by Aiden Bates
Carter retreated to his office. He tried not to take barbs like that from Paul personally. Paul had every right to be bitter. He'd thought he was getting a proper husband, one who would treat him right and love him. Instead, he'd become the baby-spewing pet of Carter's nightmares. Carter didn't need to fret that Paul was lashing out at the wrong person, because he could understand Paul's grief and because Paul didn't have the power to do him any real damage.
Of course, that had been before the baby. Now he felt like he'd taken a knife to the back. What was it about Carter that condemned him to always be alone? Why should a goblin like Paul get the charmed life—an alpha, loving children, a full house and a warm bed—while Carter was condemned to solitude? He was a good man, or at least not a bad man. He took care of his parents. He gave to charity. He took damn fine care of his patients and he was active in his community.
Resentment had never gotten him anywhere. He forced his mind away from its tantrum through sheer force of will and went into his weekly departmental meeting with a smile on his face. No one needed to know any more about his meeting with Paul.
On Friday, he arrived at work just as he normally would when Dr. Yamashita, the department chief, approached the nurse's station. Dr. Yamashita rarely left his office except to examine a patient or attend a birth, so his mere white-haired presence drew everyone's attention. The fact that their senior statesman's skin had gone gray generated an unhealthy amount of nausea in the pit of Carter's stomach, but he waited for the older doctor to speak.
Yamashita cleared his throat. "The executive team has issued a new directive." He held up a piece of paper, gripped in shaking hands. "Effective immediately, every C-section performed in this hospital will generate a five thousand dollar fine, paid by the department to the general fund."
Carter looked at the other doctors. The other doctors looked at him. "Based on?" Carter asked. His arms and legs tensed up, the effect of adrenaline.
"It doesn't say." Yamashita put the paper down. "That's the entire message. It does come from our delightful CEO, though."
Carter pursed his lips. His mind raced. "All right. This is ridiculous. There's no medical basis for this. He just—" He cut himself off. "Okay. I don't actually give a crap if he fires me, so I'll go down there and explain exactly why it's not appropriate for an alpha who went to school to learn how to shake hands and golf to make medical decisions for women and omegas. I already know he's not going to listen to me—"
"He has before." Allen met his eyes.
"Yeah, well, he won't now." Carter looked away. "Trust me. He's on some kind of anti-science kick. Anyway. How far are we willing to go here? Are we willing to shut down the department over this? Because this? This is a decision to be made by a carrier parent and their doctor, not by a hospital administrator looking to scrounge a few pennies from under the cushions."
Yamashita flinched, but he looked around the assembled workers. "I'd rather that the entire department were here to vote on this, but needs must. All in favor?" He raised his own hand.
No one declined, or even abstained.
Carter licked his lips. "All right. I'll go down there and try to talk some sense into him. Allen, if you don't hear from me in three hours, come down to the Justice Center and bail me out."
Allen snickered. "Will do, big guy."
Carter took the piece of paper from Yamashita and headed through the labyrinth of hallways and elevators up to the executive suite. He greeted Marcia as nicely as he could, but she could see that he'd gotten his dander up. "Oh, Dr. Idoni, I'm so sorry that you're having a bad day."
"That's okay, Marcia. One way or another, it's about to get a lot better. Is Mr. Riley in?"
Marcia's grin turned wicked. "As a matter of fact he is. Just a moment." She pressed the intercom. "Dr. Idoni to see you, sir." She didn't give Finn a chance to reply. "Go right on in."
Carter left the door open as he marched right into Finn's office. He registered the presence of three outsiders, but he didn't care. They just spared both Carter and Finn from having any uncomfortable conversations about the irrelevant past. He thought they might have been the auditors. "What the hell is this, Riley? Have you completely lost your mind or have you been possessed by the spirit of a guy named Ebenezer?" He slammed the directive down on Finn's desk.
Finn didn't react, not even when he heard the desk crack under Carter's fist. One of the auditors winced, though.
Finn stared up at him, cold as ever. After a moment, he stroked his beard. "Did they not teach basic reading in Tennessee? Is that your difficulty?"
Carter fought against the urge for violence. "Have you ever read any piece of medical information in your life, or is this more crap that you picked up off the Internet again? This? This isn't going to save you money. This is going to cost you money. A lot of money. It's going to cost you money in lawsuits, and it's going to cost you money in lost revenue, and then you're going to lose your accreditation."
"I knew I should have checked your transcripts." Finn sniffed. "It seems you went to drama school instead of medical school. C-sections are costly. One of the things that the audit turned up is that we need to reduce the number performed. So—a fine. Not that I have any obligation to justify my decisions to an insubordinate employee."
