Mom! Don't Pull The Curtain! novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Open House

Justin's POV

Lena didn't try to take the laptop.

She stood in the closet doorway in her navy suit and looked at the five of us as though we had come to a meeting she'd scheduled.

"The open house is at six," she said. "Justin's old patients are coming. Stay. I want you all to hear the plan for the new clinic."

"There isn't a new clinic," my father said.

"There will be tonight."

She walked away down the hall, heels clicking, and my father took the server's power cord in his fist and pulled it out of the wall.

At six o'clock the waiting room was full.

The nurses had put out cheese cubes and a banner that said WELCOME TO HOSTETLER WOMEN'S CLINIC, UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.

Eighty women stood in the lobby with paper cups.

I recognized half of them.

Susanna stood at my left shoulder, and her mother at my right.

My father was behind us with the board's investigator and a deputy he had coached in 1998.

Lena stepped up on a low platform by the front desk.

"Thank you all for coming," she said. "Under my management we are building a modern clinic, with expanded service and complete safety."

"Safety from what?" said the woman in the yellow dress.

A few people laughed.

Lena's smile didn't move.

"From the kind of scandal this clinic has had," she said. "As of today Dr. Hostetler no longer owns any part of this practice. I wanted you to hear that from me."

All the heads turned toward me.

I'd had a speech.

I'd been rehearsing it since the closet, and I stood there with my heart going and realized I didn't need it.

I stepped up on the platform beside her.

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