AN INTERN THREW COFFEE ON ΜΕ THEN PROCLAIMED THE CEO WAS HER HUSBAND. SO I CALMLY CALLED THE BOSS: “YOU NEED TO COME DOWN HERE. I HAVE A SURPRISE FOR YOU!”
I felt the scalding, sticky weight of the liquid before I even heard the cup hit the floor. Dark, bitter espresso bloomed across my white silk blazer like a spreading ink blot, the heat seeping through to my skin. In the sudden vacuum-like silence of the hospital lobby, the only sound was the rhythmic drip drip drip of coffee hitting the polished marble. I didn’t move. I didn’t scream.
I just looked down at the ruin of a suit that had been the last birthday gift my father ever gave me. Behind me, a shrill, rehearsed so broke the silence. Oh my god, look what you did. You pushed me. You ruined my custom dress. I turned slowly. Standing there was a girl who looked like she’d wandered off a reality TV set and accidentally ended up in a place of healing.
She was barely 22, caked in contour, and wearing a hot pink dress so tight it looked painful. She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at her iPhone, which was mounted on a gimbal, the screen glowing with a cascade of scrolling emojis and live heart icons. Everyone, you saw that, right? She wailed to her followers, her eyes dry and calculating.
This crazy woman just assaulted a healthare worker. I’m literally shaking. She looked at me then, her eyes narrowing into a venomous slits. She leaned in, whispering so only I could hear, the scent of cheap perfume and arrogance rolling off her. You’re dead, Karen. Do you have any idea who my husband is? Mark Thompson, the CEO. He owns this place.
He owns you. You’ll never get a doctor to look at you in this city ever again. I felt a cold, sharp tremor of irony go through me. Mark Thompson, my husband, the man I had spent 10 years building, polishing, and protecting. I reached into my pocket, my fingers brushing against the cool glass of my own phone.
I looked at the coffee stain, then at the girl’s name tag. Tiffany Henry, intern. “You want the CEO?” I asked, my voice coming out as a low, dangerous hum. Let’s get the CEO. But to understand how we got to this marble floor, we have to go back 12 hours. The Boeing 787 had touched down at JFK with a heavy thud that rattled my teeth.
I’d spent 30 days in Frankfurt navigating the cold clinical boardrooms of German medical manufacturers. I was the chief strategy officer of Apex Medical Group. But that was just the title on the door. In reality, I owned 60% of the company. I was the legacy. My father had built this empire from a single clinic. And since his passing, his weight had settled permanently onto my shoulders.
Mark, my husband, was the face. He was handsome, charming, and spoken the kind of silver tongue platitudes that investors loved. But he couldn’t negotiate a paper bag out of a corner. I had gone to Germany to secure a fleet of state-of-the-art MRI machines, a job he should have done because I knew if he went, we’d overpay by millions.
I didn’t tell him I was coming home early. I wanted to surprise him. I wanted to see the hospital through the eyes of a stranger to see if the culture of care my father died for was still alive. I stepped into the lobby of Apex University Hospital at 9:15 a.m. It was a cathedral of blue tinted glass and antiseptic. Usually I use the private executive entrance, but today I pulled my own suitcase through the front doors. The first thing I saw wasn’t a doctor. It
was David Chen. David was the head of cardiology, my oldest friend from medical school, and the only man in this building who didn’t care about the stock price. He was on his knees in the center of the lobby, his white scrub soaked with sweat, performing rhythmic, bone cracking CPR on an elderly man who had collapsed.
Nurse glucose now,” David barked. His focus was absolute. He didn’t see the crowd. He didn’t see me. He was a man holding back death with his bare hands. That was the apex I knew. But then the contrast hit like a slap. Not 10 ft away from David’s life or death struggle. Tiffany was berating Henry, our head valet.
Henry was a Vietnam veteran who had worked for my father for 30 years. He was 70 years old, bowing his white head as this girl screamed at him because his slow walking had left her Mercedes in the sun for 5 minutes. You move like a turtle, she shrieked before turning to her live stream to pucker her lips for the camera. Gh. The help here is so incompetent, guys. Stay positive, though.
Tap that heart. The rage began as a slow simmer in my chest. This was what Mark had allowed while I was away. This was the professional standard he’d promised to uphold. I walked over to Henry, placed a hand on his trembling shoulder, and silenced him with a look when he tried to say my name.
I turned to the girl. The workday started over an hour ago, I said, my voice like a scalpel. You are late. You are out of uniform and you are harassing a senior staff member. Put the phone away. That’s when it happened. The dismissive sneer, the bitter old hag comment to her camera, and then the deliberate lunge. She didn’t trip.
She turned, checked her camera angle, and slammed her iced coffee directly into my chest. And now here we were. The crowd was growing. People were filming. David had finished with his patient and was standing up, his eyes widening as he recognized me. He started toward us, his face darkening with a protective fury I hadn’t seen in years.
Catherine, are you hurt? David’s voice was a low rumble. Tiffany laughed. A sharp grading sound. Oh, you’re .
