“If you want to go in, you’ll have to gown and glove and put on a hood. She’s being very careful about contamination. As far as her progress is concerned, I haven’t the faintest idea. When we arrived this morning, she went directly in there after changing into her scrubs. My sense is that she’s doing just fine. If not, I’m sure she would have been back in here to complain. Thanks to Jack, she’s got a terrific lab to work in, with all the latest equipment.”

James rapped loudly on the gowning-room glass door in hopes of attracting Sana’s attention. He could tell it was immediately successful, because she suddenly stopped moving and lifted her head as if listening. James rapped on the glass again and caught her attention by waving. She waved back. Then James waved for her to come back into the outer office, which she immediately did.

“Good morning, James,” Sana said as she poked her hooded head into the office. “Or is it afternoon already?”

“It’s afternoon,” James said. “And would you mind joining us for a few moments? I have a proposition to share with you people.”

Sana hesitated, realizing she’d have to change her scrubs if she passed beyond the gowning room. Recognizing that was hardly much of an inconvenience, she stepped beyond the door she was holding ajar and let it close behind her.

“What kind of proposition?” Shawn asked warily.

“Yes, what do you have in mind?” Sana questioned, while pulling off her hood.

“First, let me ask how you are doing in there?” James questioned. “I see Shawn is making headway, if not at the speed he’d prefer.”

“I’m doing extremely well,” Sana said. “The lab is truly twenty-first-century and conveniently designed to maximize productivity. I’m already going to be at the extraction phase this afternoon with the centrifuges. Right now my pulp sample is in the solvents with the detergent to break open the cells and the proteinases to denature the proteins. At this rate, I could be at the polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, stage as early as tomorrow.”

“No need to fill me in on the details,” James said. “It’s all Greek to me!”

Everyone laughed, even James. “Second of all, I’d like to thank you for such a wonderful evening last night, and say that the food was out of this world.”

“Thank you, Father,” Sana said, blushing to a degree.

“I wish I could say the same about the company,” James added, with a chuckle to indicate he was trying to be humorous. “I’m joking, of course, but I was disappointed to learn that my wish for the Blessed Virgin to be left out of this affair is not going to happen. At least not at this time. Am I right in this assumption, Shawn?”