Lab Lockdown

Locked in a lab with an attractive pregnant doctor

This is a story about a young man trapped together with an older married woman.

Lab lockdown

If it hadn't happened to me, I'd have said it sounded like the plot of a bad science fiction movie, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

My name is Patrick and I'm 20. All my life, if you'd asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have given you the same answer. I wanted to be a scientist, wearing a white lab coat. So I studied and got straight A* in my 'A' levels in maths and all the sciences. Now I'm studying physics and chemistry at one of the country's top universities. In addition, I'm studying engineering in my limited spare time. What can I say? I'm a nerd and rarely socialise.

My professor had encouraged me and arranged for a tour of a local research laboratory, something the general-public would never get to see. So, after signing an alarming number of waivers and handing over my phone, because no electronic devices were allowed inside, I was introduced to Doctor Nia Patel.

Instantly, I was tongue-tied. I struggle around girls in the first place and it gets worse the more attractive they are. Despite her name, she wasn't Indian or Pakistani, but some blend that left her with perfect features. Mocha coloured skin and a hint of an African component in her tight, curly black hair.

Fortunately, as she talked about science, my brain finally kicked into gear and I could avoid sounding like a bumbling idiot. Science was one thing I could always talk about.

She explained how the laboratory was split into different levels of safety protocols. Starting with level one, which was the lowest level of isolation, all the way up to level five. These contained deadly toxins, radioactive materials and the nastiest of viruses.

As we toured the facility, we paused outside a level three laboratories and she explained this was where she used to work, until she got pregnant. She placed her hand on her belly and explained she was three months pregnant. Because of the potential dangers, she was forced to do admin work out of the laboratories, such as give me a tour.

On the way to show me the outside of a level five lab, she detoured into an empty level two lab to show me how it worked. One entire wall was glass, and we had to enter via an airlock into the negative air pressure laboratory. Sensors measured the pressure to ensure there could be no leak from the lab. It caused a little discomfort until I forced my ears to pop to equalise the pressure.

Nia seemed to think that was amusing, but all humour vanished as alarms went off all over the building. Lights started strobing in the hallways and we stared at the door as we heard locks sealing us in. For a moment, I wondered if this was some prank. Something to scare the crap out of a visitor and any second, a gang of scientists would appear and laugh at us trapped in the lab.

However, Nia's expression revealed she was as shocked as me. The alarms were nearly painfully loud, and she moved to a control box on the wall and flicked a switch. It shut off the alarms within the lab, and the alarms outside were partially muted by the multiple layers of glass.

Grabbing a phone on the wall, she dialled an extension and put it on speaker. We waited for several minutes before it was answered.

"Hello?" a man's voice asked.

"Tim? Is that you?"

"Nia? Please tell me you're not in the office today."

"Unfortunately, yes, I'm stuck in lab 7."

"Shit. Are you alone?"

"No, I was giving a tour when the alarms went off."

"A tour? What the hell. You know we can't..."

"Not my idea. Professor Gardener set it up."

"Fuck! He treats this place like his private property."

"I know, but he's on the board of directors and pushes a lot of work our way. What's going on?"

"I don't have all the details yet. There was a flash fire and explosion."

"Shit! Anyone hurt."

"Unfortunately yes. At least one fatality, but that's not the worst part."

"What do you mean?"

"It was in a level four lab dealing with category D compounds."

"Oh, my god did it breach containment. And what was it?"

"I can answer the first question, yes it did. However, I cannot tell you exactly what it is with a civilian in the room with you. Give me a moment and I'll check the risk log."

Nia looked at me and I could see her searching for some words to reassure me. However, she came up short and looked back at the window, wondering what pathogen was floating in the air outside our lab.

"Nia? Are you still there?"

"Where else am I going to go?" she snapped back.

"Yeah right. Please tell me you have full hazmat suits in that lab?"

She turned to me and pointed at a cupboard in the corner. I opened it to find it empty.

"Fuck! No, this lab is not being used at the moment, so it's not fully equipped."

"Damn. In which case, you're going to be stuck in there for quite a while."

"Why?"

"Because I've checked the details on the compound. I don't know what your attitudes to carcinoma are, but this stuff is terrible for a foetus."

