In the wake of my previous post about the post-apocalyptic Victorian steampunk nurse character, I’ve experienced something of an outcry from nursing professionals. That post generated several LiveJournal comments endorsing the idea, as well as two emails on the subject — all from folks who are totally psyched about the prospect of a nurse-hero, if only I would see about writing one.

So it got me thinking, and it got me doing a smidge of research. If I were to set such a figure in the same alternate-history universe as BONESHAKER, that’d put her (she’d almost certainly need to be a woman) in 1879-1880, while the Civil War is still swinging. Since western medicine in the 19th century was — let’s be fair — something of a giant effing joke, I wondered if I could find a good example of healthcare badassery that would lend itself to spinning off a nurse hardcore enough to traverse the war-blasted zones of the south and midwest.*

There will definitely be roving bands of outlaws and raiders, Native American conflicts of interest, and there might even be a few mutant-style zombies. You never know. Regardless, she’d have to be one tough customer.

Then I remembered something about a Confederate hospital in Richmond, and a few minutes of googling took me to Sally Louisa Tompkins. When I saw her private hospital’s righteous stats — 1333 patients, only 73 deaths in 4 years of active warfare — I said to myself, “Self, this is the kind of operation that could spawn a nurse such as I require for snappy genre fiction.”

I don’t want to use Captain Sally, mind you; if the war were still going on in the 1970s there’s no doubt that she would’ve been soldiering on in her hospital, serving the war wounded. But there were half a dozen doctors and a score of other personnel working beneath her, and I’m pretty sure I can nab one of those folks for fictional purposes. Or, yanno. Create one. Whatever.

Anyway, this post was just to say to the eager R.N.s out there — yes, I’m thinking about it. And maybe once I get back from DragonCon, I’ll have a chance to noodle around on it. It’s entirely possible that you’ve shoved me down the track of a pretty cool idea.