Maybe one day there would only be yes.
Chapter 26
Alexis
I hung up with Daniel, touched up my lipstick, and went back out to dinner with my parents.
We’d just ordered, and our drinks had arrived while I was gone. We were at Sycamore in Minneapolis. It was a high-end steak place that looked like the inside of first class on the Titanic. It was dimly lit, with crisp linen tablecloths and stately paintings of important white men on the walls.
That always annoyed me, that the white men got the stately paintings. Even at Royaume, the hallways were lined with them. All the men throughout the history of the hospital who’d made significant contributions. Mostly from the Montgomery family, but still.
I was going to request stately paintings of all the marginalized people who had contributed to the hospital’s success over the last hundred and twenty-five years.
I’d been thinking a lot about what I wanted my contribution to Royaume to be. Maybe I’d start a weekly free clinic for low-income patients, get some donors to contribute to new programs for financial aid.
These last things had never felt as important to me as they did now.
Every time a patient came to the ER in their own car because they couldn’t afford the ambulance ride or they put off care until they were in such bad shape it was an emergency room visit, I thought about Daniel.
Most people in Wakan were barely making it as it was, and a hospital stay would ruin them.
I always tried to help my patients when they couldn’t afford care.
Last week a man came in with a simple perforated eardrum, and I saw him in the waiting room and wrote him a prescription without checking him in so he wouldn’t be billed for an ER trip. When I could, I coded procedures so they fell under a wellness visit or I sent a patient to their primary care physician where it would be cheaper instead of giving them a treatment that could wait. But I was starting to feel like it wasn’t enough. I was starting to feel like I could be doing more. And now I was in a position to.
There were definitely perks to being a Montgomery. Maybe I should start to use them.
Mom and Dad stopped talking as I slid into my seat and put my napkin in my lap. Dad leveled his eyes on me. “So what was this announcement you wanted to make?”
Mom waited patiently.
I’d been the one who’d made this dinner date. They’d been wanting to talk to me about the quasquicentennial, and I’d been turning down all their invitations to do it, mostly because they all included Neil. So I’d booked the reservation myself and told them we could talk about the event over dinner, and I added that I had something I wanted to tell them.
I smiled. “I’ve put my bid in for chief.”
Dad’s brows drew down. “Of course you’ve put your bid in for chief, I expressly told you to do so. What kind of announcement is that? What about Neil?” he asked, looking confused.
“What about him?” I asked, looking back and forth between them.
“You’re not getting back with Neil?” Mom said, her eyes darting nervously to Dad.
“What? No…”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Alexis,” Dad said. “What was the point of this dinner?”
I blinked at him. “I…I thought you’d be happy. About the chief thing. You wanted me to run. I’m officially running.”
“Bringing us here to tell us you’re doing what you should have been doing in the first place is not worthy of a dinner announcement,” he said.
Mom licked her lips. “Sweetheart, we were under the impression that you were getting back with Neil.”
I pressed my lips together and let out a slow, patient breath through my nose. “Mom? Dad?” I put my hands on the table. “I am never getting back with Neil.”
“Why the hell not?” Dad snapped.
It was so loud, people from other tables turned to look at us. I gawked at him in shock.
He pointed a finger at me. “You’ve given that relationship about as much effort as you’ve given your career. You’ve done the bare minimum, and you wonder why it isn’t successful.”
Mom put a hand on his shoulder. “Cecil…”
“No, Jennifer, she needs to hear this.”
His face was red.
“That man deserves your respect. You don’t even return his text messages. He’s made every attempt possible to make amends with you—and if you don’t want to make them, that’s your business. But until you’ve exhausted couple’s counseling, do not sit here and act like you’re not part of the problem.”