Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse

CHAPTER 13 Spring

For the three months before the birth, Mary had read and read again everything in their library about pregnancy and childbirth. The book she read the most was the midwife’s training book called Heart and Hands by Elizabeth Davis. She made Todd read all the books at least twice, too. She had a fairly easy pregnancy. Mary weighed herself and checked her blood pressure twice a week. From her reading, she knew her best chance for a healthy baby was exemplary diet and plenty of exercise. Using the test strips provided in one of the birthing kits that were stocked at the retreat, she tested her urine for sugar which would indicate gestational diabetes. She also tested it for protein which would indicate toxemia. However, she never had much swelling of her hands and feet, so she was not really concerned about the possibility of toxemia.

She wished she wasn’t the first woman to give birth at the retreat, since no one else had ever been involved in a birth except herself during her obstetrics rotation in her nurse’s training. Margie had given birth to Della but it was a hospital birth and Margie said that she was “pretty well knocked out” at the time. She had also seen and assisted farm animals give birth. But she had had a pretty difficult time giving birth to Della, and increasingly radiated nervousness about the upcoming home birth. Finally, Mary decided she didn’t want Margie there at all for the birth, even though she was the only one to have gone through it.

Lisa Nelson, who was about Mary’s age, told Mary she would really like to be there for the birth. She said, “Mary, you might not be able to help at every birth here. I really think I ought to learn as much as I can from you. Someday Mike and I would like to have a family and I want to know what I’m getting myself into.” Lisa was a disciplined and dedicated pupil. Mary was happy she would have her help at the birth. Mary wasn’t too worried about the baby needing any special medical attention since most floppy babies are caused by anesthesia. But Mary was concerned about tearing her perineum when birthing the head and shoulders. The last thing she wanted was Todd or Lisa sewing up her most delicate parts. She wished she could reach to sew herself up if necessary—but that was impossible.

On the evening of March twenty-fourth of the second year, Mary had a “bloody show.” This was the mucous plug being dislodged as the cervix began to dilate. Mary, Todd, and Lisa were very excited, because they knew that this meant that labor would be beginning soon. She had about three hours of irregular contractions that night, but then they stopped. The next afternoon, irregular contractions began again.

By dinnertime the contractions were eleven minutes apart. Mary had very loose stools during the day, which was another encouraging sign of early labor.

About 7 p.m. she became nauseated and vomited, but she knew that this too was nothing to worry about. During this early labor phase, Mary went about her usual daily tasks to keep her mind off the discomfort of the contractions, but she was careful not to tire herself.

At 8 p.m. Mary felt like she was tensing up more than she wanted to, mainly because her contractions were so strong. Lisa and Todd were invaluable at this time. They reassured her, and started her on breathing exercises to help her get through the intensity of the contractions, and to distract her attention. Suddenly she felt a tremendous pressure, and her bag of water broke. There was amniotic water everywhere. Todd and Lisa were aghast both to see so much fluid, and to see Mary crouched down over the bedsheets, carefully examining them.

“What a relief! Great!” Todd and Lisa were still quizzical. “Don’t you get it?” Mary asked. “The fluid is clear! There’s no sign of merconium in the fluid. That would have darkened it. That means that the baby probably isn’t in fetal distress.” All three were grinning now.

Lisa asked, “What does it feel like, Mary?” She replied, “I wouldn’t say my contractions are painful. But they are incredibly intense. It is r-really hard to stay relaxed and not tense up.” The contractions began coming closer together.

Todd massaged her entire back and put counter-pressure on her lower back. She remarked that it really helped. She started feeling an urge to push. After scrubbing up with Betadine solution, Todd and Lisa both checked her dilation.

Todd estimated ten centimeters. Lisa agreed that she felt like she was fully dilated. They couldn’t see any more cervix holding back the head. Mary squatted to get gravity working on her side—getting the baby down more quickly. She pushed with each contraction for thirty-five minutes. Gradually, they could see the crown of the baby’s head.

Mary moved to a semi-sitting position on the bed so Lisa and Todd could control the emergence of the head and prevent tearing. If she were to remain squatting, the baby would come too quickly. Lisa checked the presentation and declared with a whoop, “The baby is looking backwards and is well flexed.”

