13 - VOLUN-TOLD
Lacey
My door opened without a knock.
Dr. Allison Hawke stepped inside and closed it behind her.
Chief Medical Officer, five-foot-two of iron will in a tailored gray suit, silver hair cropped.
She didn't sit. In six years, I'd learned to read the difference between Allison standing and Allison sitting, and standing meant brace yourself.
"Lacey," she said, folding her arms. "A word."
I closed the report window and gave her my full attention. "Of course."
She got straight to it, because she always did. "The hospital gala is in a couple weeks. You'll be sitting at the head table."
I blinked. "I usually sit with the peds team."
"Not this year."
"Is there a seating issue? Because if it's about the Hendersons, I can talk to—"
"No issue." Allison's mouth curved, not quite a smile. "You're sitting with Derek Harrington."
My stomach dropped. "Derek Harrington."
"The same."
I sat back in my chair. "Allie."
"I know."
"He and I don't exactly—"
"I know that too." She stepped closer, dropping her voice to the register she used when she wanted something to stay in the room.
"He's our single largest individual donor.
He's also still carrying a grudge against half the medical staff, and there isn't a person on this floor he doesn't regard with some degree of active suspicion. " A pause. "Except you."
I laughed, short, disbelieving. "Allie, I don't think you've watched us together.
He doesn't like me. He argues with me about activity restrictions, about whether Jessica can play soccer, about whether I'm being too conservative, too cautious, too quick to say no.
Every visit ends with him looking at me as if he's quietly calculating what it would cost to buy the hospital and have me replaced with someone more agreeable. "
"Exactly." She held my gaze. "He argues with you.
He doesn't argue with anyone else. He stonewalls them, polite, strategic stonewalling, the kind that costs us donations, access and goodwill we can't afford to lose.
With you at least he engages. He pushes back.
He shows up." She let that settle. "That's not hostility, Lacey.
That's investment. And investment is leverage. "
I opened my mouth. She continued before I could use it.
"We need the new pediatric MRI suite funded.
The equipment alone is six million. Altogether it might be north of ten million.
Derek Harrington has the capacity to fund that with a single signature if he's in the right mood and the right company.
" She tilted her head, and the not-quite-smile returned.
"Your assignment is to sit next to him at the gala.
Talk to him. Not about medicine, not about Jessica's activity restrictions, not about anything that lets him put on his board-member face.
Just talk to him. Like a human being, at a dinner. Soften the ground a little."
"You want me to charm him." Charm Derek fucking Harrington.
"I want you to be yourself. Which, when you're not being his daughter's cardiologist and he's not being the man who second-guesses everything you do, appears to be enough.
" She straightened, already turning for the door.
"As with every other impossible job you've pulled off here, I'm confident you'll exceed my expectations. "
"Allie, how exactly does he make all his money? Nobody has ever told me, but you and Pamela were close, right?"
Allison hesitated. "I'm not sure I completely understand myself, to be honest. His company does some kind of contract with the military, and he used to be Special Forces, that's about all I know." She looked at me significantly. "And that's all I care to know."
She was gone before I could protest.
I sat staring at the closed door. That last line was a little creepy.
I knew what was in his donor file without opening it. Forty-six, military contractor. Foundation in his late wife's name. Hospital board seat. And underneath all of it, in every appointment I'd ever had with him, Jessica. Mostly Jessica.
Almost five years. Every appointment involved an argument. He'd made me a better doctor, and I'd never told him so.
And then there was the scarf.
Camel-colored cashmere, folded and tucked into the inner pocket of his coat.
I'd glimpsed it once, months ago, when he reached for his wallet at the coat check after a benefit dinner.
He didn't use it. It wasn't a scarf he wore.
It was a scarf he kept. I'd known it from Pamela wearing it when she was pregnant, the scarf bright against her dark coat.
Derek had never mentioned it. He tucked it into his pocket with a quick, practiced motion and went back to being Derek F. Harrington without missing a beat.
I'd thought about that scarf more than once since. It was the folding, I think. He folded it perfectly, almost obsessively.
I thought about the exam room. How he positioned himself between me and the door when he disagreed with something, not aggressively, just there, solid, taking up more room than he needed to.
The time, midway through an argument about Jessica's cardiac rehab plan, he glanced at me with real puzzlement and said I was the most stubborn person he'd ever dealt with.
And the way he arranged things. On desks, counters.
I don't think he even knows when he does it.
He challenged everything I said and arrived prepared to cite the literature back at me, and he came to every appointment, on time, Jessica's hand in his, regardless of his grudge against the medical system. This was a man who showed up and paid attention.
Outside the window the early light had shifted. I hadn't gone back to my report.
A gala was different than the clinic. I'd seen him outside it once, at the benefit dinner, and even there he'd carried a weight on him, the same gravity in a better suit.
I had never seen him set it down. And I wanted to know what was left when he did, whether there was a person under the gravity, at a dinner, with a glass in his hand.
Derek Harrington. Of all people. A column of restraint with a checkbook attached.
I tried to put it where I put these things.
This wouldn't go in. I turned it one way and another and it didn't fit anything I understood, because it wasn't quite wanting, and I had no compartment for a man who kept his grief folded in his coat.
I pulled the report forward. It was just a dinner. I read the first line three times, flustered by my assignment. I closed the laptop and went to find my first patient.
That night I called Janice and told her my bad news. "Allison's making me be Derek Harrington's date at the gala."
"Derek Harrington." A pause. "You don't sound all that upset."
"I'm furious. The man's insufferable. He thinks he owns every room he walks into, he argues with everything I say, and Allison, for reasons known only to God and Allison, keeps throwing me at him."
"Well, you aren't getting any argument from me, sister.
I hardly know the guy and I can't stand him.
" I could hear her thinking. "But the MRI's for your department.
You'd be the one using it. You're his kid's doctor.
From where Allison sits, you're the obvious person to charm the checkbook out of him. "
"Traitor."
She laughed, the easy one. "Sorry, babe. I call it like I see it."
"Yeah, yeah." I leaned back against the headboard. "Well. He's single and miserable, same as me. Maybe we'll bond."
"Misery loves company. But I wouldn't bond with that one for anything." I could hear her smiling. "But you might have fun."
"Fun." I turned the word over and set it back down where I'd found it. "Right."