Reasonable Rascal
Veteran Member
This is the first installment of a story I have been working on for a year + now. It was started as a companion piece to another story started on AssaultWeb by a fellow called Hard Rock. He was shooting up so many patriots I thought a system of underground hopsitals was called for, since they were effectively fighting the government, albeit a rogue government that had found its way to power after assassinating the legitimately elected if not always popular president and other officials.
The story is the carrier, if you will, for the information. The purpose is to illustrate medical care under austere conditions. To this end I have taken the liberty of a little "poetic license" if you will to add interest to what might otherwise come across as dry.
This is but Chapter 1 of 8 completed and the 9th some 10 pages already. The rest is/has been posted on my forums as it was written, so if you can't wait for me to add a wee bit of editing here and there you *could* get ahead of me and read it there meantime.
I caution you though; the work has been inquired of for possible publication, though I will have to edit extensively, so reproduction other than for personal use is prohibited until (if?) I can get any details worked out. Meantime, enjoy.
RR
PATRIOT AID STATION
Dateline: St. Olaf, Iowa
Andrea stood in the doorway of the old farmhouse, hands on her hips, a look of dismay upon her face. Before her she saw evidence of years of neglect - cobwebs in every corner, dead flies by the many hundreds laying everywhere, the remnants of an old dining set strewn across half the room. The torn curtain that covered half of one tall old-fashioned window floated limply in the breeze issuing through the randomly shattered windowpanes. Beneath it the wooden floorboards had given way to the rains that had blown in over the years, slowly dissolving them until a dark-edged hole remained. Below that was darkness. It seemed to mock the gloom she felt rising within her as she regarded what was destined to be her "hospital."
"Battalion Aid Midwest" she mused to herself half-aloud. "BAM." That was the official designation given to what was to become effectively an underground hospital destined to care for the combat wounded of the patriot movement that was fighting the new regime that had overthrown the legitimate government of the United States of America. She shook her head as she surveyed the sight before her, what she was supposed to turn into an aseptic environment for the receiving of combat wounded men and women.
Andrea Steinkuhler was 34 years of age, an experienced RN who had been practicing for 13 years now, beginning at her training hospital, Jennie Edmundson in Council Bluffs. After 11 months working the Oncology floor she decided that she needed more of a challenge. An opening came up in Orthopedics, which she applied for and was granted. There she often worked with Dr. Mueller, known for his brusque nature with nurses, as he was genial with patients. But he took a liking to Andrea after she stood her ground with him one day and stared him down in front of a patient. Thereafter she was entrusted with additional duties including those he normally limited to his PA. Andrea's skill with her patients was a plus and when she asked for medication order changes or alterations in their traction apparatus more often then not Dr. Mueller agreed with her and signed the order change during his next set of rounds.
Standing 5' 7" with a slim but not skinny form she grew used to muscling patients to and from wheelchairs and carts who had the added disadvantage of heavy plaster casts and metal frames supporting fixation pins. Seldom did she require more than one Patient Care Technician to assist her. Her experiences in both Oncology and Orthopedics would stand her in good stead in later years. At the age of 27 she married, a short, disastrous affair that caused her to turn deeper into her medical career. Within a few months she relocated to Creighton Saint Joseph's Hospital in Omaha - where she spent the next 20 months working a busy ER and taking every opportunity to learn as much as the medical students assigned there for their rotations. Following which she then fled the city entirely to accept a position as a Nurse Manager with Ottumwa Regional Health Center.
She was a patriot this girl. Growing up as she did in a rural community, coming from German stock who had seen their way through the great depression and who knew the value of putting by. Andrea was never without at least the basics for an emergency. When Y2K had come into focus as a looming threat she had been the one who began to stockpile in earnest. Her new husband of the time ridiculed and mocked her, one of several sides of his she had never seen prior to the marriage. When the separation came he found himself with bass boat and his pool table and little else. He was never the know what he had lost.
Dateline: USA
And wounded there were many of, every action large and small producing more. At first they were presented to the local hospitals. The first few were passed off as hunting accidents or car crash victims, but only a few. It has soon become evident to even the thickest-headed orderly that hunting accidents didn't result in shrapnel wounds and car crashes didn't produce blast injuries. And game loads weren't full metal jacketed. Instead of birdshot and slugs the patients offered small caliber rifle and pistol bullets to the surgeons upon the altars of healing.
Less than 2 weeks after the first wounded patriot arrived the arrests started. Patients found their hospital rooms filled with police officers and agents of the government. After a quick appraisal of their condition they were either dragged off to jail or left with an armed guard at their door, to remain until they could be moved. In one instance of particularly barbaric cruelty a young man barely in his 20's, a resident now of the past 3 days in the ICU, was shot as he lay in a comatose state, with tubes protruding from his body, an equally young and sad-faced fiancée sitting at his side. The federal agent who had performed the deed merely shrugged at the gasping, shocked faces of the nursing and technical staff who had come running at the sound and stated "He wasn't fit to stand trial and his guilt was undeniable anyway." With that he turned on his heal and pushed way through the gathering crowd, leaving them to deal with the now hysterical young woman who remained.
Soon it became evident that the normal medical channels were closed to the patriot community. More than a few died of sepsis or shock from their poorly treated injuries. Sympathetic small town doctors, themselves avid hunters and sportsman, could occasionally be found to render aid. A few, like old Doc Mitchell, themselves veterans of other wars in Europe and Asia, came out of semi-retirement to quietly offer what services they could, only to find themselves ill-prepared with supplies and drugs, much less the sorely needed technical devices. Midnight visits to small town ER's became the rule of thumb until that too all but dried up as the authorities began to station police guards, and hospital staffs refused to "get involved," as they said, in caring for "terrorists." For that was what these patriots were labeled by the new government - terrorists.
