By late afternoon, Mariah's hotel suite had become an extension of her office. Michael Torres arrived with two laptops and a folder of updated lender notes, followed by Nadine Porter, whose calm manner concealed a professional dislike of executives who treated legal obligations as inconveniences. They reviewed the proposed investment, the provisional board approval for the seventy-two-hour review, and Talia's preliminary account of retaliation. Mariah asked Nadine to separate firsthand evidence from accusations that still required corroboration. She had learned that even a strong case could be damaged by impatience, and she had no intention of giving Elliot an excuse to dismiss legitimate witnesses as reckless.
"The board authorized preservation and a limited review," Nadine said. "But until the written order is executed, access will depend on people who are already under pressure. We need a clean record of every request, every refusal, and every document received." Michael asked whether they should withdraw the financing before their name became entangled in a public controversy. Mariah said they would make the decision after examining the facts, not after predicting Elliot's next insult. Her larger concern was that the company could already be suffering from problems the executives had hidden even from their own lenders.
She called a hospital executive she knew in Wisconsin, Dr. Celia Navarro, who managed clinical operations for one of Vance Meridian's customers. Celia had worked in emergency care before becoming an administrator, and her voice carried the fatigue of someone who had spent too many weekends helping staff invent workarounds for software that was supposed to make their jobs easier. She confirmed that the latest platform update had caused serious disruptions in reconciliation workflows and appointment interfaces, though local safeguards had prevented the problems from becoming a single catastrophic patient event. Nurses were checking records manually, pharmacists were reconciling lists twice, and hospital IT teams were extending shifts to keep the systems functioning.
"I don't care who wins the fight in that boardroom," Celia told Mariah. "I need reliable support on the phone at three in the morning. My staff are exhausted, and they can't hold a failing vendor together forever." Mariah asked whether the hospital could remain operational if Vance Meridian entered a restructuring process. Celia answered that contingency plans existed, but changing clinical software on short notice was expensive, technically complicated, and risky. She ended the call by asking Mariah to remember that patient safety was not a talking point to be used by whichever executive needed sympathy that week.
Mariah wrote that sentence on her legal pad. It steadied her focus more effectively than the evening's first cup of tea. Elliot could try to turn the dispute into a contest of personalities, but the real measures of success would be whether patients received reliable care, whether workers kept their wages, and whether the company could account for the money it wanted investors to provide. Her father would have understood those questions immediately. He had cleaned office corridors for men who spoke constantly of excellence and sometimes could not be bothered to acknowledge the person standing beside them with a mop.