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“Yeah, Angela and Carter are still here. I don’t know for how long. Maybe forever.”
I found myself pacing already. “Did you tell them?”
“Not yet. I want to be able to give them answers.”
“I’m on my way. Can I get anything at the store? Pick up dinner?”
“Yeah, we haven’t eaten. Maybe I should—yeah—I—sorry, this is a lot.”
“I should’ve been there. I’ll get something and be right home.” I hung up and turned to Adam. “Sorry, family emergency.”
“You’re so good with people.Topeople.” Adam marveled like I was Supercarerwoman.
Sadly, I didn’t think it took much to impress him in this area. “Thanks. See you soon,” I said, although I was already dreading it. I had one week left in my fellowship; surely I could keep myself busy at work.
I rushed home to help Natalie get our niece and nephew fed and settled on our couches for the moment. We would have so much to take care of—clothes and shoes and doctors and breakfast, for heaven’s sake—but a good night’s rest would make all of it easier tomorrow.
Plus, keeping busy would keep me from replaying anything Adam had said tonight—or anything Davis had said for months.
Once again, Davis was right and I was regretting it.
Only eight more days of working in the same hospital. Instead of comforting me, though, the thought made me cry.
I filled in another square of the emergency/inpatient utilization matrix. This single document had already taken me longer than the guidelines combined—but I didn’t often get ten-plus hours a day with nothing else to distract me but work.
Had that only been last week? It had to have been a lifetime ago. A time when Cassie and I were... I didn’t know what.
I had to stop missing her. Maybe she wasn’t who I’d thought she was.
The vacuum in my chest seemed to disagree.
My phone buzzed with a text. Grateful for the distraction—for the third time in an hour—I checked the message. Messages. A text from Luke and two emails from Owen.
Luke sent a heads-up that our office lease was signed and accepted, with occupancy to start Monday. The man had a way of making things happen faster than humanly possible. I made a note to write up the concept I’d come up with for the meetup space design and have Luke coordinate with the office designer he’d found. We were lucky to find a place that didn’t need a remodel—another Luke coup. We could be in our space in as little as a week.
Of course, I’d still be here during the day, mapping out how many visits individual patients had made to the hospital as inpatients or emergency cases. Pushing pencils. Excelling at Excel. Succeeding at spreadsheets.
Answering texts and handling my other business every twenty minutes.
I found my place again in the spreadsheet and transferred the number—amount and percentage of emergency department income from patients making fewer than four emergency visits and fewer than two inpatient visits. Strange to think that next fiscal year I would fall in this category. Barring any future hospital visits, I hoped.
Was this really helping anyone?
Yes, I knew it was. Eventually. Indirectly. When we could find our own inefficiencies and problem areas, we could better serve the community. Then we could train locals to make better decisions about their health care.
But at the moment, it looked like just numbers.
My phone buzzed again, this time notifying me of a photo from a year ago: the damage to my car’s paint from the Tynies’ egg attack. I had to turn off those notifications.
I remembered Owen’s emails and opened the first one. We’d been brainstorming how to build trust without personally identifiable information—apparently one thing in my hours of HIPAA training had taken. We had to make sure our matches were truly compatible before they risked sharing anything that might be used against them, but we were still coming up short.
We need to define what they can and can’t share very precisely, and I’ll build an algorithm to exclude data that falls into those categories, Owen wrote. He was also at work now, apparently, but he kept the programming for Connect to after work hours.
I swiped to Owen’s next email, sent two hours later.I was talking to Tiffany and she pointed out that vulnerability is vital to building lasting relationships.
I swallowed hard. I wasn’t using the app; Owen wasn’t asking me to be vulnerable.
Suddenly my hospital stay didn’t feel so distant at all. I’d let myself be vulnerable, and look where that had gotten me.
