Locked Down with the Army Doc

Amber gave a quick nod of her head and walked around Jack, heading toward the first person with a bloody wound pad pressed to their forearm.

He watched for a few seconds as he could see her swallow nervously. This was different for her. And he got that.

He moved on over and started treating the next member of staff who had a cut on their forehead.

He was methodical. And he was quick. All the injuries were relatively minor.

But as he worked steadily he noticed the continued chaos around him. Although the external phone lines weren’t working, the internal phones rang constantly. Staff seemed to be disorganized, and Ron, as Head of the ER, seemed out of his depth.

Jack couldn’t help himself. He walked over. “How about you let me do some of this?”

Ron looked up from a prescription he was writing. Three other members of staff were waiting to talk to him and the radio was crackling constantly on the table.

“What can you do?”

Jack pointed to the desk. “I have experience of crisis triage. How about I field all the radio calls? I can take the details and liaise with the other agencies. We need to know what’s needed and where. As soon as the winds die down we could have teams packed up and ready to go. What do you say?”

He was trying so hard not to overstep. He could see Ron was struggling with the volume. He might not know Jack, but surely he would let him help?

Ron only paused for a few seconds as the radio continued to crackle.

“Perfect. Let me know if there’s anything major.”

“You got it.” Jack settled at the desk and picked up the radio. There were a few notes already about building damage—but no reports about casualties. There was a footnote querying whether a home with disabled residents had been evacuated, with a note to check with the nearest evacuation center. There were a few other notes from a care agency who had several housebound residents that they hadn’t been able to get to. Chances were they were safe. Most Hawaiians knew about the potential threats and what to do. But the infirm or frail would probably not have been able to put all preparations in place without assistance.

There seemed to be no standard way of keeping track of all the information, so Jack added all the names and addresses to a list for checks and pulled out a citywide map to start charting where everyone was.

Some staff were reporting that the sky was almost black now. No one with any thought to safety could possibly go outside.

The chatter on the radios was constant, along with the background noise of the hammering winds. Even though they’d been told not to, some of the staff squinted past mattresses at the windows and let out squeals and gasps. “Did you see that?”

“That car just flipped!”

“Oh, my, look over there. The roof’s coming off that building like a tin can!”

“Those trees are bending like drinking straws.”

“That one’s going to snap for sure!”

The rain thudded off the windows, battering down in among the wind’s fury. Debris flew through the air, randomly hitting windows and shattering glass.

Jack tried to tune it all out, focusing on the task he’d been given and trying to keep a clear head. But even though he tried, his eyes were distracted by the woman who’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail and seemed to be cleaning and stitching wounds precisely. She had a quieter nature when working with staff who were patients, and, even though he’d seen a smattering of nerves earlier today, he would never question her clinical skills.

Reports continued to come in and his list grew longer and longer. By the time Amber came over and sat down next to him, he’d started to separate out all the calls by seriousness and area.

She looked down at the lists and charts he had spread across the table. “Wow. You’re really keeping on top of this. How many teams do we have?”

“Probably less than we actually need.” He didn’t mean his answer to seem quite so brusque.

Amber shot him a strange sideways glance. “Do you know how many staff we have, and how many transportation vehicles?”

He glanced over at Ron, trying to hide his frustration. “Ron hasn’t told me yet. Search and Rescue say no one leaves unless they deem it necessary. There can be risks of flash flooding.”

Ron appeared next to Jack and blanched when he saw the list and map covered in colored dots. Jack stood up. “The eye of the hurricane has passed. How about we send staff back down to the first floor to reopen the ER? It’s important that people have a central point to come to.”

Ron nodded in agreement.

“Makes sense.” Amber pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket and smoothed it out in front of her. “So, do any of the areas where teams will be sent have patients we’ll be looking for?”

He could tell she was trying to sound reasonable. He knew perfectly well that as soon as the winds died down she wanted to find a car and get around all the contacts immediately.

He pulled out his own list. He hadn’t forgotten that he’d offered to help her. “Trouble is, it’s so dark out there now. With all the debris, the roads will be hard enough to maneuver along. What with no street lighting, things will be much worse.” He pointed to colored dots he’d stuck on the map. “The blue dots are addresses where we need to give people antibiotics. What complicates things is that some of these people might not have stayed in their own homes. The statewide evacuation shelters are all based in high schools or elementary schools. Chances are, some of them might have gone there.”

“We have no way of telling?”

Jack shook his head. “Not right now. There could be thousands of people in each of the evacuation shelters. With limited communications, there’s no way for us to find out.”

“Any news about Aaron’s parents?”

Jack shook his head again. “I’ve not heard a thing about them. If I do, I’ll let you know.”

He could see her swallowing nervously as she pointed to another part of her notes. “These people, there’s fourteen of them. That includes the three close contacts who had traveled internationally. We’ve contacted Florida, Texas and New Zealand. It’s up to their own public health departments to make contact and issue the antibiotics. We also had four kids go back to Oahu. Honolulu staff are coordinating for them. Another two kids are on Maui and one more on Kauai. Local doctors will deal with them.”

“So that leaves us the kids and staff from the Big Island. How many do we need to still track down?”

“Four. That’s not too many. Hopefully we can coordinate with any team that’s going out.” She was toying with a strand of her hair. It must be a nerves thing. But it made him feel instantly protective.

“We still have the other six teenagers that were still staying at the surf school. Ty hasn’t been able to get hold of anyone else, but he’s pretty sure they’ll have been evacuated to the Deltarix High School. Six close contacts in one trip. That should make things a bit easier.”

Amber bit her bottom lip. She looked over at the map. “So the red dots are the reports of damage or destruction, and the blue dots are the places we still need to go for contact tracing?”

“Yellow are the people that need to be checked on. That doesn’t necessarily need to be medical personnel, but since that information is being passed between agencies, I thought it wise to keep it up there.” He sighed. “We still have no idea if there’s a threat of flooding, or what the roads will be like.”

Ron pointed to a part to the north of the city. “During the last tropical storms, these roads were impassable between mudslides and flood damage.”

There was a blue dot very close to that area. Jack leaned forward. “Where’s the nearest evacuation center to there? Maybe because of what’s happened in the past, the residents will have evacuated anyway?”

The radio next to Jack crackled and he picked it up. “Reports of major incident at Deltarix High School.”