forbidden (illicitus) wrote in the_colony, @ 2010-11-03 19:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 22, louisa may smith, thomas galloway, | louisa may and tom |
Week 22: Sunday
Characters: Tom & Louisa May
Location: The farmhouse, Tom’s room.
Summary: Louisa May joins the Colony and the logistics of moving in are discussed.
Rating: PG for mild expletives.
Louisa May pulled up to Grant’s Pass, feeling a little nervous. It was her second time there in three days, and she was still very much getting used to the idea of being around all these people full-time. She wasn’t a social person by nature -- in Portland, she lived by herself. But living alone in a bustling city where she had a job working with hundreds of people a day and a core group of friends was very, very different than living isolated in a farmhouse, and Louisa May knew that it simply wasn’t good for her to stay holed up there. Here, she would be needed -- she could do what she did best, and be appreciated for it.
Friday’s interactions with her new neighbors had left her emotionally and physically drained, but in a good way. Knowing that Derek would be sticking around -- at least for a little while longer -- helped make her decision much easier, as did seeing Leo face to face. Still, it was a leap of faith to just pack up and leave her parents’ home and live with a whole pack of strangers -- hence the butterflies in her stomach.
She put the truck in park, took a deep breath, and swung out of the cab. Here goes.
The person on CB duty had told him Louisa May was coming, and Tom had been watching for her when she pulled up to the house. He’d debated going out to meet her, but there was little point in stepping out into the cold when she was already on her way up the walk. Instead, the veteran held the door open for her as she came up, Rollo at his side with his tail thumping eagerly. “Doc, welcome back. Didn’t expect to see you again this soon, but you’re always welcome here.”
“Hey, Tom,” Louisa May replied, smiling upon seeing the now-familiar figure waiting at the door to greet her. “You got a couple of minutes? I catch you at a busy time?”
“For you I’d make the time, but it so happens that you caught me on a slow day.” He ushered her inside and took her coat for her, moving to hang it in the closet while Rollo barked and looked for a scratch from Louisa May. “Rollo, heel.”
She chuckled a little as Rollo bumped against her hand, giving him a small pat and scratch behind the ears before he ran obligingly off to Tom’s side.
“Good. I just wanted to touch base on a couple of things, now I’ve had a chance to come up here and all. Figured it’d be easier to sort out in person.” She paused in the hallway. “You... mind going someplace private to talk?”
Tom quirked an eyebrow at that and nodded. “Sure, we can do that. We can go to the library and close the door or we can use my room if you’re all right with that, it’s kind of turning into my office during daylight hours anyway. Can I interest you in a sandwich or something else to eat before we get down to it or you want to go straight to business?”
“Thanks for the offer, but I’d rather get down to brass tacks if you wouldn’t mind,” she replied. She was nervous enough -- sitting in a kitchen and putting things off wouldn’t help. “We can go to your office, that’s fine.”
“All right.” He led the way to his bedroom, which beside the normal bedroom furniture contained an old gunmetal grey desk and a trio of chairs.
Several framed pictures hung on the interior wall. Most showed a younger Tom with his son down the years, though a few had other family included as well, and progressed all the way from infancy through Tommy’s graduation from West Point. The most recent picture Tom had of his son sat on the corner of the desk. In it Tommy was full grown and wearing Captain’s insignia on his desert fatigues. Standing in what appeared to be one of Saddam’s palaces, father and son had an arm around each others shoulders and mugged for the camera.
Those, his son’s medals and the flag that had covered his casket at the funeral were all he had left of Tommy. The medals and flag were safely stowed away in a box under his bed, along with his own military memorabilia. The idea of leaving all of that behind had been unbearable, and so Tom had made a point to carefully pack them away for travel when they left Las Vegas.
“Take a load off,” Tom gestured to one of the chairs, and took the other with Rollo settling down on the floor beside him. Louisa May sat down, looking around the room as she got settled.
The good-looking younger solider in the pictures in his room looked like Tom -- she didn’t know he’d had a son. Seeing as few people these days had any living family, however, it was a guaranteed sore topic -- the present was a far safer choice for conversation.
“Y’all got a real nice thing going on here,” she said, leaning back a little in her chair. She didn’t see the point in stringing Tom along, so she got right down to the reason of her visit. “I’d like to join up with you, if you’ll have me.”
“If we’ll have you?!” Tom looked at Louisa May as if she’d grown a second head for a moment, before his face broke out into a wide grin. “Hell Louisa May, I figured I’d have to work on you for a few weeks before you decided to join up. You’ve been welcome here from day one.”
Louisa May grinned back. It felt good to be wanted, and even though she hadn’t known him for very long, it meant a lot hearing that from Tom. “Well, Friday went pretty well, and I figured, with winter gearing up and all, sooner the better.”
He scratched Rollo behind the ears and thought about things for a moment. “Have you given any thought to how you’d like to do it? I’m sure I can get a few warm bodies for moving purposes if you want.”
“Well, I still like the idea of a trailer. I think it could work out pretty well. So I’d need to track one down.” She paused, making a mental checklist. “Let’s see. What else. I’ve got a U-haul full of stuff I salvaged from my daddy’s general supply store, and it could use some sorting through, but there’s a bunch of stuff I think y’all could use. It should be pretty easy to drive the whole thing up here if the snow doesn’t pile up too high first.”
“Can do.” Tom nodded appreciatively. “There’s a trailer park a few miles down the road. I don’t know if there’d be something there that you’d want or not, but it can’t hurt to take a look. As far as getting your things up here, we could get the U-haul up and unloaded today and leave the trailer empty to load up anything in your house you want to bring with you. The sooner we get you moved the less we have to worry about driving on roads that aren’t plowed anymore.”
