The world as we know it is about to change. Whether it is the Mayans' 2012 or the Christians' final days, humans can feel a major change coming to the world they now inhabit. Blood Quantum offers the hope of change of mind and soul over that of physical extermination. A world where the veil between the spirit world and the physical world once again is opened so that both can be quided by the Great Mystery of life, in a peaceful and harmonious way.

Blood Quantum

By Jerry D. Stubben

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2011 Jerry D. Stubben
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-0896-7

Chapter One

"To Heal, One Must First Be Sick."

Sam Sheridan leaned over the motor of his 2008 Dodge Dakota pickup, "Bertha" As he tightened the last sparkplug, the speaker on the emergency radio in the cab screamed out, "Sam, Sam, come in Sam!" The male voice startled Sam, causing his head to jerk upward, meeting the latch of Bertha's hood.

"He Ah!" Sam screamed as the lightning bolt of pain shot from the top of his head, down through his neck, to his chest, through his belly, down to his legs, into the tips of his toes, and then back up to is brain.

"Oh, Wakanda, why my head, why always my head?" Sam questioned his creator.

"Must you whap me on the head to get my attention? I know I haven't been to ceremony for a month. I'll go next week, I promise!"

"Sam, Sam, come in Sam!" the male voice repeated itself over the radio's speaker.

The emergency radio was property of the Indian Health Service hospital, where Sam was finishing his duties as an intern. Within the year, he would become Sam Sheridan, M.D. The radio was necessary so that the hospital could reach him at all times, like a real doctor. It was for official emergencies, only. Not idle conversation and or pranks .

"What kind of emergency could this be?" Sam thought.

"Come in, Sam? Dammit, answer me!" Sam recognized the voice of his friend and orderly at the hospital, Herm, "Sam, we got one big mess back here. We need you, now."

Sam reached through Bertha's open driver side window and grabbed the radio's microphone. "Herm, what the hell going on, you nearly got my head tore off by Bertha?"

"That old pickup hood got you again, aye, Sam. You got to watch those pickup spirits, especially Bertha's," Herm laughed as he spoke, adding to Sam's pain and frustration. Maybe Herm didn't need him as much as Sam had thought. Maybe he was just joking around.

"What the hell do you want?" Sam shouted into the mike as his free hand checked out why the top of his head felt so wet.

"Sam, we got some white guy down here at the hospital that's burning up with a fever." Herm replied. "Doc Garner wants you to come in and take a look at this guy."

Dr. Garner is the head doctor at the hospital and is there. Sam is nearly ten miles away and it's his day off.

Sam answered in an even more angry voice, as he looked around the pickup for a rag, towel, or something to place on the bleeding wound that caused the wetness on the top of his head, "Herm, why are calling me? Doc Garner's there to take care of him. I can't do anything about a fever out here."

"It's Sunday Herm, remember, my day off." Sam continued.

Sam's right hand touched a pad shaped, cotton like object in a yellow plastic bag under the driver's seat.

"Doch Sha, I know that Sam, but this guy's saying some old Indian guys put a curse on him and the guys he's talking about sound like your Uncle Henry and his partners out on Blackbird Bend." Herm had finally revealed the reason Dr. Garner wanted Sam and why Sam had to come to the hospital, even if it was his day off.

"Uncle Henry?" Sam thought out loud, "what's he up to now?"

As he pulled the pad like object out from under the seat, Sam realized that it was one of his wife's sanitary napkins. Kotex.

Sam hoped it wasn't anything like what happened a couple weeks ago when Uncle Henry threw crow's blood into the local priest's holy water.

Sam's sister, Rachel, was planning on having her son, Lester, baptized by the local priest. She had married a Chippewa from Turtle Mountain, up in North Dakota. The father's family, like many in their tribe, were Catholic. He wanted his son to be Catholic.

Uncle Henry did not agree with his relative becoming Catholic or being baptized. He felt that too many of his family had left their own people' religion for that of the white people. And he was not going to let any more of his young relatives go that way. So, Uncle Henry's way of stating his displeasure with his grandson's baptism was to put a little crow's blood in the holy water before the baptismal ceremony was to take place.

The crow's blood did postpone the baptism.

But putting a curse on someone was not the way of a holy person such as Uncle Henry. A sacred person would not harm another living being in such a way that might endanger a life. And Uncle Henry being accused of such behavior was not good for Sam's family or clan, either.

This was a major emergency that definitely required Sam's presence.

A family emergency.

"Herm, I'm on my way" Sam said as he took his wife's Kotex pad from its plastic bag and applied it to the cut on his head. The pad sucked up the blood and stopped the bleeding almost immediately.

Dust clouds billowed behind Bertha as she and Sam raced down the gravel road from Sam's house to the main highway, making her look like an F-16 roaring out to meet the enemy. Sam jerked the wheel of the pickup to the right as he swerved to miss a knee-high pile of gravel and dirt in the middle of the gravel road that he and Bertha were speeding down.

"Damn old Ben White ... he's so blind he leaves these mountains of gravel right in the middle of the damn road," Sam muttered to Bertha.

As soon as he had said these things about Ben, Sam felt a tinge of guilt. Sam knew the real reason the tribal council kept Ben working, even though his age and health would make another retire. Ben was raising five of his fourteen grandchildren. His oldest daughter and her husband were killed in a car accident during the bad blizzard three years ago. Ben's wife had diabetes, real bad. Sam may even have to remove her left foot some day, after he's a full-fledge doctor.

"Sorry, Ben for thinking bad of you," Sam apologized for his disrespect. Dodging a few piles of gravel was a small price to pay for Ben to be able to take care of his family. It was good to have a tribal council that still respected the true needs of the people.

Anyway, a few piles of gravel weren't going to stop Bertha from getting to the hospital and to Sam's family emergency.

The United States Public Health Service and its subsidiary, the Indian Health Service, or IHS owns and runs the hospital where Sam worked at.

The hospital is on the Winnebago Reservation in northeastern Nebraska, thirty odd miles south of Sioux City, Iowa. And a hundred or so miles north of Omaha, Nebraska, which was named after Sam's ancestral tribe.

Nearly 150 years ago, the Winnebago were removed from their homelands in Wisconsin by the U.S. government. Namely, the U.S. Army. Oral history states that as the Winnebago were floating down the Missouri River on boats, the Omaha heard their "big voices." The Omaha's invited the Winnebago to come ashore and settle on Omaha land. Some say the U.S. Army and the thieves in Congress forced the Omaha to share their lands with the Winnebago. And then stole the Winnebago lands in Wisconsin. Either way the Winnebago and Omaha live next to each other. Not so much with each other.

These IHS hospitals and clinics are supposed to provide health care for over a million reservation and off-reservation Native Americans. Some feel the hospitals do a good job, some think they don't. For many, they are the only option available to them for receiving any kind of health care at all.

Some white people near such facilities view them as welfare for Indians only. Most white people don't even...