Glenda De Bruyn (née Donger)

Early Life and the Donger Heritage

Glenda Donger was born on 12 April 1973 in the cultural heart of Zurich, Switzerland, arriving into a household where creativity and storytelling were woven into the fabric of daily existence. Her father, Gebhardt Donger, was a renowned local storyteller whose tales combined folklore with philosophical insight, earning him a devoted following in the Swiss German-speaking community. His stories would plant the seeds of Glenda's lifelong curiosity and her inclination toward solving mysteries—both scientific and personal.

The Donger household was creative and warm, filled with language, learning, and a subtle undercurrent of sorrow. Evenings were often spent gathered around Gebhardt as he spun tales of impossible worlds, magical portals, and guardians who walked between dimensions. These stories, which Glenda absorbed with the wonder of childhood, would later prove to be far more than fantasy. Her mother, Anna Donger, provided balance to Gebhardt's dreaming with practical warmth, creating a home where intellectual exploration was as valued as emotional connection.

Glenda's younger brother, Oska, took a dramatically different path from hers, eventually entering the nightlife scene as a club manager across Central Europe. Despite diverging lifestyles and the geographical distance that grew between them, their familial bond endured across years and continents. The contrast between the siblings—Glenda pursuing healing and truth, Oska embracing the transient pleasures of nightlife—reflected the household's embrace of individual paths, even when those paths led far from one another.

From an early age, Glenda demonstrated an unusual combination of scientific precision and intuitive empathy. She possessed her father's curiosity about the hidden workings of the world and her mother's practical instinct for helping others. Where Gebhardt told stories about healing, Glenda wanted to practise it. Where Anna offered comfort through presence, Glenda sought to understand the mechanisms of comfort itself. These traits would converge naturally into a calling in medicine, though the path would prove neither straight nor conventional.

Education and Medical Formation

Glenda's formal education took place at the University of Zurich, where she distinguished herself in the fields of human biology and internal medicine. Her academic performance was exemplary, but what set her apart was her approach to medicine as fundamentally human rather than purely clinical. Whilst her peers focused on diagnostic precision, Glenda maintained a personal interest in psychological trauma, medical ethics, and the human stories behind clinical cases.

The Swiss medical education system provided rigorous training in diagnostics and treatment protocols, but Glenda found herself increasingly drawn to questions that textbooks could not answer. Why did some patients heal whilst others with identical conditions did not? What role did community, family, and belief play in recovery? These questions would later inform her holistic approach to practice and her conviction that medicine extended far beyond the prescription pad.

After graduating in the mid-1990s, she opted to begin her career in humanitarian medicine, seeking placements that would bring her into direct contact with underserved populations. This decision reflected both idealism and practicality—Glenda understood that the most profound medical education occurred not in well-equipped teaching hospitals but in remote clinics where resources were scarce and improvisation was survival.

Humanitarian Missions and Meeting Pierre

In 1997, seeking to apply her medical training beyond the walls of academic hospitals, Glenda joined a multi-agency international aid project based in the Kalimantan region of Borneo. The initiative, supported by Médecins Sans Frontières and regional partners, aimed to provide basic healthcare services to remote villages with high infant mortality, limited access to vaccinations, and severe shortages of medical infrastructure.

The terrain was difficult and resources were sparse. Glenda found herself treating everything from malaria and waterborne illnesses to chronic malnutrition and complications from untreated injuries. What struck her most, however, was not the physical hardship but the resilience of the communities and the dignity with which they faced systemic neglect. These observations would shape her later conviction that health equity required not merely medicine but structural reform—better supply systems, transparent data reporting, and culturally sensitive protocols.

It was during this mission that she met Dr Pierre Laurent De Bruyn, the project's Chief Medical Officer. A Belgian-born virologist seven years her junior, Pierre had previously worked on containment strategies during dengue fever outbreaks in West Africa and was known for his uncompromising ethical standards. His French Flemish roots lent him a quiet intensity, offset by a dry wit and an almost monastic discipline in the field.

Their professional synergy was immediate. Pierre appreciated Glenda's diagnostic precision and intuitive grasp of cross-cultural health communication; Glenda was impressed by Pierre's command of epidemiology and his ability to mobilise small teams under pressure. Long nights spent analysing patient data, coordinating supply chains, and writing emergency protocols soon blurred the boundary between collaboration and companionship.

By 1999, the two had become inseparable—both as clinicians and as partners. They accepted a new assignment in South America, embedded in a long-term programme along the Peruvian and Bolivian borderlands, targeting preventable diseases in post-conflict zones. Working in unstable political conditions and amid frequent funding disruptions, they focused on building sustainable health education frameworks, often training local volunteers to deliver care in their own communities.

These formative years tested their endurance and reshaped their worldviews. Glenda encountered the crushing weight of institutional fragility—health clinics operating without electricity, bureaucratic roadblocks to basic treatment access, and endemic corruption. She also learned the importance of public trust: that medicine, no matter how advanced, meant little without social cohesion and shared belief in its purpose.

