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An Invisible War, Part I

Written by Danita Lee Ewing

Chapter One

June, 1633

1

Beulah MacDonald eased her spare frame into the padded leather chair in Dr. James Nichols' crowded office with a carefully hidden sigh of relief. Beulah, old girl, you're not up to those long hospital shifts anymore. A woman your age has no business on her feet twelve hours a day, most days of the week, turning patients, running a hospital and all that. Still, it wasn't as if there were many nurses around after the Ring of Fire. They could certainly use, oh, say a thousand fully trained registered nurses, a hundred nurse practitioners. And doctors. And pharmacists. Some physical and occupational therapists would be great, too. Enough trained people to handle everything that needed doing weren't just going to drop from the sky. Everyone had to help out where they could, including her. No more retirement checks and social security for you, m'dear.

"Here you go, Beulah. No cream and enough sugar to put any diabetic into a coma." James Nichols handed her a blue ceramic mug and shook his head in mock rebuke. His grin spoiled the effect a bit.

"I have to keep going somehow. I'm not diabetic you know, so a little sugar won't hurt me. At least we've got caffeine again, even if my arthritis is slowing me down some."

Beulah and James had developed a friendly sparring relationship when they were alone. When they were in public, acting in their roles as Director of Nursing and Director of Medicine, they were a little more formal but not too much. Beulah had never gone for that subservient nurse to the almighty doctor stuff in her entire forty-plus year career. She wasn't about to start at this late date even if James had been the type for that nonsense. Which he wasn't, thank God. She and James had worked together a great deal since the Ring of Fire, both in the field and here at the new Grantville hospital. Mutual respect for each other's expertise, a deep commitment to their patients and a shared sense of humor had helped them develop a strong friendship over the last two years. Since Beulah had worked in just about every kind of nursing over the years, she had been the logical (and nearly the only) choice to be the director of nursing at the new hospital after the Ring of Fire. They needed the younger nurses for the more physical work and the nurses older than she was were too old, too sick or dead now.

Still, she couldn't keep up this pace forever. The willow bark tea helped with the arthritis but it wasn't the same as her now unavailable prescriptions. Her hands wrapped stiffly around the hot mug of coffee. The heat helped the pain, as did the paraffin dips. Her definition of an old remedy was certainly changing, though. The paraffin dips had been something they did in the "old days." Without all the fancy medicines, surgeries and other treatments from the twentieth century, a lot of people were using old folk remedies or adapting ones from the 1630s. Which caused its own set of problems. No, not problems. Directors of nursing don't have problems, they have challenges, she reminded herself.

They sipped coffee in comfortable silence for several minutes. Outside James' door, she could hear the sounds of the hospital quieting down for the night. She could practically feel her tired muscles unknot as she sank deeper into the chair. Getting up again would be interesting, but James had known how sore her hips and knees were at the end of the day and had given her the most comfortable chair in the room. The thoughtfulness was as appreciated as the coffee and typical of the man.

She wasn't sure which of them spoke first, just general things at first, chatting about the staff, the hospital, difficult cases recently. So she was somewhat sandbagged by what he slipped in next.

"You want me to what!?"

No teasing grin lit James' face now. His tone was calm but determined. "Become the dean at the College of Medicine's new Health Sciences Department."

"I hate administration. Endless meetings. There's too much paperwork in the job I've got now. Being the dean of a brand new health sciences department will mean even more paperwork. Have you ever developed a course curriculum? Handouts, lecture notes, syllabi. Paper everywhere."

"No, I haven't developed a course. But you have," he countered smoothly.

"I taught nursing for twenty years at a community college. Part time. What we've all been talking about this past year is a multilevel training program for everything from nurses' aides to doctorally prepared researchers. I don't have the background for that. What about you or Balthazar? Balthazar knows everyone and the local educational system. He'd be perfect."

"Even if he weren't tied up with practice and helping train our spooks, Balthazar never fully recovered from his heart attack. You may be older chronologically, but he is older physically. The rest of the medically trained up-timers are needed for more direct patient care, although we'll all probably be doing some teaching and mentoring of students- especially the hands-on aspects of instruction. More importantly, most of us have never taught so much as a CPR course. We wouldn't know how to put together lectures, handouts or a syllabus. We're all being stretched in ways we never planned. You'll be great as the new dean."

James was good, she'd have to give him that. "What about education? Shouldn't a dean have more than a bachelor's degree? I never finished my master's degree as a midwife. Many of the faculty at Jena will have more formal education than I do."

