March 30, 2030.
Elena did not announce her acceptance with enthusiasm.
She sent an email.
Six sentences. No attachments. No congratulations to herself.
I'll take the role under the mandate discussed. Effective immediately. First priority: staffing discipline. We do this quietly.
Timothy replied with a single line.
Agreed. Proceed.
That was how TG MedSystems moved from an idea protected by structure into something that had weight. Not by expanding. By narrowing. By deciding exactly who was allowed inside.
The next two weeks were not spent interviewing in bulk. There was no job blast. No recruitment firm paid to flood inboxes. Hana and Elena built the list themselves, line by line, function by function, with a whiteboard that stayed deliberately incomplete.
They started with absences rather than titles.
"What breaks first if it's missing," Elena asked, marker in hand.
"Regulatory continuity," Hana said immediately.
Elena wrote it down. Regulatory affairs lead.
"What else."
