ELUSIVE WHISPERS, A DARK CLOSET, STRONG ARMS... DOES SHE EVEN WANT TO REMEMBER?Camille Weller has arrived as the first African-American attending in the trauma service of the Medical College of Virginia. Never mind that the locker rooms are labeled "doctors" and "nurses" rather than "men" and "women" or that her dark skin communicates "incapable" to many of her white male colleagues in the OR. Camille has battled prejudices her entire career, but those battles were small spats compared to what she faces now.
When a colleague discovers a lump in her breast, she believes Dr. Camille Weller is the best doctor for her. Together, they decide on a course of treatment that bucks the established medical system, keeping Camille firmly in the cross-hairs of male surgeons already riddled with skepticism and suspicion.
Her success as a surgeon is jeopardized further when dark whispers from her childhood in Africa plague Camille’s thoughts. Bewildering panic attacks instill fear in a surgeon bent on maintaining the control, pace, and direction of her own life. Unable to shake the flashes of memory, Camille is forced to face a past she has not acknowledged since the death of her father on an African mission field. Who was he? Who was she? And why would either of those answers affect her present?
Note from the author: the inspiration for this story came to me as I listened to a real life account of missionaries being martyred for their faith in Congo. I decided to write this fictional account through the eyes of one of the children of the martyrs. My protagonist is the daughter of an American surgeon missionary and a Congolese native.
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