Hank and Juan's Story

Twenty minutes later when the Doc came around he found the pair sleeping, Juan motioned him over closer to the televisions to talk.

“Heard the Jefe wanted to see me?”, Doc asked Juan.

“Yeah he had some questions about Sky Ridge and about cleaning the wounds of the guys in the pen. Maybe get the nurse to break out all the Hydrogen peroxide and clean up the bitten.”

“Clean up the….naw that wouldn’t work their wounds are already infected, cleaning them out now would not do much goo..”, Doc stopped at Juan shook his head.

“No Doc, it ain’t for them, it is for everyone else, to make sure it looks like maybe we are at least trying to do something, besides maybe it will help someone, you never know right? Could Betty take some of the boys around, show how to clean up the mess and let them take over after that?”

“Oh I get it, yeah, my bedside manner has gotten kind of worn in this world of managed care, I can see how it would be a comfort to everyone else at least. Beth, her name is Beth Juan. Another nurse came in too, Charlie or something, a guy.” Juan raised his eyebrows, “Yeah, I am ‘old school’ enough to still find that odd too, a male nurse, still there are, were, more and more of them lately, he could do that, I guess. What did Hank want to know about Sky Ridge?”

“How big a place is it? Could we all fit? I don’t think you are gonna find many of the people here have ever been there.”

Doc knew what Juan was saying, the people holed up in the Mike’s club were predominately from Juan’s old neighborhood, which was in the bottom of the income bracket for the metro area, not quite THE bottom, but not high enough up the chain to have gone for treatment at a hospital like Sky Ridge either. “Well I worked a few shifts in their ER when they first opened, it has about 30 beds, but they don’t have much in comparison to Denver General or even University Hospital, I suppose the place might do though there is only one main road going by the place and it is backed onto the highway, big fences just went up there last year, that would be good to keep any zombies on the road from seeing us. We could block the other street at both ends, easier than securing this place, no creek leading to the reservoir out back to contend with either. We’d have to move though, all these people and we need the food and stuff here, the generators would be handy but any hospital with a trauma center has generators. I will have to tell Jack to look out for a bus or two, plus semi-trailers to haul the food out of here. Maybe we keep this place as an outpost to guard the food and goods? Move the families over to Sky Ridge and clear the roads between the two places?”

“Well, the highway is open, it looks like the national guard already went through there, maybe yesterday and opened it up. How many regular rooms does the hospital have? How many floors?”, asked Juan.

“Its beds, Juan, I think they have like, 400 beds, the place is huge, it sits on 40 acres, tons of parking, I am not sure why I wanted to go stay at University, the Sky Ridge Hospital has rooms that are like Hotel rooms, some of them are suites, definitely geared towards the higher class. I suppose it would be okay if no one else got there before us. I’ll talk to Jack, if the highway is open, maybe we could send a couple boys up there to scout it out?”

“Nah, you’re a council member now Doc, I’ll talk to Jack and get him on it, tell him to find the buses and semis too. Plus we are going to want more guns and ammo. 400 beds? That is a small town, plus 40 acres of land, so we could see zombies coming across the yard, that is even better. What was it like working there? Why did you stop?”

Juan didn’t say it but the Doc knew what he was aiming at. When they had first met the Doc had been holed up in a small clinic in a poorer part of town, not exactly in the same category as a hospital built to server the upper echelon of Denver’s society. The Doc thought about it for a second and replied, “I had some trouble Juan, got reviewed and lost, the rich fucks at Sky Ridge let me go pretty quick after that. I turned to private practice and had to start small.”, he held up his hand to forestall Juan’s questions on the subject, “It was five years ago and I don’t want to talk about it. All you need to know is I am licensed to practice, so is Beth, and I think this Charlie guy is too, though he didn’t have his paperwork with him. I guess you might be right though, Sky Ridge should be better than University for a wide range of reasons, I can’t let my personal feelings get in the way. Besides it would be good to screw over those bastards and take their hospital away from them too.” He rubbed his hands together like a greedy pirate, “Okay I say we take it, move our guys in, start running food over as we need to resupply.”

