Vance pulled his head down into the room and, seeing Pia, climbed down, smiling, rubbing his hands on a rag. “Ah, Miss Grazdani! How are you today? I missed you yesterday when I left.”

“I noticed you took a four-hour lunch. You should have told me you’d be away so long. I could have been working here in my office. Anyway, yesterday you thought you’d be finished. What’s up? How long is this going to take?”

“The job is turning out to be more difficult than I had thought. All I can really say is that I’m trying my best. As soon as I figure out what the hell is wrong, I’ll knock it right out and be outa here.”

Pia merely sighed irritably and lifted her bag.

“Miss Pia, I’ve got a surprise for you. I made an extra sandwich today for lunch, one for me and one for you. How about joining me for a bite? I make a wicked pastrami sandwich on a ciabatta roll. What do you say?”

He was smiling again. Jesus, men were so predictable. Pia glowered: Was this guy suffering from delusions? She wasn’t staying to find out nor did she want to encourage the man.

“Just hurry the hell up with the job. Please!” she snapped. As far as the sandwich offer was concerned, she didn’t even want to acknowledge it.

Pia turned and stepped back into the main lab. She put her bag on the bench area where she’d worked the previous day. But instead of jumping right in, she walked back to Marsha’s desk to find out where their leader was that morning. To her surprise, she learned that Rothman was in his office and waiting for her. Pleased, Pia hurried in through the open door. Immediately she noticed he was dealing with the same maintenance inconvenience Overhead, a number of ceiling tiles were missing and spaghetti-like wires dangled from the holes. An assortment of tools dotted one of the countertops and a few were scattered on the floor. In the corner was a stepladder leaning against the wall and the security camera was missing from its mounting.

“Good morning, Dr. Rothman,” Pia chirped. She never knew what to expect mood-wise but hoped for the best. “Marsha said you were expecting me.”

“Miss Grazdani. How do you spell ‘catheter’?” Rothman demanded, not even bothering to look up from the sheet of paper he was holding. She could tell it was part of the Lancet manuscript she’d worked on.

“C-A-T-H-E-T-E-R. Why?”

“Well, it seems you know how to spell it, so I’m wondering why you felt the need to make up an alternative version for my paper?”

Pia had worked on Rothman’s article, making several suggestions for changes in structure and rewriting one whole section she found particularly opaque. Late last night she had been in a hurry to finish, and she hadn’t run a spell check.

“One wonders what they taught you at NYU, if anything. There were several spelling errors and two grammatical ones.”