My Husband Called Me His “Muse” — Then The FDA Asked One Question He Couldn’t Answer

My husband introduced me to the FDA compliance officer as ‘his muse and his inspiration’ — and I watched Dr. Sarah Okafor’s eyes move from Elias’s face to the synthesis diagram on the whiteboard, the one I had mapped out on the kitchen counter three years ago while Elias was designing the packaging.

My name is Nora Thorne. My husband calls me his muse.

We were in the Elias Naturals headquarters boardroom. The room was suspended on the fortieth floor of the glass tower, filtering the Tuesday morning light into a sterile, expensive gray. The air conditioning hummed, a low, calibrated vibration beneath the polished mahogany floorboards.

Dr. Sarah Okafor sat across the wide table. She wore a dark, unstructured blazer. Two compliance analysts sat flanking her, identical laptops open. They had the preliminary S-1 filing printed and stacked between them. The document was three inches thick, spiral-bound in navy blue. It was the final regulatory hurdle before a hundred-million-dollar IPO.

Page forty-two of that filing described the proprietary peptide compound that served as the foundation of the company. I knew the exact phrasing because I had read it in my home office six months ago. A formula developed by our founder through years of personal research. My name did not appear on page forty-two. My name did not appear in the index.

Elias stood at the head of the table. He wore a crisp, tailored Oxford shirt. The sleeves were rolled to the forearm, a carefully calculated signal of a man who worked with his hands. He held a green dry-erase marker. The synthesis diagram was projected onto the smartboard behind him, but he preferred to draw over the projection. He liked the authoritative squeak of the marker against the glass.

“The skincare market is crowded with inactive ingredients,” Elias said, projecting his voice exactly as his media coach had taught him. He capped the marker. He held it like a baton. “This compound is different. It is the result of my years of research into peptide binding.

I spent countless nights in my home lab. Just experimenting. Testing different concentrations. Refining the vision until we had the perfect cellular delivery system.”

He turned toward where I sat at the far end of the long table.

“And this is Nora.” He extended an open palm toward me. “My muse. My inspiration. She keeps me grounded through all the corporate madness.”

He smiled. It was the smile that had secured two rounds of venture funding. The smile that graced the cover of industry magazines last month.

Dr. Okafor did not smile. She looked at Elias. She looked at the green marker in his hand. She turned her head and looked directly at me. Her dark eyes were analytical.

I sat perfectly still.

Dr. Okafor’s gaze dropped to my hands resting on the mahogany. She looked specifically at my left thumb. The acid staining from a hydrochloric spill three years ago had never fully faded. It was a faint, permanent yellow-brown shadow baked deep into the epidermis. No amount of Elias Naturals exfoliating scrub could remove it.

Dr. Okafor picked up her silver pen. She wrote two lines on her legal pad.

My canvas tote bag rested on the carpet directly under my chair. It was unusually heavy today. The straps had dug deep red lines into my shoulder during the walk from the parking garage. I kept my right foot pressed against the base of the bag.

I always bring my notes to technical meetings. Notebook Volume 2 sat near the top of the dark canvas interior. Its cover bore a faded, circular coffee ring from a 3:00 AM session in 2022. The wire spiral at the top was crushed on the left side. It had been in my bag every single day for the last three years.

Elias turned back to the board. He checked his Rolex discreetly as he paced.

“The medical-grade certification you’re reviewing today hinges on this specific synthesis pathway,” he said. He tapped the green marker against the board. “Our esterification process.”

I picked up my water glass.
The condensation transferred to my palm.
I set the glass down.
I aligned the heavy crystal base exactly with the edge of a wood inlay on the table.
I placed my hands flat on the mahogany.
I looked at the diagram on the whiteboard.

The esterification step. Elias had drawn the chemical reaction arrow himself.
The arrow on the whiteboard pointed right to left.
In my original diagram, mapped out on a yellow legal pad while Elias argued with graphic designers on the phone, the arrow pointed left to right.
The direction matters.
Reversed esterification does not yield a stable cosmetic peptide. It produces a toxic isomer. It would burn human skin on contact.

I noticed the inversion in the first thirty seconds of the meeting.
I did not say anything.

“The yield is unprecedented,” Elias continued, stepping two paces to his left. “Because I designed the buffer phase to stabilize the pH immediately after the reagent is introduced. It took me twelve failed batches to realize the viscosity was tied to a zero-point-two adjustment in the buffer.”