“Okay, I wasn’t gonna grill you doc, we started over now you know. I don’t care what you did or to who, so long as you do your best now. You better take a few of the boys under your wing too, in case this ain’t like we think. Ain’t short term. I gotta go talk to Jack again. Check Hank while you are here?”

Doc looked at Juan in a most peculiar manner, but said, “Sure thing, vice-jefe.”

Juan watched while the Doctor checked on Hank and had to wonder a little about the medicine he had gotten at the doctors request that morning. Half the bottles were antibiotics, Juan read that on the labels, the other half were prescription pain medicines, of which only a very small amount had gone to Hank, six pills in fact out of 4 bottles. Juan was not a doctor or even that experienced with medicine, but he knew most of the common antibiotics, which is how he knew which ones were for infection and which bottles of medicine were probably for pain. The extra three bottles of antibiotics were sitting back in the pharmacy; the four bottles of ‘other’ medicine had not been in the bag when Juan returned the medicine to the pharmacy. He didn’t want to think too much about it, but he could not help asking himself, “Where did those other bottles of medicine go?”

After the doc finished poking around Hank, not quite waking him up, he wandered off to find nurse Beth or Charlie and get them on disinfecting the bitten’s wounds. Juan wandered off to find Jack. Once he was outside one of the men told him Jack had gone back to helping the guys move cars into position. Juan wandered slowly over to where he saw the men working on the street, maybe a quarter mile away. There were armed men all around the parking lot, most had baseball bats, quite a few had rifles, they were taking down the zombies as they approached, it did not appear like there were a lot of zombies coming around anymore, they were just trickling in by ones and twos. The men, and some women, handled them quickly and efficiently, using their bats, not their guns. Juan already knew that loud noises attracted the zombies attention. As he was walking a shot rang out and one of the men fell backward behind the car, the other men started yelling and shooting at something beyond the cars that Juan could not see.

Juan ran up to the men, in the July heat it made him break into a sweat, even to go a quarter mile, by time he got there the shooting had stopped, a man was bent over the man on the ground who was shaking and kicking his feet. Juan elbowed his way in next to him and knelt down. The man had been hit in the neck. Juan didn’t know either of the men, the man trying to treat the wounded man yelled out at Juan, “Back the fuck off and give me room. Someone go get Doc! You!”, he yelled right at Juan, “Back off and give me room to work!”

Juan sat back on his heels and yelled in Spanish at one of the men to grab some clothing to help stop the flow of blood. Quick enough they had a clean looking blanket out of a nearby car torn into rags, it however did not do any good, the man kept bleeding and kicking his feet, first his feet stopped moving, then he stopped moving entirely, then the other man working on him started CPR, Juan had been to all the classes to certify as a Cub Scout leader so he jumped right in on compressions, thanking God he did not have to do the bleeding. What seemed like half an hour later the Doc was there, he knelt down in the blood, looked at what was going on and said quietly, “Stop.” Neither Juan nor the other man stopped working. Doc raised his voice and said , “Charlie, Juan, stop!”

Juan looked up at him, sweat beading and rolling into his face, Charlie, saw Juan stop and said, “Don’t stop goddamn it, we can save him!”

Juan looked at the doc, the doc said, “Charlie! Charlie look at me.” Charlie did so. “I am the doctor here, this man cannot make it, I am calling it. Time?”

Charlie responded by looking at his watch, “Fifteen thirty-fi….dammit!” He got to his feet a little wobbly and looked down on Doc, “We could have, should have..”

“Charlie, things have changed, we couldn’t have, shouldn’t have. Me, you and Beth and anyone else are going to have to have a talk about triage, sooner, today. There are no hospitals to go to, no flight for life, nothing, if we can’t fix it here, with what we have, it won’t get fixed. We don’t have much here either. Which means we won’t be able to fix much.”

