He Chose Mistress, I Chose Empire novel · Chapter 8 of 32
Chapter 8: Two Trucks and a Plan
"She'll kill the bid before it's opened," Wilma said.
"She can't. The hospital picks. The foundation just raises the money."
"Honey, the foundation raised the money for the new building. She'll be in that room."
"Then she can watch."
I spent four nights in the basement of the warehouse.
My father kept everything. Every job he ever ran is down there in banker's boxes, labeled in his square print.
On the fourth night, at one in the morning, I found it.
CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL. 1989.
Three boxes. His inventory sheets for the move from the old building on the hill to the one they were leaving now.
He had moved a whole hospital in thirty-one hours, with nine trucks and a hand-drawn map.
There was a coffee ring on the map.
I sat on the basement floor and held it for a long time.
The bid presentation was in a glass conference room on the top floor of the hospital.
The two other bidders were national companies with tablets and matching polo shirts.
One brought a drone video. The other brought a vice president who had flown in from Atlanta.
I brought Wilma, a rolling cart, and three banker's boxes.
Opaline sat at the end of the table beside the hospital's CEO.
She wore ice blue and her pearls. She smiled at me.
The CEO was a white-haired man in his sixties with reading glasses pushed up on his head.
Their presentations were very smooth, using the word "seamless" at least a dozen times.
Then it was my turn.
I stood up.
Opaline spoke before I could.
"I want it on record that I think this is a waste of the committee's afternoon," she said.
"Noted," the CEO said.
"Ms. Kitt has a personal grievance against my family. She's going through a divorce. She is, as far as anyone can tell, a girl with two trucks and a grudge."
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