The Lab Tech — A Short Story

On her way to work, Celine had been cut off once again. She was tired of the traffic. During the pandemic, traffic was non-existent. Most people got to work from home, which meant she got to cut at least ten minutes off her drive and zone out while she drove to work. She regularly went 10–15 miles per hour over the speed limit because no one was there to slow her down. The cops evidently had better things to do with their time than stop speeders during non-rush hour. Well, now the rush was back along with the extra ten minutes of commuting time plus at least ten miles below the speed limit to crawling. It had been a nice reprieve but alas it did not last.

She was back in the lab to finalize plans for a new product. They were introducing the first new pain medication to the market in at least ten years. During clinical trials, the new drug, which still didn’t have a name, showed it was non-addictive. Anyone who had been paying at least a little bit of attention in the last few years knew that opioids were the bane of modern medicine. They were addictive and the best option for serious, chronic pain. So many people had become addicted and many had died. Families were ruined as opioids swept across the nation causing more harm than good. Celine was excited to be part of a team to bring a new, non-addictive medicine to help people with chronic pain lead fulfilling lives.

While she set up the morning’s lab work, she couldn’t help but drift back to thinking about the traffic issues. Why couldn’t people just take a breath and deal? We would…