Character Info

[adjuvant]

BACKGROUND:

June comes from the year 1957. She lives in the small town of Twin Falls in North Carolina. Her father is the town Sheriff. Her mother stays at home, having been paralysed with polio as a teenager. She has one elder brother, who fought in the Korean War and has distanced himself from the family since his return (June has always assumed that he has some war trauma that he doesn't want to share with them, but the truth is that he realised he is gay whilst in the Army and is afraid to come out to his family, given the time period).

June is a registered nurse, having moved away to Charlotte, NC to attend nursing school after leaving high school. She returned to her home town in order to care for her mother and help with the housework, and works in the local doctor's surgery, attending to patients there and making house calls. She works under Dr Crawford, a quite elderly gentleman who has more conservative views on medical treatment and dislikes new methods, but who cares deeply about the wellbeing of the community.

In 1957 there was a worldwide epidemic of Asian flu, which hit June's town particularly hard (notes on this can be found here. When the disease worsened in Twin Falls with a far higher rate of casualties than usual, the CDC sent in Dr Everett Davison to assess the situation and put in place an emergency plan. Dr Davison was a younger man with more modern ideas, as well as being from the federal government rather than a local, and from a northern, big city - and inevitably he and Dr Crawford clashed repeatedly on how to treat the epidemic. June frequently kept the peace, feeling torn between her mentor and the newcomer, on whom she had developed a big crush.

The virus increased in severity in the winter months, and although a vaccine was administered, the strain had evolved and it was ineffective. By late autumn there had been several deaths, mostly of young children and old people, and in November, June herself fell ill. She developed viral myocarditis, and began to weaken and decline over the next few weeks. This was the straw that broke the fragile working relationship between Dr Crawford and Dr Davison, and they both went about treating the epidemic in their own ways, though not at all effectively, as they were both distracted trying to treat June, worrying about her, and arguing over her care and that of Twin Falls.

In terms of her personality, June is a bright, happy girl who cares deeply about the people around her. She has a great sense of pride in her community, and in her nursing, which she sees as a vocation rather than just a job, and delights in being able to help and heal people. At the same time she does feel a little trapped in her small town, and feels as though she's at a crossroads between tradition and change, both in her profession (e.g. the clashes between Davison and Crawford's treatment styles, and the new developments such as a new vaccine for the same disease that left her mother paralysed) and in the wider society and culture of the late 1950s. The world is rapidly changing, and June doesn't want to be left behind, and is more open to newer, liberal ideas than may be expected of the daughter of a Southern small town Sheriff; yet she also acknowledges the tradition of her small community and wants to keep the spirit of that intact through the inevitable changes. June can be quite naive, always wanting to see the best in people, and this can easily be taken advantage of, as can her impulse to help people, and she's the sort who needs others to stand up for her or she risks being trampled over. She isn't good with conflict, preferring to be an uneasy peacemaker rather than confronting issues head on, even if it leaves her unhappy and frustrated as a result she'd prefer that to making everyone else angry or upset.