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“Well, they’re going to do something about it now,” Castiel muttered. “Or they’re going to have a lot of pissed off nurses, doctors, and other hospital personnel on their hands.”
Oh, I had no doubt that my woman would be one of them.
***
Pru
I was angry.
So fucking angry.
I’d walked into work today with a smile on my face—and even my dead cell phone hadn’t put a damper on my mood. I’d taken two steps inside, turning to offer my smile to Mr. M on the way in, only to be confronted with crime scene tape and a bloody body print where Mr. M usually stood.
My mother, who’d come in right behind me, had immediately gone into action, ignoring my horror and confusion.
What happened? A knife-wielding psych patient came in and tried to stab his previous nurse.
Why wasn’t I called? Your phone was dead.
How is Mr. M? Dead.
My mother had smiled at me sadly once she’d gotten a few minutes to herself, and had given me a quick hug, then we’d gone our separate ways. That was until I’d gotten wind of the emergency board meeting going on that was in the professional office hallway just down from the ER.
We—Conleigh, Phoebe, and I—had gone to stand outside while they talked. Only when I heard what I heard next, I hadn’t been able to keep myself standing outside like a good little girl.
“No, but it wouldn’t surprise me if you hired him just to prove a point on how unsafe it was,” Kelley pointed out.
I felt my mouth drop open in affront.
“I know that you’re not accusing my mother of hiring a knife-wielding psycho to kill someone just to hammer her safety protocol suggestions home,” I said, no longer controlling the anger or snarl in my voice.
Kelley’s eyes turned to me. “I’m sorry, but this is a private board meeting. Since you’re not on the board, I’d like to ask you to leave.”
“No,” I refused. “I’m not leaving. In fact, I think it’s high time someone around here listened to what we have to say.”
“I agree,” Phoebe said softly.
“As do I,” Conleigh approved. “We’ve been trying to share the problems this ER is facing for months. It’s unsafe.”
Kelley’s eyes narrowed on me. “Leave or lose your job.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why would I want to work anywhere that’s unsafe?”
Kelley’s eyes snapped fire.
“Mrs. Mackenzie…”
I turned to the other rude old man that knew about our problems and corrected him. “Miss.”
He sighed and leaned back in his chair, his sizeable bulk making the chair creak as he did.
“Fine, Ms. Mackenzie, we do understand that y’all are upset. Understandably so, but please give us time to dissect the problem…”
“You’ve had plenty of time to dissect the problem,” my mother supplied. “And it’s more than obvious, even with what happened to Mr. M as well as what almost happened to the night charge nurse, that you don’t care about our safety. And, like I said when I came in here, making these farces you call meetings private do y’all no good. Y’all don’t realize that there is something rather awful going on out there, and y’all aren’t the ones putting your lives at risk. In the last month alone, we’ve had two drug dealers try to shoot the place up over a turf war. We’ve had a nurse nearly maimed because y’all refuse to give us sitters. And now, someone has lost their life. Yet y’all still don’t care.”
“We care,” a woman, older and in her late fifties, early sixties, said. “Mr. M was a valuable asset to us. We will make the ER safer.”
“Start by hiring a professional that can look into the workings of the ER,” I suggested.
“As I’ve already told your mother, we’re not hiring your father’s company to do any work for us. That’s bias,” Kelley all but snarled.
I wanted to stab him in the face with the pen he kept pointing at me each time he spoke.
“Then don’t hire anyone local,” I suggested. “Hire someone that’s from out of the city. Out of the state. Hell, I don’t care if he’s from out of the country. But you need to do it, or I’m not working in your ER any longer.”
Kelley narrowed his eyes, then turned to my mother.
“Are you going to allow this insubordination?” he asked, eerily calm.
“Yes,” she said. “Because until further action is taken, I’m on strike as well.”
Kelley’s mouth thinned. “We have the choice to fire you as well. You’re all easily replaceable. We’ll just get other nurses to work double shifts.”
“Um, no.” Conleigh butted in now. “I will not work double shifts. I’m busy as it is and health wise, I choose not to work extra. I’m also in agreement. I will not work in an unsafe environment. I don’t have to for one reason and secondly, I’m fairly sure that my husband won’t allow me to after hearing what happened today.”
