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[dolly-madison.livejournal.com]

Hello everybody!
I posted this a while ago on the yahoo group, but I thought I'd post it here. It's currently incomplete, but it'll be done soon, I promise.
It's an angst fest. You have been warned.

“Attention, attention, incoming wounded. Looks to be a long and messy one, folks.”

 

            “Never a break,” BJ sighed, putting down his weekly letter from Peg and standing up. Hawkeye said nothing; he just unintentionally mimicked BJ’s actions, however, his letter was in fact a martini. The stress was becoming intolerable. Everything hurt: his head, his back, even his fingernails were falling victim to the tiredness, the unbearable exhaustion of being a surgeon in the war. He felt like his patients: shot beyond repair.

            “Let’s go,” Hawk sighed. This was the last thing his body needed, but being a surgeon, it wasn’t his body that mattered. As soon as he stood up, it was clear that this wasn’t going to be an easy task: every bone clicked and the sinew stretched. Hawkeye winced.

            “You alright there, Hawk?” BJ asked opening the door for himself and his friend who was now up and ready to go.

            “Yep. Just a cramp…this too shall pass.”

            “Like the war?”

            “Just like the war.”

Neither of them believed it, but it was soothing to think that this could be the last batch of casualties before the peace treaty was signed and they were discharged. They thought this every time though, and every time, they were wrong.

 

            There were four ambulances waiting outside. The number of patients wasn’t anything to be alarmed about, but the extent of their wounds was the main concern. Limbs torn off, sides spilt open… it was horrific to say the least.

            “What the hell happened?” BJ shouted over the chaos, half holding in a private’s intestines.

            “There was a major air assault by the North Koreans. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, sir. There was shelling everywhere, you couldn’t escape it! Out of a unit of 57, sir, I think 20 are in 100 different pieces on the front line, 20 are here and the other 17 are scrambling together tryin’ to get these men to you fine people. Pardon the informality, sir,” the driver yelled back.

            “I’m a doctor, be as informal as you want.” BJ looked around. He saw Margaret running around trying to get everyone settled in the right place, the colonel and Radar trying to sort out who was alive and who needed Mulcahy. It truly was chaos at it’s finest. Hawkeye was looking bewildered, something that was very unbecoming and rare for him to show. He looked lost, like he’d never seen a bunch of casualties before. BJ looked away and back to his patient who was in very bad shape. “Margaret! I need this one prepped for OR, I’m taking him first.”

            “Yes, doctor,” she said nodding, Klinger helping her to pick up the stretcher.

            “Hawk, it’s all hands on deck, I need you to check this patient beside me!” BJ yelled. He was tending to a boy with a leg missing, and the patient next to him had an ominous blood soaked blanket covering his face.

Hawked snapped out of his daze and ran over. “OK, what am I dealing with?” he asked, kneeling beside the wounded soldier.

            “I don’t know, you’re gonna have to see what’s under that blanket.”

            “Yeah, why didn’t I think of that?” Hawk attempted to joke. He took a breath and lifted it up. What he saw was the epitome of horror. “Beej…this KID he…oh my god.”

            “What? What’s wrong?”

            “There’s… Beej, he’s got no face. It’s gone.” Hawkeye kneeled there silently for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “No, no, NO, this isn’t right!” he screamed.

            “I know, Hawk, its terrible! But if he’s got a pulse, we gotta try.”

            “What’s the point?!” Hawkeye yelled, standing up and throwing the blanket over the soldier’s face. “There’s no point! This kid might survive, but do you really think anything’s going to get better for him? They’ll send him home and he’ll be the attraction of the neighborhood, the one they’ll keep quiet so that morale stays high. Well fuck that! I’d rather have his deserved death on my conscience than that.” Hawkeye ripped off his dog tags and threw them on his, now doomed, patient. “I’m sorry, kid. I’m outta here.”

            “What are doing?!” BJ yelled, wanting to get up and knock some sense into him, into his friend who was behaving in a way that he’d never thought possible, but he was holding a blanket to his patient’s leg to slow the bleeding while he waited for him to be taken away.

            “Hunnicutt, this may be an inappropriate time, but could you please go and tell your friend to confine the manic-irrational, ‘I’ve had an attack of conscience’ outbursts for the nursery, and tell him to get back here and start acting like the doctor he’s meant to be?” Charles piped up.

            “Yeah, Charles, in a minute. At this particular one I’m trying to stop this kid from bleeding to death.”

