Gary was old-school, just like her dad, and Sheila was glad he ordered a martini. She wanted him to talk unrestrainedly, and he mostly did, since he was a talker anyhow. She had only to provide gentle prodding, and his natural gabbiness along with a couple martinis did the rest.
Gary’s bald head became a little pink as his second martini kicked in. Sheila caught him up on Roy’s health and prospects and then gently brought the subject around to GHS.
“Do you like being on the GHS board?”
“Oh, hell, yeah. It’s like the biggest thing in Silicon Valley right now. You heard all those magazines want to profile Erica. She’s a rock star. And the company’s valuation—it’s five billion.”
“She seems to be. Do you know how far along she is with the whatchamacallit—the blood-test machine?” Sheila was sipping, very slowly, a glass of white wine. She was determined to stay sober and not risk missing anything.
“Oh, she talks about how many companies are interested in it. She’s going to start manufacturing. She’s already renovating a factory space in Fremont. The demand for this is going to be through the roof. You know she’s hired this big-shot ad agency in San Francisco. When they’re ready to go, they’ll do a full publicity campaign and website roll-out. This is going to be huge, Sheila. Huge.”
“That sounds fantastic. Do you want another?” Sheila pointed at Gary’s empty glass.
“Hey, why not? I don’t have any meetings this afternoon.” He winked.
“Erica can be a little short on the details of what she’s doing that’s not related to public relations, don’t you think?” Sheila asked, mildly.
“Oh, I don’t know. I think she has it under control. She’s brought on a COO to take care of all that. Some Indian guy. You know, Sheila, we have to give her at least as much leeway as we’d give any man. We ought not to second-guess her. I’d think you’d understand that.” Gary was another recent convert to feminism.
“I don’t think anyone wants to treat her like she’s some dumb woman. I didn’t see that,” Sheila said, and it was true. It was rather the extreme opposite.
“No. We try to be respectful. Early on, before Roy came aboard, there was this guy—I think he was another VC—and he was real aggressive with her. She got Derrault to can him.”
“Aggressive how?” Sheila asked
“Oh, you know. He’d grill her. ‘What about this, what about that?’ He tried to trip her up. He’d go ‘last meeting, you said this or that, and now it’s changed?’”
“Uh-huh. He was booted?”
“And I was able to bring Roy in. That’s good, right?”
“Right. Well, here’s to all the money we’re going to make.” Sheila raised her glass.
Gary grinned, “You got that right, sweetie.” Maybe not feminist quite yet. Sheila let it pass. She wasn’t happy that the board of directors appeared to have completely abdicated their oversight functions. Erica had free rein to do whatever she wanted. Sheila was concerned about where that might lead, but, one, she could do nothing about it, and two, she didn’t know of any bad consequences. Yet.
* * *
“Do you know who the COO is?” Sheila asked Tony later.
“Well, yeah. Of course. Huey.”
“What’s he like?”
Tony didn’t answer right away. “He’s kind of a jerk. Most of the employees don’t like him. I told you about all that security junk. That’s him.”
“Yeah, right. You did. Do you think he’s competent? I got the impression Erica has let go of hands-on management.”
“I’m not sure.”
Sheila decided to change the subject. “It was the most superficial board meeting I’ve ever been in. I need to ask my dad if this is normal for them. It’s almost like they’re a bunch of doting grandpas with their precocious granddaughter. I was the only one who asked a question, and I’m not sure I’m going to get an answer. Erica sloughed me off with some story about lawyers have to review this or that.”
“Did they talk about anything to do with the company and what we’re going to be doing with Graff?”
“Nada. Just the next-year income projections, and I still want to know more about them. Tony, honey, they’ll tell you what you’ll be doing when they tell you. Everything’s always going to be last-minute. And you’ll handle it, whatever comes.”
Tony said no more. Sheila was right. She wasn’t sure exactly what she ought to say anyhow. Talking with Ricardo had activated her foreboding, her manager Sanjay was in a cone of silence, and she couldn’t even ask Gordon’s replacement any questions about the progress of the Leonardo upgrades. She received monstrous amounts of lab supplies, as though they were going to be doing a lot of testing, and she dutifully signed for them, trained Tan, and organized the lab. Certain clinical lab supplies needed careful inventories. They couldn’t use expired items, which would invalidate their assays.
About two weeks after her last talk with Ricardo, Sanjay walked into the lab with a man Tony didn’t recognize. He introduced him as James, and then the two of them walked around the lab together discussing what, Tony didn’t know. She was suspicious though, sensing there might be some sort of big change, and she was going to have to roll with it, like Sheila said. Well, she was getting used to the changes, which were frequent. She wondered if James might be another engineer and have something to do with Leonardo that they were supposedly going to test patient samples on, but Sanjay hadn’t said anything yet.
Later in the day, Sanjay told Tony and Tan to move the stuff from the three back benches in the lab. It wasn’t as though they needed the space, with only two of them working, and that didn’t concern Tony. But what would take up the space?
She received her answer the following day. James, along with another fellow, entered the lab with no less than eighteen Leonardos on lab carts. They carefully placed them stacked two at a time on the bench, with a stand-alone centrifuge between each pair and connected to both.
