Beulah MacDonald eased her spare frame into the padded leather chair in Dr. James Nichols' crowded office with a carefully hidden sigh of relief. Beulah, old girl, you're not up to those long hospital shifts anymore. A woman your age has no business on her feet twelve hours a day, most days of the week, turning patients, running a hospital and all that. Still, it wasn't as if there were many nurses around after the Ring of Fire. They could certainly use, oh, say a thousand fully trained registered nurses, a hundred nurse practitioners. And doctors. And pharmacists. Some physical and occupational therapists would be great, too. Enough trained people to handle everything that needed doing weren't just going to drop from the sky. Everyone had to help out where they could, including her. No more retirement checks and social security for you, m'dear.
"Here you go, Beulah. No cream and enough sugar to put any diabetic into a coma." James Nichols handed her a blue ceramic mug and shook his head in mock rebuke. His grin spoiled the effect a bit.
"I have to keep going somehow. I'm not diabetic you know, so a little sugar won't hurt me. At least we've got caffeine again, even if my arthritis is slowing me down some."
Beulah and James had developed a friendly sparring relationship when they were alone. When they were in public, acting in their roles as Director of Nursing and Director of Medicine, they were a little more formal but not too much. Beulah had never gone for that subservient nurse to the almighty doctor stuff in her entire forty-plus year career. She wasn't about to start at this late date even if James had been the type for that nonsense. Which he wasn't, thank God. She and James had worked together a great deal since the Ring of Fire, both in the field and here at the new Grantville hospital. Mutual respect for each other's expertise, a deep commitment to their patients and a shared sense of humor had helped them develop a strong friendship over the last two years. Since Beulah had worked in just about every kind of nursing over the years, she had been the logical (and nearly the only) choice to be the director of nursing at the new hospital after the Ring of Fire. They needed the younger nurses for the more physical work and the nurses older than she was were too old, too sick or dead now.
Still, she couldn't keep up this pace forever. The willow bark tea helped with the arthritis but it wasn't the same as her now unavailable prescriptions. Her hands wrapped stiffly around the hot mug of coffee. The heat helped the pain, as did the paraffin dips. Her definition of an old remedy was certainly changing, though. The paraffin dips had been something they did in the "old days." Without all the fancy medicines, surgeries and other treatments from the twentieth century, a lot of people were using old folk remedies or adapting ones from the 1630s. Which caused its own set of problems. No, not problems. Directors of nursing don't have problems, they have challenges, she reminded herself.
They sipped coffee in comfortable silence for several minutes. Outside James' door, she could hear the sounds of the hospital quieting down for the night. She could practically feel her tired muscles unknot as she sank deeper into the chair. Getting up again would be interesting, but James had known how sore her hips and knees were at the end of the day and had given her the most comfortable chair in the room. The thoughtfulness was as appreciated as the coffee and typical of the man.
She wasn't sure which of them spoke first, just general things at first, chatting about the staff, the hospital, difficult cases recently. So she was somewhat sandbagged by what he slipped in next.
"You want me to what!?"
No teasing grin lit James' face now. His tone was calm but determined. "Become the dean at the College of Medicine's new Health Sciences Department."
"I hate administration. Endless meetings. There's too much paperwork in the job I've got now. Being the dean of a brand new health sciences department will mean even more paperwork. Have you ever developed a course curriculum? Handouts, lecture notes, syllabi. Paper everywhere."
"No, I haven't developed a course. But you have," he countered smoothly.
"I taught nursing for twenty years at a community college. Part time. What we've all been talking about this past year is a multilevel training program for everything from nurses' aides to doctorally prepared researchers. I don't have the background for that. What about you or Balthazar? Balthazar knows everyone and the local educational system. He'd be perfect."
