Deliver Me (Silver Oak Medical Center Book 1)

by Aiden Bates

  Okay. So what Finn was dealing with here was a True Believer. That wasn't exactly a shock. Dr. Idoni clearly had some kind of lofty ideals when it came to the work that he did, and if he was the kind of guy who signed on to get sent to an "underserved" location then that was no surprise. Finn had dealt with True Believers before. All he had to do was to show them their behavior was hurting their cause, and they would cut the crap and get with the program.

  Finn massaged his temples. He didn't need this crap. He'd done the lunch thing with four other departments so far. Those meetings had gone fine. Everyone had been suitably impressed by the necessity of cutting costs, and no one gave him any grief. For crying out loud, it wasn't as though Finn was telling them to execute patients or anything like that. He just needed them to bring their expenses in line.

  Silver Oak was a nice hospital. It was the best hospital in Syracuse. It was also, unfortunately, a money pit. Regent hadn't understood that when they'd acquired the place. They figured that they could get the place to break even if they managed to achieve some kind of economies of scale, but clearly they hadn't been informed about the true state of the hospital's finances. If he couldn't get the place to stop bleeding money, some things were going to have to go.

  If the Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Omega Medicine department was going to play host to a mouthy jackass like Dr. Idoni, who couldn't figure out the power structure around here, then maybe that was what needed to be on the chopping block.

  He signed some papers in his office for a while, trying to calm down. Whatever the mouthy omega might think, say, or do, Finn was the one in charge around here. He was the authority. All he had to do was assert his authority, and everything would work out. Maybe he hadn't been the chief executive at a hospital before, but he'd worked his way up the chain just fine. He knew what he was doing.

  After a couple of hours, when his rage faded but his anger lingered, he made his way down to Dr. Idoni's office. Maybe he could focus once he'd set this jerk straight. It had nothing to do with the omega status that Finn found in his file, of course. Finn was above that sort of thing. It had everything to do with establishing his position as the head of this hospital.

  The department receptionist turned pale when she saw him, and Finn hated himself a little bit. He didn't want all of the employees to be afraid of him, for crying out loud.

  Just Idoni.

  "I want Dr. Idoni and I want him now."

  "Dr. Idoni's in with a patient, sir." The receptionist wouldn't meet his eyes.

  "So pull him out!" Finn leaned forward. "I'm his boss!"

  Another doctor, a woman in a pencil skirt and a lab coat, happened to be passing by. She carried a tablet in her arms, but she turned to face Finn and frowned. "You don't pull someone out of a high-risk delivery." She curled her lip. "I mean that's how infections are spread. You have worked in healthcare before, right?"

  Finn sucked in his cheeks and counted to ten. "She didn't tell me that he was in Labor and Delivery. She told me that he was with a patient."

  The doctor, whose nametag identified her as Dr. Indah Glover, curled her lip a little. "Do you honestly think that we do anything in this department, Mr. Riley, that anyone can simply be pulled away from? A patient would be on the phone to the state medical board right there on the table, and they would be right." She shifted her weight. "Is there something that I can help you with, or are you here to try to intimidate Dr. Idoni?"

  "Is this entire department insubordinate?" he barked.

  "You're from out of town, aren't you?" She rolled her eyes. "I'm sure you'll be able to find the coffee station. He usually comes back to his office after a delivery; he'll be back when the baby's here." She walked off toward the doctors' offices.

  "Would you like to have a seat? You can wait there for Dr. Idoni." The receptionist's voice was bland and calm.

  "Thank you, no. I'll wait for him in his office."

  The receptionist opened her mouth, and then she shut it again. "Yes sir. Right this way."

  At least someone around here knew how to follow orders. He followed her down the hallway that led to the doctors' offices and sat down in one of Dr. Idoni's office chairs to wait.

  The office was in the older part of the building. Finn was going to have to come up with the cash to renovate it soon. He couldn't be positive, but he thought that those windows might be original. No wonder the heating and cooling costs were so astronomical.

  If his office was any indication, Dr. Idoni spent most of his salary on books. Finn could barely tell what color the walls were, because they were hidden by shelves and all of the shelves were full. The books were full of information, too. There were anatomy books. There were how-to manuals. There were pathology tomes as big as a man's head, and bound volumes of medical journals that surely must have cost a fortune. Finn hoped that this jackass wasn't spending department money on the damn things.

  There were a few personal items. Idoni's degrees hung on the wall. He'd gone to Brown for undergrad, and then to Stanford for med school. Not too shabby. He'd had prestigious residencies, and then he'd finally ended up right here in Syracuse where he'd stayed. Apparently he liked it here. Well, good. That was some good leverage to hold over him.

  He sat back down to wait, and to wait, and to wait some more. Had someone managed to get down there and warn him?

  Finally, after the sun had gone chasing the Greyhound bus to Ohio or wherever it went, Finn heard that wretched doctor's voice. "I wish we could do more for him."

  "Carter, man, we did everything we could." The second man was a local, if his accent was anything to go by. "You saved his life, and you saved his baby. That's literally all you can do. You even referred him to Social Services."