“You got that right. We get any deep snow around here, and it’ll be awhile before anything other than a four by four is gonna be able to get around.” She smiled at Tom. “Another reason I figured there wasn’t much point in waiting.”
“If I’m gonna be in a trailer, I’m not gonna need a full U-haul’s worth. But... we could use it to pick the General Practitioner's office and a couple of the drugstores in Medford clean -- I could use some equipment, and I don’t want anyone else getting their hands on that stuff.”
“How much of that stuff is still useful?” Tom had no idea what sort of medical equipment and drugs would still be good without regular electricity. Anything halfway perishable had gone through an entire year without any kind of regulated temperatures. Bandages and surgical instruments would still be good obviously, but beyond that?
“Well, not everything, of course -- insulin needs to be refrigerated, for instance, so that’s done -- but anything in pill form would be good for a while yet. Depending on the meds, they’ll be good for another year or two at least. It’s a short term solution, but still worth it.”
“We’ve only got so much manpower Louisa May,” Tom frowned, thinking of the small fold out road map he had of Medford. “There’s got to be twenty or thirty places in Medford that have that kind of stuff. If we can keep it to the GP’s office and one or two drugstores that you know how to get to and clean out the stuff you want out of them fast, I think we can handle that in a day. Anything more than that will just have to wait until spring.”
“Can do,” she replied. “Just don’t want to be stuck out here in the dead of winter and be hurting for some good local anesthetic or pain pills.” She paused. “That’s another thing I wanted to cover -- I know we’re limited on space, but I’d like to sort out a place where I could do procedures if necessary. A place I could keep sterile, with good light, where I’d have easy access to equipment. Do you think... would it be better to have a second trailer designated for that? Or is that too much right now?’
“We’re extremely limited on space at the moment.” The veteran scratched his head and considered Louisa May’s request. “It makes a lot of sense to have something you can keep sterile, but the good light thing might be more difficult without juice to run lights. You think you can fix up one trailer to work as both residence and office for the time being? Once we get the crops in this spring we’ll have plenty of time for building projects, maybe between now and then we can think up a more permanent setup for an infirmary. Sound doable?”
Louisa May nodded. “I’ll see what I can track down with that in mind. Maybe I could take Derek out with me in the next couple of days to look for one that’d serve our purposes?” There was an awful lot that had to happen in the next week or so, but once she got all her things here, she’d be able to spend all winter settling in and setting it up to her liking.
“The sooner you get started, the better.” Tom leaned forward in his chair, a thoughtful expression on his face. “We’ve already got a good couple inches on the ground and I don’t know how bad winters get around here. Our people can get you packed up and moved, but whatever trailer you find will probably need some work to get it mobile. And there’s the GP’s office and drug stores you want to hit.”
Louisa May mentally ticked off the growing ‘to do’ list. “We can get the U-Haul up here this afternoon, if you can spare somebody for an hour or two. I can spend the rest of today packing up the things I’m bringing from home and sorting out a list of the medical supplies I’ll be looking for while y’all empty out the truck. Then, it’ll be free for our shopping trip.” She paused. “And somewhere in there, we track down a trailer that isn’t broken too bad. Long as it’s got a bed and working propane heat, we can make it pretty later.” She smiled. “That about cover it? Jesus, Tom, I knew it was gonna be a pain in the ass to get me up here, but this is bigger than I thought it was gonna be.”
Her comment caused an answering smirk from the veteran in return. “We’ll get it done Louisa May. As for the trailer, when you find one you like strip it to the bare walls and make sure the tires have air. We can bring any furnishings you want to keep from your house over here. I’ll round up a couple people to help with unloading the U-haul and packing up what you want to bring.”
“Sounds like a good start,” she replied. “Here’s hoping the weather will hold off till we’re done with it all.” Getting the medical supplies would be the top priority for her -- she’d rather spend the winter sleeping on the couch than be unprepared.
“I’ll see how many bodies I can round up, we should be good for at least two or three without impacting guard duty or any tasks we need to get done around here during the day.” Obviously Bridget was out for travel, but she could probably be counted on to help unpack, as could Meg. He got up from his chair. “We’ve still got plenty of daylight, might as well get moving.”
“Right,” Louisa May replied, also standing. She paused. “By the way... I talked to Derek on Friday, and I think he’s going to stick around, at least through the winter.” This was glossing over quite a lot, but she figured Tom of all people should know of Derek’s intentions, and that Derek wasn’t necessarily going to be forthcoming.
“Good.” Tom let out a sigh at the news and shook his head. “Leo’s more a threat to himself than he is anyone else. Hopefully sticking ‘round over the winter will convince Derek he’s as safe as anyone else around here.”
“It’s certainly something he’ll have to come to peace with,” she replied. Derek’s inner demons were not going to be simple to work through -- and although seeing Leo as a lack of a threat would be a good start, she got the feeling it was going to be a long, hard road for him.
“Right,” she said, briskly switching topics back to the tasks at hand. “We got a whole list of things need doing, and daylight’s a finite resource. You want me to take someone down to Medford with me, or should I head down and get to work and expect company later?”
“Let’s go see who we can scrounge up.” Tom replied, as they started out of his bedroom/office. “One rule around here that’s as ironclad as I can make it Louisa May, is that nobody goes off into Indian Country by themselves.” He waved toward a window. “Anywhere off the property is Indian Country these days.” Louisa May nodded. The fact that her home was considered to be in hostile territory was certainly sobering. The sooner she moved to Grant’s Pass, the better.