He was quoting me. Word for word. From the technical summary I wrote for the patent attorney eighteen months ago.

One of the FDA analysts typed rapidly. The sound of the keys was sharp in the quiet room.

Dr. Okafor leaned forward. She adjusted her glasses. She looked at the inverted arrow on the board. Then she looked down at the S-1 filing. She turned to page forty-two.

“Mr. Thorne,” Dr. Okafor said. Her voice was flat. Effortless. “Could you walk us through the esterification step again? Specifically the reagent sequence.”

Elias nodded. He uncapped the green marker.

I reached down.
I unzipped the top of the canvas tote bag.
The zipper teeth made a quiet, metallic scrape.
I slipped my right hand inside. My fingers found the crushed spiral wire of Notebook Volume 2. I rested my palm flat against the cardboard cover, right over the coffee stain.
I did not take the notebook out.
I left my hand in the dark.
I watched my husband step up to the whiteboard to explain my chemistry to the federal government.

The green marker squeaked against the smartboard glass. Elias drew a second, smaller arrow branching off the first. He was deepening the procedural error.

To Elias, the physical reality of the molecules did not matter. He operated on a plane of pure marketing. He genuinely believed the compound came from his vision of what the product should do. In his internal logic, my chemistry was just the manual labor required to execute his architectural brilliance.

He did not distinguish between conceptualizing an outcome and producing it. When he told journalists he developed the formula, he wasn’t consciously lying. Vision and development were the exact same thing in his mind. The physical science was just record-keeping.

The overhead fluorescent light flickered in the converted garage. It was 1:14 AM. The air was thick, smelling heavily of ethyl acetate and the distinct, sharp odor of burnt protein from the previous failures. I stood at the stainless steel work table I had bought at a restaurant supply auction.

This was Batch thirty-four. The thirteenth iteration of the peptide concentration. Elias was asleep in the master bedroom, two floors up and completely insulated from the chemical fumes.

I held the glass dropper over the beaker. My hand did not shake. I adjusted the pH buffer by exactly 0.2 units. Twelve previous batches had fractured at a 0.1 adjustment, the proteins unraveling into useless sludge. I watched the liquid turn cloudy, then clear. The viscosity stabilized. The separation stopped. It held.

I pulled my phone from my pocket. I photographed the beaker, making sure the timestamp was visible on the digital scale. I set the phone down. I opened Notebook Volume 2, pressing the binding flat against the steel table. I wrote down the titration sequence in black ink.

I recorded the temperature. I set my coffee mug on the cardboard cover. I stayed in the garage until the sun came up, watching the suspension to ensure it didn’t degrade. I left the mug on the notebook too long.

The kitchen island was cold marble. The morning light caught the gold rim of my coffee cup. It was a Tuesday, two years ago. I scrolled through the digital spread of Aesthetic Business magazine on my phone. The headline read: The Visionary Behind The Peptide. I read Elias’s quote in the second paragraph. I spent years studying peptide science, testing different concentrations in my home lab to find the perfect balance. I read the words a second time.

The home lab was the two-car garage I had insulated with fiberglass rolls over a holiday weekend. The years of studying were the six months I spent sitting on the concrete floor, re-reading my advanced biochemistry graduate textbooks while he drafted lifestyle marketing copy on the couch.

I set the phone on the marble counter. I placed it face-down. I did not text him congratulations. I stood up. I walked through the house, out the side door, and into the garage. I put on my protective goggles. I slid my arms into my white lab coat. I began the reagent prep for Batch forty-one. I measured the powdered amino acids down to the milligram.

The patent attorney’s office smelled of expensive leather, lemon polish, and ozone. Eighteen months ago. We sat in a glass-walled conference room overlooking the financial district. The formal paperwork for the proprietary formula sat perfectly aligned on the mahogany table. Four pages of my handwritten technical summary, typed and formatted by a paralegal, formed the core of the filing.

The patent listed Elias Thorne as the sole inventor.

I held a heavy silver pen. Elias pointed to a secondary form on the third page. Technical Contributor. “Just a formality for the files,” Elias said, checking his watch. “To document the support staff.”

