by M. S. Parker
The place was huge, but I’d looked at every picture and layout I could get my hands on, so I knew exactly where I was going. I’d expected someone to be there waiting for me, but no one was, so I paced and tried to look like I knew what I was doing.
“Addison Kilar?”
I turned around to see the owner of the voice glowering at me. She was close to my height but carried some extra weight that her wardrobe hadn’t been adapted for. She was probably in her early thirties but was trying to look younger. Her light brown hair was teased into some strange hairdo, and her mouth was painted bright red.
I processed all of this in just a few seconds, then smiled and walked over to her. “That’s me.”
She didn’t smile back and gave such a cold look to my outstretched hand that I pulled it back in a hurry. “Well, I’m Ms. Kemyss, and you’re late.”
I frowned. “I thought I didn’t start until eight o’clock.”
She inhaled deeply, one of those deep sighs that mothers or teachers gave when they’re irritated but are trying to not explode. She pointed at the clock on the wall. “It’s five after.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. “I think your clock is fast.” I smiled to lighten what she clearly took as a reprimand because the disapproval on her face grew. “We don’t allow phones. You’ll need to leave yours with security, and you can collect it at the end of the day.”
That hadn’t been mentioned in the online code of conduct and expectations, but I wasn’t going to argue with her about it. She looked like the sort of woman who’d slap me if I dared question her.
“Oh, okay.” I looked around for the security person I needed to give my phone to, but no one else was nearby. “I was told I’d be working with Dr. Hunter. I’m sure he has something he needs me to do.”
A smile finally appeared, but it held no warmth. It was worse than the blank stare she’d been giving me. Damn. I thought people in the South were nice.
“I’ll be telling you what you need to do.” She eyed my clothes, a slow examination down to my shoes and back up to my hair. Her lips pressed together. “And I’ll get you the employee handbook to read over.”
This wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was my first day in a new place, and it was a place I really wanted to be…which meant this wasn’t the battle to fight.
I smiled, trying to warm her over to me. “Sure thing. Lead the way.”
Less than an hour passed before I realized that Pansy Kemyss wasn’t one of the doctors or scientists here. I didn’t know what her actual title was, but she basically recorded information for the scientists. After taking me on a tour and introducing me to all the scientists – well, almost all, since I had yet to see Dr. Hunter – she then sent me to drop off my phone at the security desk, then go around and ask if anyone wanted coffee.
I was one thesis away from achieving my doctorate in infectious diseases while also working on a thesis about a link between genetics and infection.
And I was getting coffee.
But I ground my teeth together and worked to impress everyone by getting everyone’s orders perfect without writing anything down. For all I knew, this was the sort of thing every new intern had to do, something to keep them humble. I could do that.
Besides, it was one day. Once I got my bearings I’d decide how to improve the situation.
“Hey, kid,” Pansy called from her desk.
I bit my lip and didn’t take the bait. Even if the activities were normal, my gut told me that the way Pansy was treating me was personal. I just didn’t understand why. I’d never had someone take such an instant disliking to me, and the scientist in me was curious about the cause.
“Run these down to Dr. Lodge, then start taking lunch orders.” She held out a stack of papers. “On Mondays, we usually order from the bodega down the street. If it’s raining, there are extra umbrellas in the break room.”
I took the papers and headed down to Dr. Lodge’s office. I’d take the opportunity to introduce myself by more than just my name. Pansy hadn’t told anyone that I was an intern working under Dr. Hunter, just that I was new.
Unfortunately, Dr. Lodge wasn’t in his office, and I didn’t want to waste time waiting for him. Lunch was a way to make a good impression, and breaking bread with someone was always good. Besides, I had time to show them all I could do.
My feet were hurting by the time I was done distributing everyone’s meals, but I still smiled and scurried off when Pansy sent me to get yet another coffee. If the super-saccharine, double foam mocha shit she sent me out for could even be rightly called coffee.
As I hurried back, I reminded myself that it was better for my career to be getting coffee for someone at the CDC than it was to be sitting at home in Minneapolis, staring at the screen of my laptop and wishing that I didn’t have insane writer’s block.
Maybe I could use the time I was doing inane tasks to do some mental preparation. I had a specific gene sequence that was giving me some trouble. If I could just figure out…
My thought process was interrupted as I ran into something solid. And then it was interrupted even more as hot coffee exploded all over me…and all over the person I’d run into.
I tipped my head back and looked up, up, at one of the tallest men I’d seen. And gorgeous. Golden blond hair. Bright blue eyes.
Shit.
Cai Hunter.
I’d just spilled coffee all over Dr. Cai Hunter.
Fuck my life.
“I am so sorry.” I grabbed tissues from the nearby desk and started trying to clean Dr. Hunter’s jacket. “I can’t believe I did that. I’ve been carrying coffee and food all day and haven’t spilled a drop.” I sighed, rubbing harder and muttering faster. “It’s not like I can even blame not knowing where I was. I’ve already walked this same path ten times today, and I have a perfect memory, so I know every detail along the route. It was stupid. I was trying to think through my thesis, and it distracted me, and I just ruined your jacket–”
“Were you burned?”
