Richard Connelly sat in his enormous den in his stately home, unaware of any of the publicity swirling around him. He lived far enough away from Jenn that the local news hadn’t yet reached him, and he was still trapped in negative thoughts surrounding Jenn’s refusal to take the settlement. He sat alone the night of Jenn’s interview, fuming to himself.

Suddenly the phone rang. It was Elliott Sullivan. After talking to Jenn, he knew he needed to get in touch with hospital leadership right away, and thankfully, Richard had no idea the phone call was coming. Elliott introduced himself and told Richard he was calling to write a story about the hospital’s history of philanthropic efforts in the area — he didn’t want to scare Richard away immediately by jumping into a sensitive, reputation-damaging topic. Would he able to meet tomorrow evening for an interview?

Richard was tired and reluctant, but he agreed. It didn’t sound like anything harmful. The next day, he drove to the hospital and waited for Elliott to arrive to set up a studio in his office.

The two struck up a friendly, if overly formal, conversation almost immediately; Elliott’s only intent now was to get background information, something to confirm that Jenn was onto something. He waited for Richard to stop speaking about the hospital’s sponsored events for charity before shifting the topic slightly.

“You’ve been talking about giving to charities, but what about within your own hospital? What are the circumstances that you’d ever pay for someone’s treatment?”

“Well, that would depend on the situation, things like the cost, of course, and what sort of care we have available. However we do have a young woman right now for whom we’ve offered to pay her medical bills for the rest of her life.”

“Oh, really? Why’s that?” Elliott perked up in his chair. This part sounded like Jenn.

“I’m afraid I can’t go into details on that, but we’ve done similar things before. If we deem a patient in need of medical assistance, we can try to help. We do try to give our patients the best care possible.” Richard flashed a toothy grin, his white teeth sparkling in all of the giant studio lights.

Elliott paused, pretending to read his notes for more questions to ask Richard. Just what I expected he’d say, he thought. Time to change subjects. He furrowed his brow and rested his pen on his chin while he considered his word choice. “Mr. Connelly, I’d like to shift topics a little bit. We’ve been discussing the good things your hospital does, but undoubtedly there are things you would like to prevent.”

Richard’s eyes narrowed. He already didn’t like the direction this was heading. His whole body tensed up, and he sat upright in his seat.

Elliott didn’t notice. “You’ve overseen this hospital for almost thirty years, correct?” Richard nodded, growing suspicious. “And in that time it’s been reported that you’ve had to address more than fifty cases of medical malpractice. Do you ever worry about what that adds up to? How has that affected your leadership over the years?”

Richard shifted in his seat. “As I said before, Mr. Sullivan” — his voice had taken a sharp edge — “we deal with all of these situations on a case-by-case basis. I would like to avoid them, certainly, but unfortunately it comes with the territory.”

“Interesting,” Elliott said, crossing his legs. “I certainly wouldn’t consider diagnostic errors, or negligent staff members, or, say, sexual assaults taking place under your watch as things that ‘come with the territory.’” He watched Richard’s face, which had stopped moving completely and merely stared back at the interviewer incredulously. “All of those things have occurred, haven’t they, Mr. Connelly? You’ve had to address all of those situations before, correct?”

Suddenly the studio lights felt like fire on Richard’s skin. He felt rivulets of sweat running down his back and his whole face flushing as the blood flowed out of it. When he opened his mouth to speak, he had to swallow twice to bring some saliva back to his dry mouth. “I cannot speak on specific circumstances that may or may not have arisen in three decade under my tenure here, Mr. Sullivan, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to end this interview. Good day.”

Without another word, Richard stood up and left his own office, ignoring Elliott’s outstretched hand and brushing one of the lights on his way out; it wobbled and might have begun to fall had one of the camera staff not caught it just in time.

He left his office furious, punching numbers on his cell phone to reach his top attorney. “Bill? Richard here. We need to talk. Now.”

Elliott watched Richard storm out and he knew he had him licked. He high-fived the crew members that were there with him that day, and immediately headed back to the newsroom to edit the footage and prepare the hour-long segment for the next Sunday night. It was Wednesday now. He could hardly wait for the reaction.