by Aiden Bates
"It sounds like he's got some kind of beef with you, or maybe with Regent." Jerry waited for Finn's response.
Finn shook his head, even though Jerry couldn't see it. "He's not—I mean yes. He's the kind of guy who won't hesitate to let you know if he thinks you're doing it wrong, and he's not a fan of for-profit healthcare. I'm not going to lie, I don't think he's a great fit for the Regent family." That made something inside Finn twinge. He ignored the unfamiliar sensation and pushed on, after promising himself never to eat an Italian sub again. He wasn't getting any younger, after all. "But he doesn't mess around with payroll or with the financial systems. He backs away from any talk about anything like those, you know? He knows care delivery. He knows medicine. He doesn't want to know management or what's behind it." He laughed again, pretending there wasn't a pit of discomfort in his chest. "That's been what's caused half of our disputes."
Jerry sighed. "See, the thing is, Finn, most of the time an embezzler isn't someone twirling his mustache and rubbing his hands together with glee. Most of the time it's someone who feels that he's been wronged by the company."
"Well Idoni's not your guy there. He's fighting for patients, and for the nurses and staff. He's not worried about his own position. He doesn't have to be. The dean of Stanford medical school came up and hugged him like the favorite grandchild at the party." He leaned back in his chair. He was protesting too hard. "You know what, though? Send some auditors out. I don't like the idea of someone stealing from Silver Oak."
"The transactions started right when Regent acquired Silver Oak." Jerry cleared his throat. "I mean, there could be other explanations. And we'll explore all of them."
"I know you will. Regent has a fantastic internal audit program. And I know that there are plenty of folks around here that have beef with Regent. I laid off half the billing department. Three quarters of what was left walked off the job within days. I think the guy running Emergency is using my picture for target practice and security has found thirteen voodoo dolls that look like me stashed in the boiler room." Finn tilted his head back. "There are so many possible explanations, I can't even start."
"Yikes. Well, you always did make an impression." Now Jerry did chuckle. "Okay. I'll have auditors there on Monday. Get someone to make arrangements for their hotel rooms and stuff."
"I'm on it. Thanks for your help, Jerry. I can't stand the thought that someone's stealing from Regent."
'I know you can't, buddy. Neither can I. But we'll get to the bottom of it, wherever it leads. I'll give you a call when I know what the next step is, okay?"
"Fantastic. I'll give you a shout if I hear anything new." Finn hung up and buried his face in his hands. This was the last thing that he needed right now. He'd been at Silver Oak for two months and they were already looking at an audit.
He frowned. Sure, they were looking at an audit. Nifterick had brought the suspicious transactions to Finn's attention and he'd handled it appropriately. He'd invited auditors in, because he believed that was the right way to handle it. He had nothing to fear for himself. A strong leader took care of problems before they became crises.
Could Carter truly be the embezzler, though? Finn couldn't make himself believe it. He jumped up from his chair and pushed the "forward" button on the ridiculous desktop phone he'd come to hate today. Then he headed down to Obstetrics. His cell phone buzzed away in his pocket, but he ignored it.
The receptionist in Obstetrics looked terrified to see him, but she didn't question why he was here. "Dr. Idoni is just scrubbing up after a birth, sir. If you want to go into his office to wait, I'm sure he won't mind."
Finn waited for half an hour in Idoni's office, surrounded by his omega's comforting wood-smoke scent. He absolutely needed to stop thinking of Carter that way. Carter wasn't his partner, or even his friend. He wasn't Tom's either, but he wasn't Finn's.
Finn supposed he should probably talk to a shrink or a counselor about that. He'd always been a possessive bastard.
Carter came into the office and spotted Finn right away. His mouth tightened, and he looked annoyed, but his chestnut brown eyes sparkled. "Here to nickel and dime the blood bags we used, Riley?"
Finn snorted and closed the door. "Oh come on, Carter." He dropped his voice. "I think it's okay to use first names. We've swapped spit."
Carter's irritable facade broke, and he grinned bright and wide. "I suppose we have. What brings you down here, Finn?"
"Got a call from Corporate, one I didn't like." He sat down in one of Carter's chairs. "You doing okay for money, Carter?"
"I'm a damn doctor with no technical dependents." Carter smirked and sat down behind his desk. "I get paid when I get paid, and then there are my publications—"
"You're published?" Finn frowned. "Why didn't I know that?"
"Should've dug deeper into the files, Finn." Carter leaned back. "Silver Oak is technically a teaching hospital. We're not a research institution, but some of the doctors here do publish from time to time. We do have clinical findings to report, especially in omega medicine. It's a growing field with a dearth of practitioners." He lifted an eyebrow. "What's this about? You've never been into my finances. Having trouble heating that behemoth of a house of yours?"
"It's June, Carter. I'm not thinking about heat." Finn shook his head. "Something came up, like I said. Just doing my due diligence." He glanced over at Carter. "Publications. Really?"
"If you honestly want to know about the parental and natal outcomes for midwife attended home births versus hospital births among the omega population in upstate New York, I'll be happy to forward them right up to you."
