299 Days: The Community

Chapter 90 A Case of Tuna, Big Boy (May 8)

On the way back home, Grant told the Team that they would have a try out the next day. They were very excited. Mark and John were happy, too. Their friends would be contributing a lot to the effort. Paul was silent. He wasn’t pissy, just quiet. Grant assumed it was because he knew he was too out of shape to be doing the cool stuff.

Grant asked Mark and John, “is there any way the Team can sleep tonight instead of doing guard duty? I want us to be rested for tomorrow.”

Paul’s eyes lit up. “Hey, I can take guard duty tonight. No problem.”

“Hey, that would be awesome, Paul,” Grant said. Paul was stepping up. He had been doing everything he could since they got out there. He had a heart of gold. He fought like hell to get his daughter from his druggie ex-wife, he worked hard around the cabins, and now he was volunteering for a boring night of guard duty. Grant made a mental note to find plenty of things for him to do.

“We’ll brew some coffee when we get back,” John said.

“I’ve got something better, at least something that won’t use up our coffee,” Grant said. “I’ve got some caffeine pills for just these kinds of occasions. One tablet is 200 milligrams of caffeine; about one strong cup of coffee. Would you like a couple?”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Paul said. After a while he said, “With a serious guard station at the Pierce Point gate, I think we can go down to one guard at our shack. Besides, every cabin is full of well-armed people.”

Everyone nodded. This was the first time they had thought that the community-wide security was making their individual security better. They didn’t need two or three guards in the shack all the time. There was a sense that the community was improvising and coming up with solutions to problems. They had all been immersed in chaos for the past week. Chaos they could not have imagined before all of this. But now things were slowly settling down. Finally, something was working out.

They pulled up to their cabins and Drew was there with his lever action carbine. He waved them in. They hadn’t been overrun by biker gangs in the two hours they had a retired accountant with a cowboy gun guarding their families. Maybe things weren’t so dire.

“Pancakes tomorrow morning at 8:00, gentlemen,” Grant said. It was getting dark now. He was tired. He had been moving and thinking all day, and was ready to take a load off.

Grant walked into the cabin and Cole said, “Hi, Dad. How was your meeting?”

“Nice talking, little buddy,” Grant said. He loved to hear Cole communicate so well. “I got home in time for tucking.”

“Thank you, Dad,” Cole said.

Lisa was getting the kids ready for bed, although it was still a little light out. It was hard to say they needed to go to bed so they could get up for school because there was no school.

“How was your meeting?” Lisa asked. She was a little afraid her gun-loving husband would volunteer for some crazy militia thing.

“Really well,” Grant said. He described the level-headed former cop Rich, how organized things were, all the military and law enforcement people involved, and how the Team had a try out tomorrow. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“So you’re going to the try out?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m part of the Team and our skills are needed.” He had decided on the ride back from the Grange that he was going to tell Lisa he was with the Team and would be patrolling with them. He knew she would flip out. A couple days of getting along with her would be over. He was trying not to get upset.

“OK,” she said with a smile. “Just be careful.” She didn’t want Grant to do this, but she was trying hard to avoid getting into an argument. At the same time, though, she knew it made sense for him to do it. She was proud of him for taking such responsibility for everyone’s safety. She just wished it was someone else’s husband doing it.

“The community asked if there were any medical people here,” he said. “I didn’t want to volunteer you without talking to you.”

Lisa had been expecting this conversation. A few times, when they were driving on long trips for a vacation, they would come across a car accident before the ambulances got there. Lisa would get out and “go to work” as she called it. She had come to accept that as a doctor, an ER doctor no less, she needed to help people. But she wasn’t always exactly thrilled about it.

“There’s no decent hospital or even clinic here and I don’t have insurance,” she said. “What am I supposed to do? Treat people with third world supplies and get paid in chickens?”

Yes. Exactly. But Grant didn’t want to say that. “Well, you have skills. Life-saving skills. We can’t just let you sit it out while people die or suffer needlessly.”

Lisa got mad. She didn’t want to go be a doctor out there in Hillbillyville. She wanted her old state-of-the-art ER back in Tacoma.

But she knew she had to save all the people she could. Of course she would do that. But under primitive conditions. The whole situation sucked. Damn it. Nothing was right. She would have to treat people like they were in Haiti or something. Why couldn’t things be normal again?

As mad as she was, she couldn’t come up with a solid reason to disagree. She wanted to help people—there was never a question about that—but treating people out there would be such a nightmare. She was insecure because she knew exactly what to do with all the equipment and supplies of a modern emergency room, and with all the help of a team of ER nurses. What if she didn’t know how to treat people without all that stuff? It was scary.

“I could do a walk-in clinic,” she said after thinking about it for a few minutes. “Check-ups. That kind of thing. No organ transplants,” she said, laughing at that last part. The laughter broke the tension.

“Deal,” Grant said. “No organ transplants. There are a couple of nurses and an EMT out here. You wouldn’t be doing this alone.”

“Where would we do this?” Lisa asked. “Certainly not in our cabin.”

“Our” cabin? Grant was glad to hear her referring to the cabin as their place. Not Grant’s cabin, like she had before. She was slowly accepting that she would be out there for a while.

“And waivers,” Lisa said. “I want people to sign waivers. You can write them up.” She was surprising herself that she was actually agreeing to do this. But she knew she had to. Try telling a mom that her child would have to die because Lisa didn’t have insurance.

“Waivers are no problem,” Grant said. “There are no courts anymore, but I’ll do one. No problem. That sounds reasonable.”

Grant paused. “By the way, I don’t think you’ll be doing this for free. You can ask for food and other things for doing this. People will be glad to pay for medical care. And, just think, no taxes,” he said with a smile. Hey, there had to be some kind of upside to doing third world medical care in exchange for chickens.

“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “But I won’t turn anyone away who really needs it.” She paused and smiled, “I won’t give some middle aged guy a testicular exam without getting a case of tuna.” She winked and whispered, “Unless you have a case of tuna, big boy.”

Grant blushed. He had not seen that coming, and he planned to take her up on that offer later.

Thank God she was OK with this doctor thing. He went into overdrive to make this work. “I’ll talk to Rich in the morning. We’ll figure out a clinic facility. We’ll get an inventory of medical supplies. I have some rubbing alcohol here, for example.”

She looked at him. “You have rubbing alcohol? What else did my psycho survivalist husband pack up out here?” She was so happy he had taken these precautions. She was just having some fun with him.

“You’ll see, my dear,” Grant said. He started to describe all the things in the storage shed. He emphasized the fact that he bought all these things with the money it took to buy an ounce of gold back when it was just $900. “A two-quart pack of rubbing alcohol was $4.99 at Costco up until recently,” he said with a smile. That’s as close to gloating as he would come.

“Well, you’re still psycho but I’m glad I have some rubbing alcohol,” she said and then winked. “That way I can thoroughly sterilize my hands after giving testicular exams to all your friends.”

Grant looked around at where the kids were.

She read his mind. It wasn’t hard. She looked at him and whispered. “Yes, when the kids go to bed. My parents are upstairs, but I’ll try to forget that.”

This set up out at the cabin wasn’t ideal, but the basics were getting taken care of. Like sex. Oh, and food, water, shelter, and security. And sex.