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“Stevens v. Travis County Hospital. Specifically, Dr. Frederick Coleman and Travis County Hospital.” He lifted the documents from the printer bed, handing one to Drew and the other to Sam. “From what I can gather, the hospital settled a malpractice suit with the widower of Abigail Stevens, who died while under Dr. Coleman’s care two years ago. There have been a few legal hang-ups, but the payment is coming due to the tune of nearly five million dollars.”
“What!” Drew flipped through the pages.
“Oh, God,” Samantha said. “This is why I’m always so afraid to hope. I’d rather set myself up for disappointment, because it always comes.”
Drew skimmed the court document, trepidation amassing in his gut. This was more than just bad. This was catastrophic. Based on Trident’s calculations, the most the hospital could absorb, even with malpractice insurance paying the lion’s share, was a half million. And that was cutting it extremely close.
“But we’ve been in constant communication with Legal,” Drew said. “Why would they keep this from us!”
“Because it makes Coleman look bad,” Josh said. “He probably ordered that everything be kept under wraps, even away from other hospital administrators. This is the type of stuff that you hide from as many people as possible if you want to maintain your position of power.”
“I could tell that guy was a prick from the first day we arrived,” Samantha said.
“I don’t care that he’s a prick,” Drew said. “I care that the powers that be in this hospital intentionally misled us. They had to have known that Trident could not conduct a clean audit without this information.”
“None of this is our fault,” Josh pointed out. “Our contract states that clients are to disclose all known financial obligations, both current and future. We can’t be held liable if they intentionally kept this from us.”
Drew wasn’t worried about Trident’s liability. They’d run the most complete audit possible based on the information provided to them. His concern was grounded in what this new detail meant for the recommendations his team had compiled for the hospital’s board of directors. One recommendation in particular.
Samantha put voice to his worrisome thoughts.
“This blows up everything,” she said, tossing the document onto the table and resuming her pacing. “We were already working on a razor-thin margin. A malpractice payout also means allocating more money toward insurance for the next fiscal year. Say goodbye to the new employee day care center. There’s no way County can fund that now.”
“The list of things County can no longer fund is longer than the list of what they can,” Josh said. “We’ll have to reassess every single dollar now.”
And in that reassessment, the fifty thousand dollars they’d estimated in order to get everything London needed for her sensory room would never fly. They wouldn’t even be able to do a scaled-down version.
There was only one solution: Drew would pay for it.
He’d offered to pay for the sensory room before. From the moment he realized just how important it was to London, Drew knew in his heart that he would do whatever he could to make it happen. He could make the donation in his mother’s name, or maybe he could ask London if she had a patient she’d lost in the past whom she had been particularly close to. The sensory room could be a memorial to whomever she chose. It was the easiest solution.
But was it the smartest?
He dragged his palm down his face and sucked in a deep breath in an effort to curb his frustration. He knew better than most that throwing money at a situation wasn’t always the best solution.
Even if he specified what the donation was intended for, the acceptance and subsequent distribution of monetary gifts would still have to go through the hospital board’s approval process. They could choose to reject his gift outright if they didn’t agree with the strings he attached to it. Given the way they’d covered up Coleman’s malpractice suit, Drew wouldn’t put it past them to do just that.
The board’s opinion was one thing, but they also had to consider the public’s opinion. If it turned out that there wasn’t enough money to fund some of the more urgent needs of the hospital, there was no way he could justify a donation being made to finance what many would consider to be his girlfriend’s pet project. Not when they could potentially face cuts to basic services that were used by the majority of patients.
Drew couldn’t think of a PR firm in the country that could put the kind of spin on this that they would need in order to pull it off.
Fucking Coleman.
That son of a bitch was going to cost London her sensory room after all.
35
Excuse me, are you using this extra chair?”
“Yes,” London said to the woman who’d already started carting the chair away from the table. “I’m waiting for someone,” she further explained.
Someone who should have been here twenty minutes ago.
She glanced at her Apple Watch again, then up and down Fourth Street. According to April’s text, Kenneth was to meet her here at noon. The downtown coffee shop was only a block from his law firm, but London refused to go to his office. Her olive branch extended only so far.
She returned to the journal Samiah had sent her. She hated to admit it, but this shit worked.
London hadn’t realized how much the guilt over her nonexistent relationship with her siblings had affected her. She knew it all tied back to Kenneth, of course, but as her pen flowed, a truth she was ashamed to own began to reveal itself.
