Novels by Dessy Ana

Dr. Warren's email arrived before I finished my first cup of coffee.Spoke to someone in Singapore last night. There's a foundation I think you should know about. I've made an introduction.His name is Daniel Chen. He's expecting your call at two p.m. his time—six a.m. for you. Sorry about the hour. He travels in the afternoons.Typical Dr. Warren. He never gave you more than you needed. If there was a story, he believed it belonged to the person who lived it.By six the next morning I was at my desk with another cup of coffee that had already gone cold.I dialed the number.It rang twice. "Mr. Chen?" I said when he picked the call,"Daniel is fine." His voice was calm. "Thank you for calling so early," he replied"And thank you for making time." I said in response"I've heard a little about your foundation," he said. "Dr. Warren gave me enough to know why we're speaking.""And what did he tell you?" I asked"That you walked away from funding because it came with conditions you couldn

Tina's POVThe message came at seven forty-three in the morning. I was standing at the nurses’ station between patients, reviewing chart updates while carrying on with my activities for the day, but the call from yesterday with Charles’s lawyer kept replaying at the back of my mind. My phone buzzed against the counter beside me. I checked the message “It is done.” Was what was written on my screen; I slipped my phone into my coat pocket and handed the chart back to the nurse."Thank you," I said to her and went to see my next patient. Emmanuel was already waiting for me; I barely got through the door before he sat up."Dr. Tina," he said, his voice sounding urgent with a very serious face."I have today's fact," he said, holding up a pad with his tiny hands as I looked down at his chart. "Do you?" I asked while going through his chart"Did you know a group of flamingos is called a flamboyance?" he saidI looked back at him. "A flamboyance?" I asked himHe nodded immediately. "The bes

A letter arrived at nine fourteen the next morning; it was not through Crestfield's communications director. It was from a firm I had not heard of before; my assistant brought it to me between my first and second patient. She set it on my desk without a word and left quickly as I finished my notes from the first patient before I picked it up.The letter was four pages, with aggressive and precise wording; every sentence was built to close a door, and every paragraph was designed to make the reader feel that every exit had already been considered and blocked before they thought to look for it.The foundation had entered a preliminary partnership process with Crestfield Institute. The preliminary partnership process constituted an agreement, and an agreement carried obligations. The foundation's dissolution notice represented a unilateral withdrawal without cause from those obligations. This withdrawal constituted a breach. Crestfield was reserving the right to pursue all available lega

I walked back to my office and closed the door behind me. I stood by the window for a long moment looking at the world outside; after a while, I sat down and opened my laptop.The documents from weeks ago are still there; I have not yet finished some of them. I opened a new file with the title "Terms of Dissolution" and started typing. “The Crestfield Institute submitted a partnership proposal to the Samuel Wesley Foundation on…” I stopped, deleted the line, and started again.“Crestfield approached the foundation under the representation of a shared pediatric healthcare mission.” This sounded better, so I kept going. I built it carefully, line by line. Finally, when I got to the twelfth page, I wrote, “Robert Hale served as senior vice president of Asian market development at Harfield Pharmaceuticals for twenty years.” I wrote about the governance review, the Southeast Asia hospitals, the patient data extraction, the managed departure, Crestfield, and clause fourteen.I placed the w

I called my lawyer while Adrian was still sitting across from me; she answered on the third ring.“Harfield Pharmaceuticals,” I said immediately. “I need everything on their Asian market strategy, pediatric research pipeline, governance reviews, leadership disputes, and anything connected to Robert Hale in the last five years.”I continued, "and pull the Crestfield counterproposal again, clause fourteen specifically. I want you reading it with Harfield in mind now.”My lawyer was quiet for some seconds. "How fast do you need this?” she asked finally“Yesterday,” I replied as I ended the call.Adrian hadn’t moved; he was still sitting across from me, his hands flat against the desk with Robert Hale’s circled name between us. He looked like a man who had been still for so long that movement itself had started to feel optional.“Adrian.” He looked up.“We are not sitting with this,” I said. “We are moving.”“Where do we start?” he asked.“The submission.” I stood, already gathering paper

“I don’t like this,” I said quietly. Adrian looked up from the page. “which part?” he asked He exhaled loudly. “Harfield,” he said, calling the name slower. “Yes.” I replied. Adrian was quiet for a while; I could see he was thinking “They are trying to build a pipeline" he said finally “With our patients,” I replied, watching as he tightened his jaw as he pulled the chair across from my desk toward him and took his seat. “I gave them the architecture,” he said, looking at the papers with Robert Hale’s name circled at the center like a target. “I gave them access to how everything worked.” His voice was flatter now. “Donor structures, intake flow, research sequencing, and expansion modeling." “I thought I was ahead of them," he laughed once. “They were studying us the entire time.” he said I said nothing as I watched him lean back slightly, then forward again almost immediately; he was restless, and I had never seen him this restless before. “No,” he said suddenly, more to hims