Finn curved his lips back into a smile of relief. There was no way Carter could be the embezzler. "I could use a little bedtime reading."
Chapter Eight
Carter ran to the bathroom. He barely made it in time. He threw up as quietly as he could, not that anyone could really control the volume at which they returned their breakfast, and then he cleaned himself up. He'd done it so often over the past week that he'd left a bottle of mouthwash on the sink.
He headed back to his office to find Allen lounging in one of the chairs. "Just take the test, Carter." Allen crossed his arms over his chest.
Carter flopped down into his own chair, safe and secure behind his desk. "I don't need a damn test, Allen." He leaned forward and buried his head in his hands. "I already know."
Allen fell silent for a long moment. "Yeah. I know. Sometimes dads just need a little confirmation. Something to make it real for them."
Hysterical laughter welled up in Carter's throat. He fought it back, but a little bit escaped. It must have sounded unhinged. He felt unhinged. "Dads. Lord." He shook his head. "That's not me."
Allen scoffed and leaned forward. "You'd make the best dad out of any omega I've met. Any mother, either. It is absolutely you. Every time I see you with a kid it stirs the cockles of my heart."
"The heart doesn't have cockles, I think they're a kind of mollusk." Carter spoke without thinking.
"Hush." Allen rapped on the desk. "They're the lower two ventricles, so-called because they look like scallops if you've been eating moldy rye. Anyway, the point is that you'll be an amazing parent, Carter. You'll be the best dad the world ever did see. You don't need Tom."
Carter threw his head back and laughed. He didn't care if he sounded unhinged now. Let Allen call someone to take him over to University's psych wing; Carter would probably wind up there eventually anyway. "Tom's not the father," he said, when he got control of his laughter. "I haven't been with Tom in years, Allen."
Allen dropped his jaw. "You're joking. I mean you're always over at his house, or he's always around you. He's chased off at least three guys who at least seemed somewhat into you."
"I know." Carter closed his eyes and looked away. "But it's just because he doesn't understand he doesn't get to keep me, you know? I'm not that kind of guy. Tom made his choice, it wasn't me, and I'm not going to disrespect Paul by sneaking around wit
h a guy who told me to my face that I wasn't good enough to claim." He shook his head.
"Then who is the father?" Allen scratched his jaw. "I mean, I get you're perfectly capable of raising a child on your own. You can afford it. But you probably want to clue the other guy in on this kind of stuff."
Carter dropped a hand to his abdomen. He could feel the solid muscle there. Soon that would all be gone, replaced by a round bubble of skin over fluid. Maybe.
"The father was a one night stand." That wasn't a lie. Finn might have been the best he'd ever had. Finn might have made his toes curl up, but Carter had known what he was walking into. "We agreed beforehand that it meant nothing, just blowing off some steam. He's not the kind of guy who does entanglements."
Allen shifted back in his chair. "Okay lots of guys say that they don't do entanglements, but they change their tune once there's a baby in the mix. I mean, everyone gets sold on this idea of omegas being all gung-ho about babies and family and crap, but really it's the other guys who are all excited about it." He put a hand on his knee. "Try talking to him, see what he thinks about it."
"Take my word for it. This guy doesn't want to think about what we did again." Carter remembered his own shame when he'd fled the house on Brattle Road. "And he's awful with kids, for the record. Just terrible. Anyway, we agreed not to discuss it. So… no." He rubbed at his face. "I have no idea what I'm going to do here."
"Carter, think about what you want to do. Never mind what you agreed to. Did you use a condom?" Allen met Carter's eyes.
"Of course we did. I'm not a complete idiot, just three quarters of one." There must have been a hole in the thing. Maybe it had been old, and deteriorating. Whatever the cause, Carter had to live with the consequences.
"So these are extraordinary circumstances beyond what you expected. You have a right to reach out and let him know that he's going to be a father." Allen knit his brows together. "Unless there's another reason you don't want to talk to him. Carter, did he force himself on you?"
Carter buried his face in his hands again. "No. Allen, no. Everything was perfectly consensual. And, ah, fun." His cheeks burned. "It just wasn't, you know, affectionate. Which was fine," he added, as Allen's visage darkened. "We negotiated that ahead of time."
"Yeah, I heard that the first time. What I haven't heard was what you actually want. You say that you negotiated ahead of time, that you were okay with having a one night stand. That's not even remotely like you, so what gives?"
Carter pressed his lips together and tried to think of a good way to spin this. He couldn't admit the truth, after all. "It had been a while, you know? So when this guy—who I knew, and had some tension with—offered to solve some of our problems in a creative way, I said okay. That's all. It was foolish of me. Yeah, I shouldn't have done it. I don't like one night stands and I didn't like how that one made me feel."
"So you like him." Allen smirked and crossed his legs.
"Well obviously I liked him well enough to screw him, right?" Carter glared out the window. "Sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. Yeah. I liked him. I felt… I don't know. I felt safe with him. That was weird. I never felt unsafe with Tom, but I felt warm and protected with this new guy that I barely know."