Dateline: Andrea
After working a year as a Nurse Manager she found herself longing once again for what she considered to be "real nursing." Resigning despite the protests of her superiors she returned to active nursing duties, happy to be rid of the administrative burdens that went with her previous position. Though Med-Surg was her home turf she doubled as a float nurse because of her varied background. The variety suited her well and her skills gained significantly. There seemed to always be something new she could learn, a new case, a procedure that a doctor would allow her to perform in response to her expressed interest. That she had been considering continuing her education to the Nurse Practitioner level was an incentive in their eyes. She added surgical, dialysis, and obstetrical clinical skills, learned to suture, watched as chest tubes were inserted, bones set in place, C-sections performed and more.
And so, after witnessing the arrest of a middle-aged farmer in the hospital she worked in, Andrea decided that something had to be done for these people. Someone had to provide a refuge where they could be tended to, healed of physical and psychological traumas, and returned to a world less free than before. But nevertheless freer than the prisons that awaited them, provided, she thought to herself ruefully, they lived long enough to even see the inside of a cell. She started by inventorying her Y2K preps, which though extensive by most counts were wholly inadequate for the task she had in mind.
Andrea spent the next month unobtrusively picking up supplies throughout the hospital. A handful of syringes here, packets of sutures there. Always they were items charged out but not used and slated to be tossed. It was fortunate that she worked in the size of facility that she did, there in Ottumwa, because they had a outpatient surgery right next to the ER, where she often worked as a float nurse when someone called in sick or took vacation. Her primary assignment on Med-Surg floor offered it's own opportunities, but the Day Surgery Unit used pre-packaged trays for the various procedures, complete with unit doses of various medications that might be needed. Those that were not were merely discarded when the patient was dismissed, as they were charged as a package anyway and Central Supply claimed it cost more to recover, re-inventory and repackage them than it did to simply replace them. So as often as she could she volunteered to help out when the ER was slack, stating that outpatient surgery interested her and she was thinking of asking for a transfer from Med-Surg. Not only did she pick out those discarded vials and bottles and ampoules but she also sharpened her skills in post-operative patient recovery, skills that would all-too-soon be put to the task.
Dateline: St Olaf, Iowa
Andrea continued her pensive thoughts as she continued her survey of the ramshackle farmhouse that had been presented to her as the ideal location for her hidden aid station. Ideal because it was well hidden from view, the owners were absent in another state, it still had a working well, was surrounded by timber and hills and the locals were pretty much of the type to keep to themselves so long as they weren't bothered. They were descended of if not actually the same people who had been such active supporters of the Prairie Fire Farm Activists back in the 80's that actively fought against the loss of family farms.
This farm was reportedly one of the casualties that stirred such strong sentiments to begin with. Put up as collateral for a farm loan it'd been seized by the bank, and remained unsold when the neighbors refused to buy it or the land. The bank itself went belly up 3 years later, heavy with properties and well used machinery and short on actual cash assets. Bought by a bank in Waterloo, which was later bought out by a larger bank in Des Moines, which merged with a banking consortium in Minneapolis which went public a year later and joined a 5-state financial empire rumored to be foreign investor owned. Nary a soul representing any of the last 3 owners had ever set foot upon it. It was merely an obscure ledger entry carried as an asset. The man who had taken her to the place, a local by the name of Melcher, said it wasn't even hunted out of respect for the family who'd been tossed off their ancestral farm. Theirs had been a Century Farm, owned by the same family for over 100 years. Now the widow lived a lonely pensioner's life in a small retirement center in Elkader called Ellen's Convalescent Center. Now it looked as if it might once again see life, not as producing farm per se, but as a refuge for the men and women fighting those same foreigners who nominally owned the land and buildings.
Stepping slowly over the threshold, watching all the while for more weak spots in the weather stained floor Andrea entered the room, a combination dining/family room from the looks of it. The kitchen was just to the rear, through a swinging door covered in cracked varnish. It yielded only somewhat grudgingly when she pushed against it. She found herself in a room approximately 9 x 12 feet; the wall to her left, which had old, fashioned built in cabinets complete with pull out flour and cornmeal bins. Ranked above them were the counter that once saw bread dough kneaded and pastries and pies and cakes shaped and blended. Overhead were deep cabinets that ran clear to the ceiling 10 feet overhead. The ceiling itself was in good shape, indicating that the room's overhead weren't exposed to the weather. That was good news at least.
To the back of the kitchen there was an attached pantry lined with wooden shelves. On the same wall as the pantry door was a bathroom complete with claw-footed tub, set just off to the side to the outside wall of the house. Andrea smiled in amusement; she'd not seen a tub like that save as a replica at a favorite - and somewhat wealthy to boot - aunt's house. Aunt Clarice was like that. She used to be a nurse herself but left the field shortly after earning her degree to marry a livestock farmer. Andrea had spent her youthful summers visiting their farm, doing girl things with her cousins and Aunt Clarice, and boy things with the other cousins and her Uncle Ludwig. Those experiences also would come in handy in times soon to come.
The toilet looked like it too was original installed sometime in the 20's perhaps when the pantry/bathroom addition was added to the otherwise square 2-story house. It was old heavy porcelain with one of those round lever handles and a big tank. The sink was also porcelain and stained from years heavy use washing dirty farmers' hands, with what looked like the occasional spit of tobacco added in for good measure.
Between the cabinets and the bathroom stood the sink, a large doublewide affair. Beside it an open space where a stove had once stood, the uncapped propane line still protruding through the wall to where the bottles had stood outside. "That looks promising" she made a mental note to herself. Turning to look at the opposite wall that was on the inside of the house she more open space and 2 doorways again. One evidently was leading to the room to the side, the other to an outside entrance. Choosing the side room she entered it.