Lisa and Todd urged Mary to pant to ease the baby out as slowly as possible and avoid tearing. They asked her to refrain from pushing hard on the next few contractions. The baby’s head was eased out slowly, with a liberal application of mineral oil. As soon as the baby’s head had emerged, Todd reached down and ran his finger around the baby’s neck, checking to make sure that that none of the umbilical cord was wrapped around it. He let out a sigh of relief, both from feeling the absence of any cord, and seeing the healthy pink color of the baby’s head. Lisa bent down and quickly suctioned the baby’s mouth, throat and nose with a bulb syringe. She knew that this was an important step, so that any mucous would be cleared before the baby took its first breath.

With the next contraction, Todd eased out the baby’s shoulders one at a time, again to prevent tearing. Once the shoulders were clear, the baby practically fell into Todd’s hands, all slippery and gurgly. “It’s a boy!” he exclaimed.

They wiped him and dried him quickly and covered him with sterilized blankets. Lisa waited until the umbilical cord stopped pulsing and then clamped it in two places with a sterilized retractor and a special plastic umbilical clamp from the birthing kit. Todd then cut the cord about two inches from the navel. Lisa and Mary examined the baby. They agreed that his breathing was rapid but strong, and that his color was exceptionally good. Lisa nudged Mary and said, “High Apgar, right?” Mary was too overwhelmed to reply. Todd said, “Thank you for bringing me a son, darling,” and leaned over to kiss Mary.

Then he picked up his son’s impossibly small hand in his own in wonder. “He’s so small, he’s so small!” Mary put the baby to her breast, and he suckled instinctively, but not skillfully. “Don’t worry, he’ll learn,” Todd said.

The third stage of the birth felt like it took longer than the twenty minutes that Todd and Lisa anticipated. Mary was so entranced with looking at her baby’s face, she hardly paid any attention to the passage of time. Lisa noticed the telltale lengthening of the umbilical cord dangling from Mary. She knew that this meant that the placenta was separating from the uterus. Lisa urged, “Come on Mary, you need to stand up so we can deliver the afterbirth.”With Todd’s help, Mary did as she was told. Mary’s knees were shaking from exhaustion. The placenta came out on its own into a large bowl with one easy push from Mary.

Todd and Lisa carefully examined it to make sure that it was complete. Although it was torn, all of the pieces were there, and they felt relieved, knowing now that there was little chance of a uterine infection or a postpartum hemorrhage.

Lisa then checked Mary’s perineum for any tears, and was happy to report that there were none large enough to require stitches. She chuckled and said, “There’s just a few little skid marks on your taint, Mary. No stitches for you!”

Mary laughed and said, “That’s good, because I wasn’t sure that I was going to trust you to stitch me up anyway. I remember you always used to tie your practice stitch knots backwards!”

Todd took care of cleaning up both Mary and the bed. The bedsheet was soaked, and the rubber sheet beneath it saved the rest of the linens and the mattress from sure ruin. Looking at the soaked linens, he exclaimed, “I’m not sure we’ll ever get these stains out!” He wrapped up all of the sodden linens and towels and threw them in a bucket of cold soapy water to soak. Mary looked up and said, “Well, since it’s a boy, I guess we’ll call him Jacob, like we discussed. Is that okay with you, Todd?” Todd walked over to the bed and picked up the baby in his arms, and said, “Yep, he’s definitely a little Jacob. He comes to us as a gift from God, and our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so it is only fitting that we call him Jacob.” Jacob weighed nearly nine pounds at birth. The next day, when the rest of them got their first peek, Mary pronounced him “very healthy.”

The boy’s full name was Jacob Edward Samuel Gray. It was Todd who suggested the name. He said, “I wasn’t even given a middle name by my folks, so I didn’t have any choice as to what I’d be called. It was always just Todd. I wanted to give our son some more leeway. Little Jacob here will be able to choose from Jacob, or Jake, or Edward, or Ed, or Eddie, or Samuel, or Sam. How’s that for options?”

