“Did you pick up the evening paper on your way in?” he said with a glint of humor in his voice.
“Sorry. I had an urgent errand this morning. Then I had trouble finding a parking place.”
A full team sat around a large table in the center of the light and airy room. Together, they decided once the contract expired, the confidentiality rule expired as well, which meant they were free to discuss the state of affairs openly. Secondly, whenever either side called a caucus, which happened frequently, Dana took her team to the smaller room next door. Patrick and the nurses always stayed in the large room.
“Are we ready to go over our proposals?”
Patrick nodded, then broke into a four-hour litany of reasons his members should have more money, improved benefits, more creative flex-shifts. He ended at one, slumped down in his chair and sounding exhausted, demanded easier access to the hospital for himself.
When Dana called for a lunch break, the team members came to life. “We'll review our proposals this afternoon.”
Downstairs in the bustling Indoor Cafe, the hostess ushered Dana's team to a banquette along the wall. Patrick had placed two tables four feet from hers. She sat on the outside of her table, unaware Patrick, seated at the end of his table, faced her. She couldn’t imagine eating lunch with that man staring at her.
He smiled. She smiled back, and then turned her attention to Ann, her assistant, sitting across from her.
Ann unfolded her napkin on her lap. “We should be grateful we got through his proposals in one sitting without a caucus. If he'll allow you the same courtesy this afternoon, we might make some headway.”
Patrick used an old negotiating trick by gazing directly into her eyes. She snapped her gaze to Ann. She’d show him. She needed to concentrate on the people sitting around her and ignore him, which lasted all of five minutes before she began to check him out from the corner of her eye. He caught her. She swung her gaze to Hildy Simms, the secretary for Dana's team. “I understand you've been the note taker at negotiations since PNA got in.”
Hildy, a short, older woman with a soft sag beneath her chin uttered, “Sure have. Nothing's changed. I find it very interesting. I love all the body language going on between you and Patrick. Hope you can handle him better than Benson did, or we'll go on forever.”
Dana flushed with embarrassment, just thinking about others on the team watching and reading her and Patrick's interaction made her thankful nothing more had come of the picnic.
“It’s fun to watch them plan their moves. Look at them. They all lean into each other like they got some big secret plan they're going to spring on us.” She giggled. “Don't they know they're only going to get what you give them?”
“Not true. They have a lot of clout.” Dana pushed her salad around on her plate.
Through lunch, Dana’s eyes were magnets, pulling in Patrick's direction. An unwelcomed wave of jealousy shot through her as she watched him laugh, animatedly talk, and touch the arms of the two nurses who sat on either side of him. She got up and excused herself halfway through her salad. “I've got to make a few calls before our afternoon session. I'll be in the caucus room.”
The afternoon meeting resumed at two thirty, and Dana reviewed her proposals, giving special emphasis on hospital finances, the new Burn Center, and the inability to increase benefits and salaries. She proposed to reduce flex-shifts, especially the twelve-hour shifts, which decrease benefits for new employees and cost the hospital too much in overtime.
Patrick and his team were outraged. The day ended on a sour note, as did each session for the next fifteen days.
Dana received a call from Gil Hargrove, at noon, three weeks after the negotiations began. He sounded curt, not his usual happy-go-lucky self. Maybe the board of directors had become antsy. Or were the nurses giving him a hard time with her hard-nosed tactics? He asked her to stop by his office after her session. She didn’t want to disappoint her mentor and friend. Maybe her style of negotiating didn't fit in this area.
Still a bit insecure on her new job, a chill ran through her.
Seven
Gil glanced up from his Wall Street Journal when Dana entered his office. “Have a seat. We've got a problem.” He rose slightly before settling back down and folding his paper on the desk.
“Yes we do. I'm getting nowhere fast.” She slipped into the seat in front of his desk.
“Sorry if I sounded brusque on the phone. A few nurses had just left my office. Put me in a bad mood.”
“Figures. I was expecting that. I guess they find my style a little different from what they're used to.” It was no easy task to take away some of their benefits and offer nothing new in return. “Patrick and I are frustrated.” Feeling tired and bedraggled from the hassling, she hadn’t slept well for the past week and had concluded she’d lost her touch. She’d never been in a meeting this long without someone making concessions. Patrick wasn’t making the first move. She was losing ground.
“Gil. You must give me some leeway or we're in for a strike.”
“It's pretty bad, huh?”
“The pits. What did you tell the nurses who came to see you?”
“They don't understand the process. I told them that it was inappropriate for them to come to me. I advised them to see their union rep. I know you're following my instructions to the letter. The board is getting nervous.”
“We're at a stalemate. I have to give something. What does the board expect from me, a miracle?”
Gil’s tone hardened, as he sounded on the phone earlier. “Yes. I promised the board you’d get the kind of contract we needed. These nurses should know how bad the economy is. If they don’t concede in some way, it could mean layoffs. The nurses aren’t used to being laid off. The old shortage isn’t the problem right now.”
She rose. “Maybe that's unrealistic. I'm not a magician. I told you from the beginning, I needed a few carrots. I've been given straw. Not good straw either. Why don't we give Patrick greater access? Won't cost any money and he'd be happy.”