The room was smaller, leaving space for the entryway behind it. It appeared to have last served as an office as evidenced by the battered remnants of an old roll-top desk that held old bird nests and other trash in it's cubbyholes. Papers were scattered about. Andrea stooped to pick one up and found it was a handbill advertising the sheriff's sale of the farmstead to satisfy the bank note. The only good thing to come of that, she mused was that it made it possible for her to be standing here now.
One wall held a chimney that jutted into the room, it's stovepipe opening covered over with a piece of tin. She'd noticed a similar arrangement on the opposite side in the kitchen. Again more potential. She doubted that if she were here come winter she'd being arranging for fuel oil deliveries. More of the tall old-fashioned windows that stretched 6 feet tall, the same as the front room. A sagging old armoire that had evidently served as a coat closet leaned in one corner. Satisfied she moved back to the front room.
Dateline: Andrea
Andrea's mind skipped backwards again to her youth. Coming from a large German-Catholic family she had many close and extended relatives, many of who farmed for their livelihood, back when you could make a comfortable living at just raising livestock and crops. As a young girl growing up in the small town of Schleswig, Iowa she'd had many an occasion to visit not just Uncle Ludwig's farm, but Uncle Frankel's, and the Baumann's and Greiner's where yet more cousins lived. Then there were the family friends. Her father, who ran a successful feed mill and modest farm supply, often visited with customers at their farms, talking over seed selection, new tillage patterns, livestock and other matters. Andrea would happily play in haylofts and stables and milking stalls and orchards, playing with well pumps and tossing hay forks for fun. She learned to milk a cow by hand, to pitch hay, to prime a dried out leather washer on the kitchen well some still used and to gather apples and nuts and pears and berries and gardens full of varied produce.
By the time she'd reached teen-hood the older aunts and uncles and extended cousins were retiring from the farms while the younger ones looked forward to rural water systems, color TV, big green John Deere's replacing aging red Massey and lighter green Oliver tractors. She found herself attending summer camp instead of spending a week on one farm or another, enjoyed family vacations in the mountains or the Wisconsin Dells. But the lessons learned in younger days stayed with her, always in the back of her mind, waiting to resurface at a future time. For she had learned to shoot small bore rifles and found that she enjoyed it. Archery came easily as well and she had later purchased her own compound bow on a whim. Through the years she had practiced with it and become proficient though she stuck to targets.
Her hobby became collecting old medical texts after being given one that had belonged to a relative who had died during the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1919, nursing the fallen until she too succumbed to the same illness. Over the years she had collected 3 bookcases full. Her nursing textbooks as well as more modern, up-to-date references were added as well. Granted they didn't fit into her collection per se, but somehow she felt compelled. Added later were references to survival medicine and wartime surgery.
Dateline: St. Olaf, Iowa
Entering the other remaining room she saw with interest the narrow stairway that ran off to her left, turning halfway up a sharp 90 degrees. The stairs were shallow and steep as they often were in these older houses, just like they had been at Uncle Frankel's place, his house being nearly as old as this one. "We'll need handrails on both sides," she stated to herself, "The non-ambulatory cases will just have to be quartered down here."
Then turning her attention to the rest of the room she carefully measured it with green-tinted eyes and decided it would hold 4 cots well enough, 5 in a real pinch for those unable to climb the stairs even with assistance. Not an ideal arrangement, a 2-story house but location and concealability were just as if not more important recommends.
Expressing a resigned sigh she then began the climb the stairs, heedful of the heavy dust and bits of fallen plaster that littered it.
Upon reaching the upper floor she found a small landing, perhaps 4'x4' in area, with a doorway in front of her and another to her left. Both had doors hanging, which she took as a positive sign. Beginning on the left she entered the first room, observing as she entered that another room opened off to the right of it halfway down the wall. The room was bigger than the one below, designed in a more square shape. It was clean but dusty and the windows were intact and shorter than those downstairs, using rope and pulley with counterweights to raise and lower. The adjoining room was of the same size and design with no other exit safe through the one she had come through.
Retracing her steps she pushed open the nearly latched door at the top of the stairs and suffered a fright that brought a startled half-gasp from her as a bird took flight and flew circles about the room at her entry before it finally exited via a broken window pain.
Bird droppings littered the floor and windowsills and the stench was almost overpowering. Mindful of the danger of infectious disease exposure from the droppings she reached into a rear pocket with her left hand as her right hand, which had flown to her mouth in her fright, covered her mouth even more tightly. Withdrawing the bandanna she carried there out of habit since her lazy summers on the farm she shook it out and quickly fashioned a dust mask whilst she held her breath. Satisfied with the hasty arrangement for now she proceeded further into the room, and thence into the room adjoining off of it. Both were nearly identical to the first two rooms in size and layout. Sizing up the situation in her mind she determined to set one set of rooms up as male patient quarters and the other side for female patients as well as her own quarters in the inner room.
Dateline: Ottumwa, Iowa
While still working at Ottumwa Hospital Andrea managed to amass quite a stash of various medications useful for surgical procedures and emergency response to the various crisis that occasionally occurred with even the best -screened patients. Medications such as anti-arrhythmic, electrolytes, sedatives, analgesics, anti-convulsants, paralytics, anti-emetics and others. Depending upon the procedure performed a patient might have 3 or 4 meds in their kit, or a dozen, and save for a very few the various kits usually differed from each other insofar as their contents. Needless to say many of them were actually used for the cases, but more than enough were simply discarded and many found room in her backpack at the end of the day.