"Oh, my god!" She pressed her free hand over her belly.

"Yeah, so we're going to take no chances of keeping you all safe. I do not know how long it will be, but be prepared for it to be days..."

"Fuck!" Nia's swearing matched my thoughts exactly.

"Make an inventory of what you have, and I'll call you back as soon as I've got news."

Nia slammed the phone down with unnecessary force.

We had a full range of standard lab equipment. Bunsen burners, flasks, pipettes and so on. A selection of measuring equipment and the regular chemical reagents. There were enough rubber gloves to re-enact the movie up, and for some reason we had miles of paper towels. Fortunately, there was a fridge containing dozens of bottles of water and a half-empty box of snack bars.

"This must have been Doctor Taub's lab. He eats those things all the time and they give him terrible wind." Nia comments.

"If this is all we have to eat, you'll need someone to check if it has enough nutrients for the baby." I suggest, and she nods, making a note on one of the many notepads.

The other most notable thing apart from the missing hazmat suits was a lack of a bathroom. The jumbo Coke I'd drank before coming here, I now realised, had been a mistake.

"What do we do about going to the toilet?" I ask the doctor, embarrassed.

She smiled before replying. "After graduating from university, I visited my ancestral village in Africa for several months. Out there, you went out to the fields night or day and did it in a ditch. That's not going to work here. Let's try this." She pointed to a metal bin a little over knee high, with a hazard label on the side and a lockable lid.

"Seriously? I don't think I could, not in front of you."

"I don't see any other options. Damn it! Now you've mentioned it, I need to go. Look, it's no good getting bent out of shape over this. We all need to pee and poop. In Africa, they don't have our hang-ups. We're grownups in a difficult situation. Let's not make it worse by getting overly worked up about it."

Nia reached down and pulled her skirt up part way, then reached under it and wriggled out of her panties. I was blushing as she slipped them into her lab coat pocket. Moving to semi squat over the bin, she pulled her skirt higher. I got a flash of tight black curly pubic hair as she rested on the edge of the bin.

"You could at least look the other way." She admonished.

"Sorry!" I blurted, and turned around. My face must have been scarlet.

I could hear her peeing, and then she asked.

"Could you hand me some paper towels?"

Grabbing a couple from the dispenser, I hold my arm out behind me.

"You'll have to come closer than that."

Looking only at the floor, I moved closer, and she took the towels.

"OK, your turn." She said, and I turned to see her standing and straightening her skirt.

"I think I can wait."

"Days? Not a chance. I'll look the other way."

Unzipping and aiming at the bucket, but I couldn't go. I've always had something of a bashful bladder, and having an audience always made it harder. Closing my eyes, I thought of streams and waterfalls until I peed, then opened my eyes to ensure I didn't miss. It seemed to go on forever before I finally stopped and zipped up, and I quickly put the lid on the bin.

"It certainly seemed like you needed to go. I think we're going to have to keep toilet visits short. Especially when we've had to do a number two. Each time we open it, the air in here is going to stink. Speaking of air..."

She walked off to the control panel and swore.

"The air system is not running properly."

"What does that mean?"

"A lab like this has bottled, filtered and recycled air. Without the air running, all we have is the air in the room. So if the room's volume is..."

I glanced at the room and did the maths in my head.

"About 190 cubic metres." She paused in surprise that I'd calculated it in a moment, then continued.

"OK, that means we've plenty of air for the pair of us if we don't waste it, for perhaps 4 days."

I thought for a moment and added. "I'd be more worried about the build-up of carbon dioxide. That will happen sooner and give us headaches and other side effects. That probably halves the time we have, unless the air comes back on."

The phone rang, and we put Tim back on speaker and went through our inventory, and he made notes.

"We have a few urgent issues." Nia spoke after we'd finished. "The air system is not working."

"Fuck! That lab was going through maintenance before this shit happened. I'll get someone looking into it urgently."

"The second issue is something Patrick pointed out. The only thing we have to eat is Doctor Taub's snack bars. We're not sure if they have sufficient nutrients for the baby at this stage of its development."

"I'll have someone check for you, but you should be ok with your body's stored nutrients."

"Are you saying I'm fat?" She asked with a hint of amusement.

