Race against death

Historical Fiction is based on a true story:

1925: Nome, Alaska: 2 degrees below the Arctic Circle

Dr. Curtis Welch pulled the sheet over the body while the child’s mother wailed. Number five. The killer—diphtheria—would spread unless the antitoxin serum arrived. Family members circled the grieving parents, and the doctor quietly left to attend his next patient—another dying child.

Remorse curdled the doctor’s stomach. Months earlier he’d ordered the serum, but the port had frozen over before it arrived, cutting off Nome from the world. An epidemic of diphtheria would wipe out the remote village—unless the desperate relay plan worked.

He entered the next room where a girl’s ragged breathing signaled the mucous in the back of her throat had thickened and now threatened her breathing. Dr. Welch gave her parents a forced smile and took his patient’s limp hand. “The sled dogs are racing through blizzards with medicine for you, and when they get here—”

“—they’ll lick my toes.” He could barely hear the seven-year’s old weak voice.

The doctor squeezed her hand. “You bet.”

The girl’s father left the bedside and pulled the doctor aside. “Last radio report said winds flipped Kaasen’s sled. Took him awhile to find and dig out the antitoxin package in the snow. If it froze…”

Dr. Welch grimaced. If the serum froze, it would be useless. For five days and nights dogsled teams had been relaying a package of antitoxin. They were pushing through 674 miles of Alaska’s most rugged terrain and brutal blizzards, death traps for even the most experienced mushers.

Dr. Welch clapped the father’s shoulder.  “It’s not time to give up hope.”

“The team that was supposed to meet Kaasen didn’t make it. Kaasen must finish the last 53 miles.” The father gazed outside where the artic wind howled. “You run dogs too hard and lungs frost.”

Both men knew three of the musher Wild Bill Shannon’s dogs had died, and two days later another musher and his team had nearly been stranded on breaking ice and swept out to sea as they crossed a frozen bay.

A deep rasping cough pulled the doctor and father back to the bed.  Dr. Welch lifted the girl to a sitting position and gently pounded her back between the shoulder blades shoulders, trying to loosen phlegm that cut off her air passages. There was little he and his staff of four nurses could do, except remain at the 25-bed infirmary, relieving each other for short snatches of sleep, while they cared for the dying.

Rose, the head nurse, entered the room. “Three more cases. We’ve set up cots along the hallway.” She offered to take the doctor’s place while he moved to the new patients.

Dr. Welch glanced at the clock in the hallway. 5:30 am. The serum was somewhere within 53 miles, but could Kaasen’s exhausted team make it? The wind chill had dropped to eighty below.

As he bent down to examine a child lying on the cot, he heard shouting from the front corridor. He looked up as a snowy figure holding a package wrapped in fur limped into the hall. “Special delivery for Dr. Welch!”

Nurses rushed out of rooms and Dr. Welch leaped up to meet Kaasen who squinted through iced eye lashes. A wool scarf, frozen stiff, wound around his neck and face, stopping below his eyes. The ice-crusted musher cradled the bundle in his arms and nodded to the doctor. “My hands can’t move. Take it.”

Dr. Welch immediately unwrapped the parcel and whooped with joy. The glass tubes hadn’t broken and the serum wasn’t frozen. He called for a nurse to attend Kaasen, while the others ran for syringes to administer the life-saving serum.

Later radio reports credited 20 mushers and 150 dogs for stopping the diphtheria epidemic in the “Great Race for Mercy.”

Did you know the Iditarod race began March 3? Mushers pulled by dog sleds are currently racing over 1,000 miles through Alaskan wilderness in honor of the men and their dogs in 1925 who risked their lives to stop an epidemic. The Iditarod race goes from 8-15 days. The above story is based on historical facts and names. I love to read and write about how God uses “ordinary” people to do the extraordinary.

PS: Instead of elevating super models and super heroes, celebrate the talents and abilities God has given you. And be ready…God has a special purpose for you! http://gretchencarlsonwriter@gmail.com

Blessings! Gretchen Carlson http://gretchen-carlson.com