Betrayed by My Best Friend and My Man

2: 2

I moved into a newly rented apartment and changed my number.

The only call that got through was from my mentor, Professor Finch.

"Margery, the university has already formed an investigation panel. You need to be ready. This is going to be a hard fight."

"I understand, Professor."

"Your original data and lab records — get everything in order. Not a single one missing."

"I've already got it ready."

I hung up and opened my laptop.

Every file was three years of my work.

On social media, everyone was taking Veronica's side.

Veronica had posted a long piece, painted as tragic as it could be.

She named no names, only said she'd been stabbed in the back by the person she trusted most, that the other woman, jealous of her talent and her achievements, had fabricated facts to smear her.

The photo showed her on an IV drip in a hospital, wrists thin, face pale, the perfect picture of a victim.

Below it, comment after comment, all the same.

"My heart aches for Vera. Some people just can't stand to see anyone else do well."

"Don't be afraid, Vera, we all believe you!"

Lowell James, one of the juniors in our lab, had commented too: "Hang in there, Vera. The truth speaks for itself."

I'd taught him to run experiments with my own hands. I was the one who'd helped him work out the framework of his own paper.

Leslie had liked the post too.

I shut off my phone, my face blank.

A few days later, the panel called the first interview.

Three professors sat in the conference room, the mood grave.

Veronica sat across from me, eyes red and swollen, looking utterly worn out.

The moment she saw me, the tears came.

"Margery, I know you've always had a problem with me, but you can't destroy me like this... this paper, we did it together."

She started turning black into white, saying we'd been collaborators, that the data was shared.

"I just organized it and published it a step ahead of you, that's all. I actually wanted to put your name on it too, but..."

She choked up and couldn't go on.

One of the professors on the panel looked at me. "Ms. Fox, is what Ms. Henson says true?"

"No."

I took a thick stack of lab notebooks out of my bag and laid them on the table in chronological order.

"These are all my original records, from the first day of the project through last month. Every experiment's date, procedure, raw data, and my analysis are in here. May I ask, Ms. Henson, where are your notebooks?"

The color drained from Veronica's face.

"I keep my records in electronic form..."

"Then please show us your electronic records, with a timestamp for every edit."

She bit her lip and said nothing.

Another professor spoke. "Ms. Henson, there's an electrophoresis image in your paper, very clean. But according to Ms. Fox's records, the result for that batch showed obvious tailing, and she marked it as needing to be repeated. Can you explain that?"

Veronica's body began to tremble.

"I might have gotten the batch wrong..."

"There's no getting the batch wrong."

I took out another document. "This is the weekly report I sent Leslie. The email went out on October seventeenth last year, and it contains this original image, the one marked for repeat. The image in your paper has been doctored."

I pushed the printed screenshot of the email across to her.

Veronica stared at that screenshot, and everything in her gave way. She slumped down in her chair.

No one in the room said a word.