The moral and logistical complexity of their work forged in them a quiet resolve. By the time they left South America in 2004, Glenda and Pierre were no longer just practitioners; they had become field-hardened strategists, bonded by love and conviction, carrying with them a shared awareness that the fight for health equity required not only medicine but truth, trust, and constant vigilance.

Establishing in Tasmania

In early 2005, Glenda and Pierre De Bruyn settled in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, after accepting dual placements that offered stability following nearly a decade of field-based humanitarian work. Whilst Pierre was appointed Senior Research Fellow in Infectious Pathogen Dynamics at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research, Glenda was swiftly recruited into several key roles across Hobart's evolving public and private healthcare ecosystem.

Glenda joined the Hobart Family Doctor's Practice, located on Collins Street at the foothills of Mount Wellington, as a part-time General Practitioner. The practice, established in 2003 by Dr Edward Hughes and Dr Amelia Atkins in a purpose-designed sandstone building, had earned a reputation for holistic, community-centred healthcare. Her clinical focus included multi-system disorders, women's health, and diagnostic complexity, often managing cases referred from other GPs in the region. Between 2005 and 2013, she became the primary practitioner for a cluster of patients from the South Hobart and Battery Point areas—many of whom had complex case histories involving both physical and mental health conditions.

Concurrently, Glenda took up regular shifts at the Royal Hobart Hospital, Tasmania's primary tertiary referral centre. From 2006 to 2016, she served primarily within the Acute Medical Unit and later rotated into the Department of General Medicine, with locum work in the Emergency Department during peak winter pressures. Her previous field experience proved instrumental in identifying atypical presentation patterns in imported infections—a recurring issue in Tasmania's growing international student population.

In 2008, Glenda was appointed to the Board of the Royal Hobart Hospital Research Foundation, becoming one of its youngest members at the time. Over the next ten years, she acted as Board Liaison for Clinical Ethics and Translational Research and chaired the subcommittee for Women's Health Equity in Research Funding from 2012 to 2016. She advocated for projects that directly benefited patients, including longitudinal studies on postpartum depression screening in regional Tasmania and research initiatives into the relationship between chronic kidney disease and socio-economic status.

Although not in a formal teaching role, Glenda regularly guest lectured at the University of Tasmania, particularly for the MBBS Year 4 clinical problem-solving module and Global Health seminars. Her sessions, typically delivered in March and August, included case studies from Borneo and Peru and were attended by both medical and public health students. She mentored two postgraduate students completing their Master of Public Health dissertations, one of whom later joined Médecins Sans Frontières.

The couple settled into a comfortable home in Hobart with Lois, Pierre's loyal Golden Retriever, whose calming presence became a constant amidst their demanding professional lives. Their domestic existence offered respite from the intensity of their earlier fieldwork, though neither fully escaped the pull of investigation and truth-seeking that had defined their partnership from the beginning.

Involvement with the Fox Order

The tranquillity of life in Tasmania shifted dramatically following the appearance of a mysterious viral outbreak whose origins and epidemiological profile defied conventional understanding. As inconsistencies mounted—unexplained patient disappearances, military involvement in medical cases, and research data that seemed deliberately obscured—Glenda and Pierre were quietly inducted into the Fox Order, a clandestine group of medics, researchers, and investigators committed to uncovering the hidden dimensions of the virus and the possibility of external interference.

Born from early 2000s distrust of institutional narratives, the Fox Order had emerged as a shadowy collective convinced that truth lay buried beneath official accounts. Led by a mysterious figure known only as "The Fox" and operated through military-trained handlers with codenames, the organisation weaponised surveillance and infiltration in pursuit of hidden knowledge. Their methods blurred the line between whistleblowing and extremism, leaving society divided between viewing them as necessary watchdogs or dangerous vigilantes.

Within the Order, Glenda's strengths in both diagnostics and deductive reasoning proved invaluable. Her medical practice became the perfect cover for covert operations—cryptic exchanges with handlers, coded communications, and the slow, painstaking assembly of a larger truth about the virus and those who controlled information about it. Her work moved between formal clinical responsibilities and late-night meetings, her stethoscope becoming an unlikely tool of intelligence gathering alongside healing.

Disappearance and Arrival in Clivilius

On 25 July 2018, Glenda De Bruyn vanished without a trace from her consulting room at the Hobart Family Doctor's Practice during what should have been an unremarkable routine patient appointment. Her final entry in the clinic log system noted the arrival of Luke Smith, a familiar patient. She was never seen on Earth again.

Despite the abrupt nature of her disappearance—her handbag, stethoscope, and notes left on the desk—no missing persons report was officially filed by her husband, Pierre. This omission would later raise quiet speculation within the Hobart medical community, though no formal investigation followed. Her absence was eventually noted in Tasmanian medical records as "unexplained departure," and her role at the practice was quietly vacated by year's end.