"Never, you're amazing as ever. Or is that going too far to say about my former boss?"

"Maybe a little."

"OK, back to the serious stuff. That's a level two lab with an isolated waste and water system. However, we're not convinced the water is entirely uncontaminated. So use bottled water only."

"Has anyone told my husband yet?"

"Karen was on the phone with him a few minutes ago."

"What about Patrick's family?"

"Shit!"

"His contact details are with the waivers on my desk."

"I'll do it right away. If anything changes, call me, and I'll call you when we know more."

Nia hung up. She turned to me and sighed.

"It looks like we're going to be here for a while. How about I quiz you on what you know about science?"

So from around lunchtime until about 8 pm, she quizzed me and corrected me on a few things. It turned out she would have made an amazing teacher. With no materials but a pen and pad of paper, she could recall formulae and chemical bonds, along with tables of properties from memory.

"You know if your career here doesn't work out, you'd make a killer teacher." I complimented her. "I think you're a lot clearer than Professor Gardener. He tends to look down his nose at anyone who doesn't already know what he's teaching."

"Thanks. I may have to consider that. I plan on breastfeeding, so it might be years before I can get back into the lab. Plus, I'm planning on having more kids."

When it came time to sleep, we wondered what to do. We had nothing soft to lie on, so the choice was the concrete floor or the metal work table. We chose the floor, and we chose wrong.

Several hours later, we both lay awake and were getting colder. The concrete was leaching the body heat away slowly but surely.

"This isn't working. I've an idea." I suggest getting up and grabbing a roll of paper towels.

Putting two layers of towels on the metal work table large enough for us to lie on, I helped Nia up and climbed up to lie next to her.

"The paper isn't much cushioning." She commented.

"It's actually there as an insulator against the metal. Hopefully, we won't get too cold."

"Do you mind if I snuggle up against you? I can cover us both with my lab coat, like a blanket of sorts." She offered.

I was incredibly aware of her breasts as she lay on her side against me, resting her head on my shoulder. However, the combined body heat warmed us and we both slept.

When I awoke, Nia was already up and pacing, chewing on her thumbnail, looking agitated.

"What's up? Is it the baby?" I asked, sitting up.

"No! Or in another way, I should say yes." I frowned in confusion.

"Can I help?" She suddenly looked rather stressed, and I realised I'd said something wrong.

After a moment, she shook her head and spoke.

"What do you know about the stages of pregnancy?"

"Not a huge amount, really. Conception, cell division, but not the specifics."

"OK, you're lucky I'm past my morning sickness phase, but unfortunately I'm in another phase that in some women makes them super libidinous."

"Does that mean what I think it does?"

"If you think it means I get extremely horny, then you're correct."

"Oh!" is the best I can manage.

"I know. I don't like to admit it, but it's true. Normally my husband and I deal with it, two or three times a day, or I nip off to the ladies and..." She mimes rubbing her crotch.

She's blushing, but I'm blushing worse.

"And we've no privacy here." I add.

"I thought about dealing with the problem before you woke up, but I realised it would be worse if you found me doing it without at least explaining beforehand."

"Erm!" I manage and chide myself. For a near genius IQ 'Erm' is the best I could manage.

"So, like the toilet arrangement, we have to be grown up and not squeamish about this." She comments and I nod, but wonder where this is going.

"I know all men masturbate, as do nearly all women. In my case, it's not just for pleasure, it's a medical necessity. If I don't, I pass on stress hormones to the baby. Even if I'm not showing it, I'm pretty stressed. Being horny just makes it worse."

"OK, what do you want me to do? I could go sit in the corner. Perhaps hum to myself or cover my ears? It's about the only privacy I think we can organise. Whilst you..." I gestured to the crotch.

"Thanks. I'm sorry this is awkward for you. It's awkward for me as well."

Taking a chair, I moved over to the enormous glass wall and tried to block out what Nia was about to do. It wasn't easy as the lights were out in the hall and I could see her reflection as she climbed back onto the table. With her feet facing away from me, she raised her knees, and I quickly closed my eyes.

