My Wife Sent Me to a Psych Ward, So I Gave Her a Big Surprise novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Visiting Hours

Maura's POV

I told the board president I had one condition, and it had two halves.

We sat in his office on a Wednesday, with his hands folded and his tie loosened, and I kept my coat on.

"Name it," he said.

"No patient's family is ever turned away at the front desk. Not for a list, not for a policy, not for a donor. If a patient wants someone, they come in."

"We can write that."

"And after nine every night, somebody sits on every floor. Not a camera. A person."

He took a long time to answer.

"That's four more night staff," he said.

"Yes."

"The budget..."

"You've had a ledger in your administrator's drawer for three years that paid two thousand dollars a month to keep a woman out of this building," I said. "Find the budget."

He rubbed his face.

"Done," he said.

I signed on the following Monday.

My first staff meeting was at seven in the evening, in the day room, with every chair in the building pulled into a circle.

Forty people came.

The day charge nurse sat with her arms crossed, and two of the orderlies leaned on the wall by the door.

I stood in the center in a gray blazer I had borrowed from the laundromat owner, who was a size larger, and I held a clipboard I did not need.

At the back of the room, in the row of folding visitors' chairs, sat Damon.

He had come straight from the yard and still had the dust on his cuffs.

He had asked, on the way over, whether he could listen.

I had said it was an open meeting.

He had said he knew, and that he wanted to sit where his mother had never been allowed to.

He caught my eye and gave me a small nod.

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