Katheryne "Kay" Heartzman lived in Detroit, Michigan. She was origanally born in Charleston, North Carolina but did not like the issue of slavery. So when she turned 16 she decided that she had had enough so she then moved to Detroit with her Aunt Crystal Lynn who lived all alone and needed help with her nursing clinic. There she studied nursing and became quite well at it. .
By the time she turned twenty she had already learned everything her aunt had taught her and much more. She understood that there was a war fixing to happen because of all of the people that came into the clinic. They were always talking about the war. How it was fixing to happen and how well they "thought" the Union were prepared. But then again, how well could anyone be prepared for war?.
When the war came, it came a lot sooner than everyone was expecting. The Union was no more prepared actually, than the Confederacy. Kay and her Aunt had a lot more patients than usual, but what else is the outcome of war? At one point they had to set up several tents outside of the house for patients because in the house there was no more room. If there were people that had bullet wounds they would just move them off to the side and tie a hanckerchief around their wound. Then they would rush over and take care of them as soon as possible. They were very short on nurses or medical staff because obviously it was only Kay and her aunt. So they had to set up a place for the intensley wounded and mildly wounded patients. They set it up to where the intensely wounded were in the house and the mildly wounded were in the tents that were set up outside. There was one major problem. There weren't enough people to help with the wounded. Little did Kay know that there was help on the way. .
Soon it just got out of hand. There just were too many wounded for the two women to handle. So they went to the neighbors and went into town and asked anyone who could help to help.