No One Left Behind, Except for Me novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: What He Owed
Mikkel's POV
At nine the next morning I sat in the corner of the chair's office, on a stool she had put there on purpose, and watched Natalie negotiate.
I had been told to attend because the offer was partly mine.
I understood within five minutes that it was not mine at all.
"A paid assistantship is fine," Natalie said. "My name goes first on the protocol. Not second, not in a footnote."
"It is your work," the chair said.
"Then it says so. And I choose the pilot group. I don't want a committee of men who read my binder once."
"Agreed."
"And Dr. Dahl is not on my review."
I looked up.
"He may join a trip as a participant," Natalie said. "If I give a safety order, he follows it like anyone else. He does not sign off on my plan, and I don't sign off on his."
The chair studied her over her glasses.
"That is stricter than I would have asked."
"I'm not doing this so anyone can say a man arranged it."
I felt the stool shift under me, because it was what I had meant to offer, and she had said it first.
She turned and met my eyes across the room.
"Is that all right with you?" she asked.
"It is the correct answer," I said. "I have already written my recusal."
The chair signed three papers and shook her hand.
That afternoon, in the flat, I called my mother.
She lives in Bergen, in a house by the water where she has kept the same kitchen for thirty years.
Her face came up on my screen with her reading glasses pushed into her gray hair.
"Mikkel," she said in Norwegian. "You look like a man who forgot to eat. Is it the American girl?"
"How do you know about an American girl?"
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