His voice jolted me out of my babbling. “What?”
“You look like you got the worst of it.” He gestured at me, his blue eyes filled with concern. “Did it burn you?”
I looked down.
“Shit on a shingle.” A laugh burst out of Dr. Hunter and color flooded my cheeks. I swiped at my shirt with already soaked tissues. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t do any good. “Sorry about cursing. It’s just my first day, and I thought it was going to be this great experience, and I’ve been getting coffee and running errands, and I can’t even get that right.”
I needed to stop talking, but my mouth wasn’t getting the message.
“At least Miss Kemyss likes it less than scalding. Otherwise, I’d be in pain right now instead of only wet and embarrassed, though maybe if I’d been burned, I’d feel less like an idiot.”
“It’s just coffee,” he said.
I looked at him, wondering if maybe this awful experience could have something good come out of it.
And then I saw what he had been holding when I’d thoughtlessly run into him.
A beaker.
Which was now empty.
“Shit on a shingle!” I said again. This time, however, all the color drained from my face. “Did I just start the zombie apocalypse? Coffee introduced into what had been a stable environment causing a mutation that could end the world as we know it?”
Would someone please shut me up?
“Or maybe it didn’t need to mutate. It could’ve been the kind of thing that was completely harmless when kept in an airtight container, but as soon as it was exposed to air, it became airborne and transmittable. I’m like that guy at the beginning of that book The Stand where he sees the virus is loose but runs like an idiot and ends up destroying the world when he should’ve been paying attention to what he was doing and maybe–”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” He reached out and touched my arm.
A jolt of electricity ran a
cross my nerves, and my mind went blissfully blank.
Five
Cai
I’d left my lab to take a walk and clear my head. Getting laid last night had helped me sleep, but it hadn’t done anything to help me focus on the problem I ran into this morning. That problem had been circling in my mind over and over, and all my walk had done was given me a rhythm to mull by.
Then I walked straight into someone who’d been paying as little attention as I’d been, and everything changed.
I stared at her as she talked, fascinated by the rapid-fire way she spoke, as if her thoughts were connecting on a level that her mouth couldn’t quite keep up with. I knew how that felt. I rarely tried to articulate my ideas because I always seemed to be skipping things and then having to go back and re-explain, and that never went well. People always ended up being confused. I couldn’t even really write them well. My brain worked great when it came to numbers and chemistry, but communication, not so much.
It was one of the reasons I didn’t often have conversations with women. Simple commands were easier.
Normally, people who talked a lot bothered me. It seemed a waste of time using so many words when just a few would suffice, but I didn’t get that impression from the pretty redhead. She was nervous, and the words were a result of that, as much a part of her unconscious response to stress as someone who tapped their toes or chewed their fingernails. The biggest difference was that her nervous tick revealed a lot about her, and I found it fascinated me.
Once she started rambling again, this time about zombies and ending the world, I was tempted to see how long she would go before she realized that no one else was panicking, but then I saw that she was truly distressed, and knew I couldn’t do that to her.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” I touched her arm, and her head jerked up, eyes meeting mine.
I’d never seen eyes quite that shade of pale green before, and something about them quieted the chaos in my mind. Or maybe it wasn’t her eyes as much as it was her. Whoever this young woman was, she managed to do what little else ever had.
She distracted me.
“I was cleaning some things in my lab,” I said, my hand still on her arm. “The beaker just had some soapy water in it.”
She gave me a strange look. “You were carrying a beaker of soapy water?”
I shrugged and gave her a half-smile. “I forgot I had it, honestly.”
She smiled, her cheeks flushing prettily. “I’m glad it wasn’t some sort of flesh-eating virus that was going to turn us all into brain-munching zombies.”
I laughed, wondering if it was me making her nervous enough to babble this time. I couldn’t say the thought was a bad one. “I’m Cai Hunter.”
She stared at me for a moment, like I’d said something strange. “I know who you are, Dr. Hunter. Anyone with an interest in infectious diseases or the cutting edge of science today knows who you are.”
She looked down at my hand on her arm, and it was my turn to flush. I’d been moving my thumb over her skin without even realizing it. I had a moment to register how soft it was before dropping my hand. I didn’t want her to get the wrong impression.
“You have me at a disadvantage,” I said, hoping the change of topic would distract her from my momentary lapse of judgment. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
“Addison Kilar.” She held out her hand, then dropped it before I had a chance to shake it.
“And you work here?”
“Sort of.”
She had an accent, I realized, and it wasn’t a Southern one. I couldn’t quite place it, but I’d heard it somewhere before.
“How does one ‘sort of’ work here?”
