Doctor January by Rhoda Baxter

could help attract young gay men to the profession too.’
    Roger paused. ‘I think you two should stop messing around and get back to work.’ He went into his office and slammed the door.
    Beth shook her head and went into the lab. She would have preferred not to hurt Roger’s feelings. He could be a total pain, but that was probably because he was lonely. She felt a little bit bad for being mean to him.
    As she was heading to her bench, the phone rang.
    â€˜Beth, it’s Anna.’
    â€˜Hey, what’s up?’ She started to roll up her sleeves, the phone tucked by her shoulder.
    â€˜Have you had any more entries come through for the calendar?’
    â€˜One.’
    â€˜Any good?’
    Beth picked up the photo from her desk and looked at it again. ‘Not bad. How about you?’
    â€˜I’ve had a few, but I don’t think we’ve got enough for a calendar’
    â€˜How many have we got?’
    â€˜I’ve had about twenty e-mails, but not many suitable ones. At a push, seven maybe. That’s assuming your new one’s any good.’
    Beth felt that was a little unfair – perhaps Anna was setting the bar too high. ‘So, what are we going to do? We need to get started soon or we won’t be able to get it done in time for the next meeting. Clarissa will have a field day.’
    â€˜There’s nothing else for it. We’ll have to keep an eye out for fit men and ask them if they’ll take part.’
    â€˜We can’t do that. We’ll look like nutters. They’ll probably call the police.’ Beth thought of Roger’s animosity. ‘I don’t think that would go down too well with my supervisor. I’m on thin ice as it is.’
    â€˜Well, I’ll do it then. Just make sure you have your camera with you at all times.’
    Beth shifted the phone to her other shoulder. She didn’t like the idea of taking people’s photos without asking. ‘We’ll have to get their permission.’
    â€˜You can get them to agree after you’ve taken the shot. You can always show them you’re deleting them if they say no.’
    It still didn’t sound right. ‘I don’t know, Anna. There must be another way. Is there an advertising avenue we’ve missed?’
    â€˜I don’t think so. I’ve even been hawking it around on Twitter. That got me some obscene messages, I can tell you. That’s after I specified that they
had
to be wearing clothes.’
    Beth sighed. ‘Okay. When do you want to start interviewing the people you’ve already got on the list?’ She heard Roger’s footsteps. ‘I’ve got to go, Anna. See you later.’ She rang off and turned round.
    â€˜Still not doing any work, Miss Tyler?’ He emphasised ‘Miss’ as though it were an insult.
    â€˜I am, thanks,’ said Beth. ‘Can I help you with anything?’
    â€˜I’m looking for Hibs, actually.’
    â€˜He won’t be in until later today. He did the late shift last night.’ Beth gathered up some papers.
    â€˜Late shift?’
    â€˜We’re taking it in turns to work nights, as I mentioned earlier. We’re running two sets of experiments in parallel so that we can use both microscopes at once. At night.’
    â€˜What sort of experiments?’
    â€˜Time courses. We’re looking at how the GFP-tagged proteins behave over time.’
    Roger folded his arms. ‘I asked you to concentrate on repeating the tests you did before.’
    â€˜I’m doing those as well.’ She was finding it surprisingly easy to work in the night, when the lab was quiet. As long as she’d set her bacterial cultures growing the day before, so that they were ready by the evening, she could get on with the experiments without interruptions from anyone. She rather enjoyed it.
    Roger snorted. ‘Just make sure you have the results I want ready in