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already a Clarion County circuit judge, and was renamed after Reverend Louis Davis, the pastor who had donated the initial structure to the town.
    Over the years that followed, a succession of inadequate administrators, most of them using Davis Regional as a stepping-stone to bigger and better places, made a succession of unfortunate decisions, opting too often for projects and personnel additions that looked progressive but could not support themselves financially.
    Gradually, but inexorably, community support for the facility dwindled, and benefactors became scarce. Older physicians began retiring earlier than they had planned, and a lack of financial inducements kept young recruits from taking their places. Bankruptcy and closure became more than theoretical possibilities.
    It was then, with the wolves howling at the hospital door, that the Ultramed Corporation appeared on the scene. A subsidiary of widely diversified RIATA International, Ultramed assailed the hospital board with slide shows, brochures, stock reports, pasteboard graphs, and more financial information on the facility than even the most diligent trustee possessed.
    Suspicious of outsiders and wary of losing control of an enterprise that had, for most of a century, been at the very heart of their community, a majority of the board opposed the sale, favoring instead another bond issue and one more stab at doing things right.
    Clayton Iverson, citing what he called “the bloodred writing on the wall,” knew the community had no sensible alternative but to sell. By his own spirited account, he worked his way through the trustees one by one, cajoling, arguing, calling in markers. In the end, Zack had been told proudly, the vote was unanimous. Unanimous, that was, save one. Only Guy Beaulieu remained opposed, though out of respect for the Judge he declined to vote at all.
    Never one to relinquish power with a hook, the Judge extracted two concessions from the corporation in exchange for the sale of the hospital: a provisional four-year period after which the board of trustees could repurchase the facility, including all improvements, for the original six-million-dollar price; and the serious consideration of his son for the position of administrator.
    As near as Zack could tell from his fathers account, following an exhaustive series of interviews, Ultramed had selected Frank over dozens of applicants—most with extensive hospital experience.
    That decision, for whatever reasons it was made, had proved brilliant.
    Orchestrated by Frank, and aided by time-tested business practices and public relations techniques, the turnabout in the hospital was immediate and impressive. New equipment and new physicians underscored the corporate theme of “A Change for the Better,” and the remaining opponents of the facility—mostly in the poor and uninsured sectors of the community—experienced increasing difficulty in finding a platform from which to voice their concerns.
    In just a few years, Ultramed-Davis Regional Hospital had been transported from the backwater of health care to the vanguard.
    “Hang on, Doc,” the ambulance driver called over his shoulder to Zack. “We’re here.”
    Zack braced himself against Annie’s stretcher as the man swung a sharp turn and backed into the brightly lit ambulance bay. Alerted by the ambulance radio, a team of three nursesdressed in blue scrubs and an orderly wearing whites was poised on the concrete platform.
    Before Zack could even identify himself, two of the nurses, with tight-lipped efficiency, had pulled Annie’s stretcher from the ambulance and sped past him into the emergency ward.
    Zack followed the stretcher to a well-equipped room marked simply, TRAUMA, and watched from the door as die team transferred Annie to a hospital litter, switched her oxygen tubing and monitor cables to the hospital console, and began a rapid assessment of her vital signs. One nurse, apparently in charge, listened briefly to Annie’s