck. And Tony wondered again why she was enduring this monstrous amount of uncertainty and lack of real information from management. The answer, of course, because of Erica’s vision. She thought of the greater good, the big picture, the mountain they were all going to scale. She silently recited these clichés in hopes their message would keep her steady.
Tony decided to visit Ricardo down at the loading dock. He was always at least good for a laugh of the black-humored variety, and a lot of the GHS staff visited with him because he was a fount of gossip, rumor, and, often, hard information. Tony had lost her disdain for gossip and hearsay because it was becoming clear that any misstep, the wrong question to the wrong person, could result in being fired. She decided she needn’t blindly believe everything Ric said, but she ought not to dismiss him either.
The loading dock was a safe space for employees. Huey didn’t like to go there because he might get a smudge on his stupid, out-of-fashion, designer jeans. He tended to stalk the offices and lab areas, trying to see who was there and who might be slacking off. On the loading dock, there was only one security camera. It faced the driveway and was, unlike all the other security cameras, actually dedicated to protecting GHS from outside threats instead of spying on the employees.
“Hey, Ricardo. How are you?” They bumped fists a la Michelle and Barak Obama.
“Oh, Tony, you have no idea.” He rolled his eyes. “But I’m hanging in there.”
She sat down in his guest chair. “Do you know anything about Sanjay Vishnu? Like what’s the deal with him?”
“He’s Erica’s new golden boy, and he’s tight with Huey. That’s all I know.”
“He’s the weirdest, most hands-off lab director I’ve ever worked for. Is anything else going on?”
Ricardo spun his chair three hundred sixty degrees and touched his finger pads thoughtfully but didn’t answer.
“So, here’s the million-dollar question, Ric. I was in product development for a couple months, then I got thrown into clinical, and Sanjay doesn’t say anything to me, but he hired a new guy, Tan, and we’re stocking up with everything. What’s going on?”
“It’s Graff. You’re going to do patient testing.”
“With Leonardo?” Tony was flummoxed. Exactly one test was functional, and it was barely working. It hadn’t even been properly QC’d according to the clinical lab protocols Tony was versed in. And the old Leonardo was supposedly being replaced with an updated version that who knew how long it would take to arrive
Tony put all the various stands together and ended up saying what was in her head to Ricardo, though she probably shouldn’t have. But he nodded sagely as she spoke.
“They are manufacturing Leonardos to put into the Graff stores, but they’re not ready to go. First, they’ll ship the patient samples back here to us for the tests. But we have only a few that can be run on Leonardo, and even then, they haven’t been thoroughly QC’d. How are they going to do all those different tests?” Tony stopped talking, and it hit her.
“We’re going to run them on the Advia. That’s not really kosher. It’s not been QC’d either, and the manufacturer’s specs are for much larger volumes of blood. We’re not supposed to use them except according to the manufacturer’s specs. Except Gordon said they’ve solved that problem by diluting the samples. But…” She looked at Ricardo, and he was clearly following what she said. He nodded.
“Senorita, I think you understand. We’re doing it GHS style.” He spun around in his chair again and added, “You think it’s nuts, I know, but it’s all about what her majesty wants, her majesty gets, full stop.” He meant Erica.
“Do you think Graff knows what the story is?” Tony asked.
“Oh, I think they’ve been told a story for sure.”
Tony was quiet for a moment and then asked Ricardo, “What makes you think this is what’s going to happen? With Graff, I mean?”
“Well, two things. I’ve been receiving a buttload of shipments of what I know are parts for Leonardo. And the enginerds are always down here the second there’s a delivery. They won’t say, but I think they’re ramping up production. And I’m pretty sure it’s for the Graff’s deal. Todd, the product-liaison dude, let that slip the other day. They’re going to put Leonardos into a bunch of drugstores around the Bay Area.”
“To do what?”
“What else, dude? Run tests on site.”
“But they don’t work,” Tony said, astonished.
“Since when has that ever been an issue?” Ricardo asked, acidly. “I think there’s a deal that the stores are going to ship the patient samples over here, and then you guys will test them and send results back via Wi-Fi.”
“How do you know that?” Tony was astonished at Ricardo’s statement.
“Simple. Huey told me in his usual gentle, sweet manner: ‘Get a contract with DHL, and make sure they know we’ll get twenty percent discount, and don�
��t tell them it’s for human samples because they’ll want more paperwork.’” Ricardo imitated Huey’s brusque, accented growl.
