The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Triggering Scent: A Medical Thriller (The Abbey Roberts Series Book 1) by Jenny White

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

The Triggering Scent: A Medical Thriller (The Abbey Roberts Series Book 1) by Jenny White https://www.amazon.com/Triggering-Scent-Medical-Thriller-Roberts-ebook/dp/B0GTX6ZT74 Beep….Beep…..Beep……. When the brilliant neurosurgeon, Dr. Mark Winston III operates on Abbey Roberts, he knows it will be a challenging procedure. But a drug addiction and withdrawal symptoms cause his hands to shake. Four hours into the operation, disaster occurs. Almost a year after the botched brain surgery, Abbey returns to work, in her comfort zone the ICU. But all is not well. She struggles to differentiate right from wrong, realizes her personality is different and has gaps in her memory she can’t resolve. Living with her brain damage, she has to create her new world and at the same time hide her challenges. Then her worst nightmare walks through the ICU doors and she must work side by side with the man who almost killed her, twice. How can Abbey navigate the ethical minefield of treating patients while her tormentor operates just down the hall? When past and present collide, Abbey must decide if vengeance is worth risking everything.

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fordstsch,christch,000,000, forward slash Chris Foss. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may by advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today, we're an amazing young lady on the show. We're going to be talking about her new book series that she's got coming out and how you can really enjoy it. And some of the experiences of her life are interesting. The title of her book is called The Triggering Scent, A Medical Thriller, and it's the first book in the Abbey Roberts series. And Jenny White is the author who joins us on the show today.

We're going to be talking about her books, her insights, and some of the interesting stories of her life and journey through life. Jenny White lives in southwestern Ontario on the shores of Lake Erie. She worked for 30 years as a registered nurse in multiple healthcare settings, including the ICU. and now writes about her experiences both as a nurse and a patient. She is a cancer survivor, brain tumor survivor, and abuse survivor. When she's not crafting twisty medical thrillers, she enjoys kayaking, hiking, camping, travel, reading, and glasswork, as well as spending time with her husband, children, grandchildren, and dog Moulson. Welcome to the show.

How are you, Jenny? I'm great. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate it. Give us your dot-coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? My main author website is www.

jennywhite.ca because I'm from Canada. Canada? And yeah. And then Facebook is author Jenny White and Instagram is author. Jenny White. We love our Canadian friends up there in the old Canada. I often joke with my Canadian friends. I go, you guys are the nicest folks up there.

Yet you live next to, we're like your guys' this drunken brother who's always getting drunk and starting fights all the time at the bar, right? And you guys are just sitting there going, oh, God, we're right next to the nuclear blast. These idiots are going to cause. So that's my joke for that. It must be hard to live next to us.

Okay. It must be hard to live with us sometimes. We're always down here causing trouble. You guys are up there just being like, sorry, we're just, where it's proximity. Anyway. So Jenny, so Jenny, Give us a 30,000 overview.

What's inside this book, please? Okay, so basically I took some memories, and I created a medical thriller. And it focuses on Abby Roberts, who is a nurse, and she's a bit younger than I am now. But she's in her 30s, and she's married. And she has a dog named Moulson by chance. And, yeah, and she works in an ICU. And that's right. The ICU is one of my favorite places, so that's where I put the first book.

So as she comes back to work after having some surgery, she discovers that the neurosurgeon who botched her surgery on her is now working in her ICU unit, and she has to figure out a way to stop him before he hurts anybody else, even if it means she's putting her own career at risk. So that's the gist of the story. Yeah. Definitely some tension. there then. Yeah, a little bit. And a medical thriller.

And then you, that we always say on the show, because there's a lot of authors and aspiring authors that listen, you write what you know, right? Right. That's the first thing they teach you. Yeah. Yeah. Right what you know. And that makes it easier.

And you have 30 years as a registered nurse in multiple health care settings. You've probably seen all sorts of, you've probably seen everything at that point. But yeah, this is. So are you technically the main character in this book living through another name? Yeah, pretty much. It was one of the strategies that I used to heal emotionally from my own traumatic surgery and just kind of poured all my thoughts and emotions into that character. So it helped a lot.