Each and every single bottle, vial and ampoule was quietly fished out of the trash with care to avoid any sharps that weren't supposed to tossed into general waste but often were anyhow. Each was carefully slipped into a padded pocket between her bra cups she had sewn in place herself specifically for that purpose. A 36C could only hide so many bottles but she managed well and in the end had well over 200 single and multi-dose units safely stashed by the time she took a 2-week vacation, requested the next day after she reached her decision. By the time her vacation began it had been nearly 2 months since the assassination of the president and all the others.
She made good use of her time in other ways as well. Boldly approaching a doctor 3 years her junior who had hinted more than once that he'd like to see her socially, she gave him a story about a distant cousin who ran a small clinic in a depressed area of Appalachia. As she informed her would-be suitor he had mentioned to her just before the "Troubles" began that he was having a difficult time obtaining needed medications because of the indigent nature of his patients and he was hard pressed some days to turn them away without the medications they needed. Would he be so kind as to assist her in obtaining a stock to send to him? She'd willingly cover the cost, as being divorced after a short and abusive marriage 6 years before she had few expenses and had managed to amass a nice nest egg which she'd gladly dip into for the sake of those poor people. She'd be ever so pleased of course.
Being enamoured of our philanthropic heroine and rather disposed to liberal leanings himself he readily agreed, quietly telling himself his persistence had paid off, never realizing that his reward for his assistance would be the chance to buy her dinner before her "vacation" only to watch in dismay as her pager chirped and she answered a (pre-arranged) request for additional fill-in staff for the remainder of the evening and night shifts.
Our intrepid acquirer added large bottles of oral antibiotics, diuretics, anti-seizure medications, anti-fungals (Ringworm and other problems were endemic in the area with the children she explained) iron supplements, bronchodilators, and more, and in the end when she cautiously inquired about a limited supply of narcotics such as Vicodin and Percocet and perhaps even some oral morphine he even consented to that. After all, cancer wasn't unknown in the Appalachians anymore than it was anywhere else and it wasn't as if she was likely to buy all these other meds just to cover up for these.
In the end the enamoured young fellow hit up some pharmaceutical reps making their regular sales routes and was able to obtain the requested meds at a very favorable discount, while making it sound as if the idea of supplying a poor rural clinic was his. One fellow, caught in a charitable spirit, even tossed in a large box of professional samples of various and sundry sorts. In all though Andrea went through several thousand dollars. Then added several hundred dollars more when she talked the Purchasing Agent - whom she ever so inadvertently happened to sit with at lunch one day - into selling her 20 cases of IV solutions when she explained her philanthropic mission, complete with administration sets. He also gave her several assorted partial boxes of catheters just the clear the shelves of a style no longer in favor with the hospital.
Dateline: St. Olaf, Iowa
Setting her mind to task after exploring the layout of her soon-to-be hospital she decided upon the front room as her general treatment area and exercise room, the kitchen would serve for the inevitable operations. "How in the world," she wondered aloud, "Am I ever going to manage operations without anesthesia?"
Returning to the outside of the house she found her erstwhile tour guide standing patiently beside his well used Ford pick up. He regarded her non-chalantly as she approached him, content it seemed to let her set the pace of things. She knew him not save that he'd been sent to take her to the old place. Her contact had simply said he'd send a trustworthy fellow who knew the area with the story that she was a back-to-the-land type looking for such a place. Though Andrea wasn't the obsessively shy type she discerned something in his manner that told her that listening might be better than asking too many questions. She'd had to ask few questions on the ride out to learn what he knew of the place.
Dateline: Andrea
Frederick was his name he told her. Just that. Not "You can call me Fred, or Rick," just "You must be that gal Arlen was a talkin' about. I'm Frederick. I'll be takin' you out there."
With that he lead the way to his truck, moved a pair of dirty Carharrt's off the seat and allowed her to climb in. As he pulled out into the street he leaned over to the left and spit a wad of chew out the window in front of a boutique that looked out of place on the street, surrounded as it was by a hardware store on one side and an abstract office on the other. "Damn busybody city bitch anyhow" he muttered under his breath, then fell silent again until they reached the city limits.
"Sorry ma'am, shouldn't be cussing in front of young lady like that but I can't help myself when it comes to that woman. See, she just up and turned up here a couple years ago, just outa the blue like. Seems she had some money and always wanted her own shop. Why she ever decided on settling in St. Olaf is beyond me. Can't be making a living, just a wastin' her money. Damn shame if you ask me." She couldn't help but smile for his referring to her as a young lady was amusing. He hadn't seen 40 yet himself. But the wedding ring on his finger might indicate a wife who disliked rough language, hence his apology as matter of habit.
"You say she's a busybody?" she ventured by way of encouraging him to continue. He cast a quick sideways glance at her then turned his eyes to the road ahead once again. Clearing his throat as much for effect as need he said, "Well, I don't like bearing false witness against my neighbors, like it says in the Bible and all, but seeing as how it's the truth…" his voice trailed off.
"Ya see, like I say she's been here just a couple of years but she sure has stirred things up around town. She's a one of them liberal types I'd guess you'd call her. Has funny notions the way things ought to be, always trying to join this group or that one. Sure got the ladies over that the Methodist church all riled up with her notions. They've had the same minister - Pastor DuMont's his name - for 8 years now and they like him real well. Know I do anyway. And here and she wants to boot him out and bring in this lady minister so's we can get a more modern perspective she says. She even had the gall to complain that the Sunday school classes ain't diverseefied enough. Can you believe that?"
He fell silent for another mile then offered once more "Well, you get the idear anyways. Just hope you ain't like that yourself."
