I’m sick of the smell of yeast, like bread and unfiltered beer. Phenol, too–sharp, acrid, and burning. 

When I have been in the lab for a while, I don’t notice it as much, but if I leave to go to the bathroom and return, it hits me again.

I imagine that in fifty years, long after this is over, I’ll step into a bakery, on a whim or on vacation, and the smell of freshly-baked bread will immediately induce an anxiety attack.

I’ve been having a lot of them lately, since my father died. I’ll open up my binder of experiment protocols and suddenly—bam!—my heart clenches, my hands go weak, and I have to sit down just to catch my breath.

I heard that’s what heart attacks feel like, too, and I suppose that makes sense. That’s basically how my mother described it when my father had his. “He put his hand on his chest and fell to the ground. Just like that.”

Thankfully, the attacks have only happened when I’m alone, after dark, in the early night of these Michigan winters. Long after my lab mates have hung up their coats and left to spend time with their families, sleep, and whatever else my colleagues with lives outside of the lab do. 

Aside from the attacks, I like working late like this. It’s easier to focus. I’m not distracted by the birds in the tree outside the window or the students chatting in the courtyard below. There is only the lab. Its fluorescent lights, the dark resin workbench surfaces, and the mechanical churn of the centrifuge. 

I need this peaceful time to focus on my postdoctoral research proposal. It’s due in only a few months and I have one more experiment to finish in order to complete it. When I told this to the lab’s Principal Investigator recently, he laughed at me. 

“Only one more experiment? What’s the big deal, then? That’s the beauty of yeast. It only takes a few days to run an experiment end-to-end. Go home and get some rest. You have plenty of time.”

He doesn’t understand what I’m dealing with, though, and I’m not sure I could explain it to him even if I tried. See, I’ve done this experiment before. A few times, even. It’s documented with careful handwriting in my binder, with precise measurements and detailed instructions for each step. The results, too, are entered on a spreadsheet and align beautifully from one experiment round to the next. I’m using the same strain of yeast, the same pipette tips, the same solvents. 

Everything has been tested, everything has been documented. I only need microscopic images. It should be simple, really. I’m good with the microscope. Everyone says so. But, and I wouldn’t say this to anyone, it’s like lately the cells won’t behave. It sounds silly, I know, but everything can go right every step of the way, yet as soon as the stage light kicks on and the microscope is humming, the cells roll onto their sides. Every single one. The chromosomes and telomeres, all that action I need for a proper photograph is hidden.

I’m a biologist, not a physicist for goodness’ sake! The observer effect should not be a concern in our field. Yet sure enough it keeps happening, like the cells are rebelling against me, and it happened tonight for the seventh time. I nearly shoved the microscope–one that costs more than my education–right onto the floor.

Sulking, I start the next culture in the incubator and leave the lab. Without those images, my proposal is sure to be a dud. Everyone will know immediately that I’m a phony. Passing by my father’s lab, his unsmiling photo on a plaque beside the door, I feel even worse. My father, the renowned Dr. Cao, was already running a successful lab when he was two years my junior. I’m sure he never struggled with his postdoctoral application.

If he were to see me now, he would be so disappointed, and I’m reminded of it a few days later when my mother shows up with lunch. She sits with me the whole time, making sure I finish every bite of fish and grain of rice. “You are so skinny!” She tells me. “You need a girlfriend to make sure you eat.” 

She told me she left food for my father. Today was the day of the Hungry Ghost Festival, and though there would be no festival of the sort in Ann Arbor, she had arranged an elaborate offering of fruits, rice, and dumplings on my father’s old, as-yet unoccupied, desk. I make a note to retrieve the food in a few days before it starts to sour. 

“Eat the eye. It will help you see better.” She says, pointing at the head of the boiled carp which I have otherwise picked clean. I don’t respond, but I won’t eat it. I never do.

After a while, she scoffs. “Your father would have eaten it. He always did. If you want to be successful like him, you need to eat the eye.”

She tells me goodbye and leaves without saying she loves me. She rarely does, and my father never did.

My eighth experiment will be ready for imaging today. This afternoon, the samples will finish DNA extraction. This evening, I’ll plate them and hope for better luck.

I wait impatiently for the end of the work day, when everyone will finally leave. Tonight, there will be a party to celebrate the summer assistants before their return to school. My lab mates buzz with anticipation for free drinks and mingling, distracting me more than usual from my work. 