"Even if he weren't tied up with practice and helping train our spooks, Balthazar never fully recovered from his heart attack. You may be older chronologically, but he is older physically. The rest of the medically trained up-timers are needed for more direct patient care, although we'll all probably be doing some teaching and mentoring of students- especially the hands-on aspects of instruction. More importantly, most of us have never taught so much as a CPR course. We wouldn't know how to put together lectures, handouts or a syllabus. We're all being stretched in ways we never planned. You'll be great as the new dean."
James was good, she'd have to give him that. "What about education? Shouldn't a dean have more than a bachelor's degree? I never finished my master's degree as a midwife. Many of the faculty at Jena will have more formal education than I do."
If his snort was anything to go by, James didn't even pretend to consider that one. "You have more education than any other nurse around, up-time or down-time. You also have a great deal of experience in just about every area we need taught." James held up one hand to forestall the comment he could see forming on her lips. "Even if some of that experience is a little old, you've gotten back up to speed very quickly. Don't think I haven't seen how many times you wind up taking care of patients rather than office work. And most of your out-of-date stuff is still state of the art and then some here. Besides, some of your old-time knowledge is more within our current technology base's capabilities."
"I like taking care of patients and we're short staffed."
James pounced on that one. "Which isn't going to change unless we set up programs and start running students through them just as fast as we can. Besides, you told me you like teaching."
A distinctly mulish frown bloomed on Beulah's face. "That doesn't make me the right person for this. I'm already running the hospital."
"We needed you to set the hospital up and get it running. Things are going pretty well here now. You've got the administration side set up and running smoothly. The staff is oriented and trained. Starr Hunsaker can take over while you move on to developing the educational program. You won't exactly be alone doing it, either. We'll all help as much as we can. Getting people trained is a priority. We're staring down more years of war, not to mention smallpox, the plague and on and on. We have to have people ready or we're going to lose a hell of a lot of people, Beulah." James met Beulah's dark blue gaze in shared grief and frustration over the ones that had already been lost.
"We thought Mary Pat would be a good assistant for you," he continued. "She's already living with you, is young, smart and energetic and has come up through the ranks in the army. She's been a medical corpsman and LPN and is now experienced as an RN. She had good trauma experience in the army plus her experiences here. She'd really help you out creating the trauma courses. I'm sure the military will release her for detached service given how desperately they need people trained as medics, nurses and doctors. And almost all of Mary Pat's RN training was as an up-timer. That also works in her favor." James leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely together. "We need you to get the ball rolling again, Beulah. You tend to make sure the practical details of setting things up don't get missed so everything runs as smoothly as possible. You know what you're doing, have lots of experience, know how to work as part of a team and get things done. And, frankly, you'd be training Mary Pat while you're at it. You've been acting as a mentor for her for nearly the entire time since the Ring of Fire. You curb some of her enthusiasm with experience. It's a good match, one we can't afford not to take as much advantage of as possible."
Ouch, another point to James, thought Beulah. Mary Pat Flanagan had come to the wedding of Rita Sterns Simpson the day of the Ring of Fire. Her entire large family was left behind, a wound that was still raw, although she hid it fairly well from the outside world. Beulah knew how much she missed them, though.
Beulah had taken Mary Pat into her home just to give her a place to stay at first. It wasn't like Beulah's brother needed his room anymore and space was at a premium in Grantville right after the Ring of Fire. Beulah had never married. There had been a few Mr. Almost Rights over the years, but never Mr. Right. She loved kids, though, and through her work had had "her" kids strung all across the state. But Mary Pat was more like the daughter she had always wanted. They had developed more than a mentoring or landlady and tenant relationship. Mary Pat had almost completed her training as an RN from West Virginia University up-time. Having Mary Pat as her assistant would make the job of dean a lot more doable, as James and the others had clearly realized. Mary Pat was smart, organized and capable.
James and company are getting way too good at this sneaky political stuff. He's hung around Mike too long.
His next sentence changed her mind.
"You'd also have help from Hayes Daniels."
