Dial H for Heroics

Josie checked the doors at the ends of the halls. She found closets on one side of the

narrow end of the first floor hall, and a half bathroom with its own sink and toilet on

the other side. She smiled at that. She didn’t think the magic would build a plumbing

service into the place.

She should have known her magic wouldn’t have left out the most important feature

in her opinion.

“Is anybody here?,” asked a voice behind their tour group.

“We’re looking around,” called Josie. She walked back to the lobby.

Sir and Madam Harp stood in the door. They looked at the tiled floor and clean walls.

This one room was probably richer looking than any other medical facility they had

been.

“This is magnificent,” said Madam Harp. “I have never seen a healing temple as nice

as this.”

“I wouldn’t call it a temple,” said Josie. “We’re looking around to see how we want

to use it.”

“It looks good, Josie,” said Sir Harp. “How do you expect things to go?”

“We hope to set up so we can bring in the women from the tent city, wake them up,

nurse them back to health, either send them home, or find a place for them here,” said

Josie. “We’re going to lose some of them because they won’t trust us, or their home

is not there any more, but we have to try to do the greatest good for the greatest

number at the moment. Also some of Jane’s people are sick and need to be worked

on too. So we need to train them up, get them working, maybe help the surrounding

city. If I can get the other building, we can set up another place there to do what we

need on that side of town.”

“Is that why you are trying to hire adventurers?,” asked Harp.

“We are going to need crew,” said Josie. “Either we get a lot of temporary workers

that we can let leave when they want, and can cycle through to get new bodies, or

we need people who will stay and help until we don’t need them any more.”

“Maybe we can find people who want to switch work,” said Harp. “Adventuring

is a dangerous job. Looking after people might be a welcome change.”

“I doubt the Amazons will want to do this for long, but it’s the best solution I have

right now other than just making a million birds and changing reality for the city,”

said Josie. “I don’t think the Society would appreciate that.”

“I can see why they wouldn’t since they seem enamored with keeping the peace,”

said Harp. He smiled. His wife shook her head.

“Oi, Ear Ripper!,” called Jane. “What are these little rooms with the buttons?”

“They’re elevators,” said Josie. “I’ll show you.”

She gestured for the Harps to follow her as she joined the rest of the group standing

beside the elevator doors. She smiled at the picture of Doctor Strange on the wall.

Jack would love that.

“So say we have a woman that needs to go on the fourth floor, or we have visitors but

one can’t navigate the stairs,” said Josie. “You press the button to call the cab down.”

She pressed the button.

They listened as the cab moved in the shaft, dropping toward them. The doors

opened. Josie stepped inside first, turning to reach for the control panel. The others

stepped inside behind her. She pressed the button for the fourth floor. The cab started

moving.

“Now you wait out the ride,” said Josie. “The doors should open on the fourth floor.”

“They should open?,” said Massa.

“Sometimes elevators are disabled, and if the building is on fire, they’re not safe

to use,” said Josie. “A cable on a pulley is all that is lifting us. If it catches fire, the

elevator could drop in the shaft.”

“I think you have been taking lessons from Jack,” said Madam Harp. She smiled to

offset the sting of her words.

“I hope not,” said Josie. The doors opened on the fourth floor welcome center that

would have nurses to greet them when the place was open. “So that’s how that

works.”

She checked each room, the doors for the closets and bathrooms. Everything looked

all right. The rooms needed beds, and they would have to come up with equipment

if they needed some for the crazier conditions that she foresaw.

“We don’t have anything for surgeries here,” said Josie. “And we don’t have anybody

trained to do that kind of thing.”

“Marla’s twins,” Massa reminded her.

“I know,” said Josie. “We’ll have to train people in basic medicine if we can recruit

anybody to help us. I’ll have to take care of Marla myself before there is a problem.”

“What’s wrong with Marla?,” said Jane.

“She has twins,” said Josie. “They could kill her if things go wrong, and the scanner

is saying things could go wrong. Now that we have the place here, we need to start

thinking about helping her before we help anybody else. I’m not sure either one

of us is ready for it.”

“What’s the worse thing that could happen?,” said Jane.

“We lose her and her kids before we even start working on them, we lose all three

while we are operating, we lose all three after we operate to save her life,” said Josie.

“Naturally, the best case would be we save all of them.”

“Can we do it today?,” asked Jane.

“With the six of us?,” said Josie. “Maybe, but the babies are premature. If we take

them out, we’ll have to put them on life support until they are ready to fend for

themselves.”

“Does Marla know?,” asked Jane.

“I don’t know if she knows she could die, but I warned her to message you if she

had any unexpected pain, or bleeding,” said Josie. “If that happens, the babies might

have started to miscarry, or they ripped something loose inside of her so she started

bleeding on the inside.”

“We should do something about it now, rather than later,” said Jane. “Chance could

take a hand and turn everything bad for her.”

“All right,” said Josie. “We’ll need the life support for her kids, the operating theater,

and I’ll need some extra hands. Some of it will be easy enough to do, but she’ll need

someone to watch out for her after the surgery.”

“I can do that part easy enough,” said Massa.

“We’ll help with the surgery,” said Madam Harp. “Both Darry and I have had

experience enough.”

