Page 52 of Ellie 1

13

Ellie

Every time I turned around, someone was all over Dr. Clark or I heard his name from lips I shouldn’t in a manner that wasn’t professional. It wasconstantand I’d barely left my office after the blowup in the cafeteria Tommy instigated.

Staff discussing his dumplings and hoping he would gobble them up.

Gushing how he talked about his “mum” and was such a good son who respected women.

Rambling on and on that they couldn’t believe such a good catch with a sexy accent came to the hospital.

Wow, so glad that my hiring decisions could help in the eye candy department and up the stakes in the dating pool.

When I walked up on someone actually having the audacity to say they were short of breath and asking if he could give them some CPR, I barely held my anger together and changed directions. Not only was that against everything I was killing myself to fix about the hospital, but I didn’t want to witness any of that.

Joyce came around to check on me and wanted to share some of the gossip that cooled me off. “Ha-joon was complaining about some nurses being over the line and asking for CPR. He asked me if it was too much if he reported that to HR.”

“Ha-joon, huh?” I grumbled as I looked over what was on my desk. I felt the side glance she gave me but she continued.

“I told him that if it was me, I would talk to their bosses first and suggest they have a conversation with their staff about being professional, especially since it was in front of patients and that makes us all look bad.”

“Good call.” I swallowed a snort. “Yeah, they can all privately ask for it during his afternoon dumpling time.”

“Wow, this is a surprise.”

“What?” I asked as I glanced up at her.

“Nothing,” she chuckled. “Nothing at all.” Still, she studied me as if she’d never seen me before. “How is everything else going?”

I sighed. Heavily. “I don’t hate everyone and everything today, so that’s improvement?”

“Your bar is set so fucking low it’s disturbing. Give me some happy to reset our moods and then let’s conquer the rest of the day.”

Wow, if Joyce was coming to cheer me up—I needed her to cheer me up and not the other way around, I was in a really bad place.

I told her about the blood drives rocking. People were still pushing for more in the hopes we could lower our prices and vamps could be taken better care of. It made sense because even if shifters were as strong or sometimes stronger than us, we were mostly EMS and military.

Their animals tried to come out in times of crisis and that made more problems than helped. So even if vamps could be pains, we were generally always on the front lines, and apparently this had shown that we didn’t get enough love for that.

“And you told them that wasn’t feasible right now, but you were planning a larger reserve of blood for the next disaster orcrisis, so no matter the country, they could rely on ASH,” she said, clearly having been read in.

“Yes.”

“It was a smart move. I heard from my leadership even that it was a better plan because peace was always the goal with kicking the humans out. And we’ve done it. They still war and we haven’t had one, only small disputes that get handled pretty fast.”

“Good.” I let out a slow breath and felt settled in my decision even if I’d known it was the right move. “I was thinking one bunker of emergency reserves for each of the four continent presidents in case of crisis. All from donation with our additives. Make it public that ASH is turning a corner and recommitting ourselves to helping people and advancing medicine.”

She was quiet a few moments. “I think it’s perfect. Make each country pay for the bunker we also always have access to so we can check the stock. Don’t ever let that control go. One of our people checks it monthly so no one is abusing it either. It’s all from donations with our additive donated and the process. But they handle the blood drives and we get the extra to sell.”

“I love you so hard right now,” I whispered, blinking at my genius friend. “I don’t pay you enough.”

She chuckled. “You do.” She cleared her throat. “And I’ve always thought you were an amazing building owner.”

I swallowed loudly. “You knew.”

She nodded. “I saw something with the company logo on your desk. I thought it odd always how nice the property manager was to me and always jumped on anything with my condo fast. It made sense when I realized you warned them that I was your friend.”

I nodded. “That, and their orders are to always take the best care of our people because I need them for the hospital. We need allowances and help too.”

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