The first summer after the retreat was activated, the group made only a halfhearted attempt at gardening. Security was the main concern. With a large quantity of stored food available, a big garden was not a necessity. Only a quarter of the garden plot was put under cultivation that summer. By the spring of the second year, however, all of the group members were tired of eating storage food. As Kevin so aptly put it, “There’s only so much you can do with wheat, rice, and beans.”

Most breakfasts consisted of heated wheat berries (whole wheat soaked overnight in water), and fresh baked wheat bread slices dabbed with a bit of reconstituted butter, peanut butter, or occasionally some jam. On alternate days they made pancakes, oatmeal, or cornmeal mush. Lunches were typically either peanut butter sandwiches (using dehydrated peanut butter) and soup, or simply a large kettle of steamed rice. Dinners were more varied. There were stews, elk and venison steaks, casseroles, rice pilafs, dehydrated vegetables, canned fruits, canned vegetables, and canned meats. In the summer there were fresh vegetables available, including lettuce, cabbage, and tomatoes.

For the first half of each winter there were crocks of slaw that Mary kept out on the north porch. After the slaw ran out each year (usually just after the New Year—a sad day), Mary sprouted alfalfa or beans to provide fresh greens until spring. Kevin, who emerged as the head cook, did an admirable job of making an otherwise bland diet more palatable by coming up with interesting dishes. There was often fresh game served. This included venison, elk meat (jokingly called “elkison” by Todd), pheasant, and quail. Any game that was shot outside of the coldest months of winter were either eaten immediately, canned in mason jars, or dried into jerky.

Kevin got most of his recipes from two books, Making the Best of Basics and Carla Emery’s Encyclopedia of Country Living. Both were invaluable references.

Kevin was generally in charge of making dinner. His most frequent assistants were Margie, Mary, Dan, and Dell. These four also did most of the breakfast and lunch cooking. Margie did most of the bread baking. She was soon renowned as the group’s “baking wizard.” In addition to bread, she baked most of the cookies, pies, and cobblers. Dell, who had a sweet tooth, made most of the candy. Her favorite was molasses taffy. Dan cooked many of the meat dishes including venison steaks, roasts, and meat pasties. He also did many of the rice dishes including Mexican style rice and rice pilaf. Mary did most of the canning and cooked up most of the gravies and sauces. Doug Carlton, who professed to be a “fumble fingers” cook, helped out by being in charge of big game butchering and making jerky and pemmican.

Although their diet was at times monotonous, it was nutritious. Dan Fong, Lon, and Margie, the only three members of the militia who were chubby, slimmed down considerably. Rose, who was thin even before she arrived at the retreat, lost ten pounds while recovering from her gunshot wound. She soon regained the weight, however. A few months later, Jeff noticed that Rose wasn’t eating well and had started to lose weight again. With the combined efforts of T.K., who counseled her regularly, and Jeff, who insisted that she take second helpings at most meals, Rose gradually got back to her normal weight. Most of the other members maintained their “pre-Crunch” weight. Some of them, including Todd and Mike, noticed that they had to take in their belts a couple of notches, but they did not lose weight overall. They attributed this to the greater amounts of exercise that they had been getting. Fat was being replaced by muscle.

Late in the second spring after the Crunch, Mary headed up the effort to plant a large-scale garden. Everyone pitched in for the effort. They started by cultivating the entire garden plot by breaking up the soil with the cultivating attachment for the tractor. Next, with a heavy gardening fork, they finished breaking up clods and cultivated the areas near the fences and in the corners of the garden that the tractor’s cultivator did not reach. They then went back through the garden with the hand fork, further breaking up the soil. Most of the contents of their now large compost heap were worked into the soil. Mary, with the help of Dan, Doug, and Della, then began planting the “early” crops. These included potatoes (lots of them), turnips, beets, radishes, onions, and corn.

At the same time, they started the more delicate crops in cold frames. These protective frames were made from the old windowpanes from the house that Todd had saved after they had been replaced with double-pane glass. The more delicate crops included melons, squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers. After the twentieth of May, these seedlings were transplanted from the cold frames to the garden proper. Many of the crops were planted at two-week intervals, to provide a steady supply of vegetables throughout the late summer. The first two crops of corn were planted inside the garden fence, while the three later crops were planted in a patch outside the garden. Only a few ears of corn were lost to the local deer, thanks to the watchful eyes of the LP/OP pickets and Shona.