“Marla is my responsibility,” said Jane. “Are you sure you can do this?”

“I can do things,” said Josie. “The problem is I can’t guarantee what happens

afterwards. So we try things out, maybe show you how to do things, and then let

you show others. Once you are satisfied that you and your trainees are doing the best

you can, then we can train others to take over from the guys you trained.”

“I am only doing this for Marla,” said Jane. “Everyone else will have to depend on

Massa since she is our medical authority.”

“I am a midwife,” said Massa. “I don’t have enough to run everything.”

“Let’s see what we can do,” said Josie. “We might need locks on the doors until

we can hire guards to keep the thieves out. We can’t let our equipment walk out

the door.”

“More jobs for adventurers will be what the Guild needs at this point,” said Harp.

“So we have a plan,” said Josie. “Let’s do this now before something calls me away.”

“So the first thing we need is Marla,” said Jane. “Then we will need the operating

theater, with this life support you were talking about.”

“We’ll need a scanner so we can see what we are doing,” said Josie. “I can do this

with my watch, but we are going to need some kind of encyclopedia that our trainees

can use during their own operations.”

“Like the code book,” said Massa.

“Exactly,” said Josie. “We don’t want people worked on for the wrong conditions.”

“All right,” said Jane. “Let’s get to it. Massa and I can run people through tomorrow

and show them everything.”

“Can all of the women read and write?,” asked Elaine.

“I don’t know,” said Jane.

“You are going to need a scribe to keep records for what potions you need, and

payments in to the hospital, and out to your suppliers,” said Elaine.

“This is getting so complicated,” said Jane. She made an ewww noise.

“Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” said Josie. “One day, you will look back

at this and say I should have punched Jack Lee in the face when I saw him.”

“That is so true,” said Jane.

“I think a meeting with the Amazons should take place, and then we bring everyone

over to do the tour, and then figure out who can do the work, and who can’t,” said

Elaine. “And then we start rotating the staff.”

“Elaine, I would like to hire you to run this place,” said Jane.

“If I did that, I couldn’t keep the city safe from Jack,” said Elaine. She smiled. “There

are things we talk about that would burn your ears off your head.”

“And she works for me to make sure the city is safe from me,” said Josie. “Let Hilda

run things. She’s your number two.”

“Hilda is thinking about leaving, and going home,” said Jane. “We talked about it

before you went to talk to Endwright. She hasn’t made up her mind yet.”

“What about Madam Harp?,” asked Massa. “She said she’s done this work before.”

“Oh no,” said Madam Harp, holding up one hand. “I worked on the battlefield. That

is a lot different from running an actual healing institution.”

“How?,” asked Josie. She crossed her arms as she gazed at the older woman.

“Things were done for expediency, there wasn’t much care for records or treatments

after the fact, you were there to move people away from the line,” said Madam Harp.

She waved her arms to encompass the whole building. “This is an institution that will

need proper procedures and handling.”

“The time has come for you to rise above the best and prove your spirit never dies,”

said Josie. “Don’t turn away now.”

Madam Harp looked at her husband. He smiled at her.

“You know you can do this job,” said Sir Harp. “You’ve done similar things before.”

“It will take up a lot of my time,” said Madam Harp. “I don’t like that.”

“Get yourself a bunch of Elaines,” said Josie. “But not my Elaine. I wouldn’t know

who to set on fire without her.”

“I highly doubt that,” said Madam Harp. “How do you want to do this, Jane?”

“We have the meeting, introduce you to the others, get as many as we can who can

take up the burden, get any who can act as scribes to set up our record keeping, and

then deal with Marla. Then we set up a schedule to empty out the yard, and move

everyone here. Then we see who we can hire to help us,” said Jane.

“Should we have them watch Marla’s operation?,” said Josie. “Some people don’t get

what they are getting into until they actually see what’s going on.”

“Maybe,” said Jane. “I’ll ask her. We definitely are going to need cooks to feed these

women if they wake up and return to normal.”

“You are also going to need laundry people, and cleaners to keep the building clean

while you work,” said Josie.

“I’ll make a list,” said Madam Harp. She looked out the fourth floor window at their

end of the hall. She shook her head. “I can’t believe this.”

“Don’t think of it as a responsibility,” said Josie. “Think of it as stopping Jack from

extending his shadow across hundreds of lives that need not ever know he was there.”

“You two say the same things about each other,” said Madam Harp. “Neither of you

are as bad as you make each other out to be.”

“We can be,” said Josie. “Jane, I’ll have Jack place a stargate down in the lobby so

your women and hirees can move back and forth from the House to here.”

“That would be appreciated,” said Jane. “It would save on walking across the city.”

“All right,” said Josie. “Let me send you guys home, and then I will have to ride

herd on my girls. Hopefully June isn’t being a bad influence.”

“We should all go to the House,” said Madam Harp. “The quicker we can get done

with that part of things, the better.”

“Plus we need to show you the scanner so you can see how we are seeing how people

are sick,” said Massa. “That will help with the decision making.”

“If Hilda does want to leave, we’ll carry her wherever she wants to go,” said Josie.

“That’s the least we can do for her.”

“I’ll tell her,” said Jane.

“Let’s talk to everyone and ask Marla what she wants to do,” said Josie. “Then we

can get started.”