Andrea regarded him for a moment in the breeze blowing in through the open windows of the cab. "No," she said, "No, I'm not. I guess you could say I'm more traditional."
The story is the carrier, if you will, for the information. The purpose is to illustrate medical care under austere conditions. To this end I have taken the liberty of a little "poetic license" if you will to add interest to what might otherwise come across as dry.
This is but Chapter 1 of 8 completed and the 9th some 10 pages already. The rest is/has been posted on my forums as it was written, so if you can't wait for me to add a wee bit of editing here and there you *could* get ahead of me and read it there meantime.
I caution you though; the work has been inquired of for possible publication, though I will have to edit extensively, so reproduction other than for personal use is prohibited until (if?) I can get any details worked out. Meantime, enjoy.
RR
PATRIOT AID STATION
Dateline: St. Olaf, Iowa
Andrea stood in the doorway of the old farmhouse, hands on her hips, a look of dismay upon her face. Before her she saw evidence of years of neglect - cobwebs in every corner, dead flies by the many hundreds laying everywhere, the remnants of an old dining set strewn across half the room. The torn curtain that covered half of one tall old-fashioned window floated limply in the breeze issuing through the randomly shattered windowpanes. Beneath it the wooden floorboards had given way to the rains that had blown in over the years, slowly dissolving them until a dark-edged hole remained. Below that was darkness. It seemed to mock the gloom she felt rising within her as she regarded what was destined to be her "hospital."
"Battalion Aid Midwest" she mused to herself half-aloud. "BAM." That was the official designation given to what was to become effectively an underground hospital destined to care for the combat wounded of the patriot movement that was fighting the new regime that had overthrown the legitimate government of the United States of America. She shook her head as she surveyed the sight before her, what she was supposed to turn into an aseptic environment for the receiving of combat wounded men and women.
Andrea Steinkuhler was 34 years of age, an experienced RN who had been practicing for 13 years now, beginning at her training hospital, Jennie Edmundson in Council Bluffs. After 11 months working the Oncology floor she decided that she needed more of a challenge. An opening came up in Orthopedics, which she applied for and was granted. There she often worked with Dr. Mueller, known for his brusque nature with nurses, as he was genial with patients. But he took a liking to Andrea after she stood her ground with him one day and stared him down in front of a patient. Thereafter she was entrusted with additional duties including those he normally limited to his PA. Andrea's skill with her patients was a plus and when she asked for medication order changes or alterations in their traction apparatus more often then not Dr. Mueller agreed with her and signed the order change during his next set of rounds.
Standing 5' 7" with a slim but not skinny form she grew used to muscling patients to and from wheelchairs and carts who had the added disadvantage of heavy plaster casts and metal frames supporting fixation pins. Seldom did she require more than one Patient Care Technician to assist her. Her experiences in both Oncology and Orthopedics would stand her in good stead in later years. At the age of 27 she married, a short, disastrous affair that caused her to turn deeper into her medical career. Within a few months she relocated to Creighton Saint Joseph's Hospital in Omaha - where she spent the next 20 months working a busy ER and taking every opportunity to learn as much as the medical students assigned there for their rotations. Following which she then fled the city entirely to accept a position as a Nurse Manager with Ottumwa Regional Health Center.
She was a patriot this girl. Growing up as she did in a rural community, coming from German stock who had seen their way through the great depression and who knew the value of putting by. Andrea was never without at least the basics for an emergency. When Y2K had come into focus as a looming threat she had been the one who began to stockpile in earnest. Her new husband of the time ridiculed and mocked her, one of several sides of his she had never seen prior to the marriage. When the separation came he found himself with bass boat and his pool table and little else. He was never the know what he had lost.
Dateline: USA
And wounded there were many of, every action large and small producing more. At first they were presented to the local hospitals. The first few were passed off as hunting accidents or car crash victims, but only a few. It has soon become evident to even the thickest-headed orderly that hunting accidents didn't result in shrapnel wounds and car crashes didn't produce blast injuries. And game loads weren't full metal jacketed. Instead of birdshot and slugs the patients offered small caliber rifle and pistol bullets to the surgeons upon the altars of healing.
Less than 2 weeks after the first wounded patriot arrived the arrests started. Patients found their hospital rooms filled with police officers and agents of the government. After a quick appraisal of their condition they were either dragged off to jail or left with an armed guard at their door, to remain until they could be moved. In one instance of particularly barbaric cruelty a young man barely in his 20's, a resident now of the past 3 days in the ICU, was shot as he lay in a comatose state, with tubes protruding from his body, an equally young and sad-faced fiancée sitting at his side. The federal agent who had performed the deed merely shrugged at the gasping, shocked faces of the nursing and technical staff who had come running at the sound and stated "He wasn't fit to stand trial and his guilt was undeniable anyway." With that he turned on his heal and pushed way through the gathering crowd, leaving them to deal with the now hysterical young woman who remained.
Soon it became evident that the normal medical channels were closed to the patriot community. More than a few died of sepsis or shock from their poorly treated injuries. Sympathetic small town doctors, themselves avid hunters and sportsman, could occasionally be found to render aid. A few, like old Doc Mitchell, themselves veterans of other wars in Europe and Asia, came out of semi-retirement to quietly offer what services they could, only to find themselves ill-prepared with supplies and drugs, much less the sorely needed technical devices. Midnight visits to small town ER's became the rule of thumb until that too all but dried up as the authorities began to station police guards, and hospital staffs refused to "get involved," as they said, in caring for "terrorists." For that was what these patriots were labeled by the new government - terrorists.