If his snort was anything to go by, James didn't even pretend to consider that one. "You have more education than any other nurse around, up-time or down-time. You also have a great deal of experience in just about every area we need taught." James held up one hand to forestall the comment he could see forming on her lips. "Even if some of that experience is a little old, you've gotten back up to speed very quickly. Don't think I haven't seen how many times you wind up taking care of patients rather than office work. And most of your out-of-date stuff is still state of the art and then some here. Besides, some of your old-time knowledge is more within our current technology base's capabilities."

"I like taking care of patients and we're short staffed."

James pounced on that one. "Which isn't going to change unless we set up programs and start running students through them just as fast as we can. Besides, you told me you like teaching."

A distinctly mulish frown bloomed on Beulah's face. "That doesn't make me the right person for this. I'm already running the hospital."

"We needed you to set the hospital up and get it running. Things are going pretty well here now. You've got the administration side set up and running smoothly. The staff is oriented and trained. Starr Hunsaker can take over while you move on to developing the educational program. You won't exactly be alone doing it, either. We'll all help as much as we can. Getting people trained is a priority. We're staring down more years of war, not to mention smallpox, the plague and on and on. We have to have people ready or we're going to lose a hell of a lot of people, Beulah." James met Beulah's dark blue gaze in shared grief and frustration over the ones that had already been lost.

"We thought Mary Pat would be a good assistant for you," he continued. "She's already living with you, is young, smart and energetic and has come up through the ranks in the army. She's been a medical corpsman and LPN and is now experienced as an RN. She had good trauma experience in the army plus her experiences here. She'd really help you out creating the trauma courses. I'm sure the military will release her for detached service given how desperately they need people trained as medics, nurses and doctors. And almost all of Mary Pat's RN training was as an up-timer. That also works in her favor." James leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely together. "We need you to get the ball rolling again, Beulah. You tend to make sure the practical details of setting things up don't get missed so everything runs as smoothly as possible. You know what you're doing, have lots of experience, know how to work as part of a team and get things done. And, frankly, you'd be training Mary Pat while you're at it. You've been acting as a mentor for her for nearly the entire time since the Ring of Fire. You curb some of her enthusiasm with experience. It's a good match, one we can't afford not to take as much advantage of as possible."

Ouch, another point to James, thought Beulah. Mary Pat Flanagan had come to the wedding of Rita Sterns Simpson the day of the Ring of Fire. Her entire large family was left behind, a wound that was still raw, although she hid it fairly well from the outside world. Beulah knew how much she missed them, though.

Beulah had taken Mary Pat into her home just to give her a place to stay at first. It wasn't like Beulah's brother needed his room anymore and space was at a premium in Grantville right after the Ring of Fire. Beulah had never married. There had been a few Mr. Almost Rights over the years, but never Mr. Right. She loved kids, though, and through her work had had "her" kids strung all across the state. But Mary Pat was more like the daughter she had always wanted. They had developed more than a mentoring or landlady and tenant relationship. Mary Pat had almost completed her training as an RN from West Virginia University up-time. Having Mary Pat as her assistant would make the job of dean a lot more doable, as James and the others had clearly realized. Mary Pat was smart, organized and capable.

James and company are getting way too good at this sneaky political stuff. He's hung around Mike too long.

His next sentence changed her mind.

"You'd also have help from Hayes Daniels."

"Hayes! Are you nuts!" Beulah protested, waving her mug around and wincing when her swollen knuckles hit the chair arm. The throbbing in her hand convinced her to be still but didn't change her glare. "He and I worked together on the nurses' aide/LPN course that they're teaching over at the tech center and the combat medics course. We don't exactly have a good working relationship. And Hayes wants everything done to his standards, his way. Like we have time for that. We needed good enough to get moving, make changes as we go, and we needed those aides pronto. Mary Pat's temper matches that red hair. Mary Pat would strangle him before we were done."

Hayes was the first Silicon Valley refugee she'd ever met. He'd worked in two high-flying startups, working too many thirty-six hour days figuring out how to teach the world how the Internet would change their lives. He'd finally decided that he'd had enough, and gotten out and come, of all places, to West Virginia, close to his friend Mike Sterns.

James shook his head. "I don't know that I agree with you on that entirely. The two of you got the job done and we're getting well trained aides, medics and LPNs now. We need to be sure we set up the best system we can from the beginning. The need right now is urgent but we won't do ourselves any favors if we cut too many corners in the name of expediency. Hayes is the only person we have who can take highly technical material and translate it into the course material we need to teach new staff, in any reasonable amount of time. We need him to help evaluate and organize the Jena material in particular. You'll be too busy setting everything else up to handle all the course materials, our teachers are busy teaching the kids, and no one else has enough of a background to even start the job."

