“You need to hurry and get on the plane. The president is preparing to close the airport,” the customs agent told him.
“Thank you,” Prince said. Djang and he walked with a steady pace up the stairs. When they reached the cabin, a stewardess ran up to them.
“Hurry and buckle up. The pilot is ready to taxi off. We have been waiting for your group a long time. There are reports of fighting all over the country. We will do the safety briefing once we are airborne,” she said, out of breath.
Prince and Djang sat down behind the trio and buckled up. Manny still had his arm around Ellen, holding her close. Ellen looked up at him, smiling, as she reached down and moved the armrest up, curling next him. Manny smiled. At long last he had his arm around Ellen. He thought maybe this was not so bad after all. He laid his head atop hers as the plane roared down the runway.
The customs agent watched the plane take off as his radio went off. “All flights are canceled as ordered by the president,” someone reported on the radio. Well, at least they got the American kids out of here, he thought.
No one could have imagined the plague that they had unleashed on mankind by doing everything possible to get those kids out of the country. The Congo was isolated enough that the plague might have run its course and died out. With air travel and four infected people out in the world, mankind did not have much hope. But there was a glimmer of hope.
Chapter 5
Bruce threw the chart on the desk, looking up at the neurosurgery resident. He knew it would be very unprofessional to haul off and hit him for just being a resident. Plus, he was just a kid. Out of all the services, Bruce hated neurosurgery the most. Not once in ten years as an emergency room registered nurse had he met a neurosurgeon resident who did not think he or she was the sole reason the world turned. Everyone thought you had to be smart to work with the brain, but what most people did not know is that medicine knew very little about the brain. All neurosurgeons could do was use a sledgehammer on a fine Swiss watch.
Bruce took a deep breath, “Canni, if you yell one more time at me, I will strangle you with your lab coat. I told you the labs were drawn and sent over an hour ago.”
“It’s Dr. Canni to you, nurse. If they were drawn, why are they not in the computer then?” he yelled.
“Resident Canni,” Bruce said. “If you yell at me again, you will slip and fall on the way to your car tonight. Why don’t you call the lab yourself and find out why the results are not up?” Bruce could feel a headache coming on, and he was losing his temper. This shift was lasting too long. Four gunshots, three car wrecks with six victims and one death, a kid some mother did not put in a car seat, and two massive heart attacks. Bruce had just sat down for the first time in ten hours, and he had not eaten anything. Now this resident wanted to yell at someone.
“Nurse, you will call the lab and then page me with the results. Now do what I told you,” Canni yelled.
Bruce pushed himself back from the desk, standing up and stretching to his full six-foot four-inch, 280-pound frame. He had a shaved head with a goatee and two gold earrings. He truly looked like a Mr. Clean on steroids. He made his way around his desk, which served as his nursing station, moving to stand in front of the resident. Dr. Canni’s smile fell off his face, and a look of fear replaced it.
Another doctor, hearing the commotion, started walking toward the nurse and resident, hoping to get there before the kid got popped. The doctor was only two inches shorter than Bruce and almost as heavy, with buzz-cut black hair and a clean-shaven face. He was not in the mood to pull the nurse off the resident. He already pulled him off a drunk who was hitting a cop. He had waited a little while before he pulled the nurse off the drunk, though.
“What is the problem here?” he asked. “Why are you yelling in my ER, Canni?”
Bruce turned, looking at the attending. “Mike, this little twerp wants me to do his job and mine because he is stupid,” Bruce replied in a flat tone.
Dr. Canni yelled, “This nurse refuses to do what I told him, and he has disrespected me in front of the medical staff.”
“First, you will not yell again in my ER at me or my staff. Is that clear, Dr. Canni?” Mike, the attending, stated firmly.
“You cannot talk to me that way to me even if you are the attending here in the ER,” Dr. Canni yelled.
“First, let’s get something straight here. I am the boss here, and you are nothing in this machine. You will address me as Dr. Collins. Everyone here answers to me. I am responsible here for every patient that comes into this ER, not you. My staff here functions here at top performance. For the last time, if you yell one more time, I will let this nurse beat the shit out of you. And in case you are wondering, all the medical staff here are his friends and coworkers. Who do you think they will say started it?” he said, standing nose to nose with the resident.
Dr. Canni took a step back. Beads of sweat started to form on his forehead and ran down his face. This had not played out like he thought it would. He had two giants looking at him, and one was ready to unleash the bigger one on him.
Then Dr. Collins looked at the resident and said in a harsh tone, “I could not help but hear you yelling that your labs are not up. That would be due to the volume of patients we have had tonight. The lab is very backed up, and I have already talked to the supervisor. They are doing the best they can. Now you need to leave my ER and call in your attending because you are not allowed down here for the rest of tonight.”
Dr. Canni had a look of true panic on his face. Attending doctors did not like being called in to replace a resident. Residents have been kicked out of programs for much less. Dr. Canni looked up and said in a pleading voice, “I’m sorry for my actions. Please don’t make me call my attending.”
“Just get out of my ER, and don’t ever yell at my staff down here again,” Dr. Collins told him.