At one end of the garden, Mary had a small, specially cultivated crop of herbs, both for cooking and for medicinal purposes. She realized that their stocks of stored vitamins and medicines would eventually run out or go bad, so she had started the herb garden well before the Crunch. Her main references on herbs were The Complete Medicinal Herbal by Penelope Ody, The Cure For All Diseases by Hulda Clarke, and Ten Essential Herbs by Lalitha Thomas. Mary spent hours reading and rereading these books and making lists of seeds and cuttings that she wanted to find. She enlarged the herb garden each summer, expanding her plantings and adding a wider variety of herbs. One of the most important herbs in her plot were her echinacea flowers. Echinacea, also known as the purple coneflower, had a reputation as a potent natural antibiotic. Mary had a friend on the other side of town who raised dairy goats and recommended growing echinacea. Her friend had successfully used echinacea to treat her goats when they had udder and teat infections.

Two years before the onset of the Crunch, Todd had built a new and larger fence for the garden, measuring forty-by-one-hundred-and-thirty feet, served by three Merrill frost-free faucets at forty-two-foot intervals. As was Todd’s usual habit, he “overengineered” the garden fence to make it deer proof. First, he bought treated six-by-eight-inch posts twelve feet long for the corners, and treated four-by-four-inch posts for the intermediate positions. The lower three feet of each post was buried in an oversized hole that was filled with concrete.

Between the posts, Todd stapled up two panels of stiff “hog wire” mesh, one atop the other. Above this he stapled a strand of barbed wire. In all it created a nine-foot-high fence—more than high enough to stop deer from jumping over. As added protection against the ravages of smaller garden pests, Todd added a wrap of small mesh poultry wire to the lower portion of the fence.

Todd built a double gate for the garden out of four-by-fours. They typically used only one half of the nine-foot-wide gate to walk in and out. If necessary, however, both halves could be opened up to allow the tractor to drive in and out.

Most of the vegetable seeds came from the supplies of vacuum packed seed that many of the members had stored. Although it was several years old, most of this seed germinated satisfactorily, due to its packaging and storage in the cool basement. On Mary’s advice, all of the group members were careful to select only non-hybrid seeds for their storage programs. The advantage of non-hybrid seed was that it “bred true” generation after generation. Although hybrid varieties often produced more, they could not be depended on for the use of their retained seeds for more than one or two generations. The other sources of seed were the seeds saved and dried from the previous year’s crops.

This seed also germinated well, so Mary made it a SOP for group members to save as much seed as possible from the vegetables produced each summer.

The garden, the corn patch, and apple trees outside of it became natural lures for deer. T.K. became the main meat supplier for the retreat. He usually set up to still-hunt early in the evening. In the summer, he’d sit just inside the edge of the corn patch. In the winter, he sat on a platform he built in a ponderosa pine near the east property line. Beneath this stand, he placed a salt block to attract deer. To conserve ammunition and keep things quiet, he hunted with his crossbow. He rarely missed his mark. The only detractor to hunting with a bow rather than a gun was that the deer did not die almost immediately as they usually did when hit by a rifle bullet. Unless T.K. got an incredibly lucky shot and hit a major artery or penetrated the deer’s spine, the animal would run several hundred yards before succumbing to blood loss. This meant that they had to be packed back to the barn for butchering and cooling out. Dragging a full-grown deer, especially uphill or in foul weather, was a real chore.

Margie’s extensive farming and gardening experience proved invaluable. It was Margie who taught the gardeners how to use the “double dug” method of cultivation, how to use companion planting techniques, and to plant marigolds around the perimeter of the garden. The marigolds, she said, discouraged a variety of harmful garden marauders.

