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Chapter Twenty-Two: Jade

I was back at work.

And I loved it.

The lab at BioHQ was alive with the hum of machinery and the subtle clink of glassware as I made my way to my station. The crisp edges of my lab coat felt like a familiar embrace after all my time away, wrapped in the chaos Dante had ushered into my life.

“Looks who’s back,” Ellie quipped from across the bench, her ponytail bobbing as she piped a violet substance into a petri dish. “The prodigal scientist returns.”

I’d arrived early, and we had greeted each other, but we had been surrounded by people. We hadn’t really had time to talk. The door to our lab was open and I was sure our colleagues could overhear us, so it made sense that Ellie was holding back.

But I still felt bad that she couldn’t say what she actually meant.

I couldn’t help but crack a smile. “And here I thought you’d barely notice I was gone.”

“Please, Jade,” Ellie said, rolling her eyes while her hands continued their methodical dance. “The place has been a disaster without your obsessive color-coding system.”

“Obsessive? It’s called efficient,” I shot back, slipping on a pair of gloves. “But I appreciate you holding down the fort.” I could feel the weight of my absence hanging between us—unspoken but heavy.

“Always,” she replied, and there was something reassuring about the steadfastness in her voice. Ellie was my rock in this fluid world of variables and hypotheses.

“Thanks for giving me space,” I said, a little more quietly this time. “After…you know, everything with Dante.” My heart thudded just saying his name, even if it was only in passing.

“Of course,” Ellie responded, her gaze softening as she looked up from her work. “You needed time to sort through...whatever that is. But I’m glad you’re back, Jade. This place isn’t the same without you.”

“Nor is the research,” I said, feeling grounded once more amidst beakers and data sheets. Ellie and I were a team, our bond forged in countless hours of shared discoveries and setbacks. “Let’s get back to it, shall we?”

“Let’s,” Ellie agreed with a nod, her ponytail bobbing in solidarity.

I moved toward my workstation, the familiar hum of machines and the sterile scent of the lab wrapping around me like a comforting embrace. This was where I belonged, among pipettes and petri dishes, the thrill of possibility always at our fingertips.

“Hey, Jade?” Ellie called out, pausing her work for a moment.

“Yeah?” I glanced up, meeting her brown eyes, which held a glint of something like mischief.

“Remember that time we stayed up all night analyzing the gene expression profiles? You were so caffeinated you started explaining statistical significance to the janitor.”

I laughed, the sound echoing slightly in the spacious lab of BioHQ. “How could I forget? He seemed genuinely interested...or maybe he was just too polite to walk away.”

“Probably the latter.” Ellie chuckled, shaking her head. “But that’s what I love about working with you. No matter how intense it gets, you find a way to make it fun.”

“Likewise.” My heart swelled with affection for my friend. “We’ve had some crazy times in this lab, haven’t we?”

“Definitely,” she agreed, her smile infectious. “And there’s more to come. Let’s make some breakthroughs today, okay?”

“Absolutely.” I nodded, my determination reigniting. We settled into the rhythm of a workday, and I knew we still needed to talk, but for now, this felt good.

It felt right and familiar all at once.

The hum of centrifuges blended with the low murmur of data analysis software running in the background. I snapped on a fresh pair of gloves and joined Ellie at the cell culture hood. “Ready to see if our axonal projections have embraced the tripling model?” I asked.

“More than ready,” Ellie replied, her fingers deftly preparing the slides. “If we’ve managed to replicate the triple helix without compromising the integrity of the neurite outgrowth, we’ll be on the brink of a breakthrough.”

“Imagine the implications for regenerative medicine,” I mused, peering into the microscope. The delicate dance of genetic modification always left me in awe. “Repairing spinal cord injuries, reversing neural degeneration...”

“Exactly,” she said, eyes intent on the screen displaying our latest gene sequencing results. “But it’s this damn vector integration efficiency that’s been giving us grief. If we can’t stabilize it...”

“Then we’ll keep pushing until we do,” I asserted. “We’re not the type to back down from a challenge.”

