GWOT Cleanup
Nov. 29th, 2018 07:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyI looked again at the sky. God damn it.
I looked at the casualties being helped into the lee of the loading dock. The radiation monitoring team was running; so was the hose line. They knew what they were doing. Been there, done that. At least the kids weren't screaming this time.
The back of the shuttle bus was a mix of trash and debris: food bar wrappings, empty water bottles, plastic and paper from dressings, vomit and blood and other fluids, expended brass, bits of paper and clothing and dirt and mud.
The janitorial team of two boarded to start cleaning it all up. They got it - that this was all life and death - and that their part was to service the vehicles and get them back into shape so we can go out again, because every trip out is lives saved. Bless them. And God has nothing to do with it.
I'd learned from the apartment building. When the sun said we were done, we were done. No night ops, not in this environment. Far too much can go wrong when a flat tire means a dead convoy.
When the hose was free and the casualties were carried into the loading dock, I decontaminated my hands, my shoes and my pants. I was still filthy but I wouldn't be tracking possibly radioactive particles all around.
As we were not going to be able to go out again today, I followed the casualties into the loading dock. We had four categories. "Chairs" in which our best plushy chairs, covered by plastic, allowed exhausted survivors to rest and await first aid. That was for those who could wait, attended by first aid trained people with some of the empathy I now completely, utterly lacked.
Then we had lawn chairs. I kid you not. Ordinary plastic lawn chairs. They could be adjusted by height so that casualties could lie down or sit up, a very poor man's hospital bed. They were also easy to decontaminate. This was Yellow, or Delayed. People who in peacetime would demand the attentions of an emergency physician and two nurses in a busy ER, but were not at high risk of early death as measured in minutes rather than hours.
In the area marked off on the ground (by me) with dashes of red colored duct tape, an actual hospital bed (stolen from an employee's residence), two gurneys and a strong metal table that the Cafeteria would never want back. Red pieces of construction paper in plastic protectors dangled from each of the four improvised beds. Immediate. For the treatment of people who _were_ at high risk of early death. People who should not be here at all - who should be in the backs of screaming ambulances or roaring helicopters, headed to comprehensive Level I trauma centers for lifesaving evaluation and treatment including fluid replacement and transfusion, surgery and medications.
Weren't none of that shit left in the Bay Area. Prewar estimates were that one small nuclear weapon would fill every critical care bed from Seattle to San Antonio. We'd been hit with two big ones.
What we had was a vet surgeon, whom I will not name to protect the extremely guilty. At our first meeting, I had explained to her in a handful of very forcible words that her duty as a healthcare provider was to care to the best of her ability for these patients - and if she didn't like it, she could make her own way to safety in a radioactive hell.
I'd looted supplies for her. A pushcart that had belonged to Facilities, with a tool box stolen from a big rig tow truck caught near campus on the day San Francisco had been double bitch smacked by the biggest firecrackers made by a human agency. Most of the tools tossed to the side, but a few remained. That first day, we'd wiped them in alcohol. Now we boiled them.
Have you ever held a person down while someone took their shattered limb off with a hacksaw? In the Age of Sail, one qualification of both a naval and a battle surgeon was how fast they could take off a limb, because the faster you do it, the less pain and shock lowers the survival chances of the casualty.
Our vet surgeon was getting better. Practice.
Outside, around a corner of the loading dock in an enclosure surrounded by blue tarps we had four pieces of plywood, the lids of server shipping cases, on waist high trestles. On the plywood, more tarps. On the tarps, dying people. Expectant.
I could take an expectant person and task an entire hospital - "Save this man!" And they couldn't. They could support them in dying, ease their suffering. But they couldn't save them, even with fifty units of O negative, a pharmacy full of every drug and a team of twenty ... but they could in trying to save that one person, kill hundreds by taking away so much care to lavish it on just one person.
In World War II the amphibious landing forces had charnel ships. Transports that were filled with those who could not be saved, collected and shoved out of the way so that the battle surgeons could focus on the ones who still had a chance.
One of my relatives had been a Marine in World War II. He'd been hit and had been triaged expectant. He'd woken up surrounded by dead and dying, and no one in attendance. He'd realized where he was and crawled to the entry port, grasping at the ankles of bearers and begging to be taken back to the hospital. After half an hour, they'd taken pity on him and backhauled him. He'd survived.
Enemy wounded had been tossed overboard. The Pacific War hadn't been pretty.
This outdoor enclosure was our charnel ship. The people on these tables were going to die soon. Burns over thirty percent of the body. Radiation exposure. Burns _and_ radiation. Penetrating trunk wounds that had breached organs. Head injuries, although fortunately for all of us they mostly didn't wake up.
We were out of both table and floor space. Two Employees were in the tarp area. One now wore an apron and was holding the hand of a dying man with his own. The other was going from person to person, giving them sips of water from the same bottle (a form of cross contamination that didn't matter at all now) and praying with them.
I had about as much use for chaplains as I had for psychologists. Zero equals zero. But this one was doing his job, comforting the dying, and the cross on his dirty white button-down shirt was for once a symbol of humanity not horror.
