“Hey, Grant,” Dan said, realizing he’d been a little too negative about this Special Forces thing, “I’m not on you about this. I am grateful that you know people like this Ted guy. I’m glad you’re doing all you can to change things. I just have some experiences that mean I question all this war talk. It ain’t all fun and games. I used to think so. If I get satisfactory answers, I’m all in. I’m a Patriot. I just don’t want to get my people killed for no reason.”
“Fair enough,” Grant said. “No offense taken, Dan. I want guys like you who know more about this topic to help us make the best decisions.”
“Well, time to go to work,” Rich said, switching gears. The meeting was over abruptly. They walked silently back into the Grange as if they had just had a discussion about…treason. They had. At least treason to the former government.
Grant went to Linda, the dispatcher, and asked her to get Scotty on the radio. He knew the Grange radio was not secure, so he chose his words carefully. He didn’t want to give too many details, even in code speak, but he wanted Scotty to be able to tell Ted and Sap that there was a valid reason to come out. Grant realized that they should have come up with some code words for many situations like this one.
After a few minutes, Scotty came on the radio. “What’s up, man?” he asked in the disciplined military protocol the Team was known for. Yet another sign that they weren’t taking themselves too seriously or being mall ninjas, Grant thought.
“Ted project, dude.” Grant said. “Get them out here tonight for cocktails after dinner. It’s a dog and pony show for Fred 1 and Badger 9.” No one had used those cheesy code names they came up with in so long that Grant had trouble remembering Rich’s and Dan’s handles. He wasn’t sure he got the numbers right, but “Fred” and “Badger” were close enough to tell Scotty that the meeting guests of Rich and Dan were important enough for Ted and Sap to come see.
“RT,” Scotty said, which was their term for “roger that.” It was an acronym they came up with before the Collapse when they would text each other about when a shooting session would be. Besides, Grant felt stupid saying “Roger that” when they weren’t really military or law enforcement. He also thought “RT” might throw off anyone who could be listening.
“Let me know tonight at dinner that you’ve made the arrangements,” Grant said.
“RT,” Scotty said again.
Grant handed the radio back to Linda who had absolutely no idea what he had just been talking about.
Chapter 178
Sandy and Walter
Grant finished the morning with two commitment trials. He empanelled a jury and heard Rory, one of the nurses, describe how two people went off their mental meds and needed to be committed.
Rory was becoming the mental health nurse, even though he wasn’t trained in that before the Collapse.
The first person to be committed was Sandy McPherson. It was absolutely heartbreaking. She was in her mid-thirties with blonde hair and was the mother of two great little kids. She originally lived in Seattle. After her first child, Eli, was born, she developed very severe postpartum depression. It got worse after the second child, Josh. She essentially couldn’t function and her husband left her. It was just her—a severely depressed single woman—with two kids.
She was determined to do the very best for her little Eli and Josh, no matter how hard it was. She came out to Pierce Point and got a job at her cousin’s store in Frederickson. She got on various medications and, after some trial and error, found trazodone (Desyrel) to work well and she was able to function normally. She was very proud of how hard she worked to make everything OK, especially for her kids. No one knew she had depression.
Then the Collapse hit. She only had a few days of Desyrel left. She zoomed into the Frederickson pharmacy on the first day and tried to get a refill. They didn’t have any and the next day, the pharmacy closed. All the other pharmacies in the area closed then, too. At the last pharmacy she tried, she saw the sign on the door that said “Out of Business.” She cried in her car in the parking lot for over an hour. She cried until her face hurt. The drive back home was the scariest time of her life. She knew she would have to try to live without Desyrel.
The stress of knowing the medication was running out and all the stress of the Collapse was too much. Two days after the Desyrel ran out, she hit a new low. All she thought about was killing herself and, on occasion, killing little Eli, age four, and Josh, age two. They were the most adorable little boys; blond hair and smiling all the time. They were so huggable and loveable, which is what drove her to think about killing them. They were so precious and innocent. She didn’t want them to live through the hell that was all around her, and she was convinced that the hell of the Collapse would never go away. Never ever. Things would never get better because she would never have her Desyrel back.
She kept dwelling on the idea that she was being the best mom in the world by taking the kids out of this horrible place. She had fantasies of Eli and Josh thanking her for taking them away. She had a little gas left in her car and decided to run the engine in the closed garage and they would all go to sleep, forever.
She was trying hard to fight against the part of her that desperately wanted to do that. In a moment of panic, she stumbled over to a neighbor’s house and told them what she was thinking and begged for help. She was so ashamed about her thoughts of running the car in the garage, but she knew that she had to go to the neighbors and get help. Her motherly instinct to protect her young was still stronger than the depression.
As Grant listened to the evidence in the case, he became furious at the Collapse. As horrible as the past system was with all its corruption, at least the government had managed to make sure there was Desyrel at the Frederickson pharmacy for Sandy. Now there wasn’t any. The Collapse did this. Well, the government giving everything away in exchange for votes and people thinking they could live like kings on other’s labor, was what caused the Collapse. But still. It felt like the Collapse was to blame for what was happening to Sandy.
He hated the Loyalists even more right then. They had built up a system that was bound to fail and it was hurting people like Sandy. And Eli and Josh. Loyalist officials in Olympia, Seattle, and certainly Washington, D.C. had all the medication they needed. Pierce Point could go to hell as far as they cared. Sandy could go to hell; she was already there. The Loyalists would never know about her, or Eli or Josh. Sandy and her kids were a problem for the hillbilly teabaggers to solve.
Challenge accepted, Grant thought. We’ll do the very best we can.
The neighbors had locked Sandy in a room in their house, which was what Sandy had asked them to do. Pleaded, actually. The neighbors went over and got the kids, called more neighbors and decided to take Sandy to the Pierce Point clinic so see if there was anything they could do for her. Lisa and Rory checked her out and quickly realized that there was nothing medically they could do without some more Desyrel. Sandy asked that she be put somewhere where she wouldn’t hurt the kids. She was relieved, in some small way that her secret was out. Hiding this had been more of a weight than she realized.
This was a very easy case. The jury took about five minutes to come to a decision. Sandy needed to be confined; she was asking them to do it. She wouldn’t be in the mental house because there were raving lunatics there and Sandy didn’t need that. She would stay with the neighbors. Eli and Josh would stay with some volunteers—a nice couple whose kids and grandkids were trapped in Tacoma—and would get to see their mom as often as possible. Pastor Pete was organizing visiting parties to make sure Sandy had many visitors. She would have people around—many of them people she hadn’t known before the Collapse—to keep her spirits up. They would remind her that she was not alone and that the community was doing all it could to help her, because she mattered. And that she was a great mom for saving Eli and Josh.