“I thought you were better than this, Grace,” he says.
“I’m just a dying woman who’s been working on this too long to see it fall by the ways
ide. So, are we going to do a joint press conference or are you going to try and Mission Impossible it out the back?”
He takes a minute to think.
“They’re never going to abide by this,” he says. “Even if I go out there and do everything you want me to do, they’re never going to abide by it. You don’t have the clout.”
“Bet your career on that?” I ask him.
I wouldn’t. In fact, I seriously doubt KJBP would even fire him for the string of bad publicity I’ve got planned — call it spite — should he do what any responsible representative would do.
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll read it, but if KJBP doesn’t go for it, I won’t have you dragging me through the shit for it.”
“You go out there and read that,” I tell him, “and you’ve got a job at Memento no matter which way it goes from there.”
That was the only perk I’ve been able to squeeze out in addition to the 10 mil offer.
Even though Andrew is right, KJBP is never going to stand by this deal, it’s still a personal victory to follow him outside and sit there, however wiped I am from the chemo, and hear him read the prepared statement saying that KJBP will soon be a subsidiary of M.E.
What I’ve neglected to tell Andrew is that when this deal falls through, I’m going to lose my own job. That’s just the position I’m in. My job was over the moment a member of our board mentioned the names of some of the biggest stations in the world.
People love an underdog story, but only if the underdog wins in the end. I have no chance of that. Human interest pieces are great, but people have a short attention span for this kind of thing and nobody’s going to care.
This isn’t going to change anything, and when KJBP announces that they’re going with whoever they end up going with, I’m going to lose my job.
What I do have is this moment, seeing the high water mark of my career. What’s ruining the whole thing is that Jace isn’t here to see it.
Chapter Twenty
Compacted Life
Jace
I’m sitting outside the room where my fate is to be decided, taking one more minute to go over my prepared remarks.
There are going to be plenty of questions, plenty of ways for me to explain exactly why and how I did what I did, though I doubt Dr. Marcum’s name will ever come up at all.
I would have loved nothing more than to have Grace’s support for what I’m about to do, but the simple fact is that she’s not here and she’s not going to be.
“Dr. Churchill?” Dr. Preston calls from the now open doorway. “We’re ready for you.”
I stand and straighten my tie. There’s probably nothing of consequence they don’t already know, but that doesn’t make this hearing redundant. It matters what I say in there and it’s going to matter just as much how I say it.
If I play it off like it wasn’t a big deal or that I didn’t really do anything wrong, they’re going to skewer me. This isn’t the kind of thing they tell you might become a problem when they’re doing what they can to pound the ethical code of conduct down your throat in med school; this is the kind of thing you know before you’re sitting in the class.
I sit down across the table from Dr. Preston.
To his left and right are board members and department heads, all members of the disciplinary committee. I know them all personally. That doesn’t mean this is going to be any easier.
From left to right, there’s Dr. Quinten, who I’m going to push into hating me for the fact that I violated the terms of a clinical study, something that’s big money for the hospital.
Next to him is Dr. Star, who’s going to soften a bit at the fact that I did this for a woman I care about, but she’s going to overcorrect her judgment so the others don’t catch on to her sympathies, something she considers a weakness.
In the middle is Dr. Preston, Dean of Medicine and a man who hasn’t stopped staring at me like he’s trying to figure out how much money his hospital can save by revoking my license and kicking me the hell out of it.
To the right of him is Dr. Jepsen, who’s one of those people you always think is on your side, right up until the moment he opens his mouth to let you know just how little he thinks of you — I’m pretty sure for no other reason than that he can.