Josie and Elaine arrived back at the converted house. They waved at the gate woman
as they entered. They needed to really start planning instead of running around like
their butts were on fire, and their heads were catching.
The first thing they had to do was get Jane to the building, maybe Massa also, and
figure out how it needed to be changed to accommodate their patients. Once they had
a list, Josie could do the rest with Zatanna.
Jack could add his own touches when he got back to town with the Enterprise. A
stargate would be exactly what they needed to bridge the gap between the House, and
the Hospital.
Once they had the preliminary stuff out of the way, they just had to move everyone
to the site to get started on a cure. The machine would have to be set up close to the
door so they could look at everyone before moving them into their new rooms.
The main thing would be Jack and she would have to do most of the medical work to
clear out the growths. It would be up to anyone they could get to make sure the
women were taken care of until they could be released.
Setting up the phantom chefs might be a good idea so they could feed people without
worrying about who was running the kitchen.
They had done a great job at the dinner. They could feed the people here with the
right tools and enough supplies.
She saw Massa talking to a woman. They seemed to be discussing the picture the
woman had in her hands.
“Let’s ask Josie,” said Massa. “She surely will know what the codes are better than
I.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Josie. She held out her hand for the picture. She glanced
at it, then the sheet of codes on top of it. She frowned as she went over it again.
“When did you take this?”
“A few minutes ago,” said the woman. “I work the night shift and keep an eye on the
wall, and make sure nothing can get into the tents. What’s wrong with me?”
“The sheet says you are going to have twins,” said Josie. “The problem is your
pregnancy will kill you if you try to have the babies.”
“Are you sure?,” asked the woman. “I haven’t had sex since before I was taken. I
don’t know who the father is.”
“You have time to make a decision,” said Josie. “I will put this on the chart the same
as Massa’s liver. At least you don’t have the growths on your spine to interfere with
things before we can do something about it. We have a building now, and we can start
moving these women out of here and getting things back to normal.”
“Can you help me?,” said the stranger.
“Maybe,” said Josie. “I want you to know that I might have to consult Jack, and he
is not known for his understanding of anything. Between the two of us, we should be
able to come up with something to help you, but there are things you should look for
like bleeding and pelvic pain. If anything like that starts, we might have to do
something to save your life first, then your twins. Understood? I’m not having Jane
try to come at me over this. You take it easy, and you look for the signs. If you think
for a minute that you might be having problems, you go right to the machine and get
coded out. Then you have Jane call me, or Jack.”
“How long do I have?,” asked the woman.
“In this case, that doesn’t matter,” said Josie. “You could have a premature birth right
now according to this. If that happens, and I can’t fix it, you are dead. So do what I
tell you, and if anyone gives you a problem, tell them I will rip their ear off like Carol.
Got it?”
“You heard the Ear Ripper,” said Massa. She smiled. “Take it easy until we start
working to help you.”
“I could have a problem at any time,” said the woman.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Josie. “We’re going to move these women out of here,
work on anything that needs to be worked on for the Amazons, and try to set up to
help the citizens of Hawk Ridge. If in the middle of that, something happens, we will
put you at the top of the list and fix what we can before you die. That is my word. I
will put someone’s head on a pike to keep it.”
“I would like to see that,” said the woman.
“No,” said Elaine. “It’s messy and gross.”
“Now go about your business,” said Josie. “Stay close to the house in case I have to
find you, and don’t try to exert yourself until we have things back in line.”
“Thank you, Madam Witch,” said the woman. She took the picture and receipt and
headed back to the house.
“I will never get rid of that label,” said Josie.
“I like Ear Ripper a lot,” said Elaine. She smiled slightly. “I can’t wait to tell the
Ducklings.”
“No,” said Josie. “I’m putting my foot down. It’s bad enough that Hilda started that
here. I’m not letting it get out in the city so everyone and their mother covers their
ears when they see me coming.”
She frowned at the two smiling women standing across from her.
“Please don’t rip my ear off,” said Massa.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Why are you asking for it?,” said Josie. She took a breath. “This isn’t getting our job
done. I have the building, and I need you to think about what it should look like to
house all these people. As soon as we find Jane, we’re going to look at it and then I’ll
take whatever list we have and reshape the building. We’ve asked Jack to put in a
gate so we can expedite movement. That will probably be the last thing we do after
everything else.”
“I understand,” said Massa. “You have no time for hi-jinx.”
“There is Jane,” said Elaine. She pointed at the object of their search.
“All right,” said Josie. “Let’s go. We can handle the building today and open it for
business. Then we can start moving these women out of here, and then start taking
our victims off the Enterprise.”
They closed on Jane. She was supervising some watering project. Putting in a well
could only help the Amazons in their self-sufficiency.
“All right,” said Josie. “I need to borrow your brains.”
“You can’t have them,” said Jane. “I need them more.”
Josie frowned at her. She triggered Zatanna and flung a bird across the city. When it
reached its destination, the group of them teleported to an empty warehouses full of
cages. They looked around while the sudden shifting of reality wore off.
“When I did my raid, these cages were full of women,” said Josie. She waved at the
stacks. “Guards had them locked down to prevent escape. I expect now they were
going to be put in a caravan and put on the road when the guards thought they were
ready to be moved.”
