‘Even the ones who subsequently pour it over your head?’
‘Just joking,’ said Gavin quickly. ‘But I meant it; you do look nice.’
Any reply was rendered nigh impossible as a wall of amplified sound came between them. The first band of the night had begun their set. ‘Shall we dance?’ asked Caroline.
‘I don’t.’
She dragged him to his feet. ‘You do now.’
Four
‘It’s come!’ A week had passed when Gavin burst into Frank Simmons’ office holding a small, plastic vial in one hand and reading excitedly from a covering letter in the other. ‘“Five grams Valdevan... for research purposes only... not for therapeutic use. Please sign and return agreement.” They’ve given it to me. Brilliant!’
‘Good show,’ said Simmons, who had been in the middle of a telephone conversation, but Gavin’s enthusiasm had overcome his annoyance. ‘The sooner you get started the better then.’
Mary and Tom exchanged smiles as Gavin, whistling loudly and tunelessly, started moving around the lab at a hundred miles an hour.
‘He’s like a ferret on speed,’ whispered Tom.
‘I think I preferred him when he was thinking,’ replied Mary.
‘Mary, what’s the best way to sterilise a solution of Valdevan?’ Gavin called across the lab.
‘Is it soluble in water?’
Gavin scanned through the specification sheet that accompanied the letter, tracing each line with his fingertip. ‘Yup, it says so.’
‘Then use a Millipore syringe filter. You’ll find one in the top drawer of the island bench. Be careful not to touch the business end with your fingers.’
‘I’m not a complete idiot.’
‘Sorry... I forgot... I think you may even have mentioned that...’
‘Light blue touch paper and retire immediately,’ whispered Tom under his breath, but Gavin was too busy to come back at Mary. He weighed out a little of the drug and dissolved it in distilled water before sucking up the solution into the barrel of a 10 ml syringe and expressing the solution through the filter membrane into a small, sterile bottle. ‘There we go...’ He returned to his desk in the corner of the lab, not so much to sit at it as sprawl over it, supporting his head with one hand while he made some calculations on a spiral-bound pad with the other, his fingers curled awkwardly round the pen. He occasionally broke off to use the end of the pen to punch numbers into a calculator as he worked out how much of the drug to add to the cell cultures. His plan — discussed and previously agreed with Frank Simmons — was to use several different concentrations of the drug in cultures: one of them would contain the manufacturer’s recommended dose, the others higher or lower levels.
He rechecked his figures before circling the calculated amounts and bringing out a number of flat glass bottles from the incubator. These were the cell cultures to be used for the experiment. They contained lab-stock tumour cells maintained at human body temperature. The bottles had been mounted on a piece of apparatus which had been timed to tilt them at regular intervals, ensuring that the cells which had stuck to the glass as they grew would be evenly bathed in nutrients and encouraged to form a continuous monolayer.
He placed each of the bottles in turn on the stage of an inverted microscope. The unusual configuration of this instrument ensured that it was possible to examine the cells from below, rather than above as with a conventional microscope. In this way, it was possible to focus on them without having to penetrate the culture fluid as well as the glass.
Mary and Tom noticed that the whistling had stopped. Gavin was sitting quite motionless, his eyes glued to the binocular eyepiece in what now seemed to be an eerie silence as his fingers gently moved the fine-focus control to and fro.
Eventually he sat up and started rubbing his forehead in a nervous gesture.
‘Problems?’ asked Mary.
‘There’s something wrong...’
Mary stopped what she was doing and went over to take Gavin’s place at the microscope. She smoothed back a wayward strand of her hair and examined all three cultures in turn. ‘They’re contaminated,’ she said. ‘Definite signs of bacterial contamination.’
‘But how?’
‘It’s the easiest thing in the world for bacteria to get into cell cultures when you’re setting them up. Your technique has to be really good, and even then some bug is still going to find its way into them on occasion. Who prepared these ones?’
‘I did.’
‘You did?’ repeated Mary slowly. ‘Why? We have a cell culture lab with trained staff. Why didn’t you ask the technicians to do it?’
‘I wanted to do it myself...’
Mary bit her lip. She was trying to think of something kind to say. ‘That’s fine if you wanted the experience... but did you ask for advice? Did you ask the technicians to show you how to do it properly?’
Gavin said not. ‘I read up on it. It seemed straightforward enough...’
‘You can learn to swim from a book, Gavin. Trouble is, you’ll drown when you hit the water because you’ve no idea what it feels like. There’s a big gulf between theory and practice in everything.’
‘Shit. Where do I go from here?’
‘I suggest you help yourself to a slice of humble pie and go ask the technicians for advice.’
Gavin turned and left the lab. Mary shrugged her shoulders and asked Tom, ‘Do you think I was too hard on him?’
‘Far from it. He seems determined to do everything on his own. One-man bands are all very well — and you have to admire the ingenuity that goes into them — but at the end of the day... they still sound shit.’
Mary picked up the phone and called the cell culture lab. ‘Trish? It’s Mary. Gavin Donnelly’s coming down to see you — he’s probably on his way as we speak. He screwed up his cell cultures and needs some help. Don’t be too hard on him.’
‘We offered to set them up for him in the first place but he insisted on doing it himself, as if he didn’t trust us.’
‘Well, that’s ridiculous,’ soothed Mary. ‘You guys are the best. It’s just the way Gavin is. He’s such a loner...’
‘Tosser more like...’ murmured Tom.
‘Okay, Mary. We won’t tell him to go screw himself... this time.’
But Gavin was not on his way to the cell culture suite. He had left the building and was making his way across the Meadows, the large green area to the south of the medical school, which separated the southern fringes of the Old Town from the respectable sandstone Victorian villas and tenements of the Marchmont and Bruntsfield areas. He had to bow his head against a bitter wind and thrust his hands deep in the pockets of his jeans to stop his fingers going numb. He had no real idea of where he was going. He just had to get out of the building. He had made a fool of himself and it was eating away at him, making his face burn with anger and embarrassment. Humble pie definitely wasn’t on the menu for today, but alcohol certainly was.
‘You’re late and you’re drunk,’ said Caroline when Gavin joined her in Doctors at ten past eight.
Gavin took one look at her face and mumbled, ‘Give me a break, not you as well...’
Caroline continued to stare at him, her silence demanding an explanation.
‘Look, I’ve just had a shit-awful day, right?’
‘And I can see how you’re dealing with it,’ said Caroline with a look of utter distaste.
‘Jesus,’ murmured Gavin, avoiding her gaze by looking down at the table.
Caroline gave him a few moments to elaborate, but when nothing was forthcoming she said in carefully measured tones, ‘Well, I’ve had a shit-awful day too.’
Gavin saw that her hands were shaking slightly. He interpreted this at first as anger, but when he looked at her he saw that there was something more. She looked hopelessly vulnerable.