The mulish frown was back on Beulah's face. "The faculty at Jena could do some of it."

"The faculty at Jena will do some of it but they're just getting up to speed on some of our basic science material themselves. They'll be one step ahead of the students the first few years. We need someone who can do some of the higher level knowledge synthesis now. And that someone is Hayes. I doubt that any of the Jena faculty even understand some of the biology and chemistry concepts from our era."

"Look, James," Beulah said, running a hand over short curly hair, "I like Hayes, I really do. He's smart and talented and a genuinely nice guy. Hell of a cook, too, for that matter. He's also going under for the third time with everyone's projects and has been since we got here. From the stories he told us while we were doing that last course, doing what he did is like being in a combat zone. And he did it for five years, with no breaks. He got six months off, and he's right back into it. You know what that's like—you've seen it."

James looked a little uncomfortable for the first time in their conversation. "It isn't just that. How old are you now, Beulah? Early seventies? You're in good shape except for the arthritis but that's getting worse. The odds are, you won't be around for as long as we need you. We have to get the medical knowledge out of your head and the heads of the rest of us so we can pass it on to the next generation. Hayes is the only one who can take what you know and put it in a form others can use to learn. The knowledge is too important to be lost when we lose you." His voice was little more than a whisper.

"I know that James." Her voice was almost as quiet. "Hayes isn't even half my age, but at the rate he's going, he won't make it to forty-five. Adding more projects to the man won't help any of us. I'm really worried about him. The man needs a keeper. Otherwise, we may just use him up, and there won't be anything left."

"It isn't as if there are any other alternatives we've been able to find for Hayes. Let's leave him for a later discussion, okay? Right now, you are the best person for the dean's job. Period."

"There are other issues. What about Jena? We'll need to locate the new college there. The first few years of schooling will be there except for brief intensives here. We'll be depending pretty heavily on their faculty. They don't exactly have any women deans at the university. Or faculty, either. Not to mention some of my up-time notions on any number of topics. Have any of you talked to the professors at Jena? How much flack could I expect? It may be that however qualified I am, politically, I'm not the best person. I'm not exactly known for tact and diplomacy."

Beulah saw him note the shift in her tone. She was silently conceding that she was the best-prepared person for the job but looking at the position from another angle now. She was still looking for a way out as James continued his argument.

"There have been a lot of changes at Jena. They have had a considerable amount of exposure to us and to the way women function in all aspects of life here. Some of the faculty will undoubtedly be resistant to any change, just like anywhere else. Some will be especially uncomfortable with any changes initiated by a woman. The handwriting is on the wall though. They know that women as faculty and as deans are going to happen, as surely as the snow comes in winter. From their standpoint, having an up-time woman take the first steps would make for an easier transition. The senior faculty and other deans support it for the most part. You and, if she agrees, Mary Pat will have to work the rest out in Jena."

Beulah sighed. She couldn't think of any other arguments against her taking the position or other questions offhand but she wasn't about to rush into a decision this important. "I wasn't expecting this. I really thought you or Balthazar would become the new dean. Let me think about it. I'm not saying yes. I'm not saying no."

"That's fine. Think about it for a bit. How much time will you need?"

"Give me a couple of days, okay?"

As they walked out into the hall, James was quiet. Beulah was running things through in her head. He could practically hear the wheels spinning. When she got her teeth into a problem, she didn't let go. The early summer evening air was still warm, although it would turn cool again in a few hours. Her "let me think about it" was as close to an answer as he'd get. There was just enough contrariness in her nature to make pushing Beulah an exercise in futility.

As they reached the street, she turned to him with a question. "Exactly when do you plan on starting the school anyway?"

"We'd like to enroll our first class at the start of the year. Good night, Beulah." A good Marine knew when to retreat. James hurried off into the night, the sound of Beulah's creative but anatomically impossible exclamation lingering in his ears. Since he was a man of good sense, he waited until he was around the corner and out of sight before he started smiling.

2

Mary Pat came down the stairs the next morning at a brisk clip, uniform neatly pressed. Where she found the energy after three straight twelve hour shifts plus her daily morning Army PT, Beulah didn't know. The kitchen at home was softly lit by early morning light, quiet and still until Mary Pat brought it to vivid life.

"Morning, Beulah. What's up? You're not dressed yet. Are you sick?" Mary Pat's concern was evident in her voice. Beulah knew that this change in routine would worry her. She was always up when Mary Pat started PT. Her arthritis meant she took a little more time to get moving in the morning than Mary Pat. When Mary Pat came back home, Beulah was always ready to go and had breakfast waiting for them both before they headed to the hospital. The familiar routine felt like having family again. She'd ...