Chapter three
Antonia
“This needs to be contained,” Edwin mutters over the boardroom table. His eyes land on me. My chest heaves, furious that all responsibility is being placed at my feet.
“And how do you suggest containing a wife’s grief?” I ask. He flinches, the way he does when I pose an awkward question. When he realizes he’s been outmaneuvered—again. “Send her a donation? Maybe a Caribbean cruise?”
The rest of the board shuffle in their seats. Four men in designer suits squirm like toddlers with filled diapers. Edwin, our finance director, purses his lips. He’s doubling down for battle, a war he can’t win.
“I’m open to suggestions,” I say.
The boardroom walls echo with silence. No one has a credible suggestion on how to handle the headline lying on the glass table between us.
Opengate Chooses Who Lives
Four simple words that could dismantle the company I’ve built up from the ground.
They chose another. My husband wasn’t considered important enough to save.
Grief bleeds through the article. A wife losing her husband because we couldn’t supply what was promised. Time ran out. Two patients needed the life-saving treatment before neurological damage could progress. We had to choose one to save.
“There was only one dose,” Harold, our Director of Supply, adds. “The situation was unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate?” I repeat. Fury rises, the way it does when our patients are reduced to numbers. “I think unfortunate is an understatement. It’s brutal.”
No one argues. There’s no winning this conversation. They know it. This is the part of my world I despise, the part I can’t control. When medicine stocks fail, red tape blocks the road, and someone dies because of it.
Ultimately, what makes this time worse is that it was me who chose who lived and who died. My own decision. Now, the victim’s family has gone to the press.
“You made the decision based on the evidence at hand,” Harold reminds me.
His team did what they could. I know they did. Phoning every supplier, every trial program, every damn pharmaceutical company on our books. There was only one available dose. It was then that I called the physicians. The doctors asking me to pull strings and find what they couldn’t. Both had secured the ridiculous funding to purchase, but only one was going to be allowed to follow through.
I asked for updates on each patient’s case. I consulted with our medical director, and we made the call. One patient’s healthsituation was further progressed than the other; one had a better chance of survival.
We gave them the drug.
And that made the bell toll on the other, and he died five days later, his family knowing the choice was ours.
“We need to respond,” I say. “Take accountability.”
“There’s nothing for us to be accountable for,” Edwin hisses, voice rising as I assume he imagines our stocks falling. “Antonia…”
I silence him with a look.
“Perhaps not legally,” I say, “but morally.”
My gaze roams over each man playing with their papers or fidgeting with their tie. Avoiding eye contact at all costs.
“Don’t worry, I’ll do it.”
My heel catches the edge of a tile as I roll my chair backward. I’ve had enough. I need to get back to work. Julian, our head of communications, clears his throat. I pause, my eyes snapping upward where he stares straight back.
“We need to consider the optics,” he says.
“Optics?” I swallow what I want to say, the argument burning my tongue.
“Yes, Antonia.” His shoulders straighten. “You can be outraged, but we still have two hundred people relying on us for a paycheck. Opengate needs to improve its image, be seen to be giving back.”