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Kirsty came to find Nick in the large-scale laboratory just before 9.30 a.m. She was flustered as she was much later than usual, having apparently overslept after a heavy night out.
‘Oh, sorry Nick, I overslept,’ said Kirsty bustling in and putting on gloves, finishing buttoning her lab coat.
‘Well you’re here now,’ said Nick rather pointedly. He had just finished assembling the equipment and all the reagents and starting materials were waiting on the bench ready for weighing and combining together.
‘Can you get the starting material dissolved in the solvent, please Kirsty,’ he asked. ‘It should dissolve at room temperature, give it a good stir.’ Nick would have liked the reaction to be underway but with two of them working on it they should make progress.
Kirsty added two litres of solvent to the flask followed by the first starting material, and she set the stirrer swirling. After about ten minutes the material dissolved giving a clear solution. The mixture needed to be cooled to around five degrees before the next reagent was added. The reaction gave off quite a bit of heat as it reacted and it was important to maintain the internal temperature below ten degrees otherwise it would overheat and they would have a runaway reaction. Now they needed to add the next reagent, the sodium azide at such a rate to maintain a steady temperature and they had ice on hand to keep cooling the flask which was sitting above a large plastic bowl. It was going to be a slow process though, the second reagent needed to drip in slowly over about an hour, tedious but necessary. There were two of them though so if one needed a break the other could supervise the addition.
Kirsty dissolved the second reagent in about half a litre of a different solvent and checked it had produced a clear solution. It looked fine so she added it to a dropping funnel which was sitting in one of the inlets in the three-necked flask. A temperature probe was in one of the other inlets monitoring the temperature which was showing it to be below five degrees.
‘Right, that looks OK,’ said Nick, ‘all dissolved in the dropping funnel then?’ and Kirsty began to tap the side of it with a metal spatula.
‘Stop, no!’ shouted Nick, ‘it’s shock sensitive, don’t tap it like that,’ Nick could feel his pulse starting to race.
‘Sorry, I forgot,’ replied Kirsty lamely.
‘Right, now check the temperature, is it still OK?’
‘Yes, fine.’
‘Right, well we can start the addition,’ said Nick, ‘now remember that lot needs to go through in about an hour, so we need to gauge how it drips in but we also need to keep an eye on the temperature.’
Kirsty nodded.
‘Are you sure you dissolved it in half a litre?’ he asked frowning.
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Kirsty, then realising it was probably about a hundred millilitres short, she had intended to top it up when as she finished the bottle of solvent she was using but in her hungover state her mind had wandered off the job. She’d met someone fantastic last night and they’d gone back to his flat but they’d not had much sleep and that was the reason she’d overslept. She couldn’t wait to phone Jared later that morning. Her mind again wandered back to last night, his hands caressing her and the lovely things he’d said. Suddenly she heard Nick speaking.
‘Kirsty, it’s dripping a bit quickly, turn the tap slightly. Check the temperature, what’s it reading?’
‘Eight degrees,’
‘Stop the addition, we need to add more ice to cool it more, and some salt to cool the bath down even more.’
Kirsty duly complied, spilling salt all over the base of the fume-hood in her haste to sprinkle it on the ice. Nick was beginning to wonder how Kirsty would ever grasp the seriousness of the job and take responsibility for herself. Despite Billie thinking that this stint in large scale would earn her enough Brownie points he was beginning to believe she would need a miracle, not just Brownie points. Once the temperature dropped to below five degrees they were off and running again. He checked his watch, it was already after 10.30 a.m. and they’d hardly made any progress. He could do with a drink of water but he was reluctant to leave Kirsty the way she was behaving this morning.
Over the next half an hour or so things proceeded as planned, they had achieved a steady rate of addition and they had plenty of ice on hand to maintain the cooling bath. Nick began to feel his thoughts about Kirsty had been a bit harsh. It wasn’t easy doing things on a large scale, planning and safety were the foremost concerns, it took so much longer and that needed to be factored in.
The door to the lab opened a crack and Billie put her head around the door.
‘How’s it going then?’ she asked.
‘Fine, fine,’ replied Nick.
‘Just wondered if you could step outside for a minute,’ said Billie quietly, ‘or I can leave it till later, if it’s not convenient?’
Nick looked at Kirsty, ‘OK for two minutes?’ he asked. He was a bit concerned about leaving her but she couldn’t be treated like a baby all the time, and he would only be outside the door for two minutes.
‘Sure, fine, it’s dripping through very slowly, I’ll be OK.’
Nick stepped outside with Billie intrigued to know what she had to say.
‘Oh, it’s nothing urgent, just wondered if you had heard about Kevin?’
