The Department He Inherited

Dr. Halima Sesay built her lab out of other people's leftovers. Now the board has hired a director whose first job is to close it. Dr. Efe Bakare is efficient, well-liked, and on a mandate to cut two programs — and one of them is hers. He also taught her the pipette fourteen years ago, back when she was nobody and he was a postdoc with all the time in the world. Neither of them mentions it. What follows is a war conducted with impeccable manners: reviews, restructures, and a jointly authored grant nobody tells the board about. Then an outbreak in a rural county puts them in a field tent together for eleven days. In the tent, there are no titles. Back in the city, there's a vote. And the only way to save both programs is for one of them to give up the job that made them important.