Holly hated working with the mice. They smelled disgusting. The mouse rooms were small and cramped, with no windows. And the behavioral tests to tell whether a mouse was developing Alzheimer’s were painfully tedious. She had to repeatedly put each mouse in a maze and measure how fast it learned the quickest way through, rewarded by a bit of food at the end. It took hours to test hundreds of mice and keep track of their individual times. The only good thing was that 40492 seemed to be working.

Fortunately, Janet and Francisco seemed to enjoy putting the mice through their paces. Or maybe they liked working together in the isolation of the testing rooms. Whatever the reason, Holly was happy to leave them to it, while she concentrated on working with Vicky to analyze the results and plan the next steps. More of a leadership role.

They were six weeks into the project when Holly came back to the lab after dinner and was surprised to find Vicky still at her desk. The postdocs and students often worked late, but Vicky usually went home by five or five thirty. Now it was almost seven and she was still here, focused on her computer.

Holly went over and said, “Hey Vicky, what’s up? I’m going downstairs for some coffee. Can I get you anything?”

Vicky looked up and sighed. “That’d be nice, thanks. Maybe a chai latte and a turkey sandwich?”

“Sure. Are you working through dinner?”

“I’m afraid so. Left my husband in charge of the kids tonight.”

“How come?” Holly asked. “You usually work regular hours. I’ve always been impressed with how you can get everything done in an eight-hour day.”

“I know, but I can barely keep up with all the data Janet and Francisco are collecting, even with the help you’ve been giving me. And it’s going to get worse next week, when I start sacrificing mice to look for the formation of Alzheimer’s plaque in their brains. It’ll take more of my time and generate even more results that’ll need to be correlated with the behavioral testing. So I’m trying to stay on top of things, before it gets totally hopeless.”

The perfect opening. Holly smiled sympathetically. “Can I do more to help out? I still owe you for all those extra brain cell cultures you made for me, and I’m pretty good at dealing with data. Would you like me to take over the data analysis? I could get that off your plate if you’d like.”

Vicky’s eyes widened. “Would you really do that? That’d be terrific!”

“No problem, I’d be happy to. Just send me Francisco and Janet’s data, as well as the results on the brains when you get them. I’ll compile everything, graph it all out, and do the statistics. That’ll leave you free to work with the mice and keep planning the next experiments. When the time comes, I’ll have the results all organized for publication. All in nice figures, like I did with my cell culture stuff.”

Vicky was beaming. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all year! I’ll send the files your way. Thanks Holly, I owe you big for this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Holly said. “We’re a team, right?”

Holly gave herself a mental high five as she walked back to her desk. A team, huh? Now that I’ve got the mouse data, this project’s all mine.