I placed the pen on the dotted line. I signed my name. Elias stood up, excused himself, and left the room to take a call with a European distributor. I stayed in the leather chair. I looked at the attorney. I asked him what the classification of technical contributor actually meant in corporate law.

The attorney adjusted his tie. He looked at the door Elias had just walked through. He explained that a technical contributor performs directed tasks. It carries zero legal ownership rights to the intellectual property.

I stood up. I walked to the elevator. I drove the forty-five minutes back to our house. I did not turn on the radio.

The home office was completely quiet. Six months ago. The preliminary S-1 filing, couriered to the house that morning, sat on my desk. I opened it to the corporate history section.

Developed by founder Elias Thorne through years of personal research and experimentation. I read the sentence three times. I stood up. I walked to the built-in bookshelf. I reached up and took down Notebook Volume 1. I opened the stiff cardboard cover to the very first page.

Batch 01. Attempt 1. October 3, 2021. pH 6.4. Viscosity: incorrect. Notes: reagent ratio too high. The date in black ink was exactly eighteen months before Elias walked into the patent attorney’s office to claim the work. I closed the notebook. I reached down to the floor.

I unzipped my canvas tote bag. I placed Volume 1 inside. I turned back to the shelf. I took down Volumes 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. I placed them all inside the bag, stacking them chronologically. The canvas stretched. The bag was heavy. I left it by the desk. I did not take them out.

There were six spiral-bound volumes in that bag. Eight hundred and forty-seven pages in total. They documented a timeline from October 3, 2021, to April 18, 2024. They contained sixty-seven failed batch iterations. They contained three viable iterations.

They contained the single final compound formula with comprehensive pH logs, structural molecular diagrams, and environmental variables. The pages bore chemical burn stains that could be forensically matched to the specific corrosive reagents used in the synthesis.

The patent was filed on April 19, 2023. The first notebook entry predated that filing by a year and a half.

I had not prepared this as a weapon. I kept meticulous, dated notebooks because I was a biochemist. Every scientist keeps notebooks. The evidence was simply what actual, physical science looked like.

Elias was still talking in the boardroom. I kept my hand inside the dark canvas bag under the table. My fingers rested on the crushed wire spiral of Volume 2. The cover was stiff. My thumb traced the edge of the dried coffee ring from the night of Batch 34. I had never tried to wipe the stain away.

This notebook contained the successful formula. It also contained a single note I had written in the margin on the final page of that session. Elias looked at the result this morning and said it was ‘good.’ He has never asked what it took to get here. I kept my hand pressed against the cardboard while the man who never asked stood under the projector lights, explaining my work.

“The buffer phase requires precision,” Elias said, tapping the board.

Dr. Sarah Okafor stopped writing. She drew a single, heavy line under a note on her legal pad. She did not raise her hand. She did not smile.

“Mr. Thorne,” Dr. Okafor said. Her voice was effortless. It was the tone of absolute regulatory authority.

Elias paused. “Yes, Doctor?”

“The esterification step,” Dr. Okafor said. “The reagent order in the diagram on your slide. It appears to be reversed from standard procedure.”

She stated it as a fact, not a question. She was watching Elias’s face when she said it.

Elias looked at the whiteboard. He looked at the arrow he had drawn right to left. He did not know what it meant.

Dr. Okafor shifted her gaze. She looked directly across the wide mahogany table at me.

Elias opened his mouth to answer her.
I tightened my grip on the canvas strap.
I looked at the inverted arrow on the whiteboard.
I looked at Elias.
I looked at Sarah.

Elias looked at the whiteboard. He looked at the arrow he had drawn right to left. He did not know what it meant.

“The reagent sequence,” Elias repeated. He offered Dr. Okafor his polished, media-trained smile. “Of course. It’s quite straightforward.”

He stepped closer to the smartboard. He uncapped the green marker.

“We introduce the base peptide, Reagent B, into the suspension first,” Elias said. He drew a second, smaller arrow branching off the first, pointing firmly right to left. “Then we fold in the acidic catalyst, Reagent A.”

He capped the marker. He held it in his palm.

“This sequence creates a kinetic shock,” Elias explained, his voice projecting easily across the long room. “It forces the molecular bonds to stabilize faster. That prevents the amino chain from unraveling during the viscosity hold.”

