What a facepalm moment!
Everything went well in my experimental fort (which was extra wide to allow for two big towers connected by a walled passage). I had several great ore strikes, plenty of good soil, the works.
The only bad things were: 1) There were no plump helmets OR SEEDS available for the embark, and 2) After a day or so, my two miners fell asleep a bit earlier than the rest of the beardos, on hard ground, in the bedroom area (no beds available yet).
Cut to the next season. Many things are made and working. I notice a miner bleeding and vomiting in her own bed.
Was it because of outdoor exposure? Nope, everyone's been running around a lot because of the huge lengthy corridors, only a couple of which were finished by now.
Finally I look at the "wounds" and what is listed is "Fever - Nausea". Seems to be some sort of flu. Fortunately, after a good rest, the sickness, whatever it is, is gone, and the miner returns to active duty.
OK, time to build and designate the hospital. I design the whole thing, and designate the zone right away even though nobody even tunneled it out yet.
A little bit later, the same dwarf, who was mining it out, decided to fall asleep on the ground, even though she has a perfectly good bed back in her bedroom. Why? Because she's sick again!
I immediately set up some beds, and then the OTHER miner has arrived and is also sleeping on the floor. Same reason-- vomiting and fever.
I return to other activities, deciding there's nothing I can do, since the beds will take some time to get there.
Then the miner cancelled sleep because she was interrupted by the noise of a bed being delivered. What did she do? Instead of waiting for the bed to be positioned, she simply moved a few squares over and went to sleep again on the cold hard floor.
The other one, meanwhile, seems to have gotten better and wandered off to do more work on the east side of the hospital. Which prompted the first miner to FINALLY find the bed and crawl into it.
That did it. I am assigning a chief medical officer.
Except it turns out, the only one with any of the medical skills needed is...
Yup. The miner.
Well, can't be helped. I'm nicknaming her "Dr."
Cut to some time later. No real hospital activity has followed, even though I see occasional patches of the miner's -- er, doctor's blood. Every time I see this I check up on both of them. Neither is vomiting or sick; in fact, they are both reported as being healthy with the now-available "h" option.
But when I do this, it zooms to the doctor, which lists wounds, but also mentions the translation of her name which I notice for the first time:
"Dr. Plaguerub"