One of the biggest problems for the garden was the ravage of birds. Because the Grays had not taken the precaution of laying in a supply of protective netting, valuable manpower had to be used to post a guard on the garden during the worst of the “bird season.” Generally the guards were armed with either Todd’s .177 caliber El Gamo air rifle or Mike’s .22 caliber Feinwerkbau 124 air rifle. Both T.K. and Kevin preferred to use their Wrist Rocket slingshots. They quickly developed deadly accuracy with them. Never ones to waste anything, the larger birds taken in the defense of the garden were made part of the summer diet.

Each spring and early summer at the retreat were dominated by cultivation tasks, and the mid-summer with firewood cutting and hauling. The late summer was a time of frenetic activity at the retreat. In addition to the normal guard duty and chores, there were crops to harvest, and hundreds of jars to be canned. Fortunately, they had procured a large supply of Ball and Mason jars, lids, rings, and paraffin well before the Crunch. Most of the canning was done using the water bath method. This was the method preferred by Mary. In contrast, Margie preferred to do pressure canning. Complaining that it looked too dangerous, Mary shied away from the pressure canning operation.

The group had purchased large quantities of canning supplies, far in excess of their predicted needs. Mary had frequently pointed out that canning supplies would make excellent barter items in most survival scenarios. The greatest quantities purchased for this purpose were canning lids and paraffin.

In addition to canning, many foods were preserved by dehydrating. A few were preserved by pickling and salting. Because Todd and Mary had not gotten around to buying a dehydrator before the Crunch, they had to build their own. It was constructed by Lon and Dan, using a design from one of Mary’s back issues of The Mother Earth News. It was a simple design that used an electric light bulb to provide low heat for a wooden box containing racks for a dozen large trays. The trays were made from old fruit packing boxes, and were covered with plastic mesh screen. Although less sophisticated than commercial dehydrators with thermostatic controls and exhaust fans, the new dehydrator worked well, albeit slowly.

Because electricity was at a premium at the retreat, Lon and Dan eventually built a solar dehydrator to supplement their electric model. This dehydrator took advantage of the fairly reliable hot days of the late summer in the Palouse.

It consisted of a large wooden framework covered by window screen. It featured a pair of doors that swung open in the front, and racks for thirty trays.

One of the nice features of the Grays’ farm was its large orchard of fruit and nut trees. Most of these trees were of mature size. A few of the apple trees were more than fifty years old, and still going strong. To hedge their bets, Todd and Mary started planting saplings soon after they moved in. These trees came from a nursery outside of Lewiston. The Grays resisted the urge to sprout seedlings from the fruit produced by their own trees, knowing that the chances of growing a productive tree from such stock were slim.

One of Todd and Mary’s biggest regrets was that they never bought any livestock for their farm. With all of the activity required to get the retreat in shape, they never got to stocking the farm before the Crunch hit. The stock would have provided a valuable source of food, muscle power, transportation, and fertilizer for the garden. Livestock would have also eliminated the teasel weeds that were beginning to crop up in small patches all over the retreat.

When Mary pointed this shortcoming out to Todd, he said, “Oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty.”

Bartering for livestock was put high on the list of priorities for a future time when a barter economy eventually developed. Mary made up a “livestock dream sheet” of the animals that she thought that the group would need and that their forty acres could support. She made up the list as a guide for future barter purchases. It included one Jersey cow, one donkey, and five saddle horses. Mary also wanted to buy a few rabbits, goats, ducks, and sheep, and breed them to eventually provide needed meat, milk, eggs, wool, feathers, down, and hides. She also would have included a pair of draft horses on the list, but she realized that such animals were scarce even before the Crunch.

Although they would likely be bred in greater numbers in the future, the chances of the group obtaining a pair within the next ten years was remote.

The bucolic endeavors of that summer were disrupted on the fifteenth of September when Margie injured her forearm. It happened early one morning while she was splitting some kindling for the cook stove, in preparation for the day’s canning operation. Working with a short-handled mine ax to split the kindling, she was momentarily distracted by the sound of the TA-1 field telephone clacking on the C.Q. desk. Taking her eyes off of her work for only an instant, Margie brought the ax down at an angle and it bounced off of the piece of wood that she was attempting to split. The ax blade struck the inside of her left forearm, making a deep, ugly gash. She let out a cry, but waited until it became clear that the call on the TA-1 was just a regular commo check.