As Dr. Canni scurried out of the ER, Dr. Collins turned, looking at Bruce, “You have been in one fight tonight. Isn’t that enough?”
“What fight?” asked Bruce.
“The drunk in room twelve that was hitting the police officer,” Dr. Collins reminded him.
“That was not a fight. I was only guiding him to the floor so he could not hurt himself,” stated Bruce innocently.
Mike laughed, “Please don’t ever guide me to the floor then.”
Bruce smiled, “He started it.”
They both laughed, along with the rest of the staff. Bruce walked around his desk and sat back down. Mike pulled up a chair beside his buddy.
“I have not ate in ten hours, I just got to sit down, my blood sugar is falling, and my hands are starting to shake,” Bruce stated as he picked up a candy bar, eating it in one bite. Mike just smiled; when Bruce started to get hungry, everyone took cover. In the thirteen years he had known Bruce, he learned that was the one time he could count on him to lose his temper real easy.
“You know you are going to have to run that candy bar off later on the treadmill,” Mike told him.
“I know, but if I don’t get something in me someone is going to come by and throw holy water on me trying to perform an exorcism,” Bruce predicted.
Mike and several other nurses laughed. “I thought you were not going to buy candy anymore,” Mike said.
“He did not buy it,” a small doctor said, walking up to them. “I bought it for him three hours ago when I saw his hands starting to shake on that car wreck that came in earlier.” She was Angela Bennit, a third-year ER resident. “I knew if he did not get something in him, heads were going to start to roll.”
Mike slapped his leg, laughing, “Once someone gets to know you, Bruce, you are too predictable.”
Angela looked at Mike. “Yes, he is, but everyone here knows Bruce is in your corner if something happens. You can always count on him being there for you. He takes care of his residents,” she said with a smile.
“Dr. Collins, when you get a minute, can I see you about room three?” she said, walking away.
“The residents and staff really like you a lot, Bruce. Please don’t beat up anyone while I’m gone to see what’s going on in room three,” Mike asked him.
Bruce looked him in the eye and said, “I’m not making any promises to that. I have three more hours on this shift and four hours of paperwork, and the guy in room ten won’t quit pissing on the floor.”
Mike stood up and stretched. He hoped the guy in room ten was some old man and not some drunk because if it was the latter, he was in for a bad night. People just did not realize you do not make your nurse mad. They were there to take care of you, but they could make your stay very uncomfortable.
As Mike walked toward room three, he remembered the day he met Bruce. He instantly liked him. They got both families together the first weekend Mike was off after coming to the university hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana. They were so much alike that it was a bit scary. They each joined the service at seventeen. Bruce served six years in the Army as an Airborne Ranger. Mike had served three years in a Marine expeditionary unit. They each had three kids and had outstanding wives. Mike’s wife was a pediatrician at the hospital, and Bruce’s wife was a labor and delivery nurse at the university. After that first weekend, every time the group was off, they were together doing something.
Bruce married his childhood sweetheart once he graduated, while she was still in school. Once Debbie finished high school she went to join Bruce at Ft Benning. While he was in the Army, Debbie went to nursing school and was a nurse his last four years in the Army. They were able to put up a lot of money during Bruce’s time in the service. Not many can say that they made money while in the military, but they could. Debbie was Bruce’s rock in life. They were a perfect match, and she was the only one who could put him in his place when his head got too big, which was quite often. Bruce left the service because he wanted a real family, and he realized that the politicians in Washington were sending troops out to make a point, not for the defense of his beloved country. After leaving the service, he used his GI bill to go to nursing school. True to his nature for action, he started working in the Level 1 trauma ER at the university, somewhere that there is always action and he could make a difference in people’s lives.
Mike joined the Marines just for the GI bill. He came from a farming family in Kansas and could never afford medical school. Afford, hell, when he graduated, he was in debt $140,000. At least the GI bill had gotten him through pre-med. It was during the first year of med school he met the light of his life, Nancy. She was the yin to his yang. She was his study partner the entire four years, and both graduated with honors. She, too, came from a poor farming family, in the Mississippi delta. When she graduated, she owed $185,000. They got married in their third year, to everyone’s dismay. All of their classmates said it wouldn’t last, but they had been together for almost eighteen years. They might be the older couple, Mike at forty-two and Nancy at forty, but Bruce at forty and Debbie at thirty-eight had been married for twenty-three years. Bruce married her before he shipped out to basic training while she was still a junior in high school.
Everyone they told this to laughed. Two kids got married while she was still in high school in Louisiana, and she graduated Debbie Williams. After graduation she took off to Bruce immediately started nursing school while Bruce served out his military term. They had been a couple since middle school. Now talk about true love.
During all of the gatherings they had, all of them had fun. Bruce and Debbie had two boys, Steve the oldest now at eighteen, then Jake, now seventeen, and the baby, Danielle, the little princess now sixteen. Mike and Nancy had Matt, the oldest now at seventeen, and the twins, David and Mary, now sixteen. With the kids all being about the same age when they met, talk about a group of people having fun.