Yeah. So you, you, let's talk a little bit about some of the things that happened to you in your medical field where you went through some interesting stuff with medicine and and surgeries in a coma, I believe. And let's talk about how that's right. Let's tell that story and then how that translated into the story in the book. Sure. So I had retired from nursing after 33 years and I was really having a great time in retirement. I was traveling the world, camping, doing all kinds of fun things that no one always hopes to do. One day I wasn't feeling very well. And, you know, And the nurse inside of me said, you better go get checked because it seems like you're having a stroke.

And I got into hospital and they said to me, the good news is you're not having a stroke. The bad news is you have a brain tumor that's going to. Oh, no. And it was like, whoa, stop. You know, excuse me? Brain tumor? Seriously? Yeah.

So, ended up having surgery about a month later because it was over Christmas. when this happened. And I got an unexpected coma afterwards, which was quite concerning. And when I did wake up, I was first tied to the bed. I realized when I opened my eyes that my hands were restrained. And it turns out that I kept the myth alive that nurses make the worst patients. Oh, wow. A terror and tried ripping all my IV lines out, my stitches out, everything.

So they had to tie me down. The second thing that I realized was that I didn't recognize my husband who was standing at the end of the bed. Really? That was a problem. Yeah. You're like, hey, what's that dude doing here? Yeah, who is that guy? And then the next thing I realized was that I couldn't speak.

I was trying to say things and just sound was coming out. They kept telling me they couldn't understand me. So there again was a problem. Yeah. And then the time came when they needed to get me out of bed and up walking, because I should have been up walking right after surgery, but clearly couldn't. And I realized I couldn't walk.

I actually had to reprogram myself so that I could get my feet to move where I wanted them to move. So that was the journey. as I was recovering, that was where the writing came in. And it was because it was during speech therapy, where I was still having trouble articulating words, that my speech therapist said, okay, write it down. Tell me what you're feeling. And so I could write okay.

And that kind of was my escape. That was how I started sort of coming out of everything. Yeah. That is a wise. How long were you in the coma? for? I was in the coma for four days apparently. Of course, for me, it was just like a long nap, but it was quite concerning to the staff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're in a coma and some people don't wake up for years, decades, never. I know. Right. Yeah. And so did you eventually,

how did the husband thing work out? I'm sorry, I have just have to know what this is about. No, that's okay. We're still together. We're, we're, we're, we're, actually married for many, many years, and we're starting over. I mean, he's got 30 years of memories, and I've got nothing. So I'm, yeah, so I'm basically, we're kind of living like roommates at the moment, but we're basically dating and starting over and just trying to reconnect. But part of the problem was my personality changed. And so the person, yeah, the person he knew is not the person that I am today. So we've kind of had to just rework everything and see if it works. But we're, we talk every day. We're committed to giving it a go. Some days are good. Some

days are not good. But where you just kind of keep trying. This is this has got to be a challenging thing to have to navigate. You know, I mean, they make movies about this, but you're always like, oh, it's just a movie. And, you know, and good for him for sticking in there, because I I know some of my girlfriends, if they had woke up from a coma not recognized me, I'd be like, move all our stuff into storage unit, and we're just going to go on like nothing happened. I've been waiting for this forever. This is an easy way out.

You guys are married. You guys are married. You got kids, right? Yeah, we got five kids and two grandkids, yeah. Do you remember them? So not really well. I don't remember their childhoods at all. I'm sort of reconnecting with them as adults.

So it's a very different kind of relationship. It's like now being best friends versus mother and child. Yeah. That has got to be interesting. Maybe this is the new thing we can introduce to help couples that have been married for a long time. We just restart their marriage. You just give them a little comb and they fall in love again maybe and restart their marriage. Maybe.