  "Yeah, well, that was before I found out that the Social Services department is running a skeleton crew right now." Idoni's voice was so bitter that Finn's mouth puckered just from the sound. "They told me that they could get to the poor guy in two weeks. By which point he'll be out on the street, with a new baby." The doorknob rattled. "I'll look for some other resources, I guess."

  "Don't stay up too late." The other voice faded as its owner moved on down the hall.

  The doorknob rattled again, and Finn's breath caught in his throat. He'd be livid if he caught someone eavesdropping on his private conversation, and it sounded like that one was definitely meant to be private. When he caught a whiff of Idoni's wood-smoke scent, though he remembered why he was here. His anger returned.

  "I suppose you're going to blame me for the social service cutbacks too," he said, in as cold a voice as he could muster.

  Idoni, damn the man, didn't have the good grace to jump. Finn wasn't sure that he could have jumped. The man looked absolutely beat. His previously neat dark hair was now disheveled, and a little line had appeared between his eyes. An omega shouldn't look that distressed. He should have someone to wrap him up in his arms and kiss him better.

  Finn blinked in surprise. Where had that thought come from?

  "Well," Idoni drawled out. His voice had more of a rasp to it than it had this afternoon. "I could point out that since you are the CEO, and they're gone, that yes, it's your fault. But since it doesn't matter whose fault it is, as long as no one's going to help that young man with the new baby, I'll just get to solving the problem." He sat down at his desk and opened up the laptop.

  "For the record, those staff members resigned when they found out about the acquisition. They were not laid off." Finn leaned forward. "They haven't been replaced, because that department was bloated and underutilized."

  "That department was running well over the recommended number of cases per worker according to most standards. I know, because we're the department that refers to them more often than any department other than Geriatrics." Idoni started typing.

  Finn shook his head. "The man in charge of the entire hospital comes to your office and you ignore him to play on the computer."

  "I'm not playing on the computer. I'm supplying the
deficiency you created and looking for resources for the guy who gave birth in my OR." He glared. "I get that it's all just numbers to you."

  "Those numbers are where your salary comes from."

  "Actually the reimbursement from Medicare, and from the state, is where the payment for what I did today will come from. So will the grants and donations that cover this hospital. No one sits here and spends money for the hell of it. At any rate, what I was saying was that it may be just numbers to you, but these are actual human lives. Silver Oak is the top of the line when it comes to patient care and patient outcomes, in all of Upstate New York. When you start to lose sight of the human beings involved, patient care suffers. At that point the grant money starts to dry up and so do the donations." He grinned, deadly and wicked. "And your name is going to be all over it."

  "You have no respect for authority, do you?" Finn stood up, incensed beyond his own ability to keep cool.

  Idoni pretended to consider it. "Nah. Not really. Not arbitrary authority. You gotta do better than waltz in and say, Hey, look at me and my charts, now be afraid of me!" He wrinkled his nose. "If you want to fire me, you're going to fire me. But that's not going to change anything that I just said. You're still going to take this entire hospital down with you. I'll just be long gone by that point."

  "But you don't want that. You stuck around in Syracuse for a reason." Finn leaned on Idoni's desk. "You could have left after two years. You didn't. You're a believer. You like it here."

  "I reckon I'd like it just fine at any of the other hospitals around here. Or, you know, in Manhattan. I wonder how a Tennessee boy would do in Manhattan."

  "You'd melt. Hospital administrators in New York actually expect their employees to do what they're told." Finn sneered. "Look, you're already on thin ice. Don't contradict me in front of people again. Don't contradict me at all. If you have a suggestion, use the suggestion box."

  "I've got a laundry list of suggestions for you, Riley. And believe you me, the first time we lose a patient because of something you did, I'm going to make damn sure the entire city knows about it." He gestured at the door. "Now if you don't mind, I've got a patient to save."

  Finn was already out by the elevators, fuming, before he realized that his own employee had dismissed him.

  He decided to call it a day and head home. He still had boxes to unpack and things to put away, not that he knew where most of this crap had come from anyway. Maybe he should have gone for a smaller space. The amount of stuff that a person had expanded to fill the space inside of a person's home. He'd gone out and bought the biggest house on the market that he could and already it felt cluttered.

  He didn't have anything to measure success by yet. They'd reduced headcount, slightly, but it hadn't been because of Finn. It had been because some hospital employees had heard that Regent was taking over the hospital and jumped ship.

  Silver Oak didn't need them. He was going to drag this hospital into profitability if it killed him, and them, and half the city. Not literally; no one wanted that. The thought that Idoni had gotten him so wrong burned in him.

  It didn't matter what Idoni thought of him. A man couldn't run a hospital with a bunch of malcontents running around behind his back, second guessing him. That was the first rule of a takeover, getting rid of the dead weight and the old guard. He'd unload those guys and replace them with loyal employees who wanted to see the hospital do well.

