building.
About an hour later, Tony glanced out the window and noticed that
Ed was still standing outside, his jacket slung over his arm, looking
lost. It turned out he hadn’t driven his car to the office that morning
and was stranded. This was before the days of Uber, so Tony went to
find Shaunak and, knowing that they were friends, asked him to drive
Ed home.
Shaunak followed Ed out the door two weeks later, albeit on
friendlier terms. The Edison was at its core a converted glue robot and
that was a pretty big step down from the lofty vision Elizabeth had
originally sold him on. He was also unsettled by the constant staff
turnover and the lawsuit hysteria. After about three and a half years, it
felt like time to move on. Shaunak told Elizabeth he was thinking of
going back to school and they agreed to part ways. She organized an
office party to see him off.
Theranos’s product might no longer be the groundbreaking,
futuristic technology she’d envisioned, but Elizabeth remained as
committed as ever to her company. In fact, she was so excited about
the Edison that she started taking it out of the office almost
immediately to show it off. Tony quipped to Dave that they should
have built two before telling her about it.
Jokes aside, Tony was a bit uncomfortable with her haste. He’d had
a basic safety review done to make sure it wouldn’t electrocute anyone,
but that was about the extent of it. He wasn’t even sure what sort of
label to put on it. The lawyers weren’t of much help when he asked
them, so he looked up Food and Drug Administration regulations on
his own and decided that a “for research use only” sticker was
probably the most appropriate.
This was not a finished product and no one should be under the
impression that it was, Tony thought.