On Monday, she got the call that they were being shut down.

The phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. Alyssa was still in her pajamas, stirring a mug of coffee that had already gone cold. She nearly ignored it— Mondays were always full of noise anyway; But the name on the screen made her stomach twist. Her manager, the one who only ever sent texts with poor spelling, was calling her.

She answered the phone on the third ring.

His voice was quieter than normal as he spoke, stripped clean of his typical casual demeanor: “Hey, are you free for a minute?”

She already knew what was coming. Her cold coffee, the way the air in her apartment felt heavier, the shake in her hands; the silence on the other end of the line was deafening.

“They’re closing the lab,” he sighed; “Effective Friday. Funding’s gone, we went way over the budget. The board pulled the plug on everyone overnight. The whole team is getting cut.”

The lab was her whole life. An old warehouse on the edge of the city. For the last five years she was part of a small team of researchers working on reversing dementia and injury related memory loss. The work was slow and hard; they weren’t making enough money yet, but they were close to finishing an important paper that could get them more funding. It was what would keep them going.

She didn’t say anything for a beat too long. She just stared at the half empty mug in her hand, swirling the dark liquid until small bubbles formed. Outside, her neighbors walked by, talking and laughing, as if nothing had changed. The endless folders of notes on her desk suddenly looked useless.

Her voice was flat when she spoke, “Okay.”

He kept talking about severance pay and how sorry he was that her work was going to waste. She could barely hear him— her mind was flooded with thoughts about bills and rent due soon. Student loans. Her savings wouldn’t last long. What would happen to all of the samples in the lab freezers? All of the data they had worked so hard on?

When the call ended, Alyssa set the phone down defeatedly. This work mattered more to her than anything else. She could still remember the way her heart twisted when she realized her grandfather had forgotten her face. He died two years later, not knowing who she was. It was heartbreaking; Watching someone she loved disappear piece by piece. Joining the lab’s research felt like a way for her to fight back against that pain. Every success, every failure– It was all personal… Now, it’s gone.