However, that didn't help. In my mind's eyes, I imagined her pulling her skirt up and touching herself. My brief glimpse of her pubic hair had filled in too much of the detail, not to imagine her fingers working on her pussy. I pinched the fleshy bit between my finger and thumb, hard to distract myself and stop the erection that had spontaneously risen.

After perhaps five minutes, I heard her swearing.

"It's not working."

"Sorry?" I asked, careful not to turn around.

"It feels too unnatural like that. At home, my husband always helps while I do it."

Glancing around, I'm relieved to see her sitting up on the edge of the table.

"Help, as in..." I gesture a rubbing motion.

She chuckles. "Not necessarily. We sit on the bed and I rest my back against him. He holds me, kisses my neck and tells me he loves me."

Thinking hard for a moment, I ask. "Would it help if I did that? I mean, except for the 'I love you' bit. That might be."

"True, and I doubt you could pull off my husband's accent. Nevertheless, would you mind?"

"It will certainly be strange, but I'll do whatever it takes to help you and the baby."

She grinned and added, "Well, you came here for a learning experience."

"Yes, but I was expecting chemistry and not biology to be on the syllabus. What should I do?"

"Sit on the floor with your back to the cupboard."

I had to wonder if my limited circle of friends would believe this. Then I remembered, amongst the papers I'd signed, were ones restricting what I could say about what I saw within the facility.

As she stood in front of me, she seemed to hesitate, and I wondered if this was too much for her. Then she pulled her skirt up, just short of flashing me, and sat down. Sliding back between my open thighs until her curvy backside was nestled up against my crotch. Damn! I'd barely suppressed my erection earlier; I doubted I'd manage it with physical contact.

"Now what?" I asked.

"Put your arms around my waist and then kiss and nuzzle my neck and ear."

"Anything for science." I muttered under my breath and did what she said.

With our height difference, it was a bit of a strain to reach down, gently kissing the side of her neck. And it pretty much forced me to look at her hand partially under her skirt.

"This is very weird." I commented.

"Shush! I'm trying to imagine this is my home and you're my husband, Izad."

I could not see what her fingers were doing, but you could tell from the movement of her hand and wrist. Closing my eyes didn't help, as my imagination was very fertile.

I tried staring off at the far wall and mentally recited the periodic table. Including their atomic numbers and properties.

By the time I was nearing the end for the second time, Nia surprised me by taking a hand from her waist and placing it on her breast. My first instinct is to pull it away, but she holds it there, and I realise she's stronger than she looks. Unsure what to do, I give her breast a gentle squeeze.

"Thank you." She lets my hand go.

Experimentally, I reach up and touch her other breast and she sighs 'good' and continues her rubbing.

By now, I'm certain she's noticed my erection pressing into her back. I try to shift a little to move it, and as if she's reading my mind, she comments.

"It's OK, my husband gets them all the time like this. I'll think of it as a compliment."

I can feel my cheeks warm after being caught out.

However, she's speeding up and I adjust my caresses of her breasts in time with her movements until she climaxes with a shudder. For a few moments, she lies pressed against me and I let my hands drop to the floor. It seems inappropriate to keep touching her up after we're done.

Then she clambers to her feet, straightens her skirt and moves off to wash her hands with bottled water and liquid soap.

"You've no idea how much I needed that. Thank you. I know it was difficult for you."

"It was hard..." she sniggers and I see her looking at my bulge. "I meant..."

"It's OK, Patrick. It really is. Women's secretions are packed full of hormones specifically designed to generate one of those. Even under these stressful circumstances, if you didn't get hard, I'd have had to send you to a doctor. Even a gay guy would get one. Wait, you're not, are you? Oh god, that would make it worse."

"No, I'm not. I may not have had a lot of experience, but I'm not gay."

"Do you need to..." She makes the universal wanking hand gesture.

"No, I'm OK, thank you. Most of it is because I need to pee." A lie and she knows it, but it's the best I can come up with.

Around 9 am, Tim calls and tells us the air system should be working shortly. He was trying to set up video conferences with our families for that evening.

"Any chance you could sort out the firewall and let me get access to my emails or the internet?" Nia asks.

"Sorry, you know the rules."

"I know, but present company excepted, it's pretty boring here. Nothing to listen to and nothing to read."

"Apart from a few hundred thousand research papers on the intranet." Tim replied.