Carter lifted his eyebrows. "Do you think that we do C-sections because it's fun? Do you think that we're down there arm wrestling to see who gets to slice and dice the next customer? Where's your MBA from, Sizzler? We do major abdominal surgery because the risks of doing it the other way outweigh the risks of cutting someone open and pulling the baby out. It's not fun. Yes, we do more of them than we'd like. I just published an article in the Obstetric Journal about why C-sections are rising, and it's not because doctors want to show off their mad Ginsu knife skills. If your attention span can tolerate having to read an actual medical journal, maybe you can educate yourself."
Finn's eyes flashed with rage before they went back to their normal chill. "I will not be spoken to this way. Not in my hospital."
Johnston cleared his throat. "With all due respect, we only suggested reducing C-sections as one possible way to bring costs down. We didn't say it was the only way to bring costs down and we did recommend consulting with the Obstetrics—"
Finn snarled at him, and the auditor shut up.
Carter collected his energy and stood as straight as he could. "You're standing by this absurd demand?"
"Go ahead, Carter. Challenge me one more time. I dare you."
Carter pulled out his phone and called Yamashita. "All right. It went about like I called it. Plan B."
He turned on his heel and walked out of the office.
***
Finn considered heading downtown and looking for some company. He wasn't even all that horny, although he could certainly perform. Rage gave him potency where shame and humiliation stole it from him. How dare Carter? How dare he walk into Finn's office like he owned the place and question Finn's judgment, in front of people?
Finn had never hit an omega, and he wasn't going to start now, but the urge had been strong.
He wanted to go to one of those clubs that he'd seen online and find some anonymous partner. He wanted to bury himself deep inside someone that he would never have to see again, and he wanted to drive the memory of Carter Idoni away from his body. Carter was supposed to be his omega, damn it. His omega would never have come in and behaved like that.
Finn didn't go to the club. Instead, he went home. He was still getting used to having the place to himself again. His parents weren't speaking to him, because somehow, even though they would never have seen Carter as anything but a living womb, Finn had wronged him by trying to introduce some logic into the situation. Finn had gone his entire life wishing that his parents would stop speaking to him, only to find himself oddly bereft once it happened.
But the house was his, once again, and he might as well enjoy it.
He headed down into the basement. The previous owners had made
the finished basement look like a bar, if someone decided to stick a bar in a log cabin. Finn couldn't tell why someone would want to stick a bar in a log cabin in the basement of a palace like this, but whatever. He didn't need to understand. He also didn't need to go out to some bar, filled with questionable people, when he could get his drink on right here in the privacy of his own spectacular home.
Maybe his dad hadn't appreciated the house. Maybe his parents hadn't believed that he had the job that he had, or that he made the money that he did. How they thought that he paid for the house, Finn had no idea and he no longer cared. He'd accomplished something that no one else in the history of Regent had accomplished, and he was only getting started.
He scowled and fixed himself a Middleton Mule. He used to like to make these drinks for the whole fraternity, back in undergrad. Back when being the Iceman was uncomplicated. Now he sought comfort in the familiar. He was furious with Carter, but all of that would fall away if he could just put his arms around his omega and hold him close.
Of course, without the baby there wouldn't be anything to hold them together. Sure, they'd had chemistry, but that hardly counted for much. All they did was fight, that was how they'd gotten Carter pregnant in the first place. Now there would never be a little boy to run through these halls, or to learn to run a business, or to drive off to college with a sigh and a secretly shared smile between the parents.
No, as soon as the baby was gone Carter had turned right back to his hostility and his insubordination, as though nothing had ever happened between them at all. And Finn had been forced to just sit there and take it, when all he'd wanted to do was to grab onto Carter—
No. He couldn't let himself think like that. Those days were gone. Those days had never really existed, except in Finn's head. They hadn't been a couple. Finn had entertained some thoughts on that end, but Carter hadn't said anything and now they were right back to being mortal enemies. Finn was in the awkward position of having to fire the man who should have been the father of his child.
He turned on the television, just for some noise to distract him. To be honest, he should have fired Carter a long time ago. What had he been thinking? Sex was a stupid way to ease the tension between them. Sure, it had been incredible, but that didn't make it any less stupid.
Or any less painful to see the object of his affection, and resentment, up on the screen.
Carter was on the news. Finn stared at Carter on the news for a full three seconds before he realized that Carter was on the news with his full name and title, as well as the subtitle Dr. Bae underneath his real name just in case people had forgotten his Memorial Day heroics. He wore his shirt this time, but he still looked sexy and amazing as he stood in front of Silver Oak Hospital.
With the rest of his department, nurses and doctors alike.
Holding picket signs.
Finn's jaw dropped. He finally caught sight of the headline. "SILVER OAK OBSTETRICS DEPARTMENT SHUT DOWN." He hadn't. Carter wouldn't. He wouldn't turn his back on his patients like this, would he?
An Asian reporter smiled over at Carter. "Dr. Idoni, some critics might take issue with what you're doing here tonight. They might say that you're ignoring your patients in favor of pursuing a labor-related grudge. How would you respond?"