Juan looked at the doctor, “Triage?”

“Triage Juan, is when a nurse or someone else, a doctor some times, evaluates who we can fix and who we can’t, once the ones we can save are in one category, they are evaluated for who needs the most help to save now, versus the ones we can afford to leave for later. Like treating someone bleeding badly, before a guy with a broken finger. Sure the finger might hurt, he might even have gotten to us first, but the guy bleeding to death can’t afford for us to wait to set the guy’s finger or he, the bleeder, will be dead. Triage. Usually we can work everyone, so triage is not needed. Sometimes though, like if two buses collide or a plane goes down and does not kill everyone, there is a need to decide who to treat and in what order. I have been pretty lucky and only had a couple of times where I had to assign a nurse to do triage. Funny too usually the nurses have to do it.”

Juan nodded, and said, “Okay, so now you mean if people get shot in the neck, there won’t be any way to save them, so we should not waste time trying to save them?”

“If it comes to that, yeah, I am not a miracle worker, I was never a surgeon, I couldn’t have done anything for this man if direct pressure didn’t stop the bleeding. I am sorry. Charlie you did all you could do. By the way Charlie, this is Juan our ‘segundo’, did I get that right Juan?”

Again Juan nodded, “Pretty close. ‘Say-goon-doe’, that is close enough.”

“Means ‘second’ doesn’t it?”, seeing Juan nod yes, he continued, “Yeah I heard some of your neighbors saying that, it sounds better than ‘vice-jefe’ to me.”

Charlie, held out his bloodied hand to Juan, who took it and was pulled to his feet. Charlie then shook his hand, “Sorry I yelled at you. I know you were trying to help, I just needed space. I have the feeling my life of treating people is going to suck for a long time though, if I can’t save them, they are going to die and we won’t be able to save many trauma patients now. You see what happen Juan?”

“No, tell me.”

“We were moving cars into place, a guy drove up with car full of people, friends and family, only one of them was not bitten. Thomas here”, he pointed at the dead man, “told them our deal, the bitten go into pen, the girl who was not bit could come in and not be segregated. Or they could leave, their choice. Just like Jack told him to say, you know? Well, they got all mad about it, made to drive away and we got back to work, about ten seconds later one of them shot Thomas from a block away. Everyone shot back, probably killed all of them. Hey,” Charlie said to everyone around them, “Did anyone check on them?”

A chorus of “No” and “Hell No!” came back from the crowd. “Maybe we should? Just in case?”

Jack’s voice called out from somewhere outside the circle, “Yeah, we should. I’ll go, you want to come with me Juan?” Jack stepped out in front of the crowd, a look of sadness on his face as he glanced towards Thomas.

“Si.”, replied Juan, “I’ll go. Gimme a gun somebody.”

A man handed Juan a new looking shotgun, he whispered, “Fully loaded, 5 shots, plus these.” As he passed the gun and a half empty box of shells over to Juan. “Okay, everybody else get back to work. Next time, we keep our guns out and ready until they get out of sight completely okay? C’mon Juan.”, said Jack.

The doc took Charlie aside and started talking to him as Juan, Jack and a couple of other guys started walking slowly to the van. As they walked the block to where it was Juan could smell gasoline and blood.

“You came looking for me, right?”, asked Jack to Juan.

“Si. We need to find a bus or two, maybe a semi too. I think we are moving to Sky Ridge, we wanna send some people over to take a look at it first, the highway should be open, it I-25 was this morning when we came through to here anyway. You know anyone who would want to go?”

“Hm tough getting people to leave, plus brother, I don’t know the way to Sky Ridge, I could get you to Denver General though. Hold that thought, lets take care of this first.”

They had approached the van, there was movement inside of it. The thing was a wreck, with dozens of bullet holes in the side, both tires were flat and gas and anti-freeze were leaking all over the pavement beneath the vehicle. At least one of the bitten had turned and was feeding on the others, who all looked dead or close to it. Jack approached the door and the squirming mounds of flesh inside it. Aiming his gun into the van, he pulled on the handle of the door, spilling a couple of the bodies half out into the street.