It was quite a sight, and Tony first thought she was going to have to stand on a step stool in order to insert samples into the upper Leonardo. That wasn’t ideal.
Finally, Sanjay sat Tony and Tan down and described what they were going to do.
Chapter Eleven
Sheila sat next to Roy in his hospital room. She was reluctant to dive into a detailed discussion about any business-related subjects because he was supposed to be resting and recovering. That was the theory, but in practice, he wanted to know what was happening at Pacific Partners with their various clients.
“How are things at GHS? Did you like the first board meeting you went to?” Roy’s speech was close to intelligible, and he was seemingly in good spirits.
“Like” wouldn’t be the word Sheila would use. Erica’s lack of transparency disturbed her, as did the way the other board members seemed content to let her slide and cheerled as she embarked on what appeared to be a full-blown publicity campaign. On the surface, it was supposed to be about publicizing GHS, but essentially it was about Erica. All the while, Erica endeavored not to disclose any details to her own board of directors on what GHS was truly doing. And then there was what she gleaned from Tony’s stories about her lab.
Sheila wasn’t sure it was a good time to start quizzing Roy more closely about what he understood from his several months on the GHS board.
“Things are good. Erica is quite the PR whiz. She has a knack for attracting attention. Positive attention. We had a good meeting, though I’d like to know a bit more detail about these partnerships she’s pursuing.”
“She’s all over that type of stuff,” Roy said, cheerfully. “She meets with a CEO of some company, and the next thing we know, she’s signing a contract with him and collecting another few million.”
“It’s all good. Hey, are you interested in anyone else besides GHS? Because I’ve got some news. Eric from Wolf Hunt says he’s about ready to launch his IPO in a couple months.”
“Whoa. Finally. That’s good. He’s confident it’ll
go?” Sheila was happy to see her dad switch gears easily from talking about GHS to discussing someone else.
* * *
“How’s Roy doing?” Tony asked as they wheeled their shopping cart around Whole Foods.
Sheila turned from the apple display she was examining and looked at Tony. “He’s doing well. I’m surprised at how cooperative he’s been about letting go of his involvement in the business temporarily.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Tony had a myriad of concerns racing through her brain as they wandered through the high-end grocery store on Saturday. She’d been working so much, she and Sheila had scarcely had time to talk, even when she did stay over. Sex was much easier and more relaxing, anyhow, than discussing work.
The shopping trip gave them an opportunity to talk, but she had no idea which subject she wanted to tackle first.
“How’s the lab?” Sheila asked. She had moved to looking at kale. “Red or green?” She held up a bunch of each, both looking insanely healthy if not exactly tasty to Tony, but she was learning to cope with the change in her diet.
“Either is fine. The lab’s okay. We have to validate three tests for Leonardo before they send them to Graff’s stores.”
“Yippee. That’s good, right? What’s validate mean?” Sheila was peering into Tony’s face with an inquisitive grin.
Tony gripped the handle of the cart far too tightly. The subject of the lab was anxiety-provoking, and she was still trying to work out what she should say to Sheila about it and what not to say. She was always weighing what was confidential and what was not.
“We have to run a whole bunch of tests to compare results with the Advia to make sure Leonardo works and spits out accurate results.” Tony had been writing up all the protocols and had turned them over to Sanjay for approval.
“Sanjay told us we have to move as fast as possible. It’s too boring to describe in detail, but I am going to be putting in some insane days.”
“You can stay here however much you want to,” Sheila said.
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“You know I like having you. It’s no sweat.”
Tony knew she ought to be eager to move forward with their relationship, but she wasn’t, and that triggered her nerves. She was hobbled by reluctance. If she gave up her San Francisco apartment, that would be final. She’d likely never be able to move back to the City because of the horrendous real-estate environment. Sheila’s joke that she lived in the world’s most expensive mailbox rankled her, even though she knew there was some truth to it She still had issues with the disparity in their incomes and how that was all supposed to work, but she hadn’t brought up the subject because she was embarrassed to talk about it.
Finally, there was the lack of stability at GHS. Tony had no real fear of being fired, but an on-going general climate of uncertainty hung over the entire company in spite of the pep talks Erica and Huey routinely gave the entire staff. Tony would come away optimistic and energized, then crash hard the next day when presented with some abrupt change of direction or a fresh load of hearsay from Ricardo. She knew she ought not to talk to him all the time, but she couldn’t stay away. He always turned out to be right. She managed to confirm things with other people and had concluded that, in order to survive, she had to pay attention to what people at work whispered about. And Tony wondered if she should disclose yet another thing to Sheila—Erica and Huey’s relationship.
Ricardo had confirmed it. They lived together and came to work together, although they arrived separately in the morning. They always went out to lunch, and they always had their heads together. Tony didn’t think the board knew about them, because Sheila would surely have said something. Maybe. Maybe she wasn’t talking about GHS like Tony didn’t talk about GHS as openly as she could. This made Tony uneasy as well, but she didn’t have any solution.