  He prowled the empty halls of his house. Once upon a time, this house had belonged to an industrialist. That had been over a hundred years ago. It had been lovingly restored, but those days were long gone. Idoni could talk about grants and about donors, but there weren't exactly a lot of folks with the kind of philanthropic muscle left to drop a new wing onto a crumbling old facility. The donors that did still exist would want to see that the hospital wasn't being profligate with their cash.

  Finn had been training his entire life for an opportunity like this. He wasn't going to let an upstart like Idoni get in his way. He'd find an excuse to fire him soon enough.

  Chapter Two

  Carter turned his car down the long, open street and sighed. He didn't want to be here. Every time he did this he said this was the last time, that he wasn't going to come back. Only a fool set himself up for this kind of misery. Carter's mom didn't raise a fool.

  And then every time Tom called, every time he said hey, why don't you come and hang out at the house with us, Carter ran right out to Lysander. Carter was a dog, and Tom had the whistle.

  At least it wouldn't just be them today, no awkward third wheel to spark Paul's jealousy and inflate Tom's ego. No, this was a party. Tom was throwing a birthday party for Paul, his husband, and the house would be full of people. Maybe that would be for the best; maybe he would be able to escape for a little while. Maybe he'd meet someone. Not a permanent partner, of course, he was past that, but maybe he'd meet someone who would be willing to take his mind off of things for a day or two.

  The memory of Finn Riley sprang to mind. They'd stayed out of one another's way since they'd met back on Monday. That didn't mean that folks at the lower levels of the org chart in Carter's department weren't walking on eggshells all the time, hoping to avoid his notice. Carter could get a job almost anywhere. Even Allen, for all of his anxiety about job security, could more or less write his own ticket. He just had to recognize that about himself.

  Some of the other workers, like the RNs, the nurses' aides, and the LPNs, didn't have that kind of privilege. They had less of a savings cushion, and wouldn't be able to absorb the hit from job cuts as easily. If that happened, Carter would help to cover what he could, but he was under no illusions that he could support a family of however many on his salary along with his own obligations.

  Carter hated that. He hated Finn Riley for putting his team through the anxiety of waiting for that shoe to drop. The man was a terrorist, holding an entire department hostage in the hopes that Carter would just keep his mouth shut and not point out his inconsistencies and outright lies. And he dressed badly—suits that might work well on Milan runways but not in the day-to-day life of a conservative Rust Belt city.

  So why then did Carter's thoughts wander back to Finn Riley if he didn't keep them under strict control?

  Obviously, he was thinking of Finn Riley because Riley was the source of his stress. Something about Riley went right to a primitive little center of Carter's brain marked "need" and didn't let up. Carter could explain, with charts and complex equations, why he had that reaction to the cold executive. There was nothing emotional about it. Everything about his reaction was chemical, a hormonal and neurological reaction based in his omega physiology, and it was completely involuntary.

  It didn't mean anything.

  If it didn't mean anything, then he could just ignore it. Hot men came and went, but at the end of the day they didn't have a lot of significance in Carter's life. And his life was pretty good without them. He had friends. He had hobbies. He saved lives every day, and there weren't many people who could make that claim. Maybe he got a little lonely at night, sometimes, but on the whole it was a good tradeoff.

  Tom's driveway was full when Carter pulled up. That wasn't surprising. Carter had gone out of his way to get here after the party had gotten started. He parked his Volvo on the street and walked up to the door, Paul's gift in hand. He could hear the sounds of the party going strong in the backyard, but he still rang the doorbell. Paul would get upset if Carter didn't observe every minute detail of the proper forms of etiquette.

  After just long enough that Carter knew his place, the door opened. Paul looked great, as usual. He wore a pink button-down shirt and a pair of white pants that emphasized his slender, tanned ankles, and he gave Carter a sly smile. "Carter! What a lovely surprise. Come in, come in!"

  Carter endured the young omega's hug and the air kisses on either side of his face. He couldn't think of where Paul had picked up that habit. Paul came from Binghamton, for crying out loud, not Paris. He pass
ed his gift to Paul. "Happy birthday, Paul. How's the party going so far?"

  "Oh, you know. It's a laugh a minute!" Paul tittered and examined the box. "Did you wrap this yourself, Carter?"

  "I most certainly did not." Carter grinned. "I know my limitations." He followed Paul into the living room, where some men in khakis watched as the gift was added to a pile. Carter didn't know the men in khakis, and they didn't seem to know him. "These are some of Tom's friends from work," Paul told him, with a brittle smile.

  Ah. "Are the little ones around today?" Carter followed his host back into the kitchen and accepted the tray of hors d'oeuvres that Paul shoved into his hands.

  "No, their grandma agreed to take them for the weekend." Paul beamed, for real this time, and led the way out onto the back deck. "I do love the little dears, but it's nice to just have a long weekend with my hubby, you know?"

  Carter did not know, and he hadn't needed the reminder about the difference in their statuses. He plastered a smile onto his face, though, and followed Paul. This wasn't about him, and if it made the younger omega feel more secure to needle him then he'd let it slide.