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“You’re just a mouthpiece for the founder, and I demand to talk to him. He has to know what’s happening here,” he seethed, shoving away one of our guards when he tried to grab him. “I will end you—”

Alan lost his temper and grabbed Gordon. “You assume we’re not all in communication with the founder and owner of this hospital. We are. We know who they are.”

Carla snorted. “I had a lovely conversation with them yesterday. Fools.” She turned to me. “Don’t give that one anything. He’s always pissed me off.” She beamed as she clapped her hands together and rubbed them. “Oh, it’s going to be so nice to not have a board of directors. What annoying—”

“No, we’re becoming the board, Carla,” Dr. James interjected.

She frowned but then recovered. “Yes, but not really. I mean, our meetings will be like—we never listened to the board or—”

“No, we’re not becoming a useless board, but a good one and to actually help Ellie,” Alan told her firmly. “Which is starting with auditing your whole department and personnel. I want mine all to have a chat with this new head of HR and—” He cleared his throat and looked at me. “We’ll talk.”

“We’ll talk,” I accepted, glancing at my watch. “Since we’re all gathered, let’s talk real quick about the change and ideas.”

“Perfect, because I brought treats,” one of the department heads chuckled.

Clearly, he didn’t know it was supposed to be a coup.

Did coups have snacks?

Probably.

I turned to leave but then remembered Ha-joon. I went over to him, noting how he was staring off at nothing, clearly in shock.

“Thank you for your help, Dr. Clark,” I said as I went to move my hand to his arm.

He raised his arm in a jerky motion so I couldn’t. He took a step away and disgust filled his eyes when he focused on me.

Everyone around us froze.

“Sorry,” he whispered, but didn’t look it. He cleared his throat and ran his hand over his head. “Yes, right, happy to help. Best of luck with the new board, Dr. Reed.” He spun around and walked off… In the wrong direction from his practice.

Okay then. Yeah, I was definitely in trouble.

I shook it off and let him do what he needed to.

And I did what I needed to.

Alan wanted everyone in his department to sit with the new head of HR. However she wanted to handle it, but he wanted to know what they didn’t like and to start focusing on what could be fixed. Without recourse. People wouldn’t believe that, but it was what he wanted.

Also, for her to flag problems so we could get rid of them. It was time to get some staff turnover.

And not because the doctors were sluts.

Others agreed and promised to talk to Beth and set up the schedule and timeline so I didn’t have to and would keep me in the loop. A good idea and I didn’t have to manage it all?

My day really was looking up.

“What happened with Dr. Tate?” Alan asked as he walked me to my office after the meeting. “I mean, the details.”

I nodded. “People had already figured out that she was an entitled princess and probably had choice words about how she finished med school and training. She jumped hospitals each time, and this time she didn’t want to.

So when she was frozen out of surgeries and not included, she went to find her own. ”

“Normal for the young ones,” he accepted.

“Yeah, but she isn’t an intern or resident,” I drawled.

“She was a junior attending. You get frozen out because you’re crap.

” I waited until he nodded. “She pushed to operate on someone who didn’t need it.

The woman would have healed in the ICU with her rapid healing and it was safer that way since she was pregnant.

“Then she left a surgical instrument in the woman.” I nodded when he did a double take.

“The report I got didn’t say which one. But clearly not just a sponge or something unfortunate but benign.

It killed her. And when she started tanking, Tate didn’t want to admit her mistake and didn’t tell anyone.

So she—the hospital is trying to quietly handle it which was why—”

“Why they wouldn’t tell us anything,” he sighed. “Lovely. This bullshit of trying to pass off problems to get them out of your hospital—we all need to be better.”

I snorted. We’d done the same. It was unfortunate, but… So was life and I needed my sanity.

“How did the OR nurses and team not realize anything was wrong?” he asked after a few moments. “Our support staff would never have let that mistake happen.”

I nodded. “They caught it. The senior nurse did when counting instruments. Tate blew up on her that it was her mistake and someone had to have thrown something away. She had them digging in all of the garbage bags and threatened their jobs if they let it get out. So she’s in trouble as well for not speaking up. She was scared of Tate and has kids.”

“That’s sad, but a woman and child are dead,” he sighed. “What a mess. I cannot believe she thought pushing in here and securing a new position would just make it all better.”

“I am known for going to the mat for our doctors. I mean, even if people don’t know it’s me doing it—the hospital is known for it.”

“True, but there are limits. She’s an idiot.” He clapped my shoulder. “We need to celebrate. No more of that fucking board. We never should have allowed it.”

I gave him a tired look. “You know why we did. It was a different time. A hospital run by doctors—and female doctors at that—would have been run into the ground according to people. We were vulnerable to slander and—you know why we did it.”

“I know why we did it,” he said gently but then hugged me. “I’m just glad it’s over now and we can go back to thriving. Toxic is on tour and kicked out. Now we thrive and grow.”

Now we thrived and grew. That sounded like the best tagline ever.