We had plenty of horror to go around. One guard was posted. His face was grim as he went from person to person, checking the names against his list. He _had to_ get their names before they passed. Not optional. I'd had to show him how, and I will draw a merciful veil over certain details. He'd almost shot me before he'd understood.
Now he was one of the damned, like me, and we nodded to each other.
I ducked around the next corner.
This was not viable. The tarps covered shapes and the flies were at them, despite the duct tape around ankles and above heads.
I walked back out, took out my binoculars and looked around. There, that hill. Far enough away, but close enough. The drainage would not affect the site water supply.
I broke squelch.
"Attention to orders. Even numbered guards will report to C dock. Bring shovels. Again, even numbered guards will report to C dock with shovels."
I collared the janitorial crew. I explained what was needed. They were understandably horrified.
I backed up the shuttle bus to get the door close to the far side of the tarp area.
"Element will lift on three. One, two, three!"
The vet surgeon came running out of the loading dock by the time we had the shuttle bus half full of bodies.
"What are you doing?" she screeched.
"Cleanup," I said callously. "We can't leave them unburied. It's a major health hazard."
"You can't do that! They're ..." she grasped for some concept that she thought would reach me, "... they're _evidence_. You can't just go burying people!"
I drew her to the side. My guards and one of her nurses watched anyway. Too damn bad.
I can't just go shooting people either, but I've "... been doing that too, _Doctor_. What do you suggest? On a warship we'd put them in the freezer, but I don't want to put radioactive dead bodies in the cafeteria freezer and We Need The Space For Food Anyway. We can't bury them at sea. I won't dump them off the site. These are our people, but I can't let their bodies kill anyone else. See that hill? The one that looks like a shoe? I am burying them on the side of that hill, right now. The graves will be marked. But we are losing daylight and this has to be done right now. There is no coroner, no examiner, no mortuary, it's not justice, it's JUST US."
"Keep loading," I ordered, as I went to the back of my truck and grabbed an empty ammo box. I got out a notepad, ripped out the used pages, wrote at the top of the next blank page. "BURIED AT THIS SITE, FATALITIES OF THE FIRECRACKER WAR:" and handed the task off to a guard to reconcile names from the shipping tags we'd wired around the ankles.
I slung my rifle. Even on campus, this movement needed security.
The vet surgeon with an anguished look went back to her duties, the people she could still save.
I rode shotgun in the door of the shuttle bus to my duties, to bury our losses, her mistakes, and anything and anyone else that got in the way of our people surviving this Apocalypse.
I looked at the casualties being helped into the lee of the loading dock. The radiation monitoring team was running; so was the hose line. They knew what they were doing. Been there, done that. At least the kids weren't screaming this time.
The back of the shuttle bus was a mix of trash and debris: food bar wrappings, empty water bottles, plastic and paper from dressings, vomit and blood and other fluids, expended brass, bits of paper and clothing and dirt and mud.
The janitorial team of two boarded to start cleaning it all up. They got it - that this was all life and death - and that their part was to service the vehicles and get them back into shape so we can go out again, because every trip out is lives saved. Bless them. And God has nothing to do with it.
I'd learned from the apartment building. When the sun said we were done, we were done. No night ops, not in this environment. Far too much can go wrong when a flat tire means a dead convoy.
When the hose was free and the casualties were carried into the loading dock, I decontaminated my hands, my shoes and my pants. I was still filthy but I wouldn't be tracking possibly radioactive particles all around.
As we were not going to be able to go out again today, I followed the casualties into the loading dock. We had four categories. "Chairs" in which our best plushy chairs, covered by plastic, allowed exhausted survivors to rest and await first aid. That was for those who could wait, attended by first aid trained people with some of the empathy I now completely, utterly lacked.
Then we had lawn chairs. I kid you not. Ordinary plastic lawn chairs. They could be adjusted by height so that casualties could lie down or sit up, a very poor man's hospital bed. They were also easy to decontaminate. This was Yellow, or Delayed. People who in peacetime would demand the attentions of an emergency physician and two nurses in a busy ER, but were not at high risk of early death as measured in minutes rather than hours.
In the area marked off on the ground (by me) with dashes of red colored duct tape, an actual hospital bed (stolen from an employee's residence), two gurneys and a strong metal table that the Cafeteria would never want back. Red pieces of construction paper in plastic protectors dangled from each of the four improvised beds. Immediate. For the treatment of people who _were_ at high risk of early death. People who should not be here at all - who should be in the backs of screaming ambulances or roaring helicopters, headed to comprehensive Level I trauma centers for lifesaving evaluation and treatment including fluid replacement and transfusion, surgery and medications.
Weren't none of that shit left in the Bay Area. Prewar estimates were that one small nuclear weapon would fill every critical care bed from Seattle to San Antonio. We'd been hit with two big ones.
What we had was a vet surgeon, whom I will not name to protect the extremely guilty. At our first meeting, I had explained to her in a handful of very forcible words that her duty as a healthcare provider was to care to the best of her ability for these patients - and if she didn't like it, she could make her own way to safety in a radioactive hell.
