27 - TURNING
Lacey
Sunday evening after the "run" had been nothing but prep for the Monday board meeting, where millions of dollars were on the line. For some reason I was able to focus even better afterwards, not what I would have expected.
The Monday drive to the hospital took eleven minutes on a normal morning.
Today I gave myself twenty-five and still felt like I was running late. The problem wasn't preparation. It was Derek fucking Harrington sitting at the head of that table in forty minutes.
The hospital needed this; the children needed this. The imaging suite we were working with was shared with adult cardiology, overbooked by Wednesday every week. I had kids whose diagnostic timelines were stretching out to six and eight weeks because we didn't have the dedicated capacity.
I had a presentation that Allison had reviewed twice and called thorough and compelling. What I didn't have was Derek Harrington's checkbook, which was apparently the only thing that mattered.
He knows he's the only one who can do this, I thought, merging onto the boulevard past the main entrance. He knows it, and he sits there and makes everyone perform for him because he can.
He gave generously but never without strings.
Not the kind other major donors attached to their money, no naming rights or big PR announcements.
No, he had wanted influence to choose who stayed and who went.
Once he got on the board he demanded blood from anyone he saw as incompetent.
On the other hand, he showed up when he said he would.
He learned the systems, the governance, made himself first knowledgeable, then competent, and almost expert at the role.
By any measure he was the kind of donor a hospital prayed for.
He exhausted me. And then the last time I had seen him felt different, but not in a way I really understood. Kinder, more human, more accessible. I felt a flutter. Ugh, no, not that, not now. And absolutely not for Derek F. Harrington.
I pulled into the parking structure and sat for a moment with the engine idling. I spoke out loud to myself. "The presentation is good. I'm going to walk in there and make the case and it's going to stand on its own merits regardless of whatever Derek Harrington decides to do with his face."
I sounded like a self-help book.
I turned off the engine.
The anteroom outside the boardroom was small and aggressively corporate. I sat in one of the chairs, opened my laptop, and went through the first three slides again even though I didn't need to.
Through the glass, I could make out Derek Harrington at the far end of the table. Even blurred he occupied more space than anyone else in the room. It was the posture, he commanded any space. Well, plus he was big.
I closed the laptop.
The door opened. Allison's assistant smiled at me. "They're ready for you, Dr. Bonds."
Long table, high-backed chairs, lighting designed to make everyone look serious. Eight board members plus Allison, who sat to the right of the head of the table. Her expression said she needed this to go well but was sure it would. Her undying, unyielding confidence in me was daunting.
And Derek, at the far end, in a charcoal suit that probably cost more than my first car. One arm on the table, the other draped across the back of his chair. If he were any more relaxed he'd slide off his seat.
I set up at the presentation screen. Pulled up the first slide. Took a breath.
"Thank you for your time this morning," I said, and then I stopped thinking about Derek Harrington and started thinking about my kids. I talked about what we had and what we needed and why the gap between those two things was costing children time they couldn't afford to lose.
The data came out clean and specific. The case studies unfolded the way I'd built them to, the facts doing all the work. I talked about the diagnostic delays, what six weeks means when you're eight years old and waiting to find out whether your heart is stable.
I was good at this. I knew I was good at this.
The board members asked questions and I gave solid answers.
Derek sat at the end of the table, still, and watched me with those gray eyes and said absolutely nothing, which was in some ways worse than questions, because I couldn't tell what he was thinking. I stopped looking at the end of the table and looked at everyone else instead.
I was three-quarters through, moving into the implementation timeline, when I heard his voice for the first time.
"Come on, Bonds."
He was half-smiling.
"You've been up there for twenty minutes. Give us the part where you tell us it'll change the world."
The room went quiet. It seemed nobody was sure where Derek was going with this.
Bully.
The word arrived in my head with certainty, and right behind it came the heat. I didn't stop it.
"I'm trying to convince you to help save children's lives, Derek. I'm not here to entertain you."
The silence lasted about two seconds.
Then came the gasps. Time went strange, each sound arriving separately and too clearly.
I stood at the presentation screen and did not move.
One beat.
Two beats.
Where did that come from?
The words were already in the air. My hands were very still at my sides and my face was hot.
Did I just completely blow this?
One of the board members spoke, the beginning of an apology.
"No." Derek cut him off.
The board member stopped speaking mid-syllable.
He hadn't moved, except now he was looking at me differently. His head had tilted, like something caught his attention and he was working out what to do with it. The left corner of his mouth lifted while the right stayed flat, a crooked almost-smile.
"Let her finish," he said. "Go ahead, Lacey. You have my attention."
I took a breath.
I turned back to the screen, found my place and finished.
The remaining minutes were the cleanest I'd ever presented anything.
Derek asked three more questions. Each time I answered directly, and he listened without expression before moving to the next.
When I finished, he said nothing. He leaned back and looked at Allison, and gave a small nod that made her straighten in her chair.
"Thank you, Dr. Bonds," she said with almost a smirk.
I gathered my laptop and thanked the board. I walked out the door with my shoulders back and my face composed without looking at the end of the table.
The corridor outside the boardroom was empty.
I stood in it for a moment, laptop case against my chest, and listened to my own heartbeat, which was going considerably faster than was strictly necessary for a woman who'd been standing still for the past forty-five minutes.
I started walking. Toward the elevator, toward my office, toward the part of the morning that made sense.
I don't lose my temper. I don't get angry.
I'm not here to entertain you.
The elevator doors opened. I stepped in, pressed the button for my floor, and watched the numbers change.
And the presentation had been better for it. I didn't want that to be true. It was true.
The elevator stopped. The doors opened.
I stepped out into the familiar controlled chaos of the pediatric floor, the monitors and the ward full of children who were sick and depended on me.
Then a memory surfaced through the churn of the last hour, and I stopped walking in the middle of the corridor.
Wait.
I replayed it. His voice, the tilted head, the half-smile, that single quiet nod.
Go ahead, Lacey. You have my attention.
Five years of Bonds, clipped and even, the surname he handed out like a rank. And then, in front of the whole board, with no weight on it at all, my name.
Lacey.