don’t recall—”
“Carol, I told you. I remember quite clearly. Call Frieda and tell her to send up half a dozen. I know they have some. I saw them down in the cafeteria twenty minutes ago. Steal them from there if you have to.”
Carol’s head disappeared.
Agnes set her purse on the table, removed her phone, and realized it was not on. Her HuffPost app had been loading slowly that morning, as well as some of her other programs, so she’d turned the phone off with the intention of turning it back on immediately. A quick reboot. But then her rye toast had popped, and she’d neglected to restart it. So now she pressed and held the button at the top right, but flipped the tiny switch on the left side to mute the ring.
Agnes set the phone on the table, then tapped her red fingernails impatiently on the polished surface. This was not going to be a pleasant meeting. She had not been looking forward to it. The news was distressing. The latest hospital rankings were in, and Promise Falls General had come in below average for the upstate New York region. The closest hospitals in Syracuse and Albany had ranked in the high seventies and low eighties, but PFG had been saddled with a sixty-nine. A totally unfair and arbitrary figure, in Agnes’s estimation. Much of it had to do with perception. The locals figured that if you needed top-quality health care, you had to go to a hospital in a big city. Bigger, at least, than Promise Falls. That meant Syracuse or Albany, or even New York.
Sure, PFG had some trouble eleven months ago with an outbreak of C. difficile . Four elderly patients contracted the bacterial infection, and one of them had died. (Too bad the Promise Falls Standard was still printing at the time; it was front-page material for the better part of two weeks.) But that was the sort of thing that could happen to any hospital, and almost invariably did. Agnes Pickens had instituted even more rigorous hand-washing and cleaning procedures, and had gotten the outbreak under control. And where was the Standard ’s front-page story on that?
Ask anyone in town if they’d be happy to be treated at Promise Falls General, and invariably they’d say, “Uh, if you think there’s even a chance of one in a hundred you can get me to Syracuse or Albany before I die, I’ll take a pass on PFG.” Changing that perception was proving to be a challenge for Agnes.
A woman in a pale green uniform and a hairnet walked into the room with a plate of bran muffins.
“Here you go, Ms. Pickens,” she said.
“Frieda, take them off that plate and arrange them with the others,” Agnes said. “And I hope to God you washed your hands before you touched the food.”
“Of course, ma’am.” She added the new muffins to the platter and slipped out of the room as Carol entered.
“They’re here,” she said.
“Send them in,” Agnes said.
Ten people filed in, nodding greetings, making small talk. Local businesspeople, two doctors, the hospital’s chief fund-raiser.
“Morning, Agnes,” said a silver-haired man in his early sixties.
“Dr. Sturgess,” she said, shaking his hand. Then added, “Jack.”
Jack Sturgess, as if anticipating a rebuke, smiled and said, “I’ve started entering my notes into the system this week. Honest. No more paper.”
A few others heard the comment and chuckled as they helped themselves to coffee and tea and settled into the cushioned high-backed chairs around the table’s perimeter. Several helped themselves to muffins, and Agnes noticed at least three of them reaching for a bran.
She liked vindications, no matter how small.
She also liked being in charge. Liked it very much. Here she was, someone who’d never been a doctor, in charge of all this. After graduating nursing school, she’d tried her hand at being a midwife in Rochester for a couple of years, then returned to school for business. Applied, and got, a job in this hospital’s administrative department and, over the years,
“Carol, I told you. I remember quite clearly. Call Frieda and tell her to send up half a dozen. I know they have some. I saw them down in the cafeteria twenty minutes ago. Steal them from there if you have to.”
Carol’s head disappeared.
Agnes set her purse on the table, removed her phone, and realized it was not on. Her HuffPost app had been loading slowly that morning, as well as some of her other programs, so she’d turned the phone off with the intention of turning it back on immediately. A quick reboot. But then her rye toast had popped, and she’d neglected to restart it. So now she pressed and held the button at the top right, but flipped the tiny switch on the left side to mute the ring.
Agnes set the phone on the table, then tapped her red fingernails impatiently on the polished surface. This was not going to be a pleasant meeting. She had not been looking forward to it. The news was distressing. The latest hospital rankings were in, and Promise Falls General had come in below average for the upstate New York region. The closest hospitals in Syracuse and Albany had ranked in the high seventies and low eighties, but PFG had been saddled with a sixty-nine. A totally unfair and arbitrary figure, in Agnes’s estimation. Much of it had to do with perception. The locals figured that if you needed top-quality health care, you had to go to a hospital in a big city. Bigger, at least, than Promise Falls. That meant Syracuse or Albany, or even New York.
Sure, PFG had some trouble eleven months ago with an outbreak of C. difficile . Four elderly patients contracted the bacterial infection, and one of them had died. (Too bad the Promise Falls Standard was still printing at the time; it was front-page material for the better part of two weeks.) But that was the sort of thing that could happen to any hospital, and almost invariably did. Agnes Pickens had instituted even more rigorous hand-washing and cleaning procedures, and had gotten the outbreak under control. And where was the Standard ’s front-page story on that?
Ask anyone in town if they’d be happy to be treated at Promise Falls General, and invariably they’d say, “Uh, if you think there’s even a chance of one in a hundred you can get me to Syracuse or Albany before I die, I’ll take a pass on PFG.” Changing that perception was proving to be a challenge for Agnes.
A woman in a pale green uniform and a hairnet walked into the room with a plate of bran muffins.
“Here you go, Ms. Pickens,” she said.
“Frieda, take them off that plate and arrange them with the others,” Agnes said. “And I hope to God you washed your hands before you touched the food.”
“Of course, ma’am.” She added the new muffins to the platter and slipped out of the room as Carol entered.
“They’re here,” she said.
“Send them in,” Agnes said.
Ten people filed in, nodding greetings, making small talk. Local businesspeople, two doctors, the hospital’s chief fund-raiser.
“Morning, Agnes,” said a silver-haired man in his early sixties.
“Dr. Sturgess,” she said, shaking his hand. Then added, “Jack.”
Jack Sturgess, as if anticipating a rebuke, smiled and said, “I’ve started entering my notes into the system this week. Honest. No more paper.”
A few others heard the comment and chuckled as they helped themselves to coffee and tea and settled into the cushioned high-backed chairs around the table’s perimeter. Several helped themselves to muffins, and Agnes noticed at least three of them reaching for a bran.
She liked vindications, no matter how small.
She also liked being in charge. Liked it very much. Here she was, someone who’d never been a doctor, in charge of all this. After graduating nursing school, she’d tried her hand at being a midwife in Rochester for a couple of years, then returned to school for business. Applied, and got, a job in this hospital’s administrative department and, over the years,
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