That's the key. Maybe, right? And it's very unsettling. Like, you really don't have a clue what's going on half the time. Yeah. And you're like, who are you people? Why are you in my house? I mean, I've been having, mostly to get out of most of my bad relationships and children, I just keep faking my death and moving to a new state and wiping, you know, my whole background. That's what I've been doing. At first, I sent them off to the military school. And then I fake my dad,

changed my address. So they weren't any of the wiser. They were off to camp. But, you know, they're in good care. It's the military. Anyway, so now does any of this coma forgetting your, because you mentioned that the doctor had botched your surgery in the book, the evil doctor, I guess? Yes. Yes. Do you have a similar scenario you play out in the book that happened to your real life? No. In real life, my surgery went as well as it could have. My tumor was just in a really bad spot.

And real estate in neurosurgery is everything, right? So it's not just what they take out. It's what's left behind and it's sort of. The fact that they had to manipulate my brain a little bit here and there to get at the tumor, I think that's what caused some of the changes. So, no, my team was excellent. Everybody took really good care of me, so no complaints there. But to add conflict to the story, I did give the physician some challenges,

which therefore caused an error during the surgery. So that's kind of added some added levels of conflict. Yeah. We've had, I know we have a lot of police officers, detectives, FBI people, CIA people. We've even had some French CIA types on the show, whatever their thing is. I think we've come from MI6. But all these people, they live this life, just like you did as a nurse, of interesting stories and scenarios and craziness and stuff. And so they have this bank like you probably do after 30 years of all this stuff.

And it gives for a rich background that they can delve from of stories and scenarios. And I think we've had some nurses or doctors, maybe it was doctors that we've had on that have done this where they've done what you done. They've transitioned into books. And so they write what they know. And sometimes I think we had one or two doctors on that they basically wrote stories of the ER that were real stories. that were real stories, names changed, obviously, but they had these wild stories. And so it's interesting how our life journeys help eventually create some great authors.

Yeah, no, absolutely. That's what adds the depth of stories is having all of the details and all of the interplays that happened that most people don't realize happen. And so that really creates an interesting dilemma. Oh, yeah. And the military guys, of course, we have on the show like, Tom Clancy folks that come on the show and Jack Ryan and all those other born, Jason Bourne authors we have on the show.

They're military backgrounds. They bring to the thing. And so, yeah, like you say, they're able to, the details of, okay, the ER machines doing this and the terminologies and all that stuff. It makes much easier. So you decide on the medical thriller, and I imagine that's because of your background. Is that correct? It is. That and what had happened to me with the surgery.

So when you have the lens of both being the health. care worker at the bedside, and then the patient, you get a really interesting mix of emotions and challenges and fears. So it really does add to the story. Now, this is the first in a series. What's your plan for the series, this Abby Roberts series? I'm going to take her as my consistent character, and I'm going to put her in different medical scenarios that I actually experienced. So in book number two, which is Tara at the Manor, I'm actually putting her into a long-term care home as a director of nursing. And I was a director of nursing. And so I know exactly what happened.

And I pulled on stories and experiences that I had. And one thing that I want to share is that as I was writing these books, a lot of memories were starting to return. So it was almost like therapeutic to do these books because it helped reboot my memory. Wow. That's got to be interesting. It's not like writing a book and being an author is cathartic, as it were. And whether you're writing nonfiction or fiction, you tend to dig through those memories and stir them up. So that's definitely a good thing. Now you have a second book that's upcoming, hasn't been released yet. I believe that you mentioned it, Terror at the Manor. Give us a nice.

of that, and when do you plan on releasing that? Okay, so it's in its final review at the editors right now, so it should be out by the end of the year. The synopsis of that one is that a retired journalist actually agrees to go into a long-term care setting as a plant because there was a previous resident-to-resident murder, and he was quite concerned about the fact that this slipped through the cracks and what was wrong and what was going on in these long-term care homes. So the reality is residents do sometimes kill other residents because of their dementia or their brain disease, whatever. And so as a director of care, I actually experienced, I had that on my watch and I had to deal with it. And so I basically

took that story and I put it into that setting. And then, Then I highlighted through his journey of trying to figure out what was happening within the long-term care home, all of some of the other challenges that came about. And Abby being the director of care, she has to figure it all out. She has to figure out how to fix it. Yeah. My sister has been in a care center for I think 15 years now. She had the disabling end of MS. And now she's going to have the throws of dementia.

