Saving the Seal: A BWWM Navy Seal Interracial Romance
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Authors: Cristina Grenier
Tags: #bwwm romance
Chapter Eight: The Last Mission
Saving the Seal
By: Cristina Grenier
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Chapter One: Genny
“You did
what?”
Disbelieving, Genevieve Thomas stared at the man seated across from her. When she’d been called in early for work this morning, she’d thought it might be to deal with a medication problem from a patient who had expressed a concern to her the previous day.
But this…this was too much.
She needed answers. She
demanded
them. Somehow, she had to assuage the churning sickness of guilt that currently plagued her stomach.
One of her patients was dead. He’d taken his life the previous night, while his wife and two children were away on a family trip. Genevieve needed to know why. When she’d seen Spencer McAvoy the previous month, he’d been smiling and laughing – with one of the best outlooks on life she’d seen since the man had returned from Iraq three years before. He’d been a shell of himself then – a haunted soul nearly destroyed by the things he’d seen; and then, slowly – patiently – Genevieve had worked with him to banish his nightmares and help him regain his confidence.
She had been so sure that he would recover…she had reveled in his triumph.
And now he was gone. Leaving behind a grieving wife and kids who would never understand why their loved one had taken his own life.
Now, she was faced with the Director of Psychiatry at the veteran’s hospital. Genevieve had recently taken a month’s leave to clear her mind. After seven years of solid work, she needed a break. As much as she loved to see her patients do well, watching them suffer could also break her down more than she’d like to admit.
And in her absence, Dr. Kant had done something she could never have imagined.
“I gave him the medication he requested.”
Genevieve’s eyes widened as she absorbed what he was telling her. “Why?” She demanded, the question faint.
“He begged me for it, Genevieve. He said that he needed it to make the pain go away and nothing I could tell him could dissuade him from thinking so. He threatened to check into another hospital to get the medication if I denied him. I felt that without it he might do something to endanger himself.”
“Daniel, if you’d looked into Spencer’s history at all, you might have found that he frequently has these episodes! He’ll be fine for months and then someone will get into his head with the notion that pills will make everything better and he’ll demand them. I
never
gave them to him because I knew he didn’t need them. Because I knew the side effects of even a low dose would be counterproductive.”
Such side effects often included depression, mild paranoia, and in extreme cases, suicidal thoughts.
Dr. Kant met her gaze levelly, his expression calm. “Genevieve, you know the nature of our profession. Who’s to say that it was even the medication that caused this unfortunate event? Mr. McAvoy could have been contemplating this for months-”
“Except he wasn’t!” Genevieve burst. “I’ve been his psychiatrist for three years and he’s never displayed suicidal tendencies during a session!” She
knew
that it was the medication that had done this to him. There couldn’t be any doubt. It was the reason she so seldom recommended medication for the veterans she treated, as there were few instances when she thought it might be more effective than cognitive behavioral therapy – that was: teaching the patient to solve their own problems.
“Genny, I know you’re upset.” The lack of emotion on Daniel’s face was maddening. He was head of the psychiatry department and yet the most heartless person Genevieve thought she might have encountered in all her thirty years. How the man had risen to the position he had was a mystery to her – and she and he often bumped heads. “You have to give this time…accept that you couldn’t have changed this outcome. I know how much you feel for your patients-”
“
No
.” Standing from her chair, Genny glared down at the man before her, shaking her head slowly. “I can’t hear this right now. Not from you. I just…I can’t.” With that, she turned on her heel to leave the man’s office, striding down the hall as the sound of her heels echoed throughout the corridor.
There were few who could get away with such an outburst towards the head of their department, but at this juncture, Genevieve didn’t care if Dr. Kant fired her. She felt both angry and helpless – blinking back the tears that rose to her eyes as she headed towards her office. Daniel Kant didn’t understand how much trust these men put in them. They came back from wars and border patrols broken and beaten, and put their lives in the hands of the psych staff at Riperton Medical.
It was their responsibility – their inherent duty – to give these men their lives back. It was the least they could do, after all they’d given up for their country. Genevieve was completely devoted to the task – so much so that she’d known she wanted to be a Veteran psychiatrist even before she’d gone to university.
Her father had been a veteran of the Vietnam war – one who hadn’t gotten the help he needed for his PTSD, and so, when she’d been ten years old, she’d come home to find that he’d hung himself in his bedroom closet. It had been one of the most traumatizing moments of her existence, and when she understood why he’d killed himself, she’d sworn she’d do everything in her power to keep any soldier she knew from doing the same.
They never stopped being soldiers – she understood that now. Even when all the fighting stopped and they’d returned to the States. When the danger had gone and they were free to live their lives without the threat of violence and bloodshed.
