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Virginia rubbed her temples and turned to the board and the investors. “Well, that’s our ER. How about we end this tour here and head back to the boardroom?”
It was probably the dumbest thing she’d ever said, but she didn’t know how to recover from this situation. In her two years as Chief of Surgery this had never happened to her before. She’d never had an emergency play out in front of the board in the middle of a tour.
Investors had never had to watch a chest tube be inserted in front of them before.
The stunned members nodded and headed out of the department, except for Mr. Edwin Schultz—the tight-lipped head of the board. Another thorn in her side. It was no secret that he thought the hospital was bad from a business perspective. He was the one holding Bayview Grace back, because as far as Virginia was concerned, Edwin Schultz wanted to drop the axe on her hospital.
“Dr. Potter, I’d like to speak with you about Dr. Brice in private.”
“Of course,” Virginia said, rolling her eyes when his back was turned. She opened a door to a dark exam room, flicked on the lights and ushered Mr. Schultz inside. When she had closed the door, she crossed her arms and braced for a verbal onslaught of tsunami proportions.
“What was that?” Mr. Schultz asked.
“A pneumothorax. The chest tube insertion probably saved the man’s life.”
“Can you be certain?”
“If Dr. Brice hadn’t have performed that procedure, the patient would’ve certainly died.”
Mr. Schultz frowned. “But in the middle of the ER? In front of the investors and other patients?”
“It wasn’t planned, if that’s what you’re implying.” Virginia counted to ten in her head. Her whole body clenched as she fought back the urge to knock some common sense into Edwin Schultz’s addled brains.
“I didn’t say it was, Dr. Potter.” He snorted, pulling out a handkerchief to dab at his sweaty bald head. He folded it up again and placed it in his breast pocket. “I’m suggesting that maybe you should have a talk with him about the proper place to perform a medical procedure.”
She wanted to tell Schultz that sometimes there was no time to find a proper room or an OR in trauma surgery when a life was at stake, only that wasn’t the diplomatic way and she’d worked so hard to become one of the youngest chiefs at Bayview Grace, heck, one of the youngest in San Francisco at the age of thirty. She wasn’t about to give that up. Job stability was all that mattered.
Her career was all that mattered.
“I’ll have a talk with Dr. Brice when he’s out of surgery.”
Mr. Schultz nodded. “Please do. Now, let’s go take care of the investors because if they don’t invest the money we need, the emergency department will have to be cut.”
“Cut?” Virginia’s world spun around, her body clenching again. “What do you mean, cut?”
“I was going to speak to you later about this, but the hospital is losing money. Many members of the board feel that Bayview Grace could make a lot more money as a private clinic. The emergency department is the biggest detriment to the hospital’s budget.”
“We’re a level-one trauma center.” And they had just got that distinction because of two years of her blood, sweat and tears.
Mr. Schultz sighed. “I know, but unless we get the investors we need, we have no choice.”
Virginia cursed under her breath. “And how do you feel, Mr. Schultz?”
“I think we should close the emergency department.” The head of the board said no more and pushed past her.
Virginia scrubbed her hand over her face.
What am I doing?
As a surgeon, she wanted to tell Mr. Schultz what she thought about shutting down Bayview Grace’s ER, but she didn’t. She held her tongue, like she always did, and her father’s words echoed in her ear.
“Don’t tick off the boss man, darling. Job security is financial security.”
And financial security meant food, home and all the necessities.
Virginia wanted to hold onto her job, like anyone did. She wouldn’t wish a life of poverty like she’d endured as a child on her worst enemy.
So she was going to hold her head up high and make sure those investors didn’t walk away. She was going to make sure Bayview’s ER didn’t close its doors so the people who worked in trauma didn’t lose their jobs.
Though she respected Dr. Brice and his abilities, she knew she had to rein him in to keep control of her hospital.
She just didn’t know how she was going to do that, or that she really wanted to.
“Where’s the family?” Gavin asked the nearest nurse he could wrangle.
“Whose family?” the nurse asked, without looking up from the computer monitor.
Gavin bit back his frustration. He knew he had to be nicer to the nurses. At least here he had them.
“Mr. Jones, the man with the crush injuries who had the pneumothorax.”
The nurse’s eyes widened. “In the waiting room. Mrs. Jones and her three teenage sons. They’re hard to miss.”
“Uh, thank you…”
The nurse rolled her eyes. “Sadie.”
“Right. Thanks.” Gavin cursed inwardly as he ripped off his scrub cap and jammed it into a nearby receptacle. He should really know her name since he’d been working with her for six weeks, but Gavin couldn’t keep anyone’s name straight.
Except Virginia’s.
It wasn’t hard to keep her name straight in his head. The moment he’d met her, his breath had been taken away with those dark brown eyes to match the dark hair in a tidy chignon. She was so put together, feminine, like something out of a magazine, and then she spoke about all the rules and regulations, about everything he was doing wrong, and it shattered his illusion.
No wonder the staff called her Ice Queen. She was so cold and aloof. There was no warmth about her. It was all business.
The woman was a brilliant surgeon, he’d noticed the few times they’d worked together, but she was always slapping his wrists for foolish things.
“It’s not sanitary. Legal is going to talk to you. The hospital could get sued,” Virginia had stated.
