Black-Belt Cop Choked a Nurse in Sparring — Then Her Navy SEAL Past Made Him Regret It
Chapter 18
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It was a woman she didn't recognize, speaking quickly: "Ms. Cole, my name is Adele Park. I'm a staff reporter for the Denton Tribune. I'm covering a story about a Denton PD officer facing a departmental review, and I have your name as a witness in the formal proceeding. I was hoping to—"Savannah hung up.She stood at the nursing station and thought about how a reporter had gotten her name, and the answer was obvious: the departmental review process was, at some level, a matter of record, and her name would have come through the witness documentation. It was inevitable; she'd known it was coming; she just hadn't expected it in the middle of a shift on day one.She called Sandoval from a break room and told him."Don't speak to any reporters," he said immediately. "The review board proceedings are confidential, but the filing itself isn't. Your name will get out. That's not preventable. But your statement is sealed until the hearing.""Can he find out what I said?""His legal representation will get a summary. Not your verbatim statement, but enough." A beat. "Savannah... he already knows what you saw. He was there."That was true. She'd been cataloging the ways this situation could escalate, and she needed to stop treating it like a controlled environment when it wasn't. She went back to work.At 6:00 p.m., finishing her notes at a terminal near the nurses' station, she looked up and saw Dr. Fitch standing across the desk from her."Walk with me," Fitch said.They walked to Fitch's office. Fitch closed the door, sat behind her desk, and picked up a printed email."I got a call today from a representative of the Denton Police Officers Union," she said. "They expressed concerns about an employee of this hospital, whom they characterized as filing a false complaint against a decorated officer, potentially motivated by a personal dispute." She set the email down. "They asked whether the hospital intended to take further action on the HR notation regarding your behavior."Savannah sat very still."I told them the notation had been flagged pending review, and that hospital HR matters were not subject to external advocacy," Fitch continued, "and that if they had legal concerns, they were welcome to pursue them through appropriate channels." She looked at Savannah over her reading glasses. "I then documented the call and forwarded it to our hospital legal department."Savannah exhaled slowly."The union rep also mentioned your name to the Tribune, I believe," Fitch said. "I got a call from them about 30 minutes after the union."The reporter had gotten her name not through court documents, but through the union feeding it to the press as a counter-narrative."Dr. Fitch—" Savannah started."I don't need an explanation," Fitch said. "I have your IA documentation. I have six years of performance reviews. And I've been practicing medicine long enough to recognize when someone in a position of authority decides to use every available system against a person who challenged them." She paused. "You have nothing to worry about from this institution. That's what I'm telling you."