He was reciting the second paragraph of my technical summary. But he was applying it to an inverted equation. He did not understand the underlying chemistry. He did not know that a kinetic shock in an inverted esterification shatters the amino chain completely. He was deepening the error, layering my accurate terminology over his fundamental inaccuracy.

Dr. Sarah Okafor did not blink. She looked at the second green arrow on the board.

“Mr. Thorne,” Dr. Okafor said. “Introducing the base peptide before the acidic catalyst does not create a kinetic shock. It triggers uncontrolled exothermic degradation.”

Elias’s smile remained fixed. He adjusted his shirt cuff. “Our lab results clearly show—”

“Your diagram outlines the synthesis of a Class II toxic isomer,” Dr. Okafor said. Her voice did not rise. She did not interrupt him; she simply spoke through him with absolute, institutional weight. “If replicated exactly as you have drawn and described it, the resulting compound would cause severe chemical burns upon dermal contact.”

Elias looked at the board. He looked back at Dr. Okafor. “This is a simplified diagram. For presentation purposes. The actual production—”

“This is a federal compliance review,” Dr. Okafor said. She closed the three-inch-thick S-1 filing. She aligned it perfectly with the edge of her laptop. “The FDA medical-grade certification cannot proceed with a fundamental chemical inaccuracy in the founder’s own technical documentation.”

She placed her silver pen on top of the closed document.

The lead compliance analyst, sitting to Dr. Okafor’s left, spoke for the first time. “A suspension of the certification review due to procedural toxicity requires a formal notation in the agency record.”

Elias’s PR counsel, sitting two chairs away from him, stopped typing on her phone. She looked up.

“If the agency record contradicts the technical competency claimed in the S-1,” the analyst continued, looking directly at the PR counsel, “that triggers a material disclosure requirement.”

The boardroom went completely silent. The low hum of the air conditioning seemed to amplify.

A material disclosure to the IPO underwriters. If the S-1 filing was proven materially inaccurate regarding the founder’s technical expertise, the underwriting banks were legally obligated to halt the public offering. The hundred-million-dollar valuation would evaporate. The board of directors would freeze all assets. The company would become worthless overnight.

I would recover nothing.

I kept my hand inside the canvas bag. I signed the contributor form on April 14, 2023. I knew what ‘technical contributor’ meant by April 17, 2023. I kept going to the lab on April 18. I kept going on April 19. I kept going every day for twelve more months because the work was mine regardless of whose name was on the patent. That was not nobility. That was the specific form of surrender that looks like dedication from the outside. I have sixty-seven failed batches in these notebooks. I knew what I was giving away. I traded ownership for silence. I let him build his empire on my chemistry because correcting the record required a confrontation I was too exhausted to initiate. I had eighteen months to speak. I did not act.

Dr. Okafor opened her legal pad. She uncapped her silver pen.

I pulled my hand out of the canvas bag.
I grasped the thick canvas handles.
I lifted the bag from the floor.
I placed it heavily on the mahogany table.

Elias stopped looking at Dr. Okafor. He looked at the bag.

I reached inside. I pulled out Notebook Volume 1. I set it flat on the wood.
I pulled out Volume 2. I set it next to Volume 1.
I pulled out Volumes 3, 4, 5, and 6.
I aligned the six spiral-bound spines. They covered two feet of the polished table. The cardboard covers were scuffed. The pages were warped from chemical humidity.

“The esterification arrow goes left to right,” I said.

My voice was quiet. The acoustics of the boardroom carried it perfectly to the far end of the table.

“Reagent A is added before Reagent B,” I continued, keeping my hands flat on the table. “The inverted order produces a Class II toxic isomer. The kinetic shock you are describing only occurs if the pH buffer is pre-stabilized prior to the catalyst introduction.”

Elias stared at me. He did not speak.

I reached out. I opened Volume 2. I bypassed the dried coffee ring on the cover. I turned to page 47.

“This is the correct procedure,” I said. I tapped the chemical burn stain on the bottom right corner of the page. “Batch thirty-four. Dated February 9, 2022. Eighteen months before the patent was filed.”

Dr. Okafor looked at the six volumes. She looked at the date handwritten in black ink on page 47.

“May I see all six volumes, Ms. Thorne?” Dr. Okafor asked.

I placed my hands flat on the open pages of Volume 2.
I pushed the notebooks across the table.