One of the bodies was moving like a slow zom and drew Jack’s attention, he put a bullet in its head before Juan even knew if it were a zombie and not just a badly wounded man. Turning towards him, Jack said, “I am in charge of security, anyone kills one of my guys they can’t expect me to let them in. These guys are all dead anyway Juan, all bitten, except her.” He pointed to a woman in the back seat, who had taken a bullet to the head, “She claimed not to be, I am shooting all these guys in the head so they don’t come back.” Jack then proceeded to do so, the two guys with him watched for other zombies attracted by the noise and shot two of them as they approached. Juan just watched and waited. When Jack had all the bodies out of the van and on the ground he rummaged around and pulled out all the guns and bags he could find, going through the bags for ammunition, there was a lot of it to go with the hunting rifles and shotguns, plus some rounds for a glock style plastic pistol one of the men had one him. Jack, Juan and the boys brought all the guns back with them, where the work was continuing on moving the cars.

“Fuck Juan, you know I issued instructions that got one of our guys killed. It could have been you or that kid you came in with, Kevin, or any of us. I don’t know if I am cut out for telling people to do things that will get them killed.”

“Si. You did like we decided; I would have done the same.”

“Maybe, maybe I should have spoke up against turning people away instead.”, Jack said sadly.

Juan reached over and grabbed Jack’s shoulder, stopping him and turning him them both face to face. “You did the right thing, you hear anybody blaming YOU for what happened? No? That’s right, ‘cause they all, all these people would have done the same thing, you know why? Yeah, sure you do, because it is the RIGHT thing to do. Some of us are gonna die Jack.”, smiling he continued, “Well some of YOU. Not me.”

That got half a grin on Jack’s face. “You saying I can’t afford to overthink this huh?”

“Si amigo. Si.”

Jack seemed to digest this and they walked the rest of the way back to the group in silence, one there he turned back to Juan and said, “So Juan, why are we still working on the perimeter if we are leaving this place, shouldn’t we just get packed up to go? I can have twenty of these cars moving in 15 minutes if you want to go today, take three or four over to scout the place then come back for everyone else if it is clear.”

“Doc said, maybe we could keep this place too, it is built like a fort, we hold it and the supplies and use the hospital to live in. Doc has been to the hospital, I think I could find it if he gave me directions, I’ll go.”

“What? Our Segundo getting into the line of fire? No way, not on my shift you ain’t.”

“Hah, who will override me? You? You are just a board member.”, Juan joked.

“Oh playing politics are we? I’ll have you know, rumor has it anyway, that our Jefe, wants a couple of women on the board, I was thinking of nominating Nanci and maybe your mom, what was her name? Gloria?”

Juan’s face paled, “You wouldn’t!”

Laughing Jack shot back, “Maybe we can come to a deal without me resorting to such extreme tactics?”

“What did you have in mind?”

Jack looked thoughtful for a few seconds, “Okay, I go, you go, one of the nurses goes, Charlie, plus three others for the extra guns and eyes, we take pickup trucks with extended cabs. This way we have a nurse to get the supply inventory, and the trucks to carry some of it back, if the place is clear or clearable, then we just bring back a few days worth of medical supplies, if it isn’t we do a quick snatch and run back here with whatever we can get away with. Sound good?”

“Si. Yeah, sounds good, I want to go now, before Hank wakes up and ‘modifies’ our plan any. He is too hurt to come with us, you know how he is though, he would want to come, this way we will be gone before he wakes, if not back before then.”, said Juan.

“Okay I will get Charlie, the three others and two trucks lined up. You go talk to Old man ‘Zales get him to at least cut us some bottled water, we can forage for food along the way if we have to.”

“Si.”, Juan turned and headed back to the building.

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This section was last updated on 30 Jul 2008

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