Dateline: Andrea
After working a year as a Nurse Manager she found herself longing once again for what she considered to be "real nursing." Resigning despite the protests of her superiors she returned to active nursing duties, happy to be rid of the administrative burdens that went with her previous position. Though Med-Surg was her home turf she doubled as a float nurse because of her varied background. The variety suited her well and her skills gained significantly. There seemed to always be something new she could learn, a new case, a procedure that a doctor would allow her to perform in response to her expressed interest. That she had been considering continuing her education to the Nurse Practitioner level was an incentive in their eyes. She added surgical, dialysis, and obstetrical clinical skills, learned to suture, watched as chest tubes were inserted, bones set in place, C-sections performed and more.
And so, after witnessing the arrest of a middle-aged farmer in the hospital she worked in, Andrea decided that something had to be done for these people. Someone had to provide a refuge where they could be tended to, healed of physical and psychological traumas, and returned to a world less free than before. But nevertheless freer than the prisons that awaited them, provided, she thought to herself ruefully, they lived long enough to even see the inside of a cell. She started by inventorying her Y2K preps, which though extensive by most counts were wholly inadequate for the task she had in mind.
Andrea spent the next month unobtrusively picking up supplies throughout the hospital. A handful of syringes here, packets of sutures there. Always they were items charged out but not used and slated to be tossed. It was fortunate that she worked in the size of facility that she did, there in Ottumwa, because they had a outpatient surgery right next to the ER, where she often worked as a float nurse when someone called in sick or took vacation. Her primary assignment on Med-Surg floor offered it's own opportunities, but the Day Surgery Unit used pre-packaged trays for the various procedures, complete with unit doses of various medications that might be needed. Those that were not were merely discarded when the patient was dismissed, as they were charged as a package anyway and Central Supply claimed it cost more to recover, re-inventory and repackage them than it did to simply replace them. So as often as she could she volunteered to help out when the ER was slack, stating that outpatient surgery interested her and she was thinking of asking for a transfer from Med-Surg. Not only did she pick out those discarded vials and bottles and ampoules but she also sharpened her skills in post-operative patient recovery, skills that would all-too-soon be put to the task.
Dateline: St Olaf, Iowa
Andrea continued her pensive thoughts as she continued her survey of the ramshackle farmhouse that had been presented to her as the ideal location for her hidden aid station. Ideal because it was well hidden from view, the owners were absent in another state, it still had a working well, was surrounded by timber and hills and the locals were pretty much of the type to keep to themselves so long as they weren't bothered. They were descended of if not actually the same people who had been such active supporters of the Prairie Fire Farm Activists back in the 80's that actively fought against the loss of family farms.
This farm was reportedly one of the casualties that stirred such strong sentiments to begin with. Put up as collateral for a farm loan it'd been seized by the bank, and remained unsold when the neighbors refused to buy it or the land. The bank itself went belly up 3 years later, heavy with properties and well used machinery and short on actual cash assets. Bought by a bank in Waterloo, which was later bought out by a larger bank in Des Moines, which merged with a banking consortium in Minneapolis which went public a year later and joined a 5-state financial empire rumored to be foreign investor owned. Nary a soul representing any of the last 3 owners had ever set foot upon it. It was merely an obscure ledger entry carried as an asset. The man who had taken her to the place, a local by the name of Melcher, said it wasn't even hunted out of respect for the family who'd been tossed off their ancestral farm. Theirs had been a Century Farm, owned by the same family for over 100 years. Now the widow lived a lonely pensioner's life in a small retirement center in Elkader called Ellen's Convalescent Center. Now it looked as if it might once again see life, not as producing farm per se, but as a refuge for the men and women fighting those same foreigners who nominally owned the land and buildings.
Stepping slowly over the threshold, watching all the while for more weak spots in the weather stained floor Andrea entered the room, a combination dining/family room from the looks of it. The kitchen was just to the rear, through a swinging door covered in cracked varnish. It yielded only somewhat grudgingly when she pushed against it. She found herself in a room approximately 9 x 12 feet; the wall to her left, which had old, fashioned built in cabinets complete with pull out flour and cornmeal bins. Ranked above them were the counter that once saw bread dough kneaded and pastries and pies and cakes shaped and blended. Overhead were deep cabinets that ran clear to the ceiling 10 feet overhead. The ceiling itself was in good shape, indicating that the room's overhead weren't exposed to the weather. That was good news at least.
To the back of the kitchen there was an attached pantry lined with wooden shelves. On the same wall as the pantry door was a bathroom complete with claw-footed tub, set just off to the side to the outside wall of the house. Andrea smiled in amusement; she'd not seen a tub like that save as a replica at a favorite - and somewhat wealthy to boot - aunt's house. Aunt Clarice was like that. She used to be a nurse herself but left the field shortly after earning her degree to marry a livestock farmer. Andrea had spent her youthful summers visiting their farm, doing girl things with her cousins and Aunt Clarice, and boy things with the other cousins and her Uncle Ludwig. Those experiences also would come in handy in times soon to come.
The toilet looked like it too was original installed sometime in the 20's perhaps when the pantry/bathroom addition was added to the otherwise square 2-story house. It was old heavy porcelain with one of those round lever handles and a big tank. The sink was also porcelain and stained from years heavy use washing dirty farmers' hands, with what looked like the occasional spit of tobacco added in for good measure.
Between the cabinets and the bathroom stood the sink, a large doublewide affair. Beside it an open space where a stove had once stood, the uncapped propane line still protruding through the wall to where the bottles had stood outside. "That looks promising" she made a mental note to herself. Turning to look at the opposite wall that was on the inside of the house she more open space and 2 doorways again. One evidently was leading to the room to the side, the other to an outside entrance. Choosing the side room she entered it.