“The guards?,” said Jane.
“I let them go to the other side of the wall,” said Josie. Jane nodded. “What do you
think? What can we do with this?”
“First, we are not going to be able to put everyone on this floor,” said Massa. “We’re
going to need at least two times more flooring, especially with eighty five more
bodies that will need to be housed.”
“Once you put in floors, you will need steps to allow us to reach the beds on the upper
floors,” said Jane. “Maybe a ramp so we can roll beds up and down when we need
to.”
“The machine should be either by the door so we can roll people through it when they
arrive, or in a space out of the way so we can do the exam and then assign a space,”
said Massa. She pointed at the wall next to the door.
“We need desks so we can keep our paperwork on the women if they wake up,” said
Elaine. “I feel they should be at the end of the staging areas so the nurses can make
notes about the women as they help them.”
“All right,” said Josie. “Where should any supplies like clean blankets go?”
“We’ll need closets near the desks,” said Jane. “We’ll also need privies at the ends
of the halls next to the nurses in case they need them.”
“I’ll have Jack work on that,” said Josie. “He put in an internal bathroom for us that
works wonders.”
“Do you think you can do any of that?,” said Jane.
“I can make alterations,” said Josie. “All these cages gives me enough material I think
to do some of it. Let me write down what we want so we can do this. The next step
after is moving people from the tent city to here after we wake them up.”
“And some of the women will have to be looked after now that we know they have
problems like the women we are taking care of,” said Massa.
“I know,” said Josie. “Back home, a big hospital would have different floors for
different problems, but everything is specialized. You wouldn’t call a heart doctor for
a broken leg. We are not going to have that luxury until we have been in existence for
a while.”
“This is turning into a bigger enterprise than I thought when we started out,” said
Jane.
“Who knew a government was kidnapping women to turn them into the walking
dead?,” said Josie.
“A fair question,” said Jane. She smiled. “Some of the women are finding love and
thinking about leaving. We might not be as strong later as we are now.”
“I wish them the best of luck on that,” said Josie. She sat down on the dusty floor. She
pulled out a piece of paper and pen to write down her wishes for the building. “Lord
Endwright is renting the building to us. Elaine has a copy of the documents.
Apparently his wife acquired things with his fortune while he was asleep. His
accountants are still going over what she owed, and whom owed her. If he evicts us,
I will have to go with the other building as our primary operation. This one will be
sanitized to remove all the alterations.”
“So if we have problems, the building goes back to this?,” said Massa. She waved her
hand at the empty space.
“Yep,” said Josie. She changed into Supergirl. She wrote down everything they had
talked about with other things added on. Anything else would have to be changed
later after the building was in use. She couldn’t think of everything, but she had what
Jane wanted, what Massa wanted, a small knowledge of the hospitals back home, and
fictional hospitals that she had read about, or seen. She doubted her list was
comprehensive, but she had to trust her wish magic to help her carry the burden.
It had to work.
She let Supergirl go. She stared at the list and nodded. She could do this. She knew
she could. She might have to steal some from the buildings around her, but she was
prepared to do that.
She wondered if this is what Jack felt when he built the Enterprise. She decided to ask
him when they caught up with everything.
“Give me a minute to charge up,” said Josie. She looked at her watch. “Then we’ll see
what I can do.”
“Do you want us to step outside?,” asked Jane.
“Just don’t move,” said Josie. “I’m going to try to do the same thing Jack did to build
the Enterprise.”
She waited for the ding so she could start at full power. She doubted this was what
the Society wanted her doing when she wasn’t fulfilling quests, but she had earned
some self-government and she was ultimately going to help the city with her creation.
She hoped Jane and her Amazons were ready for the amount of responsibility she was
going to ask them to take on.
“Like Jackie Gleason used to say,” said Josie. She called on Zatanna. “Away we go.”
She built thousands of birds in a second. They swept out and picked up anything they
thought she would need for the alterations she wanted. Empty houses abutting the
warehouse were seized. Their owners were gone one way or the other. She supposed
she was stealing from the duchy but she didn’t care. The cages came apart under the
passing of her birds as they searched for material.
The birds came back and popped as soon as their mission was done. The building
changed under their administrations. Elaine gripped Jane and Massa so they wouldn’t
move in the maelstrom of power throwing material around in the confined space.
Josie snapped aware when the last bird had done its mission and faded away. She sent
out a search for any problems. Everything came back with an all green.
The women looked around with various expressions, but the space around them had
been changed into a foyer with a desk for anyone who could man it.
“Let’s take a look around and see if it looks good,” said Josie. “Tomorrow, we work
on getting the Amazons used to it, and the day after we start fixing whomever we
can.”
“I can see why everyone calls you Madam Witch,” said Massa. She looked up at the
ceiling. “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it.”
“I’ll sit down with everyone and work on a schedule for everything,” said Jane. “This
is something else, Josie. I can see why Jack is scared of you.”
“Good job,” said Elaine. She smiled at her friend.
“This part was the easy part,” said Josie. “The rest will require a human touch to care,
and a brain to figure out any problems.”