Scrub Cap Quotes

So together, Reader and Vincent used HeLa cells as the springboard to launch the first industrial-scale, for-profit cell distribution center. It started with what Reader lovingly referred to as his Cell Factory. In Bethesda, Maryland, in the middle of a wide-open warehouse that was once a Fritos factory, he built a glass-enclosed, room that housed a rotating conveyor belt with hundreds of test-tube holders built into it. Outside the glass room, he had a setup much like the Tuskegee's, with massive vats of culture medium, only bigger. When cells were ready for shipping, he'd sound a loud bell and all the workers in the building, including mailroom clerks, would stop what they were doing, scrub themselves at the sterilization station, grab a cap and gown, and line up at the conveyor belt. Some filled tubes, others inserted rubber stoppers, sealed tubes, or stacked them inside a walk-in incubator where they stayed until being packaged for shipping.

The door slowly opens, and a tall, thin person ducks inside. He’s wearing the same green surgeon scrubs, face mask, and blue gloves that the pre-op nurses wear, but his wavy brown hair is peeking out from under a clear surgical cap. His eyes find mine and I let go of the railings in surprise. “What are you doing here?” I whisper, watching as Will sits down in a chair beside me, scooting it back to make sure he’s a safe distance away. “It’s your first surgery without Abby,” he says in explanation, a new expression I don’t quite recognize filling his blue eyes. It’s not mocking or jokey, it’s totally and completely open. Almost earnest. I swallow hard, trying to stop the emotions that come bubbling up, tears clouding my eyes.

In the long draw of last light across the Eatery, as the tables around them are scrubbed with white vinegar and only they are left in their island of four, flicking the bottle cap from one to another in silence, he is grateful, again, for the infinite generosity of boys.

The shoot-to-kill order came through at zero one fifteen, relayed over a satellite radio. It’d been just three hours since the two-man reconnaissance team had reported the sighting. They lay in a shallow dugout on a windblown ridge, the leeward slope falling away steeply to an impassable boulder field. A desert-issue tarp all but covered the hole, protected from view on the flanks by thorny scrub. Shivering, they blew into their bunched trigger-finger mitts. The daytime temperature had dropped twenty degrees or more, and fine sleet was melting on their blackened faces. Darren Proctor extended the folded stock of his L115A3 sniper rifle. He split the legs of the swivel bi-pod and aligned the swivel cheek piece with the all-weather scope. Flipping open the lens cap, he glassed the terrain cast a muted green by the night vision. The tree line was sparse, a smattering of pines and cedars shuddering in the biting wind. Glimpsing movement on a scree slope fifty metres or so beyond, he focused in. The eyes of a striped hyena shone like glow sticks. He watched as the scavenger ripped at the carcass of an ibex or wild sheep. A second later it sniffed the air, ears pricked, and scampered off.

A team of doctors came through the door still dressed in scrubs from head to toe. Each entered, holding the door for the one behind them. Robert was nowhere to be seen. Autumn stood first, and Kane rose at a slower pace, his eyes staying trained on the doctors. They wouldn't make eye contact with either of them. What did that mean? Kane's breath hitched, he tripped, stumbling when he tried to get to his feet. Robert had been the last physician to enter the waiting room. He was tugging the cap off his head when his red-rimmed eyes connected with Kane's.

At five o’clock Tatiana took off her coat and her mask and goggles, splashed water on her face, retied her hair into a neat ponytail, and left the building. She walked on Prospekt Stachek, along the famous Kirov wall, a concrete structure seven meters tall that ran fifteen city blocks. She walked three of those blocks to her bus stop. And waiting for her at the bus stop was Alexander. When she saw him—Tatiana couldn’t help herself—her face lit up. Putting her hand on her chest, she stopped walking for a moment, but he smiled at her and she blushed and, gulping down whatever was in her throat, walked toward him. She noticed that his officer’s cap was in his hands. She wished she had scrubbed her face harder. The presence of so many words inside her head made her incapable of small talk, just at the time when she needed small talk most. “What are you doing here?” she asked timidly. “We’re at war with Germany,” Alexander said. “I have no time for pretenses.” Tatiana wanted to say something, anything, not to let his words linger in the air. So she said, “Oh.” “Happy birthday.” “Thank you.” “Are you doing something special tonight?” “I don’t know. Today is Monday, so everyone will be tired. We’ll have dinner. A drink.” She sighed. In a different world, perhaps, she might have invited him over for dinner on her birthday. Not in this world. They waited. Somber people stood all around them. Tatiana did not feel somber. She thought, but is this what I’m going to look like when I’m here by myself, waiting for the bus like them? Is this what I am going to look like for the rest of my life?

At the sight of the dozen assorted cupcakes, as bright and optimistic as party hats, Louise's eyes lit up. "How wonderful!" she said, clapping her hands together again. I handed her one of the red velvet cupcakes that I'd made in the old-fashioned style, using beets instead of food coloring. I'd had to scrub my fingers raw for twenty minutes to get the crimson beet stain off them, but the result was worth it: a rich chocolate cake cut with a lighter, nearly unidentifiable, earthy sweetness, and topped with cream cheese icing and a feathery cap of coconut shavings. For Ogden, I selected a Moroccan vanilla bean and pumpkin spice cupcake that I'd been developing with Halloween in mind. It was not for the faint of heart, and I saw the exact moment in Ogden's eyes that the dash of heat- courtesy of a healthy pinch of cayenne- hit his tongue, and the moment a split-second later that the sugary vanilla swept away the heat, like salve on a wound. "Oh," he said, after swallowing. He looked at me, and I could see it was his turn to be at a loss for words. I smiled. Louise, on the other hand, was half giggling, half moaning her way through a second cupcake, this time a lemonade pound cake with a layer of hot pink Swiss meringue buttercream icing curling into countless tiny waves as festive and feminine as a little girl's birthday tiara. "Exquisite!" she said, mouth full. And then, shrugging in her son's direction, her eyes twinkling. "What? I didn't eat lunch.

Prologue               It started with rain. A torrential downpour that began around midnight and waged throughout the next day. Occasionally it would ease off for a few minutes, only to come back even stronger.               Step two was the temperature drop. Rapid and even, it took only a matter of hours for the mercury to dip below freezing. Once it did, the rain gave way to heavy, wet snowflakes.               Dr. Hardy Nicks stood just outside the front door of the Vanderbilt Medical Center. He checked his watch repeatedly while hopping up and down on the balls of his feet, hoping to stay warm. A plume of vapor extended from of his mouth, each breath hanging like a cloud in front of him.               As an attending surgeon at the center, Hardy had been on the floor for twenty hours straight. Enormous bags hung beneath each eye and his thinning hair was plastered to his head from being smashed beneath a surgical cap. He hadn't bothered to change out of the light blue scrubs he'd been wearing all day, the shapeless togs doing little to hide his slight frame.               An airlock released behind him.