But the horror stories that go on at these things. and they've gotten really bad down here in America. I don't know what you guys are doing. Have they? But basically, they used to be all like family owned. And so there was a lot of personal care. And people gave a crap because you could go talk to the owner if you wanted. And then they got bought out by all these corporations.

They just corporatized them all. And, of course, they bought them out for whatever money. And then they lean out to staff. And it's just horrible. They're trying to get enough workers to work there all the time. And it's a tough job. No one wants to changing diapers on an adult isn't fun. But it's wild, the stories that I've heard.

I can probably start writing some medical thriller books and stuff. You probably could from the perspective of a family member. Oh, yeah. It's crazy. But those will give you a lot of material. You can have like a 50-book series off that, I think. Yes, yes, I could. Do you have a plan for the series?

So when we had recently said they were playing on 30 books in their series, some people just do like three and then they quit and they move to something else. Do you have a vision for where you're going to take it or is it just book by book? It is a bit book by book. I'm planning, I think, on four, but it depends on whether I'm having fun with it. In my second act of life here, I'm choosing what I want to do. And if it's no longer fun, I'm not going to do it. But as long as it is, I'll keep exploring.

Like you said, I've got a safe full of ideas in the back of my head somewhere that just need to start coming forward a little bit more at a time and I can probably keep going for a while. Yeah. Yeah. This will be interesting. Medical thrillers, I don't think we have a lot of people on that do medical thrillers. I think it's a pretty good niche, but people love thrillers, right? They do.

And they love that CSI stuff on the TV. You know, we're always doing the medical lab stuff and all that. And they love ER and shows like medical stuff. So you should. And the pet. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing is, too, that, oh, gosh, my,

I just lost my thought there, but yeah, most medical thrillers are written by physicians. And nurses have a very different lens than doctors. For lack of a better analogy, doctors are like the mechanics. They diagnose the problem, they fix the problem, and off you get. Whereas nurses, we look at the person as a whole being. So we're dealing with their spiritual, their emotional, their family issues, all of those kinds of things that are impacted when one isn't well. So it's a very different way of looking at a situation.

Yeah. Yeah. And nurses, of course, they're some of the best people in the world because they care for people and help their lives and everything else. Without them, we'd be screwed. Doctors don't always have the best best side manners too. Sometimes you can be a little nerdy doctors. You know what? It's not really their fault because they have such a narrow focus, right?

That to be really smart to do all the stuff they do. I'm not smart enough to do surgery on people. There is definitely skill there. Now, one of the things that I do, sorry to interrupt you there. I had to get that joking. That's okay. That's okay.

So one of the things that I incorporated into my books are some of the issues that we face in health care, right? So like you mentioned, short-staffed, exhausted healthcare workers, diseases like COVID, where people are putting their own lives at risk to look after other people. Things like budgets that are super tight and often staff have to do miracles with very little supplies. So there's so many things that can be talked about in a medical thriller above and beyond what the characters are going through. It all adds to the drama of the thriller. Yeah. And there's all sorts of new weird stuff going on in the world. Like I know a lot of our

Tom Clancy, born guys, the military dudes, they're always like when there's stuff like Iran wars and there's always stuff that can playoff. You got the new Hanta virus now that's come out. So you could potentially create scenario books on that. And then I guess Ebola is spreading now. So we got that fun going to say. Yeah. Yeah. And Ebola, there's there's no cure for that. There is a vaccine for one strain of it. But they're looking at a totally different mutated strain of Ebola and that could just be another pandemic. I'm having to see in my coffee right now. I'm just having a little Ebola trying to build up my resistance level.