In reality, Glenda's disappearance was neither random nor accidental. During her consultation with Luke Smith, she was introduced to a portal device, a slim metallic instrument capable of breaching dimensional boundaries. Their conversation revealed shared knowledge of a hidden alternative realm: Clivilius. When Pierre's urgent warning arrived—"We've been compromised. Run!"—Glenda had no time to communicate further. She stepped through the swirling portal of colour and energy, severing ties with her known life on Earth and entering the threshold of an entirely different reality.

The Clivilius she encountered bore no resemblance to the world her father had described in his childhood tales. There were no bustling cities, no abundant wildlife—only endless brown dust, barren plains, and crushing silence. The realisation that Gebhardt's stories might have been more than fantasy, yet had prepared her for nothing of this desolation, nearly overwhelmed her. But when Luke mentioned that another settler, Jamie Greyson, had fallen ill with a fever, her medical instincts cut through the existential despair. Whatever else had changed, she remained a healer.

Founding Bixbus and Establishing Medical Infrastructure

When Glenda stepped through the portal onto Bixbus's barren plain on 25 July 2018, she arrived at the edge of a wide, silent river where a small cluster of new arrivals had begun staking out ground. There were no buildings—only two tents, a rudimentary firepit, and an upturned crate serving as a table. The location, known simply as Bixbus, had been "settled" for less than a week.

Glenda was among the first dozen arrivals. Whilst many struggled to orient themselves or waited for leadership to emerge, she moved instinctively into action. Her background in emergency medicine and frontier health proved indispensable in those early days. She immediately established a triage tent built from scavenged tarp and salvaged tubing to assess dehydration, shock, and sleep trauma from portal transit. She organised a rotating health watch roster, ensuring someone was always monitoring new arrivals, and began handwritten settler health logs that would evolve into the first medical record archive in Clivilius.

Her first true test came almost immediately when Jamie Greyson's infected splinter wound required emergency treatment. Working within canvas walls with makeshift tools, Glenda extracted the infected debris whilst Jamie screamed and his dog Duke's teeth found her arm. This brutal baptism stripped away the theoretical frameworks of her Tasmanian practice, revealing the raw essence of frontier medicine that would define her role in building Bixbus's foundations.

On 5 August 2018, a severe bus collision near the makeshift transport clearing marked the first major trauma incident in Bixbus. The Brisbane Grammar School bus had emerged from a portal and overturned, leaving students and teachers injured across a scene of chaos. Glenda, alongside trauma surgeon Dr Emily Jane Nguyen, paramedic Jackson William Roberts, and general practitioner Raj Patel, responded with the only tools they had. That moment catalysed the creation of what would become the Bixbus Medical Centre, transforming from a triage tent on riverstone ground into the settlement's essential healthcare facility.

Through coordinated support from the Clivilius Health Board and global logistics group Global Modular Solutions, the Medical Centre was fitted with modular units by mid-September 2018. Glenda was directly involved in overseeing the layout of the Examination and Emergency Units, protocol drafting for maternal care and field surgery, and staff induction procedures for both Earth-trained and locally trained medical aides.

Rise of Governance and the Clivilius Lead Council

By August 2018, only weeks after her arrival, Glenda's leadership and practical capability had already earned the trust of the earliest settlers. As the population grew steadily—from a handful to over fifty by mid-August—so too did the need for structured governance and settlement coordination.

On 14 August 2018, the first formal meeting of what would become the Clivilius Lead Council was convened. Glenda was invited to join as Medical Advisor, alongside figures such as Paul Smith in strategic operations, Dani Alexandra Nowaski in urban development, Terry Saba as principal engineer, and Grant Ironbach as director of wildlife rehabilitation. Her early contributions were critical in establishing community health infrastructure: drafting emergency triage procedures, setting clean water handling standards, and recommending labour-rest cycles to minimise exhaustion and mental health deterioration in new arrivals.

When the council's formal administrative structure was enacted on 29 January 2019, Glenda remained a core member, working in close cooperation with Deborah Ann Snow, who was named Secretary of Health and Human Services. Her advisory role focused on ethical frameworks for inter-settlement care delivery, oversight of first aid and field care training modules, and drafting policy on medical neutrality regarding resource access for non-aligned outposts. She also co-authored the Bixbus Compendium Charter, a foundational legal document that continues to guide civic and ethical standards within the district.

The Search for Gebhardt Donger

The portal journey triggered more than relocation—it reawakened the mystery of Glenda's father. Before stepping through, she recalled stories from childhood in which Gebhardt Donger spoke of "the Portal" not as metaphor but as real possibility. His tales of Clivilius, which she had dismissed as creative fantasy, now demanded reconsideration.

In the months that followed her arrival, Glenda undertook intermittent expeditions beyond the perimeter of Bixbus into Verdant South, Lake Deruna, and the Fragment Woods, where traces of pre-Bixbus settler activity had been recorded. Locals in the region recounted folklore of a "story-man who lived by the copper rivers," matching her father's description.

She compiled a private archive titled "The Donger Trail," consisting of symbolic carvings found near Old Harthspan Hill, a journal fragment in Old High-Terran signed only "G.D.," and an encoded map found beneath a slate shelter in Hollow Steppe. Whilst the search remains unresolved, Glenda continues to follow threads.