Ellie glanced at me, a smirk playing at her lips. “Remember when Dr. Kline said we were too ambitious trying to tackle the axonal tripling? Said it was like reaching for the stars.”

“I’m glad Dr. White replaced him,” I said.

“Yeah, same. Jade, we’ve gone through more iterations of this project than I’ve had hot dinners,” Ellie said, flipping through pages of dense data. “But here we are, still tweaking, still testing...”

“Because that’s what it takes,” I finished for her. “And one of these days, we’re going to nail it. All those nights poring over genomic databases and protein folding simulations will pay off.”

“Until then, it’s back to the drawing board.”

But we didn’t talk about anything other than the work, and while there was a lot to discuss, we obviously had to sort…what had happened between us out. I felt terrible that I’d just left in the middle of the night when she had offered to help me, and she had been the one to warn me about Dante from the beginning.

“Ellie,” I began, my voice slicing through the chill, “I’m sorry. Can we talk–”

She paused, her fingers hovering mid-air before they resumed their dance across the keys. “No, Jade. Just...preoccupied, I guess.”

“Because if it’s about when I left—“

“Let’s not,” she cut in, her gaze fixed on the monitor. A frown creased her forehead, as impenetrable as the data she scrutinized.

I bit back a sigh, turning to recalibrate the spectrometer. The precision required for the task usually soothed me, but today it was just another source of frustration. Despite the layers of protective gear separating us, I could feel the distance between Ellie and me more acutely than ever. It was like trying to bridge a gap with a frayed thread.

“Hey,” I tried again after a stretch of strained quiet, “how about coffee later? My treat.” I forced a casualness into my tone I didn’t quite feel.

Ellie glanced up, the surprise evident in the slight raise of her eyebrows. “Coffee?”

“Yeah,” I persisted, pushing past the tightness in my chest. “There’s a new place that opened up by the lab—heard their espresso is top-notch. We could use a break, don’t you think?”

She hesitated, weighing my words, then offered a nod that held more resignation than warmth. “Sure, Jade. Coffee sounds good.”

“Great.” The relief was genuine, even if the smile I mustered felt brittle. “It’s a date.”

A few hours later, we wrapped up our tasks with mechanical efficiency, the energy in the room shifting from tense to tentative. As we shed our lab coats, the weight of unspoken apologies hung heavy in the air.

Exiting BioHQ, the blast of winter chilled my skin, but the prospect of mending fences with Ellie warmed something within me. I tucked my hands into my coat pockets, turned my face against the biting wind, and led the way towards the promise of caffeine and conversation.

The clink of porcelain mugs on the wooden tabletop punctuated the silence that had settled between us. The steam from our coffees curled up, disappearing into the crisp air of the cozy cafe.

“Ellie,” I began, my voice a little more than a murmur as I wrapped my fingers around the warmth of my cup. “I’m sorry. For everything. For not being there when you needed me.” My words tumbled out, rushed and sincere.

She bit her lip, a gesture I knew meant she was wrestling with her thoughts. Finally, she looked up from her own coffee, her brown eyes clouded. “Jade, I... I’ve felt lost. You ghosting me, it hurt more than I expected.”

My heart sank. The distance between us had been my doing, fear and uncertainty driving me to pull away from one of the few anchors I had in this storm of life. Ellie’s friendship was a lifeline, and I had nearly severed it with my silence.

“Ellie, I never meant to...” I started, but she lifted a hand, stopping me mid-apology.

“Look, I know that things were complicated. But you could have talked to me. Like how you talked to me at the clinic.”

“I didn’t want to put you in a position like that again.”

“So you ran?” she asked. “You didn’t even tell me that you were going to run.”

“Well, yeah…”

She picked her head up to look at me, and for the first time, I noticed that there were tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Jade. Truly.”

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for.”

Ellie’s eyes were brimming with tears, spilling over and tracing silent paths down her cheeks. “Yes, there is,” she said. “Jade, there’s something I need to tell you. And I’m going to ask you to sit here and wait for me to finish what I need to say before you react. Just…give me five minutes, okay?”

I nodded, the throat at the pit of my stomach tightening. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, okay.”