Page 4 of BillionHeir

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Maxwell

“Six WEEKS?”

“Mr. Banks, I understand this might come as a surprise, but please—”

“No,” I interrupt as I shake my head adamantly. “Six fucking weeks? Absolutely not. I do not have time to sit in some fucking nursing home with a bunch of invalids for six weeks. I am a very important and busy man. I can’t and I won’t.”

“But sir,” the Chief Physician of the hospital says, trying to reason with me. “If you don’t give yourself this time to heal, you could lose the use of your entire arm. Physical therapy is a necessity, not a recommendation.”

“No,” I say again, even stronger than before. “Figure out another treatment plan, because I am not going.”

“Mr. Banks,” Katrina cuts into the conversation as she bustles into the room with a disappointed voice. “I know you are not cursing at this doctor.”

I clear my throat and look down at the scratchy sheets on my bed as I try to avoid her gaze.

“You need to listen to this man. He has your best interests at heart. And don’t you dare talk about those people in rehab like that. After all,” she says, pinning me to the bed with her stare. “You are about to be one of them.”

I sigh and look back up at the doctor who seems shocked that Katrina’s scolding worked on me.

“I need to get back to Boston,” I say in a tone slightly less annoyed than before, but only just.

“We can do that,” the doctor answers with a nod, looking back down at his paperwork. “A transfer shouldn’t be an issue for a man of your means. Do you have any opinions on where you want to go?”

“The best of the best.”

* * *

“It is good to see you again, Mr. Banks,” my assistant says when I am situated in the luxury ambulance that will take me to the rehab facility from the airport.

I have just spent the last 6 hours on a Med Flight from Seattle.

It was quite a harrowing experience flying after having just been in a helicopter accident.

I insisted on Ethan meeting me here at the airport and riding along with me to the rehab facility so that he could catch me up on everything that has happened at Banks International since I have been out of commission.

“Ethan, I think we are on a first name basis at this point,” I answer, noting the look of shock on my assistant’s face.

He has been working for me for years now, and he has been keeping my company running in my absence.

At this point, I have no choice but to trust him.

I might as well become more familiar with him.

“Okay, Maxwell,” he says carefully.

“It is Max,” I say more forcefully than I intended. Being friendly is not exactly my strong suit. “I am glad you weren’t with me as originally planned. I hate to think of what might have happened.”

“Sir,” Ethan says before quickly correcting himself. “Max, I am so glad you are going to be okay. I have been managing, but now that you are capable of selecting someone to temporarily run the company while you recover, I have put together a list of potential candidates.”

“I have already chosen someone.”

“Great, that will make this process easier,” Ethan says, sounding relieved. “Who is it? ”

“You.”

He audibly gulps before responding. “Really? But Mr.—”

“It is Max,” I growl.

“Right, Max. Sorry. Why me?”

“Tell me how things have been going while I have been gone,” I command without responding to his question.

He takes the subject change in stride, just as I expected.

“Things are running smoothly. I have been managing your emails and attending meetings in your place. The department heads have been coming to me with any issues of which there have been surprisingly few.”

When he finishes, I just nod my head, and he gives me a questioning look.

“And you wonder why I would choose you. I trust you, Ethan. Look how well you have done since I have been gone. My own friends are impressed.”

“You have my word that you will return to a thriving empire, just as you left it.”

I nod, fully believing him. If there is anyone I can trust to do it, it is him.

“What do you know about this place they are sending me?” I ask, still upset about having to be in a facility like a caged monkey for months on end. I would much rather be at home where I can relax .

“It is the best rehab in Boston. I had to pull a couple of strings to get you in on such short notice, but once they heard your name, they were very amenable.”

As they should be. It is good to be back in a place where the Banks name means something.

When I try to stretch my neck, pain radiates up my arm and down my back like lightning just as the ambulance hits a bump in the road, jostling me in the gurney I am lying on.

I have to grit my teeth to suppress my cry of agony.

“Watch it!” Ethan yells at the driver, surprising me with his outburst. “He was just in a helicopter accident, or did you forget?”

If I wasn’t in so much pain right now, I might smile thankfully at my assistant for standing up for me so forcefully. I feel the vehicle slow and pray to everything that is holy that we are at the rehabilitation center. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

I insisted on leaving that hell hole of a hospital in Seattle as soon as it was physically possible.

They tried to warn me that it was too soon, that my bones needed more time to set after surgery, but I can be a very persuasive man when I want to be.

My frustration and sour mood combined with a generous donation to the hospital convinced them to go ahead with the transfer .

I took a red eye last night with the best private medical care Seattle had to offer.

The team then took a return flight back, and I instructed Ethan to hire the highest rated ambulance service in the city to take me the rest of the way to the rehab where I will be doing my physical therapy and begrudgingly staying for the next six weeks.

