Grey and his co-workers find themselves in dangerous situations every day at work. Their social services jobs require them to confront irate parents who are on drugs or who are mentally unbalanced. Grey is a long-time social worker, one who is not afraid to snatch newborn babies from glazed-eyed mothers or grab abused children out of classrooms, to place them in foster care. But something happens to Grey, something he cannot put into words as he struggles to cope.
When a new co-worker enters the department, she secretly strategizes ways to force Grey out of his job. He senses her ploy and his stress intensifies. He grows increasingly head-strong and defiant, but he fails to stop her from delivering the final crush in an unexpected, malevolent manner
To challenge his co-worker, Grey must find his inner truth and his co-worker’s "Achilles Heel" in order to rise up to conquer her. One of them must be transformed or destroyed
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CHAPTER ONE:
The Hospital
GREY STOOD QUIETLY next
to the hospital bed. “Mrs. Jaspers, your baby has tested positive for cocaine.”
Grey knew from experience that talking in a low voice helped hold back the
negative emotions of a child’s removal, before anger and defiance from parents
swept around him like a dangerous tempest. Mrs. Jaspers, a nineteen-year-old
woman recently out of high school, glared at Grey. Her eyes grew larger in her
upturned face, framed by tangled, matted purple hair. She wore an apologetic
nose ring that swept to one side of her flared nostril and vibrated with each
panicked inhalation she drew in.
“I repeat, Mrs.
Jaspers, your baby has tested positive. I am from the Department of Social
Services. I am here to take your baby to a safe environment.”
Mrs. Jaspers bolted
upright in her bed. She grabbed onto Grey with a gritty desperation to stop him
from removing her baby. “My baby ain’t on cocaine. How dare you say my baby is
on drugs? I didn’t give no drugs to my baby. You cannot take my baby girl. We
are waiting for her daddy to come see her. We are going to name her today. I
need my baby to stay with me, because like I just told you, we’re waiting for
her daddy to come see her.”
The daddy, a
twenty-one-year-old unemployed construction worker who married her when she
tested positive for pregnancy, prowled the streets looking for cocaine after a
three-day drinking binge. Grey unclasped the mother’s hands and moved
towards the door.
Mrs. Jaspers jumped up,
pulling out her intravenous tube, causing blood to spurt out of her arm. She
howled loudly. Grey called in a police officer who waited tentatively in the
corridor. The police officer’s presence did not deter the fiery mother from
running around her hospital room in frantic leaps. The sickening odor of fresh blood
permeated the room. Her hospital gown flew open, displaying the naked form of a
young woman new to adulthood. Her tattoos, splayed across her torso, looked
like colorful orbs of paint, embroidered flesh.
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