6. She got a point

I walked to the main office area. People were either staring at their laptop screen and quickly typing, or having their earphones on them, attending meetings. Eva was one of them. Unlike Liam and me, she was senior enough to have meetings every day.

Then finally I saw Daniel. He was sitting just in front of Eva, running a coding software on his laptop. I carefully moved next to him.

The weight from my mother’s call still sat in my chest. But at this point I was trying my best to hold it.

Daniel didn’t look up immediately, but he'd already felt my existence. He was quickly coding, eyes fixed on the screen.

“Give me a second,” he said, his tone clipped but not unfriendly.

I stood awkwardly, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, until he finally moved his eyes away from his laptop and turned toward me.

"Sit." He said, grabbing a chair for me, emotionlessly. 

He gently moved his laptop closer to me, making sure I could see his screen. It's a lab report entry created under my name, with yesterday's date on it. The one I sent to him. Every time after we finished an experiment, we should make a lab report entry online. It's not urgent to finish it all and sign it immediately, but-it's a task.

Daniel leaned back in his chair, watching me carefully. “I just rejected it. Two of the reagents had wrong expiry dates. And here," He scrolled down, "I would like to see your calculations when you spiked the plasma, with the donor ID, and the haemotocrit recorded as well. These couldn't be missing."

I swallowed.

“You’re doing good work, Maggie, but precision matters. Every one makes mistakes. I do as well. But recording it will help you. As you might as already notice, there was day to day variation in our results, the records will help us to keep track. It’s not just the experiment—how you present the data reflects on you.”

I nodded, feeling the words settle uncomfortably in my stomach. I’d already heard enough of those sentiments from someone else today.

“I’ll fix it. Sorry.”

Daniel didn’t say anything for a moment. His gaze lingered like he was about to ask if I was okay.

But he didn’t.

Instead, his focus moved back to his screen for a few seconds, then back to me.

“I know it’s just your first month, but performance reviews would come around October. I always got quite good feedback from Eva about your experiment handling skills, so it would be a shame to have bad reviews on these lab reports if these keep happening."

A shame.

I managed a quiet “I understand”, careful not to let my hands shake.

After lunch, I found Olivia near the centrifuge, transferring samples with the kind of confidence I wished I had.

She flashed a quick smile when I approached. “Hey, Maggie! Everything good?”

“Yeah,” I said, returning the smile. “Need me to run the samples on the chip (the measurement system name, called chip)?”

“Nah, I need to run these on my plates first,” she said lightly, eyes flicking toward the screen. “If we got any lucky, we would do that on chip. But not now.”

I nodded, even though something felt off.

But Olivia always did things like that—little gestures wrapped in politeness, but with an edge I couldn’t quite grasp.

“I’ll let you know when there’s something to prep,” she added, cheerful as ever. “You’ll pick it up in no time.”

It sounded encouraging.

But I knew she wasn’t going to ask.

The following afternoon, Olivia and I stood over the experiment setup.

“We should increase the incubation time to 6 minutes,” she said, adjusting the labels on the tubes. “It’ll improve the assay sensitivity.”

I frowned slightly, tilting my head as I examined the protocol. “But won’t that increase the background? And seems like after 5 minutes it's already saturated.”

Olivia’s smile didn’t fade, but her gaze sharpened just slightly. “I’ve done this before. Trust me.”

I hesitated, feeling the weight of Daniel’s earlier critique pressing on me. Maybe she was right. But the numbers didn’t sit right in my head.

Still, I held my ground.

“I get your point, Liv, but I ran a few clinical samples yesterday on chip, and my predictions suggest it was already oversaturated and the background went up,” I glanced at her carefully. “I think we should keep the timing for now temperarily.”

Her smile faltered for half a second before she caught herself.

“I’ve been running this experiment for two years,” she said, her voice light but firm. “You’re still learning the ropes.”

Before I could respond, Daniel’s voice broke the tension.

“What’s the issue?”

I turned to him. I had no idea how long he was standing there, and how much he listened.

I glanced at Olivia, expecting her to explain.

She did.

“Maggie thinks the incubation period should stay at 5 minutes. I suggested increasing it to improve the results.”

I braced myself for the inevitable. Daniel had just finished criticizing me—he would just try to persuade me to follow Olivia's order. I tried not to look at him straight in eyes. He might be thinking "The girl who didn't do lab reports properly is trying to tell a more senior person how to do something. How ridiculous!"

But after a brief pause, Daniel shifted his attention to me.

“I think Maggie has a point.”

I blinked, doubting my ears.

Olivia’s smile stayed in place, but something flickered behind her eyes—a split-second flicker of disbelief.

Daniel remained still, emotionlessly.

“Increasing the incubation time works in some cases,” he said, addressing Olivia now, “but Maggie’s right about the background. For now let's do more digging on the formulation itself.”

He spoke casually, as if this wasn’t a big deal at all.

But to me, it was.

When Olivia left the main lab to take a break, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

Daniel lingered by the bench, watching me carefully.

“Good call,” he said, no sarcasm in his voice.

“Thanks,” I replied, trying to keep my tone neutral.

Daniel gave a small nod before turning to leave.

Just before he stepped out, he glanced over his shoulder.

“And Maggie… don’t second-guess yourself so much.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but the words stuck somewhere in my throat.

By the time I found them, he was gone.

"Hey Maggie," Olivia came back almost in no time, "Nice catch today. I hope we could work together more.”

She smiled warmly, sounded sincere.

But somehow, I was not sure.