“No. I don't want that man in this hospital any more than he already is.” Gil paused, leaning back in his chair with his two index fingers pressed against his lips.
“What if we let them keep their flex-shifts?”
“Can't do that. They're costing us too much money already, and patient care suffers from the nurses working long hours.”
“The nurses don’t mind the long hours if they get more time off. You're not giving me anything to work with.” Now she was getting desperate. Gil and his board were being obstinate because of the new wing that they wanted to build before his retirement.
“Want to call in a mediator?” He leaned forward.
She froze. A mere three weeks into a tough contract and he wanted to take away her authority and pull in a mediator. If she could give something, she felt Patrick might offer something up too.
“The mediator will ask for concessions. The most important thing to us is money. I'll protect that, but I have to give on some of their proposals.”
He leaned back and stuck his chin out. “Negotiating and compromising are always difficult.”
She wanted to laugh at his profundity. She strolled to the window, stared at the arbor of yellow roses a few feet away. “You speak of compromise. We're not.” The most stunning orange and black monarch butterfly she'd ever seen sat on the petal of a rose, its wings outstretched, resting between flights. Oh, that I was as free and unfettered as that beautiful carefree creature. “They haven't compromised one iota either.”
“Please.” She turned to him. “Let me work out some of the flex-shift issues. They're already in place. I can work a few new ones with the least cost to the hospital.”
“Okay.” He came to stand next to her, his hands clasped, eyeball to eyeball. “Work out a plan and let me see it before you go back tomorrow. They're not used to your Bay Area drive down here in our peaceful valley. Play it a little softer, my girl.”
She pursed her lip
s and clenched her jaw. “Is that all?”
“Good luck tomorrow.”
Luck. Ha! She needed more than that.
Dana stayed up most of the night finishing the concessions she felt the nurses might accept. Before retiring, she called Teal. No answer. Strange. It had been three weeks since Dana had seen her. If she wanted to make any headway in Templeton, she wasn't spending much time at it.
The next afternoon, Dana, with her offer approved, arrived back at the hotel. Patrick sat with his arms across his chest in a pompous manner and a defiant expression on his face. He made it quite clear yesterday he wasn’t going to meet again unless she gave on something. Both teams were seated and eagerly awaiting to hear what she had to offer.
She sat in her seat, folded her hands on top of her unopened briefcase, and smiled.
“Are we negotiating today, or are we going to hear more about Templeton's financial doldrums and their new wing?” Patrick snapped.
She stood up and announced in a voice like steel wrapped in silk, “We're negotiating, Mr. Mitchell.” She glanced from person to person until she circled the table. After three weeks of bantering, she experienced a heady feeling knowing she had exactly what she needed to put the entire process in motion for the first time since they began.
Dana removed the copies from her briefcase and carefully counted out enough proposals for the members of PNA's team. Then with panache, she rose from her chair and walked confidently around the long table, personally handing each member a copy.
She walked back to her seat. “We'll be keeping all flex-shifts in place.” She paused deliberately for effect. “Plus we've approved the seven-seventy (ten hour days, seven on, seven off) for the critical care areas. They’ll have to be designated as professional and give up the hourly rate and overtime.”
A long, unbroken silence settled over the room. The nurses turned to each other with baffled expressions. One clapped and soon the others, one at a time, stood, giving Dana a standing ovation. A first in her career. She had struck a chord. She felt wrapped in a cocoon of euphoria. Burning the candle at both ends had been worth the effort.
Patrick stared at her in sheer amazement. The twinkle of admiration in his green eyes sent a shiver through her.
Following the clamor, Patrick called his team back to order. “When you decide to give, you really give, don't you?”
She heard joy in his seductive tone. She winced, torn by the conflicting emotions that drew her to him.
“I know my nurses will be happy to know their flex-shifts are protected. I've been fighting for the seven-seventy for two years.” He scannedtheproposalforamoment.“You’llbedesignatingthe emergency room, operating room, and dialysis units as critical care?”
“I can't.”
Patrick cooled as quickly as molten lava flowing into the Arctic Ocean. “We'd like to caucus and discuss your interpretation of critical care.”
Well, the glory had felt good for a minute. Why did he have to beat a dead horse? It wasn’t going anywhere. He knew it and she knew it. If he took the rest of the day, she claimed this round.
Resigned to spending the afternoon in caucus, she rose and started to leave. At the door, she turned to Patrick. “To save you time, I have the criteria for a critical care unit. That's what we'll be using.”
“We don't need any criteria.” He waved her on. “We make our own criteria.”
At five o'clock, he still hadn’t called Dana and her team back from the caucus room. She had to make the necessary arrangements for Michael to stay late at the day care center. Anxious, she stood. “I'm going over to check and see if we're working late. I'll be right back.”
She knocked. Patrick opened the door. “How late are we going tonight?”
He glanced at his watch. “I'd like to put this offer to bed today. How about we try and finish by eight?”
