Lillian Whyte is an emergency room doctor.
She is not a spy and never has been been one. She is, however, married to one; or at least will be part way into the three recorded adventures we have of her. And while it is common knowledge that CIA operatives are not supposed to share their work with family and friends, agent Sean Jennings has the excuse that it is more that his wife finds her own way into the missions.
It is because her day-to-day work as a physician in the Emergency Room that she will become involved in matters far outside her comfort zone such as a missing nuclear bomb and marauding militants and terrorists holding a devasting biological weapon, although that last one does fit a bit closer. Actually, it is her approach to her work that is the cause of her change of direction.
We learn early on, thanks to a scolding she gets from her boss, that she came to the hospital with letters of recommendation commenting on what an exceptional physician she was and that she was the youngest attending doctor the hospital had had. He admitted to her, "You consistently work hard and you save lives". Unfortunately, she also has a file of complaints from patients not wanting to hear the truth about their life styles and other members of the ER who had run afoul of her comments. "Half of the residents are terrified of you. They call you the Whyte Witch."
It is that supervisor who will send Whyte on her forced retreat, heading to Africa where the "US military has a small peacekeeping base in Kenya [where] they want volunteers to treat the locals". It is that unscheduled detour in her career that will really change her attitude towards a lot of things.