Page 16

The meat vendor he was connecting us with so we could get more at better rates was interested in doing the same. Way too interested, so I didn’t know if he’d hit hard times or was just greedy, but I told him we needed a foundation before taking that step.

He accepted that and told me to please always think of him. I was relieved when I saw only worry in his aura instead of greed. Okay, so he’d had hard times.

Yeah, I could figure out a way to help with that. For now, what we were ordering should take some worries off of him. We were ordering a lot of fucking meat to change up our menus after all. And since we were going to increase the number of employeesandpatients—hopefully—I planned on ordering more.

But everything was positive, and I was happy from the major win and putting together difficult puzzle pieces.

So what I walked into was an extra slap in the face. I’d spent hours and hours making the work life of my employees better… Only to learn they’d been sharpening knives to stab me in the back at the same time.

I stared around at the chaos that several department heads, HR, and the legal department were trying to manage and snapped. “Enough!”

“Ellie, we can handle this bullshit,” Alan said as he spun around.

I snorted. “You mean the children throwing a fit and trying to call it a mutiny?” I met the gaze of the attending I suspected at the head of all of this. “The sad,sadattempt to try and keep me from kicking out dead weight and making doctors actually do their jobs instead of getting paid more than they’re worth and reaping the benefits—”

He snapped as well, unable to take the jabs so publicly. “You run this hospital and Ineverdisrespected that as others did. Butyou do not pay my salary, and I want to hear that these changes are approved by the owner as is myright. Legally, according to the federal government of North America.”

“Unfortunately, he’s correct,” Gerald warned, looking severely beat up.

Alan’s face turned red so fast that I thought it was going to explode. He turned on the lion and clearly they had already been battling. “Not when the owner has signed everything to—”

“Alan, leave it,” I begged. I sighed when he looked at me. “Please, this isn’t Gerald’s fault and he was in the ED Friday because we’re breaking him.” I ignored everything else and focused on Gerald. “Are you even okay to be back at work?”

He sighed, scrubbing his hand over his hair. “Dr. James is going to show up and yell at me, but he ruled out everything scary. It’s exhaustion. Clark is going to check me as well just to be safe. I’ll be good with the knockout potions and IVs. I promise. It’s just—I got word of…” He gestured around.

I let out a slow breath and took it all in. There were at least a hundred doctors, nurses, and hospital staff there throwing down. It was clear they were trying to out me by demanding a meeting with the founder and owner to hear these were approved changes directly from the source.

Not just the “mouthpiece” which was me.

I walked right up to the attending and studied him, unnerving him by acting so calm. “You’re correct that it is your right under federal law, but the provision in all of your contracts stipulating you waive that right to always handle matters with the owner’s designated representative negates that.”

“It’s beenapprovedby the federal government, held up at the North American Supreme Court,” Alan snapped when people wanted to argue.

“I didn’t know that,” Gerald sighed, waving off Alan. “I’m not on their fucking side. I’m trying to protect you, idiot. You were about to take a swing at him! I’m—”

“Get him in a hospital bed,” I ordered one of the security standing off to the side. “Seriously, he’s about to drop.”

“I’m sorry, Ellie,” Gerald mumbled as he ended up leaning on Alan.

“No, I am. I let my anger and upset make me stupid,” Alan mumbled as he helped the lion.

At least no one was so feral for my head that they didn’t take a time-out to let us help Gerald. Once he was wheeled off though… Game back on.

Luckily, more people from my team showed up.

I felt worlds better when the attending’s department head looked out for blood when he realized one of his was in charge of this fucking coup. All of my department heads were beyond pissed. We were busting our asses to make ASH into what it should be and people were blocking us at every turn.

“This will not be forgotten or that you did it when the interviews are starting today,” I said bluntly before looking at Beth, the head of HR. “What can I say legally? What won’t get me in hot water?”

She seemed to swallow a tired sigh before looking at me. “I would have to reread the section of the contract again. I got a call of protests in the lobby and raced here. If it’s against their contract and they’re breaching it by demanding this, you can absolutely fire them.”

There was an edge to her tone and I knew why. Yes, I could do it, but theopticsof firing over a hundred employees for challenging my policy changes after I’d gone on TV and welcomed the challenge would be more than ASH could recover from for a long time.

Fuck. Me. Hard.

“Maybe it’s time,” Alan said quietly. “Maybe it’s just really fucking time already.”

“I don’t know how else we handle this without risking the progress we’ve made,” Carla agreed from behind me, a few other department heads echoing her. “And I’m just fucking tired of the drama and these stupid blowups. This makes us look like clowns when we’ve got interviews coming in.”