The six notebooks covered two feet of the mahogany table. They were an alien intrusion in the sterile, expensive boardroom. Their edges were frayed. The cardboard covers were stained with chemical rings and permanent marker.

Dr. Sarah Okafor did not touch them immediately. She looked at the chronological dates written on the spines.

The lead FDA analyst unclipped a portable copy-stand from his briefcase. He assembled it in ten seconds. He mounted his phone to the bracket. He positioned it over Notebook Volume 2, open to page forty-seven.

The camera shutter clicked. A bright flash illuminated the chemical burn stain on the bottom corner of the paper.

He turned the page. Click. He turned the page. Click.

He had been photographing the pages for three minutes. He stopped. He lowered the camera. He looked at the handwritten reagent sequence, then looked directly at Dr. Okafor. He stepped back from the table entirely, leaving the camera suspended over the prior art.

Dr. Okafor leaned forward. She read the text on page forty-seven. She compared it to the open S-1 filing beside her.

“The synthesis pathway described in the patent,” Dr. Okafor said, her voice carrying absolute, unhurried authority, “matches the exact procedure documented in this notebook.”

She tapped her silver pen next to the date.

“The notebook entry is dated February 9, 2022,” she said. She looked at Elias. “The patent was filed on April 19, 2023. Can you explain the eighteen-month gap between the successful procedure and the filing, Mr. Thorne?”

Elias stood at the whiteboard. The green marker was still in his hand. The inverted, toxic arrow was still drawn on the glass behind him.

“We were still refining,” Elias said. His voice was slightly tighter, but the media-trained cadence remained. “The timeline of research and development is complex. Nora assisted with the technical documentation. The compound itself was my concept.”

Exchange 1.

Dr. Okafor did not argue the definition of a concept. She reached across the table. She pulled Notebook Volume 1 toward her. She opened the stiff cover.

“Ms. Thorne,” Dr. Okafor said, keeping her eyes on the page. “Were you still refining the formula in February 2022?”

“Batch thirty-four was the successful prototype,” I said. “February 9, 2022.”

Dr. Okafor looked at the first page of Volume 1. She read the date aloud to the room.

“October 3, 2021.”

She looked up at Elias.

Elias placed the green marker on the whiteboard tray. The plastic clicked against the aluminum. “This is a family matter,” he said. He adjusted his stance, attempting to reclaim the physical authority of the room. “An internal dispute over administrative credit. It has no bearing on the safety of the product.”

Exchange 2.

“If the preliminary S-1 filing misrepresents the inventor of the core compound,” Dr. Okafor said, her tone flattening into pure institutional protocol, “it is an FDA matter and a federal securities matter simultaneously.”

Elias opened his mouth.
He closed it.
He had reached the limit of his script.

“Batch thirty-four,” I said.

Elias looked at me.

“February 9, 2022,” I continued. “pH 6.6. Reagent A first. That is the compound in your product.”

I stated the facts. I did not raise my voice. I did not ask for his acknowledgment.

The PR counsel sat two chairs away from Elias. She had been taking rapid, continuous notes on her tablet since the meeting began. She stopped typing mid-sentence. She closed the leather cover of the tablet. She picked up her phone, stood up without looking at Elias, and walked out of the boardroom to make a call.

The second compliance analyst was scrolling through the S-1 index on her laptop. She stopped scrolling. She wrote three lines on a physical yellow notepad. She slid the notepad across the mahogany to Dr. Okafor.

Dr. Okafor read the three lines. She placed the notepad face-down.

“The FDA medical-grade certification review is formally suspended,” Dr. Okafor announced. She addressed the room, but she was speaking for the federal record. “Pending a full review of the disputed intellectual property and the correction of the procedural toxicity outlined in the founder’s presentation.”

She picked up her pen.

“A notice of this suspension will be entered into the public FDA compliance database this afternoon,” Dr. Okafor said. “As this materially impacts the viability of the core product, the underwriting counsel for the initial public offering will be copied on the formal notice.”

Structural destruction does not happen with screaming. It happens with paperwork.

The money froze first. The S-1 filing was now materially inaccurate. The underwriter’s counsel would halt the IPO immediately to prevent SEC fraud charges. The hundred-million-dollar valuation was suspended in the air.

The power fractured second. The PR counsel’s phone call was to the board of directors. A federal compliance hold triggered an automatic emergency session. Elias’s position as Chief Executive Officer was now under formal review pending the outcome of the patent dispute. He could not sign a single check without board approval.