I'd looted supplies for her. A pushcart that had belonged to Facilities, with a tool box stolen from a big rig tow truck caught near campus on the day San Francisco had been double bitch smacked by the biggest firecrackers made by a human agency. Most of the tools tossed to the side, but a few remained. That first day, we'd wiped them in alcohol. Now we boiled them.
Have you ever held a person down while someone took their shattered limb off with a hacksaw? In the Age of Sail, one qualification of both a naval and a battle surgeon was how fast they could take off a limb, because the faster you do it, the less pain and shock lowers the survival chances of the casualty.
Our vet surgeon was getting better. Practice.
Outside, around a corner of the loading dock in an enclosure surrounded by blue tarps we had four pieces of plywood, the lids of server shipping cases, on waist high trestles. On the plywood, more tarps. On the tarps, dying people. Expectant.
I could take an expectant person and task an entire hospital - "Save this man!" And they couldn't. They could support them in dying, ease their suffering. But they couldn't save them, even with fifty units of O negative, a pharmacy full of every drug and a team of twenty ... but they could in trying to save that one person, kill hundreds by taking away so much care to lavish it on just one person.
In World War II the amphibious landing forces had charnel ships. Transports that were filled with those who could not be saved, collected and shoved out of the way so that the battle surgeons could focus on the ones who still had a chance.
One of my relatives had been a Marine in World War II. He'd been hit and had been triaged expectant. He'd woken up surrounded by dead and dying, and no one in attendance. He'd realized where he was and crawled to the entry port, grasping at the ankles of bearers and begging to be taken back to the hospital. After half an hour, they'd taken pity on him and backhauled him. He'd survived.
Enemy wounded had been tossed overboard. The Pacific War hadn't been pretty.
This outdoor enclosure was our charnel ship. The people on these tables were going to die soon. Burns over thirty percent of the body. Radiation exposure. Burns _and_ radiation. Penetrating trunk wounds that had breached organs. Head injuries, although fortunately for all of us they mostly didn't wake up.
We were out of both table and floor space. Two Employees were in the tarp area. One now wore an apron and was holding the hand of a dying man with his own. The other was going from person to person, giving them sips of water from the same bottle (a form of cross contamination that didn't matter at all now) and praying with them.
I had about as much use for chaplains as I had for psychologists. Zero equals zero. But this one was doing his job, comforting the dying, and the cross on his dirty white button-down shirt was for once a symbol of humanity not horror.
We had plenty of horror to go around. One guard was posted. His face was grim as he went from person to person, checking the names against his list. He _had to_ get their names before they passed. Not optional. I'd had to show him how, and I will draw a merciful veil over certain details. He'd almost shot me before he'd understood.
Now he was one of the damned, like me, and we nodded to each other.
I ducked around the next corner.
This was not viable. The tarps covered shapes and the flies were at them, despite the duct tape around ankles and above heads.
I walked back out, took out my binoculars and looked around. There, that hill. Far enough away, but close enough. The drainage would not affect the site water supply.
I broke squelch.
"Attention to orders. Even numbered guards will report to C dock. Bring shovels. Again, even numbered guards will report to C dock with shovels."
I collared the janitorial crew. I explained what was needed. They were understandably horrified.
I backed up the shuttle bus to get the door close to the far side of the tarp area.
"Element will lift on three. One, two, three!"
The vet surgeon came running out of the loading dock by the time we had the shuttle bus half full of bodies.
"What are you doing?" she screeched.
"Cleanup," I said callously. "We can't leave them unburied. It's a major health hazard."
"You can't do that! They're ..." she grasped for some concept that she thought would reach me, "... they're _evidence_. You can't just go burying people!"
I drew her to the side. My guards and one of her nurses watched anyway. Too damn bad.
I can't just go shooting people either, but I've "... been doing that too, _Doctor_. What do you suggest? On a warship we'd put them in the freezer, but I don't want to put radioactive dead bodies in the cafeteria freezer and We Need The Space For Food Anyway. We can't bury them at sea. I won't dump them off the site. These are our people, but I can't let their bodies kill anyone else. See that hill? The one that looks like a shoe? I am burying them on the side of that hill, right now. The graves will be marked. But we are losing daylight and this has to be done right now. There is no coroner, no examiner, no mortuary, it's not justice, it's JUST US."
"Keep loading," I ordered, as I went to the back of my truck and grabbed an empty ammo box. I got out a notepad, ripped out the used pages, wrote at the top of the next blank page. "BURIED AT THIS SITE, FATALITIES OF THE FIRECRACKER WAR:" and handed the task off to a guard to reconcile names from the shipping tags we'd wired around the ankles.
I slung my rifle. Even on campus, this movement needed security.
The vet surgeon with an anguished look went back to her duties, the people she could still save.
I rode shotgun in the door of the shuttle bus to my duties, to bury our losses, her mistakes, and anything and anyone else that got in the way of our people surviving this Apocalypse.