Then, applying direct pressure to the wound, she called for help. The cut only bled a little at first, and Margie was not overly alarmed. By the time Mary was examining it a few minutes later, however, the capillary bleeding had begun to increase. To Mary’s dismay, she also found that Margie had nearly severed two tendons.

Mary quickly applied a bandage to the wound and had Margie move to the kitchen. Mary put on one of her light green “scrub suit” uniforms and a surgical mask. Then she thoroughly washed her hands and forearms with Phisoderm and put on a pair of sterile surgical rubber gloves. Meanwhile, Rose washed down the kitchen table with rubbing alcohol. Throughout all this, Margie sat patiently at the table, with her arm raised above her head to help control the bleeding. By the time Mary was done scrubbing up, the bandage was soaked, and a thin rivulet of blood began to trickle down to Margie’s armpit. “Please hurry, Mary dear,” she said.

Mary was finally ready to begin after she had pulled a selection of surgical instruments from her bag and out of their sterile wrappers. She then paused to wash her hands yet again. “It’s starting to really hurt. It’s throbbing,” Margie said with a groan.

Mary had Margie lay down and elevated her injured arm and her feet, to lessen the risk of going into shock. Soothingly, she said, “Don’t worry. I’m going to give you something for the pain.” Picking up a 20 c.c. hypodermic syringe, Mary quickly filled it with Lidocaine H.C.L. After tapping the sides of the syringe and briefly depressing its plunger to displace a few small air bubbles, Mary inserted the needle subcutaneously to three sites around the wound. She said soothingly, “The pain will start to subside within a few minutes. Just be patient, my patient.” Looking toward Rose, who was by now also wearing a surgical mask, she said, “I’ll need more light. Bring the reading lamp from the living room, and put it here on the edge of the table. There’s an outlet right over there.” A minute later Rose returned with the lamp. Mary chided, “No, no, not so close, that thing’s hardly sterile. Set it up farther down the table, but tip the shade so that I get the light over here. There, that’s it.”

Mary then picked up a pair of her black handled bandage scissors and cut away the now sodden bandage from the wound. Working with a blunt-tipped probe, she gauged the extent of the wound. For the benefit of Margie and Rose, who was looking over Mary’s shoulder, she said, “The cut is ten or twelve millimeters deep, at its deepest point. There is considerable capillary bleeding and there are four small arterial bleeders. The bluish-looking one here is a vein, not an artery. It’s a pretty big one, and luckily it still has its integrity. If it had gotten cut, there would already be a puddle of blood, so that’s a piece of luck. The bad news is that we’ve got two tendons that have been nearly cut through, and another that’s been nicked.”

By now, four other militia members were hovering at the far end of the kitchen, whispering to themselves. Looking over her shoulder, she said to them, “You can make yourselves useful if one of you were to go out to the shop and get the electric soldering iron, the small one.” Lon turned from the doorway of the kitchen and dashed in the direction of the shop. “What does she need a soldering iron for?” Della whispered to Doug, who was standing next to her.

Doug leaned over until his mouth was nearly touching Della’s ear and whispered, “Cauterizing, I think. You don’t have to stay and watch this unless you want to. It could get pretty gross.”

Della whispered back, “No,I want to stay.I won’t get grossed out.Besides,this is pretty interesting. I might have to do this someday.” Doug nodded in agreement.

Mary continued on with her monologue. “I’m going to start by stitching up, or at least trying to stitch up, these four little arteries. I’m afraid to say that they are about the same size as the ones that I had trouble with when I worked on your gunshot wound, Rose. I’m going to use the smallest of my absorbable suture material. Anything larger, and I’d probably end up with an artery that was patched together, but that would leak like a sieve.”

Just then, Lon returned with the soldering iron. Mary tossed her head to gesture toward the lamp. “Plug it in over there,” she said.

“What about sterilizing it?” Lon asked.

“We don’t have to concern ourselves with the tip, that will sterilize itself as it heats up. It’s just the handle that I have to worry about. I’ll just do all of the cautery at once, and then change gloves.”