‘Yes, Brett called me in this morning first thing, I would have told you but I’ve been busy in here and I’ve not seen you to speak to.’
‘Oh, well I thought you’d be pleased. It’s so good that chap Shane took the initiative and snapped some photos of him. I guess Brett forgot to tell me that he’d spoken to you. The thing was there was a call from the police about something so he had to go, Amanda came to interrupt us. Anyway, I won’t keep you any longer, hope the reaction goes OK.’
‘Right, me too,’ added Nick and went back inside.
Whilst he’d been out of the lab Kirsty had taken the opportunity to send a few texts to the new love of her life Jared. She was missing him already. So she had failed to notice that the reagent was no longer dripping into the reaction. It looked like a few crystals of undissolved material had settled down to block the funnel, either that or some material had crystallised during the time it had been dripping in. Kirsty realised this was probably because it was more concentrated than it should have been as she had forgotten the full amount of solvent. They now had a half completed reaction and a dangerous reagent in a funnel with the addition only half completed. What would Nick say, he would be furious. She tried turning the tap this way and that, jiggling it, hoping that the crystals would slowly dislodge and the flow would start-up again. Nick returned to check the reaction.
‘What’s happening? Why are you fiddling with the tap like that?’
‘It’s stopped dripping in, there are a few crystals of undissolved material blocking it,’ she replied.
‘Shit, oh, fuck it,’ said Nick really annoyed by this stage. ‘Didn’t you check it was properly dissolved?’
‘Well I thought it was, I’m sorry, it must have crystallised out partially,’ her voice was trembling by this stage, panic starting to set in.
‘I thought you’d not added enough solvent,’ said Nick, and sighed. ‘Look, sorry, I’m just a bit uptight about this, we can solve it, I need to go and find a bit of plastic tubing or something, I can probably just agitate it and get those crystals away from the tap, that should do it.’
‘OK,’ said Kirsty glumly.
‘I’ll be back in two minutes, I know where I can find some, don’t worry,’ and he rushed out of the lab.
Kirsty felt really upset, her concentration had faltered and now they were in a mess, it didn’t look good for her. Nick would be sure to report this back to Billie and it would go down in her appraisal. She stood looking at the reaction. It was only a few crystals, surely they would shift if she turned the tap a few times. She turned it back and forth and it seemed to be having an effect, the material started to drip through again, it was working, that was a relief, but it wasn’t the same flow rate as before, too fast, she needed to stop it. It was really tricky adjusting it properly, they’d managed it before but this time she couldn’t get it right and the tap didn’t seem to be turning as smoothly. Had some of the material started to leak around the tap joint and make it stiff, that’s what it looked like. She turned it again to get the correct flow rate, but, she didn’t believe it, it had stuck. It had stuck in the open position and no amount of force could shift it, it had completely seized. In horror, she could see the material add rapidly into the reaction, it wasn’t dripping in, it was actually running in a steady stream.
‘Oh, God, shit, oh god,’ and she looked at the temperature which was steadily rising. It was now past twenty degrees and heading above room temperature. She added more ice but it had little effect, the temperature probe was now reading thirty degrees and still heading upwards, the dropping funnel was now almost empty. That meant that over half the reagent had run in over about thirty seconds rather than over half an hour. The reaction had started to change colour, she could see a faint pink tinge developing, it was darkening before her eyes. She backed away, consumed by fear and indecision, she was transfixed, and the door opened.
Nick had hurried along the corridor, stopping momentarily in his tracks as Kevin was stocking the solvent store with large bottles from a trolley. He was whistling away and as he was half in and half out of the room Nick could sneak back into the lab unnoticed. Kevin was the last person he wanted to encounter, after today he would never have to see him again. Nick burst into the lab carrying the tubing and could see from Kirsty’s face that something was wrong.
‘What’s happ...’ was all he managed to get out as he approached the reaction to see it was now heading towards a purple colour and solvent was beginning to bubble and escape from the reaction.
‘Shit, Kirsty, what did you do?’ he exclaimed.
‘The tap stuck!’ she screamed.
‘We have to get out of here! Go, I’ll press the emergency button, the reaction is going to take off, run for it!’
Nick pressed the emergency button, he pressed again but nothing happened. Because the lab had not been used for a while the call point mustn’t have been checked, stupidly he’d not checked either, there had been so much happening recently. There was no point continuing to press the button, it was futile. He ran for the door, but at that point, the reaction detonated. There was a massive explosion, he never reached the door, he was blown off his feet. His world went black, the front of the fume-hood shattered, chaos ensued. Solvent ignited as it leaked into the electrical sockets. Panels and debris from the ceiling started to tumble, striking Nick on the head. He fell to the floor oblivious.