            “Yes, well, most of these soldiers are likely to bleed to death unless you get that overgrown child back here this instance, hmm?”

BJ, loathing the idea of listening to Charles, gave in anyway when his patient was taken away. He picked up Hawkeye’s dog tags and ran into the direction that Hawkeye had recently gone.

 

 

 

            “Hawkeye? Are you around here?” BJ was yelling into the darkness. He’d been looking for him for less than two minutes and it already seemed like an impossible task: you could always count on Hawkeye Pierce to hide better that anyone else. Even if you could see him, he could still hide; he had a knack with emotional disguises. This one, however, just got washed off. “Hawkeye, we really need you in there! Charles, Potter and I can’t handle it all.” BJ sighed, Hawkeye wasn’t answering. “Please. I won’t say anything about the kid, I promise. Look, we just need to go and do some routine surgery and then you can go to Rosie’s and this’ll turn out to just be another day.”

            “Another day?” Hawkeye asked, literally stepping out of the darkness.

            “Yeah, just another day. Like last week and the week before.”

            “I’m not coming back. That’s it. I’ve just killed a patient; I’ve run away from a load of patients; I’m becoming a mental patient. I can’t do this anymore.”

            “None of us can, but we are. We have to… we don’t have a choice, Hawk.” BJ sighed and grabbed Hawkeye’s arm, “C’mon, let’s go, I’ll treat you to some clean scrubs.”

            “No way. Let go of my arm,” Hawkeye replied, shaking his arm free. “Tell them I’ve gone AWOL, I don’t care. I’m not coming back. This isn’t like me, but I’ll handle it.”

            “You can’t just go!” BJ yelled at Hawkeye who had now defiantly turned on his heels and was walking away to pack his belongings. “There are kids lying in the dirt 20 yards behind us waiting for you to go and put them back together. You can’t just walk away from that!”

            Hawkeye turned around, “Watch me.”

            BJ ran after him and grabbed him by the shoulder, “Hey just a minute. What the hell do you think you’re doing? This is serious, Hawkeye. You can’t just leave like that.”

            “Don’t you dare tell me what I’ll do. You’ve been here, what, 4 months? I’ve been here almost two years!” Hawkeye spat. He was right up in BJ’s face, breathing out pure rage and anger.

            “Look here, Hawk. I’ve left a little girl who doesn’t even know me back home and a wife who’s never had to look after a kid on her own before…”          

            “Oh, boo hoo. Change the record, Beej. We’ve all left our families behind. Just because you’ve got a wife and kid doesn’t make them anymore important than me leaving my dad.”          

            “Yeah, well I’m sure your father wouldn’t want to see you walking away from your patients!” BJ stepped closer to him, “So get the hell over there and do what you’re trained to or so help me…”

            “What? What’re you going to do? What, you’re gonna hit me? Give me a bloody nose? Big deal,” Hawkeye was saying in almost a taunting manner. “You’d be better to take a walk over there yourself and give yourself a moral nosebleed.”

            “Hang loose, Pierce, I’m warning you,” BJ warned, trying to find some way of releasing his anger that didn’t involve fists or further harsh words. “Just do your job.”

            Hawkeye took a step closer to BJ, who was now shaking with anger. BJ could feel the hotness of his breath on his face and see the glazed over, animal expression in his eyes. “Why don’t you take a walk, Hunnicutt, and go do your fucking job,” Hawkeye snarled.

            Hawkeye started, again, to walk away and BJ stood with his astonished. Had this really just happened? What was this indescribable feeling in the pit of BJ’s stomach that was creeping up his throat? Why was he walking towards Hawkeye without even really knowing it? 

            “Hey, Hawkeye?”

            Hawkeye turned around and BJ realized what that feeling was in the pit of his stomach: rage.  His fist connected with Hawkeye’s jaw and check and sent him down to the ground. “Do you realize what you’re doing?!” BJ screamed bending over to yell the message as close to Hawkeye’s face as he could. “This is the end of your whole career and I don’t think you understand that,” he continued, straightening back up and fixing his shirt. His hand was throbbing.

            Hawkeye was still and silent. He wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t alive.

           “I’m leaving you here. I’m gonna go back now and treat whoever’s still alive the best I can. I’m not even going to tell anyone that I found you, and you know why?” BJ changed his tone and bent back over to Hawkeye’s body, “Because you’re not worth it.”

So BJ left him there, this one surgeon’s body that was now worth nothing, and headed back to theatre for a, hopefully, more forgettable 15 hours of surgery.