Carter chuckled, easy and comfortable in front of the camera. "Is that a pun, Clara? Um, in all seriousness, we're out here today because we can't guarantee patient care when our hands are tied like that. Look, everyone in the department wants to save money. We all live in Syracuse; it's something that's kind of trained into us up here." He put a hand on his chest, chestnut brown eyes brimming with sincerity. "The issue comes up when people make demands that involve patient care without understanding medicine. If a patient presents and the safest way to deliver their baby, with minimal risk to the parent and the baby is a C-section, then the right thing to do for that patient is a C-section.
"That's not a decision that should be made by some guy sitting in an office with a spreadsheet. That's a decision that should be made by the carrier parent, the mother or the omega, in conjunction with their obstetric caregiver. They know that patient's situation. They know that patient's history. And if we're coming to a point where we're weighing human lives against saving a couple of bucks here and there, then we've reached a sad point in human history.
"I'm not willing to be part of that. No one who has taken the Hippocratic Oath will be part of that. No one who has dedicated their life to service, like these nurses, is going to be part of that." Carter smiled, his face beautiful and serene in the artificial light of the parking lot.
Finn looked away in disgust. The reporter was looking at Carter like he'd hung the moon. She couldn't know that Carter had somehow destroyed something sacred.
"Do you feel that picketing the hospital might be the wrong way to get your message across?" the reporter asked, eyes shining.
"Well, it's something we'd rather not do. We've got a lot of respect for all of our colleagues inside and we don't want to make them feel like they're crossing a picket line or anything like that. We're not at that point right now. We have tried more direct communication with management, and we're hopeful that the nurses' union will find a way to make that more productive going forward. But we had another goal tonight, and that was to warn anyone who might have planned to come here to have their baby tonight to choose someplace else. If you're an omega and your baby is on its way tonight, do not come here. Go to University; Dr. Huntington is there tonight to help you." Carter looked directly into the camera as he spoke, projecting assurance and confidence.
Even Finn believed him.
He picked up the phone and called his chief of human resources. "Are you watching this?"
"If you mean the news," he said in a sour tone, "I've got it on in the background. I'm busy trying to coordinate with the sick lines right now."
"A sick out." Finn shuddered. "I'll be there as soon as I can."
He put down his untasted drink and got back into his car. The drive took eight minutes. The picketers weren't numerous, but they were visible as Finn drove up. They left him alone, even though Carter must have recognized Finn's car.
He stayed at the hospital until three o'clock that morning, on the phone with union representatives. All of them swore that Carter hadn't contacted them. The nurses' union said that they needed to get involved because of the involvement of their members. The housekeepers' union made less sense, but Finn had to tread lightly here. He couldn't run the hospital without them.
The HR chief reported that calls for nurses that had suddenly caught a virus had spiked during the night, and Finn didn't think he could do anything about that. He could penalize them. He could fire the entire obstetric department, too, and he was definitely going to have to consider that.
He wasn't going to do it tonight. He needed to sleep on it. He knew that he was angry, and he knew that people who made decisions out of rage often regretted them when they calmed down. He'd never been prone to rage before, but he'd seen it in other people.
The next morning he got a call from Bill McCloskey, his mentor and the CEO of the entire Regent family. "I hear you're having a bit of labor trouble, son."
Finn rubbed a hand over his face. He should have expected the call to come in this early, even if he'd been at the hospital late the night before. It was the old man's MO. "Yeah—er, yes, sir. The Obstetrics department's been a hotbed of insubordination since I got here, and they've resisted everything that I've tried to put into place. Don't worry, sir. I'll soon put it down."
"Hm." Bill grunted. "Seems to me that the Obstetrics department is one of the reasons that we acquired Silver Oak. Having them on strike isn't great. Looks bad for Regent. Especially when they're saying that you've put rules in place that are having a negative impact on patient care."
"Ugh." Finn rolled his eyes. "That's just Idoni. He thinks everything is bad for patient care. He's an obstructionist nitwit who doesn't understand that he's an employee.
"
Bill chuckled. "Riley, I'm not sure you understand who he is. You could fire him tomorrow, and he would walk out the door and have five job offers. He doesn't need Silver Oak and he doesn't need Regent. To be honest, if the guy's telling you that something's got a negative impact on patient care, you need to listen. Did you really try to ban C-sections?"
"The auditors recommended it, sir." Finn stood up and walked toward the kitchen. He needed coffee for this conversation. "You can ask them."
"Johnston called. He said it was one thing to examine further and that you didn't investigate further before putting it into practice. That includes seeking medical advice on a medical matter. Now Finn, I know you. Tell me the truth. Why would you do something like that? You know better!"
Finn sighed. "Look. My job is to bring the hospital to a point where it's turning a profit, so that the profit can be paid to Regent. Correct?"