After being a close-knit group for over a year, Bruce and Debbie asked them if they wanted to buy some property together. It was a decision that was not taken lightly. Mike and Nancy were already in debt up to their ears. Mike was the only one making some money because pediatricians do not make much. After talking it over with Nancy, the group formed an LLC together and bought a farm eighty miles outside of town. It might only be 210 acres, but it was the world to them. Then they all bought a trailer in Haughton fifteen miles from the hospital so everyone was not always in transit back and forth from work. Mike had to say if it were not for Bruce and Debbie’s down payment of $150,000, there was no way his family would have been out of that apartment. A three-bedroom apartment was hell with three kids. Almost everything was paid off in three years except student loans and the swimming pool. When you have four professional paychecks knocking down bills, they really don’t stand much of a chance.
“Dr. Collins,” Angela said.
“What,” Mike said with a startle.
“I think you were daydreaming, Dr. Collins,” she told Mike.
“I was. Now what do you have for me behind door number three?” he asked with a smile.
Chapter 6
Bruce watched his buddy walk off with the little resident. Mike was a natural teacher, and the residents here really liked having him teach them. Watching Mike over the years, Bruce knew Mike loved his job because he got to teach the next generation of doctors.
Bruce did not know what he had done to have so much going for him in life. He thought life could get no better after his family was complete. After Danielle, he knew his family was complete. She was his princess even though she drove him insane. At sixteen, she acted like she was going on twenty-five. Debbie told him constantly she would get better as she got older. Not that they did not get along and do a lot of stuff together––it was just boys calling the house all the time. Danny had her own cell phone, but they called the house phone and her mom’s phone to talk to her. More than once when Bruce walked into her room, she would be talking on her cell phone, the house phone, the X-box, and Skype. All the while, she was still carrying on a conversation with Mary, Mike’s daughter and her partner in crime. If one girl got in trouble, the parents had learned, go ahead and punish the other one because she was guilty, too.
Then Mike and his family came into Bruce’s life. Bruce never considered himself a survivalist, just someone who is prepared for emergencies. He and Debbie always kept an average of six months’ worth of food in the house. They both grew up on farms where stocking up was second nature. Debbie loved to hunt and fish as much as he did, so naturally they instructed the kids in how to hunt, passing on the love of the outdoors. Mike and Nancy both hunted in their youth but had slacked off until they started hanging out with the Williams’ family. Now each year the family went on a hunt somewhere. The last one, everyone went to Canada to hunt black bear. Now there was a bearskin rug in every bedroom in the house.
After they bought the land past Castor, 210 acres of paradise, the first priority was getting a house for them to live in. There was a small two-bedroom house and two barns on the land when they bought it. After having a large family meeting, it was agreed to build one large house that everyone could live in. It took a whole year and lot of sweat, but the Family––what they now called themselves and actually named the LLC after––shared. What was one family’s was also the other’s: they were one large family. Bruce actually told most people that he had two wives and a husband with six kids. That usually got weird looks from people, especially the ones at church.
The house was laid out in an L shape, with a basement for food storage and guns. The first floor was the living area. This was the only area over which both wives just about wanted a divorce. Mike and Bruce wanted a large game room with a projection theater. The wives adamantly refused. So the boys waited until both had to work then installed one while they were in Shreveport for two days. They eventually grew to love it, but their first night back, Mike and Bruce had to sleep downstairs. The kitchen had huge two dishwashers because Bruce said he would not wash dishes because that’s what he had to do when he got in trouble at home and in the army. Three washers and dryers were in the laun
dry room off of the kitchen. They never bought anything new, always refurbished, and learned how to fix it themselves or bought another used one. A large dining room and den were the length of the L, then two guest bedrooms at the base of the L. The upstairs was all bedrooms. Two master bedrooms were side by side at the bottom of the L. Along the length of the L was the kids’ rooms, with a hallway running down the middle. On the left were the two girls’ rooms with a bathroom in the middle for them to share. On the right were two rooms with a shared bathroom for Jake and David. At the end of the hall was a bathroom for Steve and Matt with a room on each side of the hall for them. A balcony went around the outside of the L with door to each room. Outside, in the L, was an Olympic-size swimming pool surrounded by a patio. The entire house was over 6500 square feet.
They over-insulated everything, not being green but with regard to money. It took another year of setting up solar panels to get off the grid. Because there were two families, they got over forty thousand dollars in free solar panels. They had five arrays over the property with two battery houses. The old army motto of “two is one and one is none” was apparent everywhere on the property. They bought old shipping containers and turned them into storage areas.
Then the wives started collecting the animals: chickens, milking cows, rabbits, ducks, quails, and, of course, horses. The only thing the family voted down was the pigs. That made both moms very unhappy, but the pig vote only had two in favor of getting the nasty critters. Everyone had his or her own horse to take care of. The kids really took to the chores of taking care of the animals and the farm that was growing. It might have had something to do with the allowance that was given out every Thursday.
The house ran like a well-oiled machine. A calendar was in the kitchen that had everyone’s schedule and chores listed. This was because of the moms, not the dads. Neither Bruce nor Mike made plans more than twelve hours in advance. Once, they both forgot a ball game, and the calendar almost immediately got put in their phones with alarms. Both dads knew the computer whiz, Jake, was responsible for that because neither mom was very computer literate.
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