The Usual Disclaimers

PG 13

Blood Relations

Dr. Alison Linn had hated the thought of leaving Los Angeles for Europe and especially Paris, when she was scouted by the scientific headhunting organization, GlobalSearch. But she was suddenly without a job so when the call came in, with an offer of an all-expense paid interview, her bags were packed.

Just as she had remembered, Paris was dreary this time of year. Rainy and dismal just like her high school senior year French club trip too many years ago. She saw her younger self, oh, so serious with dark rimmed eyeglasses and straight hair always severely held back off her face. About to go off to college and to start her career, this had been the last hurrah of high school. And she had hated every darn second of that trip. The French were disdainful, actually quite rude, especially the waiters at the cafes who pointedly corrected your pathetic attempts at speaking their language. No, she did not have good memories of France.

Still it was a job and after BioNalysis had made the discovery of totally bungled lab reports on blood and genetic material analyses going back to 2001, there had been a "blood" bath. Alison snickered at the pun. She was, however unfairly, one of the ones who got soaked.

Not so funny, but too true. She had immediately called her best friend, Beth Turner, who was as shocked as Alison over the sacking. Beth had commiserated with Alison and had invited her to a pity party dinner at the lovely penthouse she and Mick shared.

Alison was always happy to see them both and a friend of theirs, Josef Kostan, had dropped in. She had, of course, heard of the very rich hedge fund trader, but didn't know how close of friends they were until that night. All had drunk wine, laughed and she had almost forgotten her misery, when Beth brought up the subject of the layoffs. The official reason was the ongoing recession, Alison had explained, but shared with them the real reasons. Josef seemed intrigued, wondering if retesting would be done? Alison assumed that if enough of the original blood or material was available, yes, it would. In fact, she knew that criminal and civil cases would have to be reviewed for any tainted evidence which would probably cause all sorts of judicial headaches. All results would be called into question for the entire first decade. In fact, retesting of stored materials had already begun. The company had to reduce their costs and Alison, being a highly paid, top level researcher, was out.

She fuzzily remembered getting driven home in Josef's hybrid limo. Several days later, the phone had rung with the job offer.

And here she was, settling into the amazingly beautiful apartment provided by her new employer, Davis Labs International. The interview had gone surprisingly well and Alison was thankful that she had retained enough of her high school French to converse and she never once felt self-conscious. Evidently the CEO was a woman, but Alison met only with whom she thought might be middle managers. Their questions were professional and detailed as to her qualifications and she saw they were very pleased with her answers. They were charming and encouraged her to open up about new fields of blood-related research she was interested in pursuing, letting her go on about genetic tracking of non-antigen rare bloods.

The next day a contract arrived with her chocolat croissants and cafe-au-lait. They would pay her twice what she had been making after 20 years with BioNalysis plus she would be given an apartment! Of course, perks such as healthcare were not necessary in France with their universal coverage and the company being privately held did not have shares to offer, but all in all, Alison figured that 10 years with them and she'd have a very healthy nest egg. She signed her name.