In fact, when he had a moment, he planned to discuss the functionality and the layout out of this emergency department with her and the board.
It was horrendous.
When he’d been working in the field, in developing countries, everything he’d needed had been within arm’s reach, and if it hadn’t been then he’d made do with what he’d had and no one had complained. No one had talked about reprimanding him.
He’d been free to do what he wanted to save lives. It’s why he’d become a trauma surgeon, for God’s sake.
If he wasn’t needed in San Francisco, if he had any other choice, he’d march into Virginia’s office and hand in his resignation.
Only Lily and Rose stopped him.
He was working in this job, this suffocating, regimented environment, because of them. He didn’t blame them; it wasn’t their fault their mother had died. It’s just that Gavin wished with all his heart he was anywhere but here.
Although he liked being at home with them. He wanted to do right by them. Give them the love and security he’d never had.
Gavin stopped at the charge desk and set Mr. Jones’s chart on the desk to fill out some more information before he approached the family with news.
“You know that was the board of directors you traumatized today,” Sadie said from behind the desk.
Gavin grunted in response.
What else was new?
Board of directors. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I suppose Dr. Potter wants to have a little word with me?”
“Bingo.” Sadie got up and left.
Gavin cursed under his breath again. “When?” he called after her.
“Ten minutes ago,” she called out over her shoulder.
Damn.
Well, Virginia would have to wait.
He had to tell Mrs. Jones her husband, who’d sustained severe crush injuries in a car accident, was going to be okay.
All thanks to his minor indiscretion over the chest tube insertion in front of the board.
Only he wouldn’t get any thanks. From Mrs. Jones, yes, but from the people who ran this place, no.
It would be another slap on the wrist. Potter would tell him again how he was skating on thin ice with the board of directors.
It would take all his strength not to quit. Only he couldn’t.
No other hospital in San Francisco was hiring or had been interested in him. He didn’t have a flashy CV after working as a field surgeon for Border Free Physicians.
He didn’t make the covers of medical journals or have some great research to tempt another hospital with.
All he had were his two hands and his surgical abilities.
Those two hands had saved a man today, but that wasn’t good enough for the board. The bottom line was the only thing that mattered and it made him furious.
If it wasn’t for the girls, he’d quit.
He couldn’t uproot them. He wouldn’t do that to them, he wouldn’t have them suffer the same life he and Casey had endured as army brats, moving from pillar to post, never making friends and having absentee parents who had both been in the service.
Although he understood his parents now. He respected them for serving their country and doing their duty. He lived by the same code, only he wasn’t going to raise a family living out of a backpack, and because he loved his life and his work he’d never planned on settling down.
He planned to die doing what he loved. Like his father had done.
Working until he’d dropped.
Of course, that had all changed seven months ago when Casey had called him.
Casey wanted stability for her girls and that’s exactly what Gavin was going to give them.
Stability.
He picked up Mr. Jones’s chart and headed towards the waiting room.
Virginia could wait a few moments more and he’d smooth things over with the board. Mrs. Jones, however, wouldn’t wait a second more.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_32acab16-59f9-5e27-8154-4df21b200712)
HE’SGOODPR for the hospital.
Virginia felt like she was running out of ways to praise Dr. Gavin Brice to the board of directors. None of them were physicians.
None of them understood medicine.
And because none of the board understood medicine she constantly had to explain to them the actions of Dr. Brice; just like she’d done for the past hour.
Virginia rubbed her temples, trying to will away the nagging headache that gnawed her just behind her eyes.
It’d been grueling, but she’d managed to smooth things over. By again reminding them of Dr. Brice’s phenomenal survival rate. It was probably that way because of the unorthodox techniques he used.
Of course, what was the point when the head of the board seemed so keen to shut down the hospital’s emergency department and make Bayview Grace a private hospital? Private meant only for the wealthy.
And catering only to the wealthy made her sick.
When she’d first decided to become a doctor she hadn’t just want to help those who could afford it. It was one of the reasons she’d chosen Bayview to do her intern and residency years. Bayview, back then, had had a fantastic pro bono fund and a free clinic.
The free clinic had been closed two years ago when she’d done her boards. When she’d become chief she’d tried to get it back, but that would have meant dipping into the pro bono money and that money had been needed.
Mr. Schultz had feigned regret, but Virginia had seen those dollar signs flashing in his eyes. It made her feel a bit sick.
Her stomach knotted as she thought about the countless people from all walks of life who came to her hospital. The pro bono budget was dwindling and she wished she could help more, because at one time in her life she’d been in the poorest of the poor’s shoes, getting by on only sub-par medical care.
It was why her sister Shyanne had died.
Shyanne had hidden her pregnancy from her parents, knowing they couldn’t afford to help her with medical bills, but the pregnancy had turned out to be ectopic. Virginia had happened to be home on a school break in her first year of medical school and had kicked herself for not seeing the signs early enough.
By the time the ambulance had come to take Shyanne to the hospital, she was gone. Ruptured fallopian tube. She’d bled out too fast.
It was one reason why Virginia donated so much time to the pro bono cases, why she didn’t want Bayview’s ER closed, like the free clinic had been closed.
There was a knock on her office door, but before she could answer the man in question swaggered into the room and she had to remember herself. She had to control the flush that was threatening to creep up her neck and erupt in crimson blooms in her cheeks.