Your immune system, eh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just conditioned. You know how they take the snake bites and they take the poison themselves and it builds up a tolerance? That's what I'm doing with the virus and Ebola. I just put a little coffee every morning, a little powder. Oh, geez. Let me know if it works.

My throat's tightening right now. going on. Anyway, my justice good thing I'm on a this way I always have nurses on podcast because if I ever have, if I ever go into some sort emergency situation, I'm 58 now. I can go in any time. Oh, you're just a kid.

I can have you at least tell someone how to resuscitate me over the, over the wire here in the office. True, true. That or you just can declare me dead, which is probably make a lot of people happy. So, so.

Oh, dear. Chris, that's terrible. You don't get to have as many followers and audiences we do on social media without the haters. In fact, it wasn't out of the haters. We wouldn't feel needed and wanted. Oh, good point. Yeah.

So is it, I can't, I don't remember if you said there's what the anticipated date is of the release. Do you know that by chance? It will probably be about October. I would say October. Yeah, yeah. Because it basically just has to be signed off and printed. So it's, it's close.

Yeah. Do you, do you see putting out a book of, year or what's the timeline goal that you have for yourself? Not a solid goal, but I do have the draft of number three happening. So what I find is once I get the meat and potatoes of the storyline, that it actually writes itself. It's really quite easy to write it. Sometimes just getting the right things in the right order sometimes is the struggle. And I'm far from a perfect writer. I'm doing it for fun. I'm doing it for entertainment. I'm doing it for the fun reasons. So every time you write something, you learn a little bit more. So again, a positive thing, right?

Yeah. You want it to be fun and interesting until you get to the editing part, of course. Yeah. Yeah, that's the hard part. I usually give the editing to the professionals and let them tear it apart that fix it up. Put them deal with all that stuff. Yeah. That's right. It is, it is, it can be nightmarish and all the stuff they do. But hey, it all comes out in the wash in the end.

And there's people that will enjoy reading your books and getting to know you better, especially maybe you've got a good target audience. Nurses work a lot of hours and sometimes, I don't know how much of the time they have, but they can read medical thrillers on the book or something. I don't know. That's right. On their breaks or something. Maybe.

So anything more we need to ask about. Oh, I notice on your website too that you do keynote speaking. Tell us about what you offer. I do. So I'm actually taking some formal training. I used to speak all the time when I was nursing in conferences and teaching other nurses, things. But since I had my brain surgery, things are just a little bit different. So I've taken the route.

I've gone back to get some actual professional. professional feedback on how to be a good speaker. But the plan is to be a keynote speaker to share the journey that I had, to share the reinvention that I did with becoming an author, and just give people hope that they can change if they choose to change and give them some solid strategies that they can use. So that kind of piggybacks nicely with the books. Yeah. I can see you doing a TED Talk telling your story of the coma and you know trying to come back and what that journey is like because that I didn't happen to a lot of people you only see stories like that usually in film but hear a real life story and and how you're reconnecting with your family and I would have come out of

the coma and been like no I was married to Fabio where's Fabio can we put him in a coma so he wakes up and thinks I'm his wife that's funny I was looking at that guy at the end of the bed and I was thinking He's kind of cute. I wonder who he is. I like that guy. I should go out and I wouldn't have asked me out. Yeah. That's good.

That's good that way. It'd be bad if you didn't, if you're like, who's that ugly guy at the end of the bed? Which I think it's like, most of my girlfriends would say. Yeah. And then find out, yeah. Yeah. My girlfriends would wake up and be like,

who's that other guy at the end of the bed? And they'd be like, that's your husband. You'd be like, does he have money? Yeah. Oh, okay. I explained anything. Anyway, anyway, that's about the only reason. It's funny.

He'd love me. So it's America. Anyway, this has been wonderful. Yeah, I'd love to hear this. I think it's to make a great TED talk. I forgot my life or something. I don't know. They always have to start out with some.