"Maybe he's your soul mate." Allen sighed and looked off toward the ceiling. His face had gone soft and dreamy.
Carter scowled. "There's no such thing, Allen. Come on. If there were, you wouldn't have 'services' basically selling omegas off to guys when they were eighteen. We don't all have one special someone made just for us. It's just chemicals and hormones. You know this, man. You're a scientist yourself."
"You have no romance left in your soul, Carter." Allen shook his head, but he still had a dopey grin on his face. "You'll see. That alpha will come through for you. You'll settle down and make scads of little beautiful kung fu babies."
"It's muay Thai, Allen." Carter managed to give his friend half a grin. "Look. You're right, I have to tell the guy. I mean, he's going to find out eventually and it would be best coming from me. I just… I hate this."
"All you do all day is babies, Carter. You don't get to hate this." Allen stood up. "I don't get it. This is your whole thing. I thought you'd be happy about it."
"Yeah, well, this is fine when it happens to other people." Carter rubbed at the back of his neck. "I mean, there's a lot that can go wrong. We know that better than most."
"You're scared." Allen tilted his head and his face lightened. "Come on, Carter. Yeah, we see all—and I do mean all—of the cases that go wrong, but most of the cases we see go just fine. You're in the best hands in the world for this—your own. Followed by mine, of course." He preened.
Carter gave his friend a shaky smile. Allen didn't know about Tobias. Allen had no way of knowing about Tobias. "Yeah. Of course. I'm probably just making mountains out of molehills, just because I'm afraid my mama's going to yell at me for getting myself pregnant without an alpha."
"Getting yourself pregnant. Cute." Allen's phone buzzed. "Well, that's my four o'clock. Let me know if you need anything."
"I will." Carter watched his friend leave the room. He waited until he heard Allen's voice booming out a greeting to his patient before he pulled out his phone. We need to talk. He hit send before he could talk himself out of it, and before his fingers could shake so badly that he couldn't work the phone anymore.
Finn's response was immediate. Now? Carter couldn't help but melt a little, even in the depths of his despair. He knew it didn't mean what he wanted it to mean, but it still felt good to have a guy like him respond right away. It made him feel special, in a way that he was never meant to be. Cherished.
No. Wait until Allen leaves. His shift ends at five thirty.
Finn's next response took another moment. I'll be there at six.
Carter had plenty of work to do until then. He'd had a long day of patient visits, and he had notes to make in patient files. He had work to do on an article for Alpha and Omega Journal, too. His article on preventing miscarriage in younger omegas seemed especially fitting now that Toby was at the forefront of his mind.
Finn showed up at Carter's office at exactly six o'clock, neither early nor late. His face carried his typical mixture of annoyance and vague concern, at least as much as Carter could read behind that close-trimmed beard of his, and he crossed his arms across a pink paisley shirt that was so terrible that it distracted Carter from his own problems. "What in the hell are you wearing, Finn?"
"It's Versace." Finn scowled at him. "You look under the weather. Are you sick?"
Carter shuddered. "God, I hope this kid gets my fashion sense and not yours."
"My fashion sense is timely and appropriate. It's not my fault that you've spent the past several years in a rust belt city without access to or interest in couture." Finn waved a hand and then froze. "Wait."
Carter nodded, miserably. That hadn't been how he'd intended to break the news to Finn. Granted, he hadn't intended to break the news to Finn at all. He supposed that this had happened in the only way that anything in their relationship could. There was no preparation, no tenderness, just the news, sudden and inexorable.
"Are you sure?" Finn flopped down into the chair that Allen had vacated two hours before. "Sorry. Stupid question. Of course you're sure. It's what you do. And you're sure I'm…"
Carter bristled. "Did you get the sense that I'd been anywhere near another guy in the past six months, Finn?"
"Sorry." Finn held up his hands. "It's just that we used a condom. It seems like we took all of the precautions we could."
Carter shrugged. "We did. Do you want me to send you the statistical analysis of condom failure rates? How old were they, anyway? I have no idea if there was a hole in the condom, or if it tore during sex. Even just a little bit. Believe me, in my line of work I have seen every kind of birth control failure there is. The only thing that works a hundred percent of the time is not doing the deed." He closed his eyes and leaned back. "I'm sorry. I know this isn'
t something you wanted. We agreed that it would be no strings attached."
Finn took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Yeah. Well. I guess that things happen." Then he laughed. "My parents have been pestering me for a grandkid for a while now. I guess this should shut them up."
Carter glowered. "This can't be what they meant." He gestured to himself. "Trust me. They wanted a nice, pretty, young omega who could give them lots of grandkids. Not some old goat that's been put out to pasture."
Finn shrugged. "I guess they should have been more specific." Then he sobered up. "I'm not… I'm not sure how to respond to this. It doesn't feel quite real, maybe because it's so sudden."
"Tell me about it." Carter picked up a pen from his desk and took it apart. "I mean, it doesn't necessarily have to be any kind of strings attached. We're not a couple. A kid doesn't mean that we have to be a couple. I'll get a nanny and work out a more child-friendly schedule with Dr. Yamashita, if it comes to that."