GWOT 1 Supply Run NI

[the day after the massive attack]

The crying of the wounded woke me up.

Note: the crying had not stopped. I had just been so very tired that I'd slept anyway.

I took an essential moment to wipe my face and carefully wash my hands. Then I put on one set of gloves, grabbed a clipboard and started going all round the infirmary.

When a doctor does it, it's called 'rounds.'

I have no idea what to call it when it's an Emergency Medical Technician way over his head and out of his depth. Or when the infirmary is stacked well past overflowing with casualties who should be evacuated to regional hospitals.

Ain't none of that shit. They're all full, and beyond full, and mostly also with burns and radiation casualties.

One of the wounded was writhing and crying. It wasn't just the pain from the shattered femur; the through-and-through in the opposite leg; and the broken shoulder from when the bullets had suddenly encouraged him to lie down.

He had to piss. His bladder was so full he was in medical danger of it bursting, and under these conditions killing him.

He couldn't. And the apprentice nurse with the bedpan had no idea what to do. I told her to go get an empty 2 liter soda bottle and come right back.

I stuck my head into the staff lounge, past the guard who started to deny me entry until he realized that I was his boss. Both the vet tech and the one trained nurse were sleeping the sleep of the utterly exhausted.

That left it up to me.

I passed the guard over the medical supply room, another purloined office, and quickly pulled out

-- three iodine swabs
-- a single 4x4 sterile pad
-- the only thing I could find that might work, a nasal cannula oxygen tube

I then raced back to the patient's side and briefly, badly explained what I was going to do.

"I don't care, it hurts," he said.

First swab over the cut off end of the oxygen tube.

Second swab carefully over the head of the patient's penis.

Third swab over the fingers of my right glove. Then all three swabs and the 4x4 pad as I advanced that same cut-off end into the urethra and up into his penis.

I was now committing the felony of practicing medicine without a license.

This was also the first time I'd done a catheterization. I'd seen one. I'd had it done to me, by someone who knew what she was doing, with topical numbing agent.

There was a very real risk that I would push the tube through the wall of his bladder and thereby kill him.

His bladder bursting would also kill him.

Risk vs. certainty.

I told the shocked apprentice nurse to hold the tube end well into the 2 liter soda bottle, and to watch the tube end and tell me when it filled.

There was a little bit more resistance when the tube end, which I was continuing to visualize, reached the bladder valve.

I slowly advanced it.

The tube jerked in my hand suddenly and got very warm.

The apprentice nurse flinched as the urine started to fill the bottle.

I took off the glove I had used, did a little surgery on it with my EMS shears, and used it to tie the tube in place.

Then I documented the procedure on the clipboard with blank paper we were using instead of a proper chart.

"This tube needs to be checked every hour. Monitor how much he drinks and how much he urinates. Note this on the chart. Make sure the doctor checks my work after she wakes up."

Then I dropped the bombshell.

"You get to do the next one."

###

Rounds completed. Doctor had woken up. I gave her passdowns over her breakfast, leftover toast and cream cheese and coffee. Another reason the staff lounge was strictly off limits.

I'd seen the contents of the medical supply room.

It wouldn't last us more than another day.

We needed medical supplies of all kinds and we needed them now.

###

"This is strictly voluntary," I started to say, and the guards looked at me as if I had lost my mind.

"If you think it needs to be done, that's good enough for me," one said.

So the three of us got into the jacked up white 4x4 pickup truck we'd been using as a point vehicle for the rescue convoys.

Some kind soul had wrapped the front bumper, presumably carefully, in barbed wire.

Now to figure out where we were going.

Any retail establishment would already have been looted, I knew that from the run on which I had recruit-napped the vet tech.

Well, that's a starting point. Her offices.

Unfortunately, they had been looted.

Fortunately, the looters had missed a lot of stuff. So we started loading everything that looked useful.

Someone shuffled up and started to talk to us and I unslung my rifle.

"May I help you?" I asked politely.

They ran. Guess not.

I looked around the neighborhood, both with my eyes and in my mind's eye - my memories of the last run, and what this had looked like before civil order had broken down.

No pretence of payment. We were going to steal shit.

Any place that was clearly medical had been broken into. But the looters had grabbed mostly medications with a focus on narcotics.

So we quickly stripped what I considered essentials from a dental office, an optician's office and - big win! - an oral surgeon's office.

We didn't have keys, but I had a crowbar.

Instruments. Boxes of gloves. Consumables, including bandages and dressings but also such mundane things as gowns.

Most importantly, airway management equipment. The oral surgeon's office had not just oxygen equipment and BVMs, but actual ET tubes and a crash cart!

That was when the San Jose PD unit rolled up, as we finished loading the back of the truck.

The officers - the four heavily armed officers - eyeballed us. I tightened the sling on my rifle and waved with a hand.

They were clearly talking to each other as the guards finished loading.

Then I got in the driver's seat of the truck.

The driver of the patrol car blipped his siren.

I got out of the truck and walked over to them, hands empty.

"Gentlemen," I opened.

"Where are you taking all that?"

"We have over a hundred wounded. I hear Valley Med is closed, San Jose Regional is burned, and the freeways are closed for troop movements. Every piece of this equipment is going to be used directly to save lives."

The police driver looked at me. The guards had stayed with the vehicle. I could see that my selected shotgun was thinking about sliding over and just driving off.

That would leave me in an awkward position, but the supplies were more important.

The driver pondered. No discussion this time.

"Be on your way. Don't come back here."

"Yes, officer" I said carefully and walked back to the truck.

There are always two parts of tension to an encounter like this during a disaster. The first is the usual police vs. citizen-suspect. The second is murkier - let's call it thief vs. thief.

This had clearly, clearly been the second. I knew it even before the cops got out with their own crowbar and popped the trunk as we left.

On our return to campus, no questions were asked.

But I had made notes of what we had taken and from which addresses. This went into the file I was dropping on the finance department's "IN" box.

The argument that we were stealing was countered by the intent to eventually pay.

Only matters if the cops are still being cops.

That's how we roll in an Apocalypse.