"Hayes! Are you nuts!" Beulah protested, waving her mug around and wincing when her swollen knuckles hit the chair arm. The throbbing in her hand convinced her to be still but didn't change her glare. "He and I worked together on the nurses' aide/LPN course that they're teaching over at the tech center and the combat medics course. We don't exactly have a good working relationship. And Hayes wants everything done to his standards, his way. Like we have time for that. We needed good enough to get moving, make changes as we go, and we needed those aides pronto. Mary Pat's temper matches that red hair. Mary Pat would strangle him before we were done."
Hayes was the first Silicon Valley refugee she'd ever met. He'd worked in two high-flying startups, working too many thirty-six hour days figuring out how to teach the world how the Internet would change their lives. He'd finally decided that he'd had enough, and gotten out and come, of all places, to West Virginia, close to his friend Mike Sterns.
James shook his head. "I don't know that I agree with you on that entirely. The two of you got the job done and we're getting well trained aides, medics and LPNs now. We need to be sure we set up the best system we can from the beginning. The need right now is urgent but we won't do ourselves any favors if we cut too many corners in the name of expediency. Hayes is the only person we have who can take highly technical material and translate it into the course material we need to teach new staff, in any reasonable amount of time. We need him to help evaluate and organize the Jena material in particular. You'll be too busy setting everything else up to handle all the course materials, our teachers are busy teaching the kids, and no one else has enough of a background to even start the job."
The mulish frown was back on Beulah's face. "The faculty at Jena could do some of it."
"The faculty at Jena will do some of it but they're just getting up to speed on some of our basic science material themselves. They'll be one step ahead of the students the first few years. We need someone who can do some of the higher level knowledge synthesis now. And that someone is Hayes. I doubt that any of the Jena faculty even understand some of the biology and chemistry concepts from our era."
"Look, James," Beulah said, running a hand over short curly hair, "I like Hayes, I really do. He's smart and talented and a genuinely nice guy. Hell of a cook, too, for that matter. He's also going under for the third time with everyone's projects and has been since we got here. From the stories he told us while we were doing that last course, doing what he did is like being in a combat zone. And he did it for five years, with no breaks. He got six months off, and he's right back into it. You know what that's like—you've seen it."
James looked a little uncomfortable for the first time in their conversation. "It isn't just that. How old are you now, Beulah? Early seventies? You're in good shape except for the arthritis but that's getting worse. The odds are, you won't be around for as long as we need you. We have to get the medical knowledge out of your head and the heads of the rest of us so we can pass it on to the next generation. Hayes is the only one who can take what you know and put it in a form others can use to learn. The knowledge is too important to be lost when we lose you." His voice was little more than a whisper.
"I know that James." Her voice was almost as quiet. "Hayes isn't even half my age, but at the rate he's going, he won't make it to forty-five. Adding more projects to the man won't help any of us. I'm really worried about him. The man needs a keeper. Otherwise, we may just use him up, and there won't be anything left."
"It isn't as if there are any other alternatives we've been able to find for Hayes. Let's leave him for a later discussion, okay? Right now, you are the best person for the dean's job. Period."
"There are other issues. What about Jena? We'll need to locate the new college there. The first few years of schooling will be there except for brief intensives here. We'll be depending pretty heavily on their faculty. They don't exactly have any women deans at the university. Or faculty, either. Not to mention some of my up-time notions on any number of topics. Have any of you talked to the professors at Jena? How much flack could I expect? It may be that however qualified I am, politically, I'm not the best person. I'm not exactly known for tact and diplomacy."
Beulah saw him note the shift in her tone. She was silently conceding that she was the best-prepared person for the job but looking at the position from another angle now. She was still looking for a way out as James continued his argument.