The room was smaller, leaving space for the entryway behind it. It appeared to have last served as an office as evidenced by the battered remnants of an old roll-top desk that held old bird nests and other trash in it's cubbyholes. Papers were scattered about. Andrea stooped to pick one up and found it was a handbill advertising the sheriff's sale of the farmstead to satisfy the bank note. The only good thing to come of that, she mused was that it made it possible for her to be standing here now.
One wall held a chimney that jutted into the room, it's stovepipe opening covered over with a piece of tin. She'd noticed a similar arrangement on the opposite side in the kitchen. Again more potential. She doubted that if she were here come winter she'd being arranging for fuel oil deliveries. More of the tall old-fashioned windows that stretched 6 feet tall, the same as the front room. A sagging old armoire that had evidently served as a coat closet leaned in one corner. Satisfied she moved back to the front room.
Dateline: Andrea
Andrea's mind skipped backwards again to her youth. Coming from a large German-Catholic family she had many close and extended relatives, many of who farmed for their livelihood, back when you could make a comfortable living at just raising livestock and crops. As a young girl growing up in the small town of Schleswig, Iowa she'd had many an occasion to visit not just Uncle Ludwig's farm, but Uncle Frankel's, and the Baumann's and Greiner's where yet more cousins lived. Then there were the family friends. Her father, who ran a successful feed mill and modest farm supply, often visited with customers at their farms, talking over seed selection, new tillage patterns, livestock and other matters. Andrea would happily play in haylofts and stables and milking stalls and orchards, playing with well pumps and tossing hay forks for fun. She learned to milk a cow by hand, to pitch hay, to prime a dried out leather washer on the kitchen well some still used and to gather apples and nuts and pears and berries and gardens full of varied produce.
By the time she'd reached teen-hood the older aunts and uncles and extended cousins were retiring from the farms while the younger ones looked forward to rural water systems, color TV, big green John Deere's replacing aging red Massey and lighter green Oliver tractors. She found herself attending summer camp instead of spending a week on one farm or another, enjoyed family vacations in the mountains or the Wisconsin Dells. But the lessons learned in younger days stayed with her, always in the back of her mind, waiting to resurface at a future time. For she had learned to shoot small bore rifles and found that she enjoyed it. Archery came easily as well and she had later purchased her own compound bow on a whim. Through the years she had practiced with it and become proficient though she stuck to targets.
Her hobby became collecting old medical texts after being given one that had belonged to a relative who had died during the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1919, nursing the fallen until she too succumbed to the same illness. Over the years she had collected 3 bookcases full. Her nursing textbooks as well as more modern, up-to-date references were added as well. Granted they didn't fit into her collection per se, but somehow she felt compelled. Added later were references to survival medicine and wartime surgery.
Dateline: St. Olaf, Iowa
Entering the other remaining room she saw with interest the narrow stairway that ran off to her left, turning halfway up a sharp 90 degrees. The stairs were shallow and steep as they often were in these older houses, just like they had been at Uncle Frankel's place, his house being nearly as old as this one. "We'll need handrails on both sides," she stated to herself, "The non-ambulatory cases will just have to be quartered down here."
Then turning her attention to the rest of the room she carefully measured it with green-tinted eyes and decided it would hold 4 cots well enough, 5 in a real pinch for those unable to climb the stairs even with assistance. Not an ideal arrangement, a 2-story house but location and concealability were just as if not more important recommends.
Expressing a resigned sigh she then began the climb the stairs, heedful of the heavy dust and bits of fallen plaster that littered it.
Upon reaching the upper floor she found a small landing, perhaps 4'x4' in area, with a doorway in front of her and another to her left. Both had doors hanging, which she took as a positive sign. Beginning on the left she entered the first room, observing as she entered that another room opened off to the right of it halfway down the wall. The room was bigger than the one below, designed in a more square shape. It was clean but dusty and the windows were intact and shorter than those downstairs, using rope and pulley with counterweights to raise and lower. The adjoining room was of the same size and design with no other exit safe through the one she had come through.
Retracing her steps she pushed open the nearly latched door at the top of the stairs and suffered a fright that brought a startled half-gasp from her as a bird took flight and flew circles about the room at her entry before it finally exited via a broken window pain.
Bird droppings littered the floor and windowsills and the stench was almost overpowering. Mindful of the danger of infectious disease exposure from the droppings she reached into a rear pocket with her left hand as her right hand, which had flown to her mouth in her fright, covered her mouth even more tightly. Withdrawing the bandanna she carried there out of habit since her lazy summers on the farm she shook it out and quickly fashioned a dust mask whilst she held her breath. Satisfied with the hasty arrangement for now she proceeded further into the room, and thence into the room adjoining off of it. Both were nearly identical to the first two rooms in size and layout. Sizing up the situation in her mind she determined to set one set of rooms up as male patient quarters and the other side for female patients as well as her own quarters in the inner room.
Dateline: Ottumwa, Iowa
While still working at Ottumwa Hospital Andrea managed to amass quite a stash of various medications useful for surgical procedures and emergency response to the various crisis that occasionally occurred with even the best -screened patients. Medications such as anti-arrhythmic, electrolytes, sedatives, analgesics, anti-convulsants, paralytics, anti-emetics and others. Depending upon the procedure performed a patient might have 3 or 4 meds in their kit, or a dozen, and save for a very few the various kits usually differed from each other insofar as their contents. Needless to say many of them were actually used for the cases, but more than enough were simply discarded and many found room in her backpack at the end of the day.