And you got a great story. And hopefully it ends well for everybody. Yes, me too. I call your mom. Hey, mom, can I borrow some money? You can be like, I don't know who you are. Click. I like this idea.

I'm going to fake that I lost my memory if I ever have kids. So then I can be selective in rejecting them. When they call me and just tell me to love them, I'll be like, oh, I love you too. I remember that. But then when they're like, hey, can I borrow 40 bucks? I'm like, who's this again? Breaking up, which explains why I'm single. Anyway, so thank you very much for coming this show, Jenny.

It's been fun and delightful to have you. And of course, I think this is going to be a great run for you in medical thrillers, because people love thrillers. They love suspense. They love mystery and solving mysteries. And I know how much readers eat this stuff up. And everybody has fear when they go into the hospital, right? Like, oh, my God, is this going to work out?

Am I going to be okay? Now you've given me a new fear to have when I go into surgery? Yes. I don't know. Maybe it'll be good, though. I'll wake up and not recognize anybody. I'll just go do something different. It'll be, I want to.

you know what? When you have a blank slate, you can do anything you want to do. So that's the, that's the upside of having a coma. The bad side is, of course, trying to sort it all out. Yeah, yeah. Sounds like you're working through it. Let me ask you this. Do you think you'd be writing books and doing the authorship if it hadn't been for the coma

and maybe coming out with a new personality? No, not at all. In fact, I had absolutely no desire to write as a kid or an adult. I wrote professional papers as a nurse, but that was career-related, right? Yeah. This is a totally different thing. And I think it's only because they were in my brain playing with it, that something got stimulated. And here I am.

Wow. Maybe we need to do more of this. We have a lot of people that want to be authors. Hey, Chris, how do I become an author? And now I'm just going to tell them, go have a brain tumor and go. Yeah, it works every time. Hopefully it works. Yeah, it's.

I got to tell you, Chris, it's not a fun experience. I wouldn't recommend it as a way to take a break from life. We all start over in life. You started over. Literally. Yeah, act too. Total recall. That was the movie with Donald Schwarzenegger.

And you sit in the chair and you get like new memories and stuff. I like this idea. Maybe I need some brain poking. There's a lot of people telling me. My surgeon, my psychiatrist keeps telling me I need lobotomies. really what I need, but you'd lose that wonderful personality you have. You're the only one who says that. All my exes say it's horrible. Oh, okay. Oh, sorry. Well, thank you very much, Jenny for come on the show and look forward to your future books. Thanks so much. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you. Oh, and give us your dot-coms as we go out. Oh, okay, www. jennywayte.ca. and I do have a speaker site as well, which is www.w.w.combecergednywhite.com. So if you're looking for a keynote address, that's where you go. Go this. Hire as a speaker. What a great story in recovery from that story. Yeah. And people can check it out on your website there in Canada. The big, I'm going to go see Rush, the Canadian band.

Oh, cool. I'm going to go see the first three nights of their tour in the first week of June. and I'm so excited. I was so crushed when Neil Peart died, and I didn't go to the last few concerts, because I was like, they'll have a big farewell one. I don't feel like that.

And then I got, then Neil stepped out, and I was like, what the hell? I didn't know we were just going to wrap this thing up. And so for 10 years, I've been just crying, pleading,

praying the universe, going, please one more tour. And so I'm so excited to me my Canadian. and friends again. And some people say I'm like a lot like Ricky on trailer park boys too. Oh, really?

Yeah, that's one of my favorite shows, trailer park boys. So we love all this. Thank you. Thank you, A, for coming on the show, eh? And folks, order up the book, The Triggering Sent, a medical thriller, the Abby Roberts series book one. Out now and watch for her forthcoming book that you can get on. That's why you want to order this book now,

so you can have it read by the time the other one comes out. Our second book, Terror, at the Manor. Thanks for honors for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortess Chris Fras, Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Foss, 1 on the TikTok, and all those crazy places in it. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.

You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning, consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger and irresistible sexy consume in regularly moderated amounts consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed all right great show jenny wonderful energy and great stuff