"There have been a lot of changes at Jena. They have had a considerable amount of exposure to us and to the way women function in all aspects of life here. Some of the faculty will undoubtedly be resistant to any change, just like anywhere else. Some will be especially uncomfortable with any changes initiated by a woman. The handwriting is on the wall though. They know that women as faculty and as deans are going to happen, as surely as the snow comes in winter. From their standpoint, having an up-time woman take the first steps would make for an easier transition. The senior faculty and other deans support it for the most part. You and, if she agrees, Mary Pat will have to work the rest out in Jena."
Beulah sighed. She couldn't think of any other arguments against her taking the position or other questions offhand but she wasn't about to rush into a decision this important. "I wasn't expecting this. I really thought you or Balthazar would become the new dean. Let me think about it. I'm not saying yes. I'm not saying no."
"That's fine. Think about it for a bit. How much time will you need?"
"Give me a couple of days, okay?"
As they walked out into the hall, James was quiet. Beulah was running things through in her head. He could practically hear the wheels spinning. When she got her teeth into a problem, she didn't let go. The early summer evening air was still warm, although it would turn cool again in a few hours. Her "let me think about it" was as close to an answer as he'd get. There was just enough contrariness in her nature to make pushing Beulah an exercise in futility.
As they reached the street, she turned to him with a question. "Exactly when do you plan on starting the school anyway?"
"We'd like to enroll our first class at the start of the year. Good night, Beulah." A good Marine knew when to retreat. James hurried off into the night, the sound of Beulah's creative but anatomically impossible exclamation lingering in his ears. Since he was a man of good sense, he waited until he was around the corner and out of sight before he started smiling.
Mary Pat came down the stairs the next morning at a brisk clip, uniform neatly pressed. Where she found the energy after three straight twelve hour shifts plus her daily morning Army PT, Beulah didn't know. The kitchen at home was softly lit by early morning light, quiet and still until Mary Pat brought it to vivid life.
"Morning, Beulah. What's up? You're not dressed yet. Are you sick?" Mary Pat's concern was evident in her voice. Beulah knew that this change in routine would worry her. She was always up when Mary Pat started PT. Her arthritis meant she took a little more time to get moving in the morning than Mary Pat. When Mary Pat came back home, Beulah was always ready to go and had breakfast waiting for them both before they headed to the hospital. The familiar routine felt like having family again. She'd never seen her still dressed in her robe and nightie at 0630 before.
"Don't worry. I'm fine. I've just got some thinking to do and if I go into the hospital, I'll get sucked into work." Beulah chuckled. "The hospital is a madhouse on a good day. Not exactly a place for reflection. I've already called and let the hospital know. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow morning on your day off." Especially since my acceptance is contingent on you agreeing to go with me.
Politically, it might be better to have a faculty member of the College of Medicine at Jena as her assistant. Problem was, she didn't know any of them to pick one for that kind of relationship. Her close relationship with Mary Pat could make some people feel like she was bringing her own inner circle, especially if Hayes was along. That was another potential issue. If she had her choice, Mary Pat was it, politics or no politics. Besides, we make a good team.
The house settled in around itself again after Mary Pat left. Not without some concern and after she had made sure Beulah had the warm paraffin dip for her hands and an extra large mug of that nasty willow bark tea. Heavy on the honey. Why anyone would drink tea when they could have coffee, she had no idea. Beulah smiled affectionately. Mary Pat was a good kid and Beulah loved her dearly. She had brightened any number of dark areas caused by Grantville's trip back in time. If I hadn't had her to come home with, to talk to and share with, I don't think I'd have made it this long. Dear Mary Pat, what is going to happen to you when I'm gone? James' remarks about her age had hit close to home for more reasons than he might suspect. She'd have to think about that, too. Soon. But right now she had a decision to make.