The reputation evaporated third. The FDA compliance database was public. Every financial journalist tracking the Elias Naturals IPO would receive an automated alert by 3:00 PM. The narrative of the visionary founder in his home lab was dead.

Elias stood perfectly still. The tailored Oxford shirt suddenly looked like a costume.

Dr. Okafor turned her attention back to me.

“Ms. Thorne,” she said. The regulatory coldness in her voice softened by a fraction of a degree. “The FDA certification can proceed once the United States Patent Office processes the amendment naming you as the co-inventor, and the S-1 filing is factually corrected.”

She tapped Volume 2.

“That administrative process takes approximately thirty days,” Dr. Okafor continued. “The IPO can proceed on an amended timeline. The agency has no issue with the chemistry itself. The chemistry is sound.”

The secondary complication was resolved. The IPO would not collapse. The valuation would survive. I would be named. The only casualty of the delay would be Elias’s sole-inventor status. The company would live, but it would no longer belong exclusively to his myth.

Elias looked at the six notebooks. He looked at the FDA analyst packing up the copy-stand.

He stepped away from the whiteboard.

“I built this brand,” Elias said.

He was not confessing. He was stating his core truth. He still believed the packaging was more important than the peptide.

“Every product,” he said. “Every campaign.”

He walked to the table.
He picked up his crystal water glass.
He set it down.
He turned and walked toward the heavy glass door.

He reached the threshold.
He stopped.
He paused for three seconds. The air conditioning hummed.
He did not turn around.

He walked through the frame. The heavy door swung on its hydraulic hinge. It clicked shut, sealing the boardroom perfectly.

Four weeks later, on a Tuesday morning, the courier delivered the finalized S-1 amendment and the first production-run sample to my new desk in the secure R&D facility.

I opened the heavy legal envelope first. I bypassed the financial disclosures and turned directly to page forty-two. Compound Co-inventor: Nora Thorne. The ink was black, legally binding, and final.

Then I picked up the frosted glass bottle. I turned it slowly in my hands. The silver foil lettering caught the overhead light. It still read Elias Naturals.

The stylized ‘E’ logo was embossed directly into the heavy plastic cap. The board of directors had finalized his severance package on Friday, stripping his executive authority and freezing his voting shares, but a full corporate rebranding prior to the delayed IPO was deemed an unacceptable financial risk by the underwriters.

The name remained. The packaging was unchanged. I would direct the science division, holding the patent and the laboratory authority, but every time I walked into the building, I would see the name of the man who stole my work mounted in brushed steel on the lobby wall. I set the bottle down. I aligned it perfectly with the edge of my monitor stand. The recovery was structural, not poetic.

Notebook Volume 2 sat in the center of my desk. It was no longer buried at the bottom of a canvas tote bag, pressed against the floor under a boardroom table. It rested in the open air, illuminated by the bright, clean fluorescent lights of the laboratory.

The cardboard cover was still warped from chemical humidity. The dark coffee ring from the night of Batch 34 was still baked into the grain. The corporate lawyers had spent three days photographing the first forty-seven pages for the federal compliance filing, transforming my physical labor into institutional evidence. But the notebook itself was still mine.

I moved it to the top left corner of the desk to make room. I placed the pristine, unopened Notebook Volume 7 perfectly center on the blotter. I opened the stiff cover. I picked up my black pen. I wrote the date at the top of the first page. I wrote Batch 68.

I listed the reagent ratios, the ambient temperature, and the buffer variables. I did not do this because I needed to prove the origin of the formula to a compliance officer. I did it because this is exactly what the work looks like.

My phone vibrated against the wood.

The screen illuminated. A text message. The contact name had been erased from my directory, but I recognized the number.

I know this isn’t what either of us wanted. But the company wouldn’t exist without your support.

I read the text.
I read it twice.
I looked at the word support. The deliberate, careful reduction. The final attempt to categorize the architecture of an empire as a domestic favor. He was still writing marketing copy.

I did not open the keyboard.
I deleted the thread.
I blocked the number.
I placed the phone face-down on the desk.

Support is not what you call the person who wrote the formula. Support is what the beaker did.

I picked up my pen. I lowered my safety goggles over my eyes. I stood up and walked into the lab to begin the titration.