They concluded their shopping trip and returned to Sheila’s condo. Tony helped her put everything away, and they made lunch together—vegan tacos.
As casually as she could, Tony said, “I heard that Erica and Huey are an item.”
Sheila’s eyebrows flared. “Is that right?”
“Yep. It seems clear.” In reality, it wasn’t, but Ricardo was as confident as always that he was correct.
Sheila shrugged. “Well, that’s tacky and icky. Not to mention questionable corporate behavior, but it’s not illegal.”
“Yeah. It’s kind of disgusting. He’s like twenty years older and is such a jerk.” Tony munched her taco for a moment and asked, “Wouldn’t the board of directors see that as, well, inappropriate?”
“Some of them might, but they wouldn’t say anything. Wimps.” Sheila laughed shortly.
“Can we go to the movies tonight?” Tony asked.
“Absolutely. Whatever you want to see, honey.” Sheila beamed at her fondly, which made Tony feel guiltier than ever. Sheila was never short or irritable. She was sweet and accommodating, as well as sexy and affectionate. She was like this dream girlfriend, and Tony couldn’t make up her damn mind to move in with her. Sheila didn’t nag Tony about anything or make any passive-aggressive comments about anything, except for the mailbox crack. Tony felt like she didn’t deserve her, and that was her last and most shameful reason for avoiding the subject of their living together.
* * *
Tony had learned the hard way to never question the enginerds’ design decisions unless she had specific reasons to back up her misgivings. As soon as she saw the Rube Goldberg-like setup of the multiple connected Leonardos with one atop the other and the forest of cables connecting them and their peripheral centrifuges, she knew there’d be trouble. She ran a few preliminary tests to check, and sure enough, the top Leonardo yielded funky results. Heat rises, and heat, more than anything else, will muck up a chemical reaction.
She explained her results to Sanjay and James, and they were both hugely irritated, probably for different reasons. James reluctantly separated the paired Leonardos, and they were back to running one test apiece on them. It was a good thing the patient samples would come in by courier, and she and Tan had only to run the tests simultaneously on several devices to produce the required results. After, naturally, they had performed thousands of tests to be able to show everything worked. Tony was crossing her fingers this would be the case, but in reality, she was far from certain. At least they didn’t have to make all the assays valid for all Leonardos, which would be logical, but Tony had a feeling that would never work.
The Leonardos had never been beta-tested. Each of them had to be good for just one test. Even though, to Tony, this seemed questionable, to say the least, she understood it might be necessary for the moment. She was willing to go along with the program, so to speak. They must have good reasons for doing it this way, but Sanjay hadn’t, as per usual, given her any reasons. He hadn’t even known enough about lab operations to tell the engineers to not stack Leonardos.
The central philosophy of the validation process was to make sure they could get the same result in the same way every time for each substance of interest they tested for across a range of quantities. They were supposed to test one hundred samples with predetermined quantities of the analytes of interest on several different Leonardos and on the commercial blood handler and compare them. The analytes that Sanjay and Huey chose were Vitamin D, gonorrhea, and potassium since these were among the most common tests that physicians requested. Tan and Tony had to recruit dozens of people to give blood to run their tests. They had to rope in their families and friends, including Sheila.
“Oh, baby, it’s so sexy when you do this,” Sheila teased while Tony pricked her finger and squeezed out two drops of blood.
“You say that now. Wait until you’ve had to do this a couple dozen times.” Tony transferred the blood to microcaps and then to a cooler until she could take them to work in the morning. “Tell me this is sexy when your finger’s so sore, you can’t touch anything.”
“You were able t
o use your fingers well enough the first time we made love,” Sheila reminded her. “And I could tell they were covered with pricks.”
“Yes, but I was highly motivated.”
As Tony exited Sheila’s car in the GHS parking lot and gave her a kiss, Sheila asked, “Shall I pick you up and we can go out to dinner?”
“I’d love to, but I don’t know when I’ll be done.”
Huey was breathing down Sanjay’s neck, and he in turn was hovering nervously in the lab while Tan and Tony toiled at their benches. Validation was the most labor-intensive lab project she had to do. And there was a deadline, Tony was certain, though Sanjay hadn’t disclosed it.
Tony laboriously concluded one hundred runs for a test of Vitamin D at fifty milligrams per deciliter and then grabbed all the results to perform a coefficient of variation calculation. She’d set the target number at three percent, which was acceptable by clinical lab standards. This meant that the Leonardo could consistently return the same number with the same conditions every time, with only slight statistically acceptable differences.
This particular Leonardo had to render consistent results time after time in its measurement of blood spiked with a normal range of the vitamin D analyte. As she watched the results come out from the program that did the calculations for her, she realized this Leonardo wasn’t going to pass validation for Vitamin D. The sample results had too much variation.
“Tan? What have you got?” Tony asked her coworker. He was doing exactly the same thing, except his target analyte was potassium. She knew, although Sanjay hadn’t explained anything to them, that doctors requested potassium-level tests quite commonly, as potassium was a key health indicator. She and Tan were saving the gonorrhea tests for last, since that test had only a yes/no answer rather than a number, and it was easier to validate.
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