Each and every single bottle, vial and ampoule was quietly fished out of the trash with care to avoid any sharps that weren't supposed to tossed into general waste but often were anyhow. Each was carefully slipped into a padded pocket between her bra cups she had sewn in place herself specifically for that purpose. A 36C could only hide so many bottles but she managed well and in the end had well over 200 single and multi-dose units safely stashed by the time she took a 2-week vacation, requested the next day after she reached her decision. By the time her vacation began it had been nearly 2 months since the assassination of the president and all the others.
She made good use of her time in other ways as well. Boldly approaching a doctor 3 years her junior who had hinted more than once that he'd like to see her socially, she gave him a story about a distant cousin who ran a small clinic in a depressed area of Appalachia. As she informed her would-be suitor he had mentioned to her just before the "Troubles" began that he was having a difficult time obtaining needed medications because of the indigent nature of his patients and he was hard pressed some days to turn them away without the medications they needed. Would he be so kind as to assist her in obtaining a stock to send to him? She'd willingly cover the cost, as being divorced after a short and abusive marriage 6 years before she had few expenses and had managed to amass a nice nest egg which she'd gladly dip into for the sake of those poor people. She'd be ever so pleased of course.
Being enamoured of our philanthropic heroine and rather disposed to liberal leanings himself he readily agreed, quietly telling himself his persistence had paid off, never realizing that his reward for his assistance would be the chance to buy her dinner before her "vacation" only to watch in dismay as her pager chirped and she answered a (pre-arranged) request for additional fill-in staff for the remainder of the evening and night shifts.
Our intrepid acquirer added large bottles of oral antibiotics, diuretics, anti-seizure medications, anti-fungals (Ringworm and other problems were endemic in the area with the children she explained) iron supplements, bronchodilators, and more, and in the end when she cautiously inquired about a limited supply of narcotics such as Vicodin and Percocet and perhaps even some oral morphine he even consented to that. After all, cancer wasn't unknown in the Appalachians anymore than it was anywhere else and it wasn't as if she was likely to buy all these other meds just to cover up for these.
In the end the enamoured young fellow hit up some pharmaceutical reps making their regular sales routes and was able to obtain the requested meds at a very favorable discount, while making it sound as if the idea of supplying a poor rural clinic was his. One fellow, caught in a charitable spirit, even tossed in a large box of professional samples of various and sundry sorts. In all though Andrea went through several thousand dollars. Then added several hundred dollars more when she talked the Purchasing Agent - whom she ever so inadvertently happened to sit with at lunch one day - into selling her 20 cases of IV solutions when she explained her philanthropic mission, complete with administration sets. He also gave her several assorted partial boxes of catheters just the clear the shelves of a style no longer in favor with the hospital.
Dateline: St. Olaf, Iowa
Setting her mind to task after exploring the layout of her soon-to-be hospital she decided upon the front room as her general treatment area and exercise room, the kitchen would serve for the inevitable operations. "How in the world," she wondered aloud, "Am I ever going to manage operations without anesthesia?"
Returning to the outside of the house she found her erstwhile tour guide standing patiently beside his well used Ford pick up. He regarded her non-chalantly as she approached him, content it seemed to let her set the pace of things. She knew him not save that he'd been sent to take her to the old place. Her contact had simply said he'd send a trustworthy fellow who knew the area with the story that she was a back-to-the-land type looking for such a place. Though Andrea wasn't the obsessively shy type she discerned something in his manner that told her that listening might be better than asking too many questions. She'd had to ask few questions on the ride out to learn what he knew of the place.
Dateline: Andrea
Frederick was his name he told her. Just that. Not "You can call me Fred, or Rick," just "You must be that gal Arlen was a talkin' about. I'm Frederick. I'll be takin' you out there."
With that he lead the way to his truck, moved a pair of dirty Carharrt's off the seat and allowed her to climb in. As he pulled out into the street he leaned over to the left and spit a wad of chew out the window in front of a boutique that looked out of place on the street, surrounded as it was by a hardware store on one side and an abstract office on the other. "Damn busybody city bitch anyhow" he muttered under his breath, then fell silent again until they reached the city limits.
"Sorry ma'am, shouldn't be cussing in front of young lady like that but I can't help myself when it comes to that woman. See, she just up and turned up here a couple years ago, just outa the blue like. Seems she had some money and always wanted her own shop. Why she ever decided on settling in St. Olaf is beyond me. Can't be making a living, just a wastin' her money. Damn shame if you ask me." She couldn't help but smile for his referring to her as a young lady was amusing. He hadn't seen 40 yet himself. But the wedding ring on his finger might indicate a wife who disliked rough language, hence his apology as matter of habit.
"You say she's a busybody?" she ventured by way of encouraging him to continue. He cast a quick sideways glance at her then turned his eyes to the road ahead once again. Clearing his throat as much for effect as need he said, "Well, I don't like bearing false witness against my neighbors, like it says in the Bible and all, but seeing as how it's the truth…" his voice trailed off.
"Ya see, like I say she's been here just a couple of years but she sure has stirred things up around town. She's a one of them liberal types I'd guess you'd call her. Has funny notions the way things ought to be, always trying to join this group or that one. Sure got the ladies over that the Methodist church all riled up with her notions. They've had the same minister - Pastor DuMont's his name - for 8 years now and they like him real well. Know I do anyway. And here and she wants to boot him out and bring in this lady minister so's we can get a more modern perspective she says. She even had the gall to complain that the Sunday school classes ain't diverseefied enough. Can you believe that?"
He fell silent for another mile then offered once more "Well, you get the idear anyways. Just hope you ain't like that yourself."
Andrea regarded him for a moment in the breeze blowing in through the open windows of the cab. "No," she said, "No, I'm not. I guess you could say I'm more traditional."
Last edited:
![amish.jpgspared."](http://www.infoplease.com/images/amish.jpgspared.")
