“Don’t I know it?” I replied as I poured us both cups of coffees. “So, what’s the issue?”
He nodded with thanks as I brought him the cup of coffee, the two of us sitting down in the meeting area. “Deborah Wingard.”
The name was immediately familiar to me, a nurse we’d let go months back. “What about her?”
“You remember the situation?”
I tried to scan my thoughts to call back the details. Maybe it was the Andrew and Annie situation, but I could barely remember.
“Remind me.”
“She was a nurse working underneath me, one of the first new hires at the clinic.” He sat back and crossed his legs, as if getting into a subject he didn’t care for one bit. “And at first, she seemed on-the-ball – a solid hire who’d come with just as solid recommendations.”
“Go on.” I did my best to pay attention, but my mind kept drifting, the expression of anger and sadness on Annie’s face appearing in my mind again.
“You alright over there?” Adam asked.
“I’m fine. Bad night’s sleep last night.” I wasn’t lying – I’d managed about three hours of shut-eye total, spending the rest of the night tossing and turning.
“Just need some more of this,” I said, tapping the side of my mug. “Go ahead.”
“Anyway, the longer she worked for us, the more I began to get the impression that things weren’t all as they seemed.”
“How so?”
“Things we couldn’t prove…like items missing from patients’ belongings. Money, things like that. Also, expenses tacked onto their final bills. Just a few dollars here and there, but costs that added up. And whenever I questioned her, there was no way to prove it was her. After all, she could simply claim she provided whatever service was on the bill. But it all stank to high heaven.”
“Go on.”
“Finally, one day, I caught her bumping a patient to add a friend of hers to the schedule – clear preferential behavior, clear violation of nurse ethics. Between that and everything else that was happening, I let her go that day. But she didn’t take it well.”
“Didn’t take it well how?”
“She said she’d sue us for everything we had. I didn’t believe her, thinking she was just being vindictive. And sure enough, after that day, I didn’t hear a word from her. Not to mention, all the billing discrepancies and patient theft stopped as of then.”
“But the problem’s not solved,” I guessed. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
“The problem’s far from solved, actually. My office got a call from her today. She’s lawyered up and was coming to meet with you.”
“Excuse me?” I sat up, more focused than I’d been all day.
“Said she was going to drop by your office today. And that’s why I’m here – to let you know and to be at your side when it happens.”
My eyebrows arched in surprise. “She’s just…dropping by?”
He nodded. “I was nearby when I heard, otherwise I would’ve given you more notice, but—”
Another chime from the intercom sounded through the office. “Shit,” I said, pointing at it. “Is that her?”
“Dr. Pitt, someone’s here to see you – a Deborah Wingard.”
“We can’t let her in here now,” I said. “Not without a member of the legal team.”
“I already spoke with them,” he replied. “And they told me that if we go full-lawyer on her from the start, it might make this thing blow up into something it doesn’t need to be. Right now, we’ve got a perfectly clear-cut case – she was fired for a good reason. If we hold the line and stick to our guns, be firm, we can maybe talk some sense into her.”
“Dammit,” I mumbled, clenching my fist. “We can’t have a damn lawsuit while we’re in the middle of expanding. It’d be the worst possible kind of attention.”
“Right,” he said. “So, let’s try to defuse this together.”
I took a slow breath, gathering my thoughts. But damn, I was still tired and distracted and not in the right headspace for something like this. It couldn’t be put off, however. We needed to handle it.
“Alright – send her in.”
Less than two seconds later the door opened. Deborah Wingard burst into the room, five-feet-three-inches of wiry energy, her body reed thin and a manic glint in her blue eyes. Her bleach-blonde hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, making her already intense expression even more so.
“You Dr. Pitt?” she asked.
“That’s me,” I said. “A pleasure to meet you, Nurse Wingard.” She looked me up and down as if I were pulling some kind of trick on her. With a bland expression, I gestured to my colleague. “And you know Dr. Brand.”
“Yeah, I know Dr. Brand,” she snarled, putting maximum disdain in her tone.
“Please,” I said. “Sit. Let’s get this situation worked out.” I stepped over to the coffee pot and poured her a cup. Caffeine seemed like the last thing she needed, but I wanted to be polite.
She took the cup and plopped onto the couch, a bit of coffee dribbling over the side. “The only way this situation is going to get worked out is if I get my job back or you give me one of those, what’re they called, golden parachutes.”
I had to hold back a smirk at her terminology. “Like a severance package?”
“That’s right,” she said, raising her finger. “Exactly what I mean.”
“Now, Deborah,” Adam began, but she interrupted.
“I keep telling you, Nurse Wingard.”
Adam gave me a knowing look before his gaze returned to her. “Nurse Wingard,” he said. “You know why you were terminated, and you know that it was with reasonable cause.”
“That’s what you said,” she went on, nearly cutting him off. “But I knew that was bullshit when you said it. And that’s what my new boyfriend said, too. He paid for a lawyer from Denver, and this guy’s good. Says he’s going to take you to the cleaners.”
“Nurse Wingard,” I said. “It doesn’t need to come to that. What I’m proposing is that before you do anything rash, simply have your lawyer meet with ours. That way we can keep this out of the courts, and you can move on with your life with minimal fuss. Maybe there will even be a golden parachute in it for you.”
It was a tactic, one that I hoped would result in her seated at a conference table in front of a team of our best lawyers. If we could get that, there was no doubt they’d be able to talk her down, to let her know she didn’t have a case.
Lying. After the conversation I’d had with Annie, it should’ve been the last strategy on my mind.
“Wait,” she said. “You want your lawyers to meet with mine? Why? Why not just solve this here and now? Go in that desk of yours and write me a check. Then I’ll be out of your hair.”
“It’s not that simple,” Adam retorted. “If we do something like that, we’ll need to do it through the proper channels. We can’t simply hand you some money and be done with it, even if that were something we were considering.”