Right Here [Regular Updates]

Chapter 6

At the research institute, Shreya was on time. But Zahra wasn't there yet.

She hoped Zahra would come soon. She wanted to ask her help to input their observations to the computer. Her eyes felt so dry, apart from checking the time when she woke up, she did not look into her phone.

The clock ticked on as Shreya sat idle.

Finally, her patience was up. She looked into her phone with slitted eyes and called Zahra.

"I'm almost there!" Zahra cut the call after shouting.

Soon she did come in, catching her breath.

"Sorry, Shreya!"

"I don't want to look at the monitor today. I'll do the hard labour. Please help me fill these in and take care of the analysis." Shreya handed over the observations she took down last night. "Oh! Pick the best one out and throw the rest away. You can make your own observations," she said with her eyes closed.

Zahra stopped fixing her hijab. "This is the first time we are meeting right?"

"Was it your ghost until yesterday?" Shreya was not in the mood to joke. She never was, for a long, long time.

"Then why do you do this?" Zahra put on her white lab coat. Shreya definitely had some animosity towards her. To Shreya's frown and slitted eyes she answered, "You want me to be seen like a pushover, don't you?"

While she left home early yesterday, Shreya had stayed back to complete the experiment. Today, apparently she had to just run the analyses while Shreya would proceed with more tests on the element. All the other colleagues would think she was snobbish and Shreya was diligent. How smart!

Shreya closed eyes, picked two bunches of paper from the stack she pushed to Zahra, and proceeded to the dustbin.

Alarmed, Zahra immediately stopped her. "Thank you! Thank you for yesterday."

She snatched up the papers and breathed a sigh. She was already an hour late! She had to set up everything and run the tests again and that would make it clear as day that she was late.

"Why do you not want to see the monitor?" Zahra asked, not seeming to look at Shreya.

Shreya turned to her and opened her eyes.

Zahra sucked in a hiss. The reddishness was definitely not normal. "Do you want to go to the doctor?"

Shreya closed them back before she showed her a bottle of eye-drops.

"Why did you even come? You should've taken a rest and slept."

"My head is also aching. If you don't mind..."

"Sheesh, okay. I shut up."

While Shreya put on her gloves, Zahra removed hers.

Their work went on in an appreciable amount of silence until lunch.

"Did you poke something in them?" Zahra asked. "No... no one would poke anything into both the eyes."

Shreya sighed with a mix of disbelief and frustration. "Do you think I wanted my eyes to be like this?"

"Then... did you cry? Over what?"

"Why? Can't I just cry over nothing?"

"Sheesh..." Zahra shook her head. What a sassy colleague! But she actually Shreya a little bit, or she would not bother talking to her. This was a day the two talked quite a lot compared to before. She did not know about Shreya. But on her part, she took her to be her friend.