Reborn: This Time, I'm Divorcing Him First novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: First

The word rolled through the auditorium.

A few people turned in their seats to look at me.

In the back row, both reporters were writing.

Harold straightened up at the podium.

"Thank you, Mr. Ashworth. I know that took courage."

Margaret put a hand on her son's shoulder.

I stood up.

"Do I get to answer?"

Harold glanced at the reporters, then smiled.

"Of course. We're a fair institution."

I walked up the steps onto the stage.

Nobody handed me a microphone, so I didn't use one.

I'd spent three years learning to be heard across a dinner party.

"Nathaniel," I said. "What did Harold offer you for that yes?"

Nathaniel stared at his hands in his lap.

"Leave him alone," Margaret snapped. "You've done enough to him."

"Then I'll ask Harold something instead."

I turned to the podium.

"Harold. Push up your left sleeve."

He laughed, short and loud.

"This is a hearing about your conduct, Dr. Ashworth."

"It is. So let me be clear about my conduct."

I faced the three hundred people in the seats.

"Every doctor in this room has felt a dialysis fistula. The buzz under the skin. I felt one under Harold Weiss's cuff on Saturday."

A murmur went through the rows.

"If I'm wrong, I'll resign today, in front of all of you. All he has to do is show us his arm."

Harold's hand went to his left cuff and stayed there.

He didn't move it.

The older board member with the reading glasses leaned forward behind him.

"Harold," she said quietly. "Roll up your sleeve."

He didn't.

The silence went on long enough for everyone to understand it.

"Harold Weiss's kidneys have failed," I said. "He didn't want to wait on the list like everybody else."

"So he paid Dr. Stuart Pierce eight hundred thousand dollars for mine."

"That is slander."

"Pierce kept a ledger. My name is on the last line. Paid in full. And next to it, two initials."

A door opened at the side of the auditorium.

Maeve came down the aisle in her St. Brigid's scrubs.

Her hands were shaking, but she didn't stop walking until she reached the foot of the stage.

"My name is Maeve Farrell," she said. "I was a nurse at the Pierce Renal Clinic for four years."

She pointed at Harold.

"Dr. Pierce ran that man's dialysis himself. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Five in the morning, through the back door. We called him Mr. W."

The room had gone completely still.

"And on Saturday, I was in the ICU changing Mr. Ashworth's drip."

She looked at Nathaniel.

"I heard Mr. Weiss tell him that if he signed the complaint, he'd get his company back."

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