As the heavy mahogany door clicked shut, the silence of the VIP wing felt oppressive. I looked at Maya. She was young, maybe twenty-four, with tired eyes that had seen too much for her age.
“How long has it been like this?” I asked.
Maya didn’t pretend not to understand. She looked down at her sensible shoes, then back at me. “Since the new management group took over two years ago, Mr. Miller. They started ‘streamlining.’ Cutting staff, increasing patient-to-nurse ratios. Brenda was… she was their enforcer. She got results. She kept the costs down by making sure people who couldn’t pay didn’t stay.”
“And the doctors?”
“Some complained,” Maya said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “But they were told to focus on surgery and leave the ‘administration’ to the experts. Dr. Thorne—the head of internal medicine—he tried to fight her. They cut his research budget in half last month.”
“Tell Dr. Thorne I want to see him in the boardroom in twenty minutes,” I said. “And Maya?”
She paused. “Yes, sir?”
“Thank you. For being the only person in that lobby who saw a human being instead of a balance sheet.”
I didn’t wait for her response. I headed for the elevators. My phone was buzzing incessantly—my CFO, my lawyers, the former owners of the hospital—all of them wanting to talk about “integration strategies” and “public relations.”
I ignored them all. I had another stop to make first.
The administrative wing was a maze of glass and steel. It felt more like a hedge fund office than a place of healing. As I walked through the open-plan office, the chatter died down. People didn’t just look at me; they stared. The news of what happened in the lobby had traveled through the hospital’s internal grapevine faster than a virus.
I reached the office of Thomas Sterling, the CEO. His secretary didn’t even try to stop me. She just pointed toward the double doors with a trembling finger.
I pushed the doors open.
Sterling was standing behind his massive mahogany desk, frantically shoving papers into a briefcase. He was a man in his late fifties, wearing a suit that was a cheap imitation of mine. He looked like a man who had spent his life stepping on others to reach a middle-rung ladder and was now realizing the ladder was on fire.
“Leo! Mr. Miller!” he stammered, forcing a sweaty grin. “I was just coming down to see you. What happened downstairs… an absolute tragedy. A misunderstanding of the highest order. Nurse Vance has always been a bit… zealous, but she’s already been processed for termination. We’ve issued a formal apology…”
“I don’t want an apology, Thomas,” I said, walking into the room and closing the door behind me. I didn’t sit. I just stood in the center of the plush carpet, radiating a coldness that seemed to drop the room’s temperature. “I want the files on the ‘indigent care’ transfers from the last eighteen months.”
Sterling froze. “Those are… those are highly confidential, Leo. Proprietary data…”
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