Mary spent the next twenty-five minutes suturing together the four small, severed arteries, muttering the occasional epithet. It was painstaking, frustrating work. To control the bleeding during this stage of the operation, she had Rose briefly put a sphygmomanometer cuff on Margie’s upper arm, and slowly pump it up to pressure. Once the bleeding had slowed to the point where she could once again see her work, Mary told Rose to stop pumping. Mary had to suture one of the arteries closed because it was badly damaged. She managed to successfully rejoin the other three. After the suturing was done, Mary told Rose to release the pressure in the cuff, for fear of restricting Margie’s blood flow for too long.

Throughout the operation, Margie remained calm. Mary occasionally asked her if she was feeling pain. She always answered no. Margie could not bear to watch the operation. She kept her head turned toward the wall throughout the procedure.

When full blood flow was restored, the patched together arteries showed no sign of leakage, but steady capillary bleeding resumed at both sides of the wound. Turning toward the kitchen doorway, Mary said, “Lon, Rose, I’m going to need your help.” The two approached and looked at her expectantly.

She said, “I need you to hold Margie’s arm in place.”After instructing them on how she wanted the arm held, Mary picked up the soldering iron. She said to Margie, “Now this might hurt, despite the Lidocaine, so try to hold still.”

Mary rolled the tip of the soldering iron across spots of the flesh that had shown the worst of the capillary bleeding. The soldering iron made a hissing noise throughout this process. Margie said that she couldn’t feel a thing, but that she didn’t like the smell. “It smells like a barbecue,” she said.

After she was done cauterizing, Mary donned a fresh set of gloves and took another look at the damaged tendons. She said, “I wouldn’t know how to begin to work on these tendons, so we’re going to have to hope that they heal themselves. The best we can do is immobilize your hand, wrist, and lower arm for two months to allow them a chance to heal themselves.” Mary then began the slow process of closing the wound with nonabsorbable three-zero silk sutures.

When she was finally done, Mary daubed the area of the wound with Betadine solution. Then she lightly wrapped Margie’s lower arm in two-inch wide sterile gauze and pulled down her mask. A few minutes of consultation with Lon yielded a plan for making a splint. Lon returned from the shop five minutes later with a pair of heavy pliers and an eight-foot length of one-eighth-inch diameter steel fencing wire. Laying the wire directly against his wife’s arm, Lon eyeballed a measurement for the splint. Then, with the help of the pliers, he began bending the stiff wire. After taking a few more measurements, he had the splint bent into shape within a few minutes. By the time he was done, Lon was sweating profusely from the exertion.

The finished splint lay on both sides of Margie’s arm. It bent 90 degrees at the elbow, and had looped cross braces at both ends. To pad the splint, Mary used some heavy wadding from an enormous civil defense surplus bandage.

After the padding was held in place on the framework of the splint by white bandage tape, Mary gingerly lowered Margie’s arm into the confines of the splint. Next, she used almost an entire roll of three-inch wide gauze, securing the arm within the confines of the splint.

When she had completed the job, she asked Margie if the bandaging felt too tight in any spot. She replied, “I can’t tell, yet. My arm is still pretty numb.”

“Okay, Margie. Just let me know right away if you feel any discomfort.

Now here’s the fun part. You are going to have to keep that arm elevated for most of the day for the next two weeks. Also, you are going to have to constantly remind yourself not to flex your wrist or fingers. I know that will be tough, but if those tendons are going to heal properly, you have got to avoid putting any stress on them, okay?”

“Okay,” Margie answered. After looking down at her heavily padded arm, she said, “Oh fiddlesticks! Why did this have to happen at a time like this? We were planning on putting up sixty jars of applesauce today.”

Later in the day, Mary tested her supply of tetracycline. She used the standard WHO-approved “titers” test of dissolving a capsule into clear water. She knew a cloudy solution or precipitates would indicate that the capsules weren’t safe and should be discarded. She was happy to see that the test resulted in a clear solution. Due to the age of the tetracycline, she gave Margie a considerably higher than normal dosage. In another year or two, Mary realized, she would have to begin titrating all of the retreat’s supplies of medicines and vitamins.