Maybe I'll be an author, or a columnist, or go to grad school for English and become a famous editor, I thought. If I'm going to stab myself with glassware tipped with poisonous substances, I probably shouldn't be working near any infectious diseases. So much for medical school."Yes? What happened?" she said breathlessly, she had been skidding around the lab trying to attend to every student's broken glassware and screwed up reactions.
"I stabbed myself with a capillary." I said, bewildered.
"Was there palladium on it?"
"Yeeaaah."
She deftly grabbed my wrist and began guiding me toward the door. "It'll be okay, no worries, this happens." I felt like crying as we passed a couple of lab stations. Black, cold counter tops and hot sand baths in metal bowls. Students rushing around with too-big goggles on their faces and pipettes in their hands. Palladium's flammable, I thought, so really, this is no big deal right? My blood stream and water-logged tissues won't catch fire, right?
"Wait, maybe not, this might be better." She whipped me around, her smaller, squatter body pulling on mine as we headed toward the nearest sink. "Okay, this may hurt, but I need to squeeze out some blood to get rid of the palladium."
"Alright," I said, a little dazed. She turned on the water, stuck my hand under the stream, and rubbed her thumb across the fresh hole in my skin. I felt the pressure and stared at the ugly corner of the sink. Those lab sinks are so... hardened looking... I wonder what those pipes have seen... Who knows what students have dumped in there.
"Does it hurt?"
"No."
The rest of the lab seemed to pass by at an extremely prolonged rate. My mouth was dry, and my stomach felt bloated from hunger, or from the lavash with peanut butter and apricot jam I had for lunch, I don't know. I felt like the black minute hand was taking a coffee break every ten seconds. Jerk.
About three quarters of the way through, Olivia enlightened me with the fact that I had thrown out the hexane solution that I was supposed to be using for the next portion of the experiment. I thought I had screwed up and done to the hexane solution what I was supposed to do to the aqueous solution. It turned out I had it right the entire time. I had thrown out the solution I needed. Oh well, I thought as she reminded me of her lecture to never throw anything out until the end, it's not like my reaction ran anyway. It exploded partially in its little lovely test tube near the beginning of the experiment and gave up after that. My thermometer was skewed, so my sand bath overheated, causing the palladium mixture to rebel against its tiny enclosed environment.
Later, I squeezed the pipette bulb between my shaky fingers a little too soon. I missed the large test tube I was aiming for and spewed the ether solution (the last hope I had at making the experiment work) across my lab bench. A lump formed in my throat as I watched the large droplets quickly evaporate into the toxic air of the lab room. The pungent, noxiously fruity scent of ether flowed through my nostrils and I felt a little light-headed.
Ether is what the surgeons used during the civil war to put the soon-to-be-amputees out before cutting of their arm or leg, right? Maybe I'll inhale enough to pass out. I imagined the professor feeling so sorry for me and my collection of screw-ups that he'd let me do the lab again. No. Chance. And hence, not worth it.
My hands still stink of ether. It's probably embedded in my epidermis. I can totally foresee my skin smelling like this for about a week.
I made it out, though! Only to check my phone and discover that I didn't get into the chemistry of cooking decal after all. Of course, I had a spot, but it didn't work out.
"Hi Sarah,
Here's what happened. Since the person who dropped dropped after 2/4, I could only get your code to you by 2/5.
And because 2/4 is the deadline to add the class for free, telebears rejected your code.
If you don't mind paying the $5 late registration fee, our scheduler says that you should talk to your student services advisor and bring the CEC with you. They should be able to add you. (Deadline for that is 2/18) If you don't want to do that, you are of course welcome to audit the class.
Sorry for the delay,
Sami "
No problem, Sami. This way, I don't really have to do any of the experiments. I can just audit and do the work and attend the class for my own enjoyment. No. Problemo. Give me the carrot that I've been chasing on my pathetic little treadmill, then once I put the sweet vegetable between my teeth, take it way.
Whatever. I'm sad, but that's life. I guess I'll audit. That's how Berkeley works, how any crammed, under-funded university would work. It's similar to my other ugly circumstance. I still don't know whether or not I've been accepted for that research position, but I probably didn't get it. At least this class isn't even my fault, I mean to say, it was completely out of my hands. I can't help the fact that I haven't taken Chem 3b yet, and that that's how the facilitators chose the original seats. I should still work with my group though. I wouldn't want to leave them anyway. I like them, they're cool people. We make blueberry and chocolate chip pancakes, speak in dorky accents, burn the pancakes, and eat whatever adequate product we come up with. That's it. I should have just eaten the 26 mg (the scale was off, there definitely wasn't that much) of product I came up with in lab today. Source of error: human consumption. Ha, I wonder what my GSI would say to that. At least the Psych department would get a new subject to study.
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