She had never much liked administration. Being in a rural area or Korea meant that she'd still had to do a certain amount of it, but she'd never liked it. Being the director of nursing had too much of it, even without reams of up-time insurance paperwork. Practice and teaching were what she loved. Carrying a public health nurse's satchel and teaching at the local community college had suited her quite well, thank you very much. Watching a student "get it" was almost as good as actually caring for a patient herself. She had the background to teach in a lot of areas, no docs hanging over her shoulder with that handmaiden crap and lots to do. Best of all had been the babies. She had even gone back to get her masters degree as a midwife in the '80s but she'd been too old and too busy to finish it. Or so she'd thought at the time. Now, she wished she had. Maybe as a family nurse practitioner she would have the broadest possible "womb to tomb" knowledge base. It would be nice if hindsight wasn't always so clear. Coulda, woulda, shoulda never changed anything. At least I still have all my textbooks. Those are priceless now.
She was happy with her life overall. She had done some interesting things, helped people out here and there and had a good time. After her stint in Korea and the army, she had stuck close to home. She'd moved back to Grantville to take care of her older brother after his stroke and then stayed on to retire from the local clinic after he died. She had done hospital work when she was younger in the little hospital over in Fairmont but she was too restless for that and had had too much of a taste for the kind of independence and responsibility a nurse could have in Korea. About the only good thing she could say about the war. No, that wasn't quite true. She had met and worked with some very special people in Korea and the experience meant she knew all too well how to handle the kinds of wounds they were seeing so much of in the midst of the Thirty Years War.
In a bizarre sort of way, here, now, she was in a place where everything she had learned and experienced came together. And she did have the skills to pass at least some of that on to the next generation, a wonderful legacy. At least I know which end of a gun to avoid and to duck when someone yells incoming she thought with a flash of grim humor. Taken together with all she and James had discussed the night before, whether she liked it or not, James was right about her being the logical person for the deanship. Dammit.
"Okay, what's up?" Mary Pat sipped her coffee the next morning and sat back in the kitchen chair to get comfortable, trying to gauge Beulah's mood. She didn't look alarmed so much as determined and thoughtful. She had scared Mary Pat a little the day before. For a moment, Mary Pat had thought she was sick. The idea of anything happening to Beulah made her stomach tighten.
Something was going on, though. What that something might be had teased at the back of Mary Pat's mind all during her shift yesterday. Beulah taking a second day off was absolutely unheard of. Today, Mary Pat herself had a rare day off. It only happened about once a month. Between the hospital and her position in the army, she rarely had any time to herself. It was getting tiring to say the least, even for someone as energetic as she was. She had intended to do some chores and maybe eat out at the Gardens tonight until Beulah went all mysterious on her.
"I talked to James Nichols two days ago. He and the others want me to become the new dean and get the health care educator programs up and running here and at Jena."
"They've picked the right person for the job. Congratulations!"
"You haven't heard the rest of it yet." Beulah replied with a gotcha grin. "We want you to be my assistant."
Mary Pat didn't spew coffee all over the place but her green eyes did widen. "You could have waited until I didn't have a mouthful of coffee before you said that," she complained. "Exactly when in my spare time am I supposed to be doing this anyway? Not that I don't want to help you out, Beulah, but I just don't have any time."
"I'm sure that given the military's urgent need for doctors and nurses, they will be more than happy to have you temporarily assigned as my assistant. Your trauma skills will be invaluable. Finding a replacement for you at the hospital is going to be harder but the latest class of nurses' aides and LPNs has just graduated from the tech center at the high school. Not the same as an RN, I know, but they can take up a little of the slack so it won't be as hard. It isn't as though we'd be leaving for Jena tomorrow or anything."
"My patients..."
"I know," Beulah interrupted gently. "Neither of us wants to leave them. James and I already had a version of the same discussion. You should have seen me come up with reasons not to do this."