“So, we’re going to test using the Advias?” Tony said more to herself than to Ricardo.
“Yep. Oh, and I know what else you ought to know. Watch out. I heard from Ari in Security that Huey comes by his office every morning and demands the previous day’s proxy-card-reader data.”
“What for?”
“He can tell who’s badging in and out and when.”
“Oh.” Tony absorbed this tidbit.
“What else do you know about Huey?” Tony asked Ricardo.
“I’m glad you asked. This is a good one. I was having a couple beers with Warren from HR the other day. You know, Heather’s lackey? I don’t think he’s going to be around much longer though.” Ricardo chuckled. “He’s too irreverent. ‘Not a team player’ is how he says Heather sees him. But she won’t fire anyone unless she’s told to. And she always plays along with management. Some HR person she is—”
“Ric, what else about Huey?”
He leaned close, their knees almost touching. “He reads Glassdoor every week to see if anyone’s posted a bad review of Global. Then he starts snooping around to try to figure out who it was.”
GlassDoor was an online employee forum where people could post anonymously. Tony read it occasionally, and after Ricardo’s statement, she resolved to start visiting the site more often.
“But get this. Warren says Heather made him write a glowing review of GHS to counter the bad reviews, and Huey made her make him do it.”
“Wow.”
Ricardo leaned back, flipping a pencil back and forth and smirking at her.
“You got to watch your back around here. I’m telling you.”
“Thanks for the info, Ric. You’re a good guy.” Tony meant that, and she tossed him a fond look.
He blushed. “Tony girl, you say the sweetest things.” He was using what he obviously considered a “queeny” voice. But Tony wasn’t going to reprove him, this time. She would be back to see Ricardo for more information. Not gossip. She remembered what Sheila had said about information and how key it was. And she wondered how much of this she ought to tell Sheila.
* * *
“We’re lucky we’re both morning people,” Tony told Sheila.
“Yes. If you weren’t a morning person, that would be a deal breaker for me. I knew you were a good catch when you first told me you took Caltrain in the City to make it to work by seven. Holy shit, I thought. This one’s a keeper.” She kissed Tony for emphasis.
Tony’s work hours were such that she could just manage to eat dinner and fall into bed when she came home. Or she took Caltrain back to the City, and they had only a brief phone conversation.
The mornings of the nights that Tony spent with Sheila were their time to catch up on each of their lives. Sheila took a shower and went to meditate while Tony showered. Then they got dressed, all their preparations for their day happening in a seamless flow of efficiency.
They were making breakfast together: oatmeal, yogurt, and fruit. After some grumbling, Tony had adopted Sheila’s eating habits, and she had to admit she felt better than if she’d eaten a doughnut, or bacon and eggs.
Tony was admiring Sheila’s put-together look: pinstripe, gray tailored suit, and mint-green fitted shirt. She was off to the GHS board meeting later, and Tony was still wondering how much of the discussion she’d had with Ricardo, the supply-chain manager, she ought to reveal to her. This wasn’t a case of confidentiality or proprietary technology. Tony wouldn’t be violating her NDA, although, from what she’d gathered, anything to do with GHS about anything going on in the company and stated by anyone to anyone else could potentially send Erica into paranoid orbit.
Sheila would be sitting around in a conference room with her that very day, but Sheila was trustworthy and swore she wouldn’t reveal anything Tony told her, and Tony believed her. She had spent her time in the shower obsessing about what Ricardo’s information really meant. It was, she realized, too heavy to carry by herself, and she needed to discuss it with Sheila and get her opinion.
She told Sheila everything Ricardo had spilled.
“Hmph.” Sheila snorted. “It’s Mickey Mouse. It’s bullshit. All except the part about putting the devices in drugstores. Yet sending the samples back to you to test if they don’t work. That’s significant. Roy told me the timeline was six months out. It seems she’s pressing forward. I hope Erica plans to talk about that today.”
“But don’t you think their whole management approach is a bit wacko?”
“Honestly, for all you employees, I think it sucks, but it’s not unusual, honey. These start-ups are under a lot of pressure to succeed—pressure that can make people lose their perspective and become paranoid. And don’t lose your mind about the Graff project until you know more. Ricardo might not have the correct information. I wouldn’t worry. I just want you to be careful and keep your head down. I don’t want you to get fired.”