Hopefully less if I have anything to say about it.

I still don’t know why I can’t just go home and have the therapists come to me. The doctors and nurses insist that I am going to want the constant care that this facility will provide, but I am less than convinced.

I have more money than I know what to do with. I can afford round the clock care at home. Hell, I could afford to hire a team of belly dancers to stand around the place 24/7 and feed me grapes if I wanted. Why shouldn’t I get private nursing care?

I know that this is what everyone wants for me, but everyone doesn’t know what is best for me. I do.

The ambulance jostles me once more, and I can feel beads of sweat build on my brow as I hold back a scream. The driver of this thing is a hack, highly rated or not.

A few minutes later, I feel the vehicle slow down and come to a stop. Ethan looks down at his phone and then back up at me.

“We are here. I will stay long enough for you to get settled. Then I need to get back to the office for an important meeting. ”

“Important meeting?” I ask, happy to have something else to focus on beside the blinding agony I am in right now.

“Nothing you need to worry about. I have a meeting with the board of directors coming up this week, and I need to reassure them that things are being properly managed in your absence. But I know just how to handle them.”

“It sounds like you have things under control. I am happy to have you standing in for me.”

Ethan’s eyes go wide. It is obvious he doesn’t know how to react to my praise, and I realize that maybe I have been a bit of a hard ass to the kid.

Sure, he needed a heavy hand to make sure he knew what he was doing.

I can’t exactly have an incompetent assistant.

But now that I know he is able to do the job, it is time I start giving him more room to actually do it.

Taking some of the stress off of me will be just what I need to heal quickly and get back to work.

The double doors at my feet open to a team of people dressed in various shades of scrubs. I assume these are the ones who are going to get me back on my feet, both figuratively and literally. I couldn’t be more eager.

“Mr. Banks,” a man dressed in a rumpled black suit says as the EMTs pull me out of the ambulance.

He is clearly not a nurse or a doctor, so I assume he is the CEO or something close to it.

“Calvin Broadmire. It is a delight to have you here recovering with us at Sanctuary Springs. I hope your time here at our recovery center will be both relaxing and rejuvenating. I trust that the staff and level of care our facility will provide will be up to your standards. If you find anything amiss, here is my personal phone number. Feel free to call me at any time.”

My eyes roll into the back of my head as he thrusts his business card at me. I can’t stand brown nosers like him.

“The pleasure is all mine,” I mutter under my breath as the legs below the gurney snap into place underneath me.

Two men in green utilitarian scrubs take over, each one grabbing one of the railings on my sides and guiding me up onto the sidewalk and through a door.

I can feel every movement as we bump over the threshold and down the colorful yet sterile hallway, somehow classier and yet nearly the same as every other hospital I have ever been in.

They take me down one corridor after another as the team of staff and personnel trailing after us grows steadily longer.

We must make for quite the comical sight.

If I wasn’t working so hard to ignore my pain, I might laugh at the thought of so many professionals chasing me down a maze of stark white hallways.

Finally, we slow down as we approach a door.

There is a nurse sitting in an alcove beside the door, tapping away on a computer.

She doesn’t look up when we reach her, and the men who are transporting me don’t seem to notice or care.

They push right past her into the room, but not before I get a glimpse of her face .

There is something familiar about her. I feel like I have seen her somewhere before, possibly even met her.

I don’t have much time to think about it before all the people who have been following us descend on my room, each of them with something to say or do.

They each wait for their turn to fiddle with my medical equipment, give me care instructions, and outline the detailed plans they have put in place to make sure I am well before I know it.

One by one they file out of the room until it is just me and Ethan again.

He looks about how I feel: overwhelmed and exhausted. He turns to me and clears his throat.

“That was quite a bit to take in, but it sounds like you are in great hands.”

“I don’t want to be here,” I grumble moodily.

“I don’t blame you. But we need you to get stronger so that you can come back to work. This is the best place for that.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, unable to keep from sounding like a petulant child.

“I will come back later. Do you want me to bring you anything?”

“Besides two fingers of Scotch?”

Ethan’s eyebrows rise, but he wisely chooses not to keep his mouth shut.

“I am good, but thanks,” I finally say, dismissing him .

“You will be out of here before you know it,” he says before he goes, obviously much more optimistic than me.

I roll my eyes, but this time I don’t have the energy to prevent them from sinking closed afterward.

I relax against the pillows of my new bed in my new room on the other side of the country from where I was last night.

It has been a long journey, and despite all my complaints, I am glad to be able to finally get some rest.

Just as I am starting to fall asleep, the door to my room opens again.

“Knock knock,” a woman’s soothing British voice calls into the room.