The tension in Mary Pat's voice didn't go unnoticed. Beulah would never say it to Mary Pat but she was worried about the long hours and multiple commitments Mary Pat had taken on the last two years. She was an active duty army nurse and had been deployed all over the area. That meant that although she knew a lot of people and a lot of the local area, she wasn't really close to anyone but her friends Elizabeth, Rodney, Sharon and Beulah herself. When she was home, Mary Pat worked five or six twelve-hour shifts a week at the hospital. She was also one of the most senior officers of the tiny medical corps, which carried its own set of responsibilities and pressures. Having her with Beulah in Jena meant she would be freed up from working sixty-plus hours a week as a staff nurse and her regular military duties. Beulah knew she and Mary Pat weren't the only ones who were getting worn out. So were all the health care types in Grantville. They were stretched way too thin and it wasn't getting any better. If anything, it was worse. Grantville's reputation as a center for healing was beginning to spread. Fortunately, right now the reputation was only local. That was going to change though, sooner rather than later. The demands on their tiny health care system would get nothing but more intense as the war heated up and people found out that they could heal things no one else in this time could.
Beulah gave a dry, humorous recount of her conversation with James. They shared a chuckle, and a little of the tension eased from Mary Pat's shoulders. Mary Pat's sharp mind would fill in the blanks here and there. She was well aware of how strained the health care resources were in Grantville and its military. Beulah ended her recounting with the role for Mary Pat and why she was needed for the position. Much the same way James did it to me.
"So you won't take the position without me as your assistant? You're perfect for it." Mary Pat was frowning a bit. "I can understand your points but I still think I could serve better here." Mary Pat reached for the coffee pot and refilled both their mugs before setting the pot back on the small kitchen table. She didn't like to see Beulah handling the heavy pot. Beulah let her think for a few minutes, enjoying the quiet and the aroma of the hot coffee.
"I don't stand a chance, do I?" She finally asked with a rueful grin. "I know that look on your face, Beulah. You've got all the bases covered and all the arguments ready. I guess we should both be getting used to being ambushed by projects like this. I could see this one coming for you but didn't see it for me." Mary Pat picked up her napkin and waved it like a flag. "Okay, I surrender. When do we get started and what do you think we need to do first?"
Beulah reached across the table and gave Mary Pat's hand a little squeeze. "That's the spirit. We need to get started now to be ready for the first class in six months. The way I see it, there are a few issues we need to start thinking about right away. Politics, personnel and resources are the three big ones at the moment."
"One at a time then?" asked Mary Pat.
"Works for me. Have a preference for which one to tackle first?"
Mary Pat wrinkled her freckled nose and grimaced. "Let's leave the politics till last."
"Personnel and resources it is then. I don't know how much of the big picture you've been aware of and it will help me to think out loud, so I hope I don't go over too much you already know. On the personnel side, the first of the German students will be entering the nurses' aide and LPN program. We're lucky to have had the program already set up before the Ring of Fire at the high school. That has meant we haven't had to start totally from scratch, although Hayes and I had to change a few things with the curriculum given what we're facing now. Hayes will be working with us too. Garnet, Courtney and Marcia are doing a great job in the nurses' aide and LPN program. They're all sharp and easy to work with and they have the program delivery down to a fine science. I know that ties up an RN and two LPNs but the work they are doing is too important to interrupt for direct patient care. I don't think we should change anything there. They're all ready to go with the mixed German, up-timer classes starting this summer."
"I agree about the aide and LPN program. That's been going really well. We have about sixty new aides and nearly twenty new LPNs now. We'll probably want to talk with Garnet, Courtney and Marcia about which of their former students might be good for the new program. Some of them are so new, I don't think any of the hospital staff who have worked with them will have a very good sense of their capabilities yet. Two things, though. My German has gotten pretty good. Are we going to be teaching in German, English or both? And, what about Hayes?"
"German and English. It will depend on who is teaching what at the university and who the staff mentors are for students. Any applicants are going to have to be fairly fluent in both. Eventually, we'll probably switch entirely to German but that's a long way off. We have too many texts in English and too many people who aren't fluent in German as potential teachers and students. Some of the Germans in Jena and other areas won't be too happy about that, I imagine. English isn't known as a scholarly language in this time. Unless we're careful, it may look like we're excluding German natives from the new educational system at the same time we're using their facilities. We'll have to have some sort of English classes for some of the German students who will be coming to Jena. There's another problem with languages. Latin."