Sheila gave her a hug and a tender kiss. Tony was mollified and mostly reassured. The devices-in-the-drugstores scenario still bugged her though, if it was indeed true. What she knew about the Leonardos made her throat constrict when she thought about them being used for testing patients. But she had always been a worrywart anyhow. That trait was appropriate for a lab scientist: the least little thing could make your testing results go south, and you had to keep vigilant.
* * *
Sheila swiveled her chair and looked out the big picture window of Global HemoSolutions’ conference room. The distant hills, green from the recent rain, looked peaceful.
Erica was late to the meeting. Still playing the one-up-woman-ship power card, Sheila noted, sourly amused at her consistency. None of the other attendees said a word about it or even appeared to notice. They were busy chatting about golf, the stock market, and Valley gossip. When Sheila had introduced herself to them, they were cordial. To a man, they were remarkably alike—all from the Valley tech culture or from government, over sixty years old, and almost certainly Republican. It was probably the Stanford connection. That was an odd thing too. Erica had spent exactly two years at Stanford. She hadn’t even acquired a degree, but she’d filed five patents that she touted in her prospectus. How did that work? Sheila had only the most superficial idea of the ins and outs of patents.
Erica arrived at last, and as soon as she was settled, Valley veteran and board chair John Derrault called the meeting to order.
“Any questions or concerns on minutes of last meeting?” He paused for the shortest of moments and then said, “In that case, let’s—”
“I have a question,” Sheila said.
Derrault looked pained but said, amiably enough, “Go ahead.”
“Last quarter’s minutes say, ‘Erica to provide copies of legally vetted agreements with retail partners.’ Are we to receive those today? Have other members received them by email? I check Roy’s email every day but haven’t seen anything. Please catch me up.” Sheila formed her expression to indicate innocent curiosity and pitched her voice the same.
She heard no response but one or two throat-clearings and the movement of squeaky conference-room chairs. Derrault looked at Erica and asked, “Any update on that?”
Erica was studiedly neutral. “The lawyers are still reviewing them.”
“When may we expect them?” Sheila asked, in the same mild tone. She recalled that’s what Roy had told her, three months ago. Lawyers were slow, but not that slow.
“Oh, who knows? Lawyers,” Erica said cavalierly. This remark elicited a few chuckles around the room.
“Let’s go on,” Derrault said. “You have some news for us, Erica?”
She beamed and made eye contact with everyone around the table. “Fortune has contacted me to do a profile. The reporter is coming in two weeks. Business Insider wants to write an article on me and being a woman in Silicon Valley and still succeeding.”
&nb
sp; There were murmurs of congratulations and approval around the room.
“You’re going to be the toast of Silicon Valley. You are already,” one of the gentlemen said.
Erica smiled in transparently fake modesty.
“Do you have new projections to share?” The publicity item was over. It wasn’t even on the agenda, Sheila noted.
“I do,” Erica said, proudly, and passed out some charts.
Sheila looked at her copy since she hadn’t seen anything other than what Erica had provided the year before when they signed their agreement, nor did she know about any budget information. She’d found nothing in Roy’s files and hadn’t had an opportunity to check with him, so she decided to ask Erica.
“Could you send me some previous projections and a couple months’ worth of budgets, along with the partnership agreements? I would really appreciate it. Roy isn’t able to brief me at the moment.”
“I’ll take a look,” Erica said. “But like I told you, the agreements are still being vetted.”
“A draft copy is okay. It’s just for my reference. I know it’s not official or final,” Sheila said, sweetly.
“Fine.” Erica wasn’t cordial anymore. What was up with that? Did Erica not have assistants to do these menial tasks like email documents?
The next two items were disposed of, and the talk returned to what Sheila considered superfluous fluff: the publicity Erica was receiving. She would be recognized for innovation and being a female entrepreneur at an awards dinner the following month.
After the meeting ended, Erica left as abruptly as she’d arrived, and Sheila had concluded the best thing to do was to embark upon a bit of schmoozing with Gary, her dad’s old crony, and see what he might reveal.
“Hey. Do you want to grab lunch, and I can let you know how Roy’s doing?” Sheila asked him.
They went over to Tanner’s, a place Sheila knew Gary liked as much as Roy did. It didn’t offer much Sheila could eat outside of salad and bread, but it would have to do. She wanted Gary to be comfortable and in a good mood.
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