“Okay.” Now extremely tired and anxious to pick up Michael, she got the feeling Patrick intended to drag this on. If he planned to dissect everything she offered, she’d never wrap these talks up by the end of August.
“We'll be ready for you in ten minutes.” He smiled. True to his word, he called them back in ten minutes. For three hours, without a dinner break, he argued her proposal.
Dana raised her hands to stop the proceedings. “It's eight o'clock. My original offer stands. We cannot afford it. We're using fact-based criteria. Take it or leave it.”
He took it. Was this yet another bluff she won?
She started putting her papers into her briefcase without looking up. “Tomorrow we'll see what you have to offer, Mr. Mitchell.”
“We're going out for dinner, Dana,” Ann said. “Would you like to join us?”
“I'm sorry. I can't.” She patted Ann's arm and whispered in her ear, “Chalk dinner up as work time and make it a long one.”
“Thanks, boss.”
Moments later in the underground garage, Dana slung her briefcase into the backseat of her Toyota and slid behind the wheel. Before she turned the ignition, Patrick strolled by, swinging his briefcase and smiling. Away from negotiations, he always acted lively, oozing self-confidence from every pore and wearing a permanently etched smile on his craggy face. Each time she saw him, she scolded herself for her attraction to him. No men. I’m going at this alone, remember? Now she must stop thinking of a man who infuriated her ninety percent of the time and remained totally inaccessible.
He gunned his engine and backed out, tires squealing on the slick cement. Her engine refused to turn over. She could hear the lifeless click of a dead battery. What about Michael? What about being alone down in the empty garage in the middle of downtown, Ashton after everything had closed? Jack, Ann, Hildy, and Donna were gone. Everyone had left for the day
She shivered down to her bones being alone in the empty cavern.
* * *
Patrick reached the top of the ramp, swung right onto the one way street and pulled up to a red light a half block away. He glanced in his rearview mirror to see if Dana followed. No sign of her. He thought she had started her car when he pulled away. His thoughts traveled back to the stories he’d heard of women trapped and raped in the cavernous underground garage with no one around to help. Without a second thought, he wheeled the car around the corner and headed back down to Level D where they’d parked. He had to make sure she was all right.
His brakes screeched to a stop next to her car. He chuckled at seeing her bent over under the hood, with grease on her hands. What a woman. She had car trouble and instead of running for help, she lifted the hood on her own and tried to solve the problem. He set his brake and got out.
“It won't start.” She wiped her hands on a grease rag. “Think it's the battery?”
“Sounds like it. Do you have jumper cables?”
He nodded and within moments, their cars were life-lined with blue cables. Patrick gunned his engine. Nothing. It wasn't the battery. He got out.
“Where’s the rest of our crew?”
“They went some place for dinner. They didn't say where. I'll call Triple A.”
Thirty minutes later, they towed her car away, leaving Dana bereft. She didn’t have a way to pick up Michael at day care. What about getting home and then to work tomorrow?
“How about a ride?” Patrick held up his hand as if he were offering a peace sign.
“Thanks, but I have to pick up my son on the other side of town.” She had no intention to expose her private life to this man.
Patrick smiled. “You have a son. My, my, you are a private person. Let's pick him up. I’ll help you get a rental car.”
A rental car. She palmed her forehead, feeling like a complete idiot. How simple. “Let's do that now, then I'll pick up my son.”
“Why are you being so stubborn? All I want to do is help. Most of the offices are closed, except at the airport. Let me call a friend of mine for you in the morning. He won't rob you blind, and he'll deliver it to your door.”
Dana hesitated a moment, then got
into his car and they sped away. Her heart palpitated. Why should she fear Patrick's reaction to Michael? Sometimes she couldn't understand herself. She was proud of her boy, proud she was caring for him and not sticking him in some cold institution.
While maneuvering his sporty red Fiat through town and onto the freeway, he whistled softly under his breath to “You’ve got your troubles, I’ve got mine” on the radio’s oldie-station.
Before they arrived at the day care center, she'd have to tell him about Michael's condition. Her stomach clenched at the thought.
Patrick turned down the music. “We made some real movement today at negotiations. I was afraid I was going to pull out the stops and call for a walkout.”
“You give up too easily. Where I come from, those are fighting words.”
“It worked, didn't it?” With his eyes still on the road, he smiled. “I feel pretty good so far. Hope we keep it moving so I can get out of Ashton.”
“Where are you going?”
“New York. That’s if I get what PNA wants.”
Her heart sank with the same slow precision as the westering sun slipping down to light the other half of the world.
“What happens if you don't get what PNA wants?”
“I'll get it,” he said in a firm, yet gentle voice. He had a seductive quality about him, and she could feel the pull of the man sitting next to her in the car.
On a positive note, if he left the area, she could stop worrying about controlling her feelings for him. Why the sudden pang of emptiness in the pit of her stomach? She almost broke out laughing when she admitted to having a secret mental affair with the man and he didn't even know it. Good thing he had plans to leave the area. Win his contract, no way. The fight had just begun. Did he think that because she gave in on one issue he had his contract in the bag?
Conflicts of the Heart Page 7