My name is Mike Peters. I'm a biochemistry grad student at UCLA. I work in the lab of Dr. Jane Talbot. Dr. Talbot is a tenured professor at UCLA and an amazing researcher. She personally has at least seven drug patents to her name. We'd been working on a synthetic hormone called estrogen-g. Estrogen-g mimicked the effects of normal estrogen in the human body, so it showed great promise as a drug both for regulating ovulation and reducing the effects of menopause.
We'd already run a full suite of animal experiments. All that remained to test it on humans. There was nothing to indicate that there was any danger in giving estrogen-g to a human patient, but as with any drug we wouldn't know for sure until we actually tried it.
Unfortunately, setting up a human trial for a new drug is expensive and time-consuming. But the clock was ticking; our grant was about to run out. We were under a lot of pressure from the department to demonstrate a positive result as soon as possible, and that's why Dr. Talbot decided to test estrogen-g on herself. Assuming that everything went as expected, that would give us something new to write up, and allow us to wrangle an extension on the grant, so we could do proper human studies.
We decided we'd start the test on a Friday afternoon. That way if Jane did suffer any adverse side effects, she'd have the whole weekend to sleep them off. I originally thought we'd administer the drug in our lab at the university, but Jane convinced me to come to her home in the Valley instead.
"I'm probably just being paranoid," she said. "But if we're going to break university rules, it's better not to do it on university property."
I'd never been to Jane's house before. It was a tiny little bungalow nestled in a valley south of Encino. I parked on the street and walked up the steps. Jane was waiting for me at the top with the front door open.
"How was the 405?" she said.
"Ha. A nightmare ... as always."
"Come on in, I've just been setting up."
She'd moved her kitchen table in the middle of the living room and laid out a variety of supplies--a stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff, a thermometer and a flashlight for testing pupil dilation, a notebook and a pencil. Off to one side was a small pill bottle--the estrogen-g.
Jane was dressed more casually than usual--just blue jeans and a short-sleeved checked cotton shirt with the shirttails untucked. She had her long dark hair pulled back in a pony tail. She was in her stocking feet, so I kicked my own shoes off at the door before I stepped inside.
"So, we're really doing this, huh?" I said.
"We're really doing this. I've made up a bed just in case you need to stay over. I hope you don't mind the couch. I've only got one bedroom."
"I don't mind the couch, but I still wish you'd let
me
be the guinea pig. It was my idea after all."
Jane shook her head.
"No, as a woman, I'm the logical choice. I'm sure nothing will happen. I suspect we have a long, boring evening ahead of us."
We took some preliminary vitals to establish a baseline. Everything was perfectly normal. Jane was almost disgusting healthy.
Then came the moment of truth.
Jane opened the pill bottle and spilled a little estrogen-g into the palm of her hand. The drug was in the form of purple crystals, about the size of grains of kosher salt.
"I think three to start," Jane said. "That's about 5 milligrams.
"Remember not to swallow. The stomach acid will degrade it."
"Thank you, doctor," Jane said sarcastically.
She opened her mouth and slipped the crystals under her tongue to dissolve. After a few seconds she made a face.
"Bleh! Bitter!"
"Well now we wait, I suppose ...," I said.
"Now we wait."
Jane sat down at her computer to check her email. I recorded the time. It was a little after four in the afternoon.
It was a weird being in Jane's living room. Despite working alongside her for years, I hardly knew anything about her personal life. Her house was tidy, but there were books everywhere--filling up the bookcases and spilling out into piles on the hardwood floors. The furnishings were mostly grad-student thrift with a few nicer pieces mixed in--a craftsman-style recliner, a modernist floor lamp. She had a framed Shag print on the wall.
It was a no-nonsense house. A comfortable house. I liked it.
I wandered over to the side window and looked out. There was a secluded brick patio with several overgrown rosemary bushes in terracotta urns. They were obviously well-watered despite their wildness. There was a yoga mat on the brick among the rosemary, and I suddenly had a glimpse of what Jane's morning routine must be like.
A chair scraped behind me. I turned around to see Jane standing up.
"Don't worry, I'm fine," she said with a laugh. "I just need to use the bathroom."
She vanished into the back of the house.
I flopped down on the couch and got out my phone. I scrolled through Twitter, reading news. I guess I lost track of time. Five, maybe ten minutes passed. Suddenly I heard a noise and looked up.
Jane was standing in the hall in her stocking feet, holding her jeans in one hand. Her cheeks were flushed and she had a disoriented expression on her face.
"Are you okay?" I said.
She shook her head like she was trying to clear it. She started to say something, then stopped. The jeans slipped from her fingers and fell on a heap on the floor. Her bare legs were slim and pale and I could just see her pink cotton panties peeking out from underneath her shirttails.
She pushed off from the wall and walked unsteadily toward me, stopping just a few feet away. Her breathing was short and shallow, her chest rising and falling.
"I feel ... weird," she said.
"Weird? Like how?"
"Lightheaded ... a little dizzy."
