Title: Scenes, Part 1

Date: January 22, 2008 1:52 AM

Category: fiction

Tags: inprogress

She was taking him back home. He was injured. Far, far beyond the capabilities of medical care in the remote African village where he had been filming. In fact, with the sepsis that was setting in, he was far sicker than the capital city of Lilongwe's best hospital could even handle. He was just plain lucky that she was in the country. She was probably the only nurse with true Western critical care experience in the nation of Malawi at the moment. She was there with a UN humanitarian mission helping the refuges that had fled Mozambique to a nation that was only slightly larger than her home state of Tennessee.

She knew him from a science fiction television show that had never been shown in her home country. She doubted that he was conscious enough to register who she was through the sedatives she had given him. She also knew he was openly gay, but to mention that in this country would probably get him killed.

Getting him out of the country took some finagling. She had switched the morphine & saline vials. When they went through the checkpoint and her “morphine“ was confiscated, she still had the real thing to give him. She prayed that she would have him out of the country before her duplicity was discovered. Also she had used up her IV neosynephrine and the dopamine stock was down to her last bag. She really didn't want to think about tapping into her levophed stock. She was terrified about running these medication without an IV pump and levophed would be the worst to control in such primitive surroundings. An IV pump battery would had died long ago on the crazy 9 hour cross country road trip. She rarely touched any of these medications anymore because by this point natives were expecting death and their medical system didn't have the resources to continue extreme aggressive treatment, even for the young and strong. But she had seen it many times, run these drugs on many patients back in America, including those who probably shouldn't have received it. Full lifesaving measures on 93 year old grandmas whose cancer ridden bodies were fatigued from the fight and eyes were begging for cessation.

Dr. Schmidt from Dusseldorf had worked with her on 4 missions now and trusted her judgement with critical patients. In fact many times he had left her to manage the night shift with a “do whatever you think.“ When they had packed him up for the trip Dr. Schmidt had piled extra IV fluids on board with a quiet “you'll need it.“ She just nodded. Of course she'd need it. He was going to get much worse before he got better. She had the IV antibiotics & morphine in the false seat bottom in the back of the Land Rover. It was a nice invisible one which was good with the “patrols“ she kept running into. She suspected some of the patrols were more highwaymen instead of government troops.

She just wished Antoine would be able to get them there faster. Peter's fever was climbing. She directed Antoine to drive them to the British embassy. The passport she had found in his items indicated dual US/UK citizenship with a current address listed in Cardiff, Wales. At the moment she trusted the British to get them out of the country quicker than the Americans. The Americans would probably fly him out to Ramstein where she would loose touch with his care. She thought the Brits would allow her to see him through to London without much hassle. She had a passport with UN personnel badge so pretty much any of the member nations would help her. Plus she was sure MI5 would wait until they had touched down in the UK to grill her. The CIA would start the minute she walked through the door without caring if her patient was stable. The Brits had more class that way. She'd still be under surveillance until she'd been debriefed, but they'd let her continue to care for her patient before the questioning began.

As luck would have it when Antoine pulled in front of the British consulate just before she ran out of dopamine. The Scotsman who was pulling guard duty apparently recognized the face of her patient. So when she started barking order that she needed the facility physician and more dopamine, she got an immediate response. Dr. Smythe luckily had started his career as A&E physician who had had frequent exposure to shock trauma. She rattled off report with the succinct rapid fire staccato of the experienced critical care provider with a few questions from Dr. Smythe occasionally interjected to clarify her American terms & usage with his British experience (even medicine has its regional dialects). When he started rattling off mcg/kg/min to the consulate nurse and her blank look at him, the American took over. “Look just go look in the IV medication supplies. Find Dopamine. D-O-P-A-M-I-N-E. And a 250 mL bag of Normal Saline, that's 0.9 percent Sodium Chloride. And your IV pump. I'll handle it. Right now, you need a nurse who knows how to care for the critically ill. And right now I appear to be the only one in country.“

The Scotsman from the Guard popped his head into the infirmary. “RAF has one going wheels up in an hour. They can make room for you if you want.“

“Do it.“

“Someone medical has to go. They can rig a stretcher, but they're staffed as a cargo plane not medical.“

“Clear me through.“ She threw him her passport.

The flight to London was bumpy and uncomfortable. She kept talking to him to keep herself awake. “I'm taking you home. To London. I know it is not my home. Listen to me, you hear America in my accent. The Southland. I actually grew up in the area that was the border between the Appalachian and the Mississippi Delta accents. That is one of the most prejudiced places on the planet in my opinion. Sometimes I wonder how I came out of a place like that.

“I'm not saying I don't have prejudices because everyone has them in some form or another. I try my best not to let labels do more than start conversations. Like someone says they are an otaku, I try not to assume they live at home with their mother, but rather ask about their collection and interests. Heck, the fact I even know what an otaku is is amazing for where I'm from.”

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A/N: I've only got sections written to this story. Hence the title of Scenes. There are large gaping holes in the story because I just wrote the sections that my muse gave me.