“I’m an intern,” she said. “It’s part of me finishing up my doctorate. Well, finishing up my thesis, more accurately. My advisor thought it’d look better if I was working here while writing rather than me not doing anything but still not able to finish the damn thing.” She looked away and fidgeted with one of her curls. “I’m sorry, Dr. Hunter. Sometimes my mouth just runs away with me. I’ll go get something to clean this up and then get another coffee for Miss Kemyss. You can give me a dry-cleaning bill, or I can pay for your shirt to be replaced. It was my fault for not watching where I was going.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “I wasn’t paying attention either. It’s as much my fault as yours.”
She shook her head. “It’s completely my fault. I was trying to work through some of my writer’s block.”
“You said you’re working on your thesis?” I drew her attention away from blaming herself. “What’s it about?”
“The link between genetics and infection.” She looked down at herself, and then at me again. “Um…I think I should find something I can use to clean this up.”
I shook my head, frowning. “You’re an intern, not a janitor. And at the CDC, that is what’s important. They have all sorts of guidelines they must follow and paperwork to fill out. In our labs, we have different procedures, but for public areas, we have to alert the janitorial staff and let them handle it.”
Her eyes widened. “For coffee?”
“To make sure the spill was indeed coffee and soapy water, and not something that would turn us all into zombies or wipe out the world.”
She looked as startled by my attempt to joke as I was.
“Okay. I’ll tell them what happened.”
“Have you eaten lunch yet?” The question burst out of my mouth, leaving me wondering if something had happened to my brain today to cause me to act so out of character with this stranger.
“No, I just got back from the lunch run.” An expression of horror crossed her face. “I’m so sorry! Miss Kemyss didn’t show me your office on my tour, and I completely spaced when I went around. I didn’t even think about your lunch–”
Something didn’t sound right. Why was an intern so close to finishing her doctoral thesis doing those sorts of errands? I needed to find out more information. Plus, it appeared she was working on something close to my own wheelhouse, and I wasn’t arrogant enough to believe that I couldn’t benefit from another person’s perspective.
“I was just thinking about getting lunch,” I said. “Would you join me? I’d like to discuss your thesis, and perhaps pick your brains about a problem I’m currently having.”
Now she looked like she was going to throw up. Maybe lunch hadn’t been a good suggestion after all.
Or maybe her stomach was twisting like mine, without explanation.
“That would…I mean…thank you, Dr. Hunter. I’ll have to go ask Miss Kemyss, but I would be honored to have lunch with you.”
“Pansy? Why do you need to ask her about lunch?” Pansy wouldn’t have a doctorate student as an intern if she’d had an intern at all.
Her expression was puzzled. “She’s my supervisor. I’ll let her know I’ll be going to lunch as soon as I…” she looked down and frowned, “do something with my shirt.”
I managed not to scowl. I didn’t want her to think I was mad at her. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Pansy, however, I was going to have a word with. “Pansy isn’t your supervisor. Interns at your level are assigned to specific doctors. You should have gotten a letter.”
“I did,” she admitted, chewing on her bottom lip. “It said I’d be working under you.”
I’d heard enough. “I’ll speak with Pansy and let her know that I’ll be taking over your supervision from here on out. Do you have another shirt to change into?”
Addison shook her head. “I didn’t think to bring one.”
“That’s always a good idea,” I said. “Because if it’s not coffee, it could be a contamination issue where all of your clothes have to be destroyed.”
She stared at me. “Does that happen often?”
I thought for a moment. “Three times since I started working here, but all precautionary.” I pulled my shirt away from my skin, only now just realizing how uncomfortable I was. “We keep a few extra items of clothing
in the storage room down the hall and to the left, second door on the right. We just ask that anyone who has to take anything washes it and returns it; or replaces it with something new.”
She nodded.
“I’m going to change as well, and then I’ll meet you at the front doors in fifteen minutes. Will that be enough time for you?” She didn’t appear to be one of those women who took forever to get ready but looks could be deceiving.
“Yes, that’s plenty of time.” She smiled, looking relieved. “Thank you, Dr. Hunter.”
“Cai,” I said, returning her smile. “There are some people here who love to hear the word doctor before their name, but I prefer Cai.”
“I prefer Addison.” The color that had faded from her cheeks rushed back. “For me, I mean. I prefer Addison to Miss Kilar.”
“Now that we have that squared away, what do you say we take care of this mess and get some lunch?” I glanced toward the part of the corridor that would take me to Pansy’s office. “I’ll have Pansy call the janitors after I’ve cleared up this misunderstanding regarding your supervision.”
As Addison hurried off, I sighed. Pansy and I had gone to college together, and I’d tutored her on and off while she’d worked on her master’s degree in organic chemistry. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been accepted into the doctorate program, but that hadn’t stopped her from wanting to do some good in the world. She applied for a position at the CDC right after I was hired, and even though most of her job was compiling and recording data, it was important work.
Which was why I didn’t understand her current behavior. If Addison had been an undergrad or hired as an assistant, running errands would have fallen in her purview, but an intern with Addison’s qualifications should be working in a lab. I supposed it was possible that Addison hadn’t felt comfortable telling Pansy that she’d been assigned to me, but Pansy knew how things worked. She should have asked immediately if Addison knew who she was working under.