"I hadn't thought about that one." Mary Pat winced. "No one I know here speaks Latin except Father Larry. Lots of medical terms are based on it, especially anatomy and physiology terms. So we won't be starting entirely from the ground up."
"We're going to have to learn at least some Latin." Beulah replied. "Many of the textbooks used for medical information now are in Latin. Some of that information is still very relevant. How much and in which texts, I have no idea yet."
"Well, we'll be working with him over the next few months at least. We're going to have to put together the curricula and text materials soon. We'll be focusing on the RN- and MD-level training and that will mean higher level synthesis. Plus, I'm hoping he can help evaluate the materials they have at Jena and help us figure out priorities for copying and translation."
"Okay. You know him better than I do. I know a few of the Jena faculty. They've downsized in recent years because of the war. There aren't going to be a lot of them to help out. The botanical gardens are great though. Werner Rolfinck is probably somebody we'll want to talk to early on. He's been at Jena for several years and heads the medical faculty. He's the one who had the OR theater set up there and is very up on the latest knowledge for this time. He borrowed a copy of a couple of my textbooks a few months ago. The next time I was in Jena, I was going to pick them back up and give him some new material. I had the books copied before I lent them to him. It was lucky I was in the emergency rotation at school. I had several anatomy and physiology texts and a drug book with me that he was interested in." It was Mary Pat's turn to sigh. "I just wish the drug book had more about herbs."
"We have some more information about herbs from the gardeners in town. I was pleasantly surprised about how much medical information they had. Not to mention the medicinal herbs in various gardens. Standardization of dosages and purity are still issues. Stoner and the others are making progress on that. I just wish we had more scientific basis for some of these new medicines. Some of the herbals claim to be able to cure everything that ails a body, including the common cold." She shook her head in disgust, sending shimmers of silver light flashing around her head.
"Sorting out what they have at Jena, what we have here and how the herbs are named and grown will take time but once we're rolling, I think it'll be fine. We may have to take at least one of our gardeners with us to Jena. Do you think Rolfinck will be supportive of us coming to Jena and making so many changes in the program? James and Balthazar have both been sending out feelers about it and kind of paving the way. Rolfinck seems very progressive and interested in having the information but it is actually his school after all. We're outsiders coming in with ideas that challenge a lot of dearly held beliefs."
Mary Pat thought about it for a minute, then shrugged one slim shoulder. "There's really no way to know until we talk with him and the other faculty members. I'd suggest talking to him first. He seems like a very reasonable guy. There are a couple of the faculty who teach what they call iatrochemistry at Jena. It's more similar to our ideas about chemistry than alchemy and that humors stuff. I can't guess how receptive those two will be since I haven't met either of them yet."
"I haven't met any of them. Haven't been to Jena either. You, at least, will be a somewhat familiar face. That should help. I'm not sure how they are going to react to some of my ideas, however progressive they may be. We're going to have to negotiate carefully. I don't want to come across as know-it-all up-timers. First, because it isn't true. Second, because that kind of attitude will cause nothing but problems. We're having a hard enough time with what we can't do. They may have a hard time with what we can."
"I agree. Ideas such as?"
"I've always felt that the split between nursing and medicine was artificial and caused more problems than it helped but it's the time factor that really worries me. We need people trained now. That doesn't even get into content issues like up-time versus down-time knowledge or some of the ethical issues we'll have to deal with. Not to mention that I see men and women having an equal role in health care."
Mary Pat grinned. "You were saying the other day that things at the hospital were starting to get too routine. A new challenge will be good for you."
"Yeah, right. Like I need any more challenges. This project will be full of them."
Mary Pat got up to look for a pen and some paper to start taking notes. "Well, we don't have to solve everything right here and now. Let's think about who we have here and who we need to put together an educational team."