Near the end of the day our lab’s summer assistant, Kristin, who helped me on many occasions with tedious pipetting, loading the incubator, and cleaning the workbenches, approaches me. She’s the last one left, having stayed behind to check the locks on the deep freezer and refill the ethanol bottles. “Kevin,” she says, “are you coming to the party tonight?”

I’m surprised. Surely she knows I don’t go to these kinds of things! But I suppose she hasn’t known me for long, only one summer. 

“No, sorry, I need to finish this experiment for my proposal. I hope you have fun. I appreciated your help this summer.” As I say this, my forehead begins to feel clammy and I get that all too familiar clenching in my chest. 

“Are you okay?” She asks.

“Yes,” I squeak out while waving her away, “I’m just getting over a stomach illness.”

After she leaves, I watch the party assemble through the window at my workbench while I wait for the attack to run its course, but almost immediately after it finishes, another begins. By now, my head is spinning and I begin to think I might be ill after all. Was it the carp? I wonder. My mother had a habit of cooking with expired ingredients.

I power through, using my rolling chair to scoot around the lab and prepare my sample. I take the extra time to ensure the solution is just right, and when I drop the slide cover onto the sample, the liquid spreads evenly beneath the thin glass square, without bubbles or leakage. Finally, I have a slide. The perfect slide, maybe.

It’s sure to work this time! I think. Despite the pit in my stomach and the ache in my heart, the night feels serendipitous.

Holding the slide like one might hold a precious gemstone, I scoot into the darkroom where the electron microscope awaits. I load the slide onto the stage and wait for it to power on. When it does, I settle my face into the eyepiece.

Upon seeing the result, I nearly fall out of my chair. Focusing, I can make out thin strands of telomeres and the dancing dots of chromosomes within the bulging cells. It finally worked!

Yet, just as I ready the computer to take a photo, the power flashes and dies out. I try to turn on the light but it’s to no avail. Leaving the room, I find that only the darkroom is impacted. Just my luck. The PCR machine is still running and the glass vials of cultured yeast still vibrate beneath the glowing incubator lamp. I need to find someone in Facilities to reset the breaker, and in a hurry. 

Passing my father’s lab, I catch the sound of rustling paper and utensils scraping on dishes. Thinking it’s the janitor who might be able to help with the breaker, and embarrassed to have them cleaning the mess of food left by my mother’s offering, I step in. 

“Sorry, you don’t have to do that…” I say, before noticing the lab is empty. Again, my heart clenches.

Time is of the essence, so I leave without trying to find the source of the noise and run down the stairwell into the courtyard where the party is being held. By now, it has been going on for a while and the conversation is loud and loose. I thread through the crowd until I find Bob, my Principal Investigator. 

“Kevin!” he says when he sees me, “you decided to come! Are you all right?” 

Without waiting for my reply, he wraps his arm around my thin shoulders. “Kevin is our prodigy,” he says to a woman I have never met, “this one’ll be published in Nature someday.”

I wriggle out of his grip. “Sorry, but there’s an issue in the lab. The power is out in the darkroom and I have a slide prepared.” It must be drying up as I speak. “Do you know of someone who can help? Or where the breaker might be?” 

Bob stares at me with wrinkled brows, then speaks softly. “Kevin, it’s okay. Have a few drinks with us. It’s a beautiful night. You work too much.” In the meantime, the woman leaves and returns with a fresh beer, which she holds out to me. Bob takes it and places it in my hand.

“But I need those images for my proposal.” I say, feeling embarrassed and justified at the same time.

He laughs, but kindly. “Kevin, your proposal could be half as good as it is now and still get you into any lab in the country. The pictures are only fluff. You’re too much like your dad, and I don’t think he would want that for you. Stay a while. Spend some time with Kristin–you’re her hero. Also, have you ever met my wife?” He gestures to the woman beside him, who smiles at me warmly.

Maybe it’s the exhaustion from the multiple attacks, or that strange serendipitous feeling, but this time I give in. For the first time in years I relax a little. I enjoy a few beers. I talk to Kristin about her future and give her advice on doctoral programs. I enjoy the warmth of the summer night air. For a little while, I forget about misbehaving cells and my parents’ expectations, and I learn a little about letting something be good enough.

The next morning, fighting a mild headache, I go about my rounds. I pull the desiccated slide from the microscope stage, the plastic tubes from the PCR machine, and, passing by my workbench, I realize I had forgotten the scraps of food from the lunch my mother brought me yesterday. I pick up the container, which by now reeks of stale fish. 

As I carry it to the trash the Styrofoam lid pops open, and, from the center of its head, I notice the carp’s eye has been eaten.