Another 2025 mini-series. The Surgeon is set 15 years after some sort of climate disaster. Humanity has started to pick itself up again. At least, some of the folks living on the surface are doing that. The wealthy are living in FallOut-style bunkers underground. What, they couldn't get their asses to Mars and die there like ambitious pricks?
Jenny Hanover is the surgeon in question, someone who earned her medical degree before civilization collapsed, but hadn't established a career enough to pay off student loans, let alone afford to go underground. At least she doesn't have to worry about the loans now! She roams the frontier on her ill-tempered horse Paint, trading expertise for food or supplies. Since it's not an easy world for someone traveling alone, she's a pretty hardcore fighter, fully able and willing to hack through enemies with her saber.
Responding to a request for a medic on "Craigslist" - a series of watch towers - brings Hanover to Turtle Island, a fort community somewhere in the western half of the U.S., led by a variety of people with useful skills. Dr. Martinez is an engineer, Rogers is a Marine, Smithy knows forging, Ben knows chemistry, especially fermentation. Hanover sets up shop, saving a little girl from appendicitis during a tornado right off the bat. The community celebrates with a big party, and Hanover is goaded into making several promises while drunk. The community's rule is "word is bond," so she's on the hook. This includes training what passes for their militia in hand-to-hand combat, since Rogers knows marksmanship, not swordfighting.
That's one of those things Pence sort of hints at without discussing in depth. Mentions of learning from people who taught Chinese farmers to fight the Japanese, but other times saying she wasn't trained so much as she just learned. Like her discussions of different types of storms, or what conditions are like in the eastern half of the country. Alluding to her lengthy history surviving the apocalypse.
(Of the three pencilers the mini-series has - Zachary Dolan for issues 1 and 2, Stan Yak for issue 3, Omar Zaldiver for issues 4 thru 6 - Dolan does the best at drawing her as someone with years of experience who's been living rough. She graduated med school before society collapsed, and it's been 15 years since then. She's got to at least be in her 40s, but Yak and Zaldiver minimize her scars, give her shiny smooth hair, pretty her up a lot. Dolan's version smiles bigger, groans and stretches and slumps. Her hair is stringier, her skin's darker and lined, like she gets a lot of sun and doesn't have a lot of opportunities to bathe.)
There's a need for training, as the fort is soon targeted by a group Hanover is acquainted with, Fury Road rejects calling themselves "Hot Animal Machines." Seems like a contradictory name, but their motto is also, 'everyone dies tonight, or dies trying,' so we are not dealing with geniuses here.
Turtle Island wins the battle, a violent and bloody one with Hanover as the point of the spear (or the edge of the sword) but can't drive the invaders away solely by force of arms. Not without more casualties than they're prepared to accept, anyway. To win the war, they fight dirty, offering opium laced with warfarin. That gets the attention of the United First Nations, especially this she-devil doctor with a sword. Hanover manages to talk herself out of trouble, offering to help Chief Long and his people rescue others being sold as slave labor to the wealthy underground (in exchange for fresh drugs.)
Then she breaks her word and runs off with the chief's nephew. That decision doesn't turn out well for anyone.
Running through the book is the notion of ideals or creeds. The gap between what people say they believe in and what they do when the chips are down. Hanover explains the concept of triage to a young man at the fort named Abner, who shows interest in becoming a healer. That if a patient is beyond saving, she lets them die, to put that energy and resources towards someone that has a chance. If the patient has a chance, then she has to do all she can to help them, including remove an appendix during a tornado.
This becomes a sticking point between them, and to an extent between her and Turtle Island in general. Rogers is wounded during initial contact with the Hot Animal Machines. Arrow in the shoulder. He gets hooked on opium during the recovery; Pence does a nice bit where Rogers' internal narration agrees he should switch to liquid aspirin, but then he says aloud he's still in too much pain. It gets bad enough, he swipes some of the tainted opium without realizing it.
Hanover gives him all the blood she can, then leads Abner and some others out to see if the Hot Animal Machines took the bait. Which leaves her ill-equipped to fight when Chief Long's guys get the drop on her. After negotiating her release, she braves a torrential downpour, at night, to get back to the fort and check on Rogers. Abner sat around drinking and playing cards with the First Nation guys. Where was the commitment to healing? To Abner, it's not a 24/7 thing, he just wants to know how to patch someone up and then go on with his life.
Martinez keeps talking about "word is bond," and Hanover plays by those rules. She gives Turtle Island everything she agreed to - while heavily intoxicated - and more besides. The terms of agreement didn't say she would fight a war for them, or compromise an oath by offering tainted drugs, but she did that too. She fulfilled her terms of the deal, but Martinez gets pissed when she decides to leave, and when Paint brings her back, badly wounded, says to let her die. Smithy, the only one who points out she did as promised, disagrees and takes care of her himself.
Little Bird seduces her, then steals her sword and Paint. Partly as revenge for not letting him die of a wound, partly because that was how he interpreted his uncle's stories about counting coup to prove you're a warrior. Chief Long is not impressed, correctly noting Hanover is not someone you want for an enemy.
Not that Hanover is above breaking her word or bending her ethics. Maybe "do no harm" went out the window the first time she had to kill in self-defense, but she still raises it as an objection to the tainted opium, then goes along with the plan. She promises to help Chief Long on his rescue mission, then bails with Little Bird at the first opportunity, even though she seems to accept payment for aid she didn't provide.
And I think part of the conflict between her and Abner is a different notion of how to use medical knowledge. Hanover wanders, going where the work is. She's seen the world outside Turtle Island's log walls, and it's hardened her. She has at least 3 scars on her face and others on her arms. Probably more we don't see. She's missing a tooth, at least when Dolan draws her. She mentions not being able to use opium because she's addicted. She's probably performed uglier operations than that appendectomy in worse conditions than a tornado.
That's not Abner's goal. He wants to help the people of Turtle Island, and that's the extent of his interest. Maybe if someone rides up asking for help he'd offer, though he flatly declined to help Hanover when she returned, so maybe not. Maybe it is, as Hanover suggests, that he just liked the pretty idea of being a healer, and the reality is too ugly, too difficult for him. Or maybe he knows his limits. He wants to protect his world and the people in it, limited as that is.
Hanover seems willing to help people as she comes across them in need, or answer the call when it's put forth, but I'm not sure her world has anyone in it but her and Paint. Everything else is transactional. Which means, when she has nothing to trade, she's got nothing to rely on but someone's pity. If not for Smithy, she dies. Little Bird might be an asshole, but he's got friends. When she gets a shot at him, they ignore Chief Long and try to rescue their pal. Like I said, that doesn't end well for anyone. People get run over with wagons, bit by horses, take hatchets to the foot.
The mini-series doesn't end with any significant change in how Hanover's going to do things, either. She briefly considers going back to Turtle Island, but brushes it off after one panel. Can't imagine she's going to want to have any run-ins with the United First Nations going forward, and she and Little Bird made some enemies before he sprang his trap. Enemies everywhere, and no friends to be found.
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