Some of them never came home; they needed help to extricate themselves from the hell they’d been sent to through their experiences.
And that was what she lived for.
Genevieve was what some would call a prodigy. She’d graduated high school at the age of sixteen and had been accepted to Brown on a full scholarship – something her mother had cried with joy over. From the moment she’d gone to university, she’d made it her mission to get through her courses as quickly as possible. There were men that needed her – soldiers just like her father - who were hurting and in need of help; and there were too few qualified people to aid them.
She’d sped through her undergraduate degree in a mere two years and had immediately dived into medical school, steering her concentration towards recovery from PTSD, Paranoia disorder, and Suicide Analysis.
Those years had been some of the hardest of her life. More often than not, she’d stayed up all night studying, had worked with patients’ whose stories wrenched her heart, and had learned what it meant to let someone else’s problems become her own. When she’d finally earned her MD, she’d been so elated that she’d smiled for a week straight, unable to believe that she’d finally achieved her goal. Perhaps the only person prouder than she herself had been her mother. The woman had suffered from her own depression ever since her husband had died, and with Genevieve’s help, she’d slowly eased her way back to mental health and even remarried when the young woman was twenty eight.
There had never been any question of where she would go. Riperton had one of the most lauded psychiatric programs for veterans and was only an hour’s commute from her house. Of course, it had only been after she was hired and worked at the hospital for a year that she had discovered that the program carried its reputation in spite of its department head, and not because of him. There were a number of truly gifted psychiatrists and psychologists at the hospital, and Genevieve considered herself very lucky to be able to call them colleagues.
However, there was not a single one amongst their number that would call Dr. Kant out for his lack of empathy concerning his patients. No one would touch the man with a ten foot pole, and even after seven years of working under him, Genny had yet to find out why. So, she simply swallowed her anger and frustration and vented when she could. But this…this was beyond anything she could fathom.
One of her patients was dead, and as far as she was concerned, his death was on Daniel Kant’s hands.
“Genny.” As she entered the office, she looked up to see the anxious face of Stella – one of her fellow doctors and closest friends. The redhead’s face was pale, her green eyes large in her slim face. “I heard what happened. Everyone is really upset. Are you alright?” She made her way out of her cubicle and closed the distance between the two of them to take her friend gently by the arms.
Genny allowed herself a deep, centering breath before she spoke. “No…I’m not alright. But I’m going to have to be, aren’t I?” She tried, trying to swallow the desolation she felt. Spencer was dead. After all the progress they had made, he was gone, and there was nothing she could do to bring him back.
She’d learned in school – and through years of experience – that you couldn’t always blame yourself for the decisions your patients made…but she knew this one could have been prevented. “Stella…Kant allowed him to have medication…
knowing
what it might do to him, he let it happen. Are we supposed to let that stand?”
Stella’s eyes immediately darkened. She was one of the few doctors in the office willing to speak frankly to Genevieve about what she thought of their department head, but she wouldn’t do it while in the office proper. “Let’s talk about it later, Gen. The cops are here now…everyone’s in a mood…trust me, all of us know no one could be more upset over this than you… but let’s not pick our battles now.”
She was right.
For all the times Genevieve had tried to drum up the support to launch a formal inquest about her boss, she’d always been disappointed. She’d learned that the office was not the place from which to start an investigation into a man beyond reproach. She was only frustrated, and she wanted, more than anything, for Kant to at least admit he’d made a mistake.
But there was little chance of that.
Glancing over to the front entryway of the office, where four officers in uniform were taking aside doctors to question them one by one, Genevieve frowned. She would be willing to bet money that they never got around to questioning her supervisor.
At a gentle hand on her shoulder, she tried to force herself to relax. “Genny, let it go. I can’t imagine how you must feel about Spencer, but there are others who need us too.”
Stella was right. Genevieve had a list of patients she was supposed to see that day, and as much as she felt for Spencer, she owed them her complete and undivided attention. Straightening her spine, the young woman merely nodded, turning back towards her desk in the corner. Upon it were stacked the folders of patients she had marked for the day – and she knew that her first appointment was in less than an hour.
Running a hand through her rampant, messy dark curls, she sank down at her desk, trying to find her Zen. Anyone who looked upon her at that moment would have seen the lush curves of a woman who took care of herself – who made it to the gym at least three times a week and tried to watch what she ate. At the age of thirty, she had not yet been assaulted with fine lines or dark circles, but her honey eyes spoke of the fatigue that came from enduring taxing situations. Her toffee colored skin contrasted starkly with the rampant, dark curls that framed her face, drawing gazes to her almost regal features – long, aquiline nose, full mouth, and eyes slanted in an exotic fashion. Genevieve was one of the only people of color working in the office, but once they laid eyes on her, her patients rarely forgot her.