"Do people trust the office?" Mariah asked.
"Some do," Talia replied. "Some think it's another way for management to keep track of who complains. I can't blame them. The only way to change that is to keep doing the work and let them see what happens to the reports."
She gave a tired smile, one Mariah recognized from her own years of building a firm without the benefit of universal approval. "I used to think I wanted an impressive title. Now I mostly want to build a system that works when I'm not in the room."
They entered the elevator together and rose toward the conference floor. Graham was waiting with a report that included cash balances, hospital support performance, the status of software remediation, and a list of unresolved audit issues. The numbers were not perfect, and he made no effort to hide it. Several hospitals had extended contracts on a provisional basis after seeing a credible service improvement plan, while others wanted more evidence before committing. The board had begun searching for permanent leadership with experience in both financial turnaround and healthcare technology reliability, and Graham welcomed the process despite not knowing whether it would leave him in charge.
The meeting continued for almost two hours, covering matters so ordinary and complicated that nobody watching from outside would have recognized them as the aftermath of a corporate scandal. There were questions about staffing coverage, technical testing, vendor verification, human resources controls, and the way customer complaints would reach directors without being filtered through marketing. Mariah listened, challenged weak assumptions, and accepted good evidence when it contradicted her first impression. That was what recovery looked like when the cameras were gone: not speeches, but repeated decisions made carefully enough that other people could trust the result.
As they finished, Darius appeared at the conference room door. A family was waiting downstairs, he said, and the grandmother had asked whether the woman she had seen in the news might have a moment to speak to her granddaughter. The child had been reading about the Bellamy Access Fund in a school project and wanted to know what the plaque meant. Mariah glanced at the clock, then at Talia, who smiled and closed her tablet. They went downstairs together.
In the lobby, an elderly Black woman stood beside a little girl who looked about eight. The grandmother wore a neatly pressed coat and held a shopping bag with both hands; her granddaughter had a backpack decorated with bright paper stars. The girl was staring at the bronze plaque, sounding out the words beneath David Bellamy's name. When Mariah approached, the grandmother offered a shy smile and asked whether she was the woman from television. Mariah replied that she probably was, although television sometimes made ordinary moments look more complicated than they were.