Fic: Heaven from Here, ch 1 (PG)

[sharselune.livejournal.com]

Okay, the people have spoken. I guess I will continue. I've gotten into the bad habit of frantically researching every little thing I don't know, so expect some random late-50s trivia. Anyway, here we go.

Title: Heaven from Here
Author: sharselune
Rating: PG for now
Warnings: None for this chapter.
Pairings: none at the moment. Will be slash.
Feedback: of course

prologue is here



Chapter One

Christ, his eyes hurt. BJ had been awake for hours, something like twenty. He used to do meatball sessions in the O.R. two times as long, sometimes three. He was getting soft in his old age.

Erin was sleeping now, for the first time in longer than BJ had been awake. Peg had taken bedside duty last night, but BJ expected they wouldn’t need another night, which was good because Peggy was coming down with a fever now, and his own sinuses felt like they were expanding in his face.

He sat by his daughter’s bed, sprawled out on the rocking chair, feet up on the edge of her bed. Erin’s breathing came easily now. Earlier, they had sat at the kitchen table, her knobby knees showing from under her nightgown as she sat cross-legged on the kitchen chair, the nebulizer humming away. Peg told him once that Erin had confessed to enjoying those nights when her asthma got so bad that the emergency inhalers wouldn’t work anymore, because then she could sit at the table, the mouthpiece to the nebulizer clamped between her teeth, as Peg and BJ sat on either side of her, reading her stories, rubbing her back and talking to her until she had inhaled all of the medicine. BJ dreaded those nights as the most terrifying ones of his existence.

The phone trilled. Pulling his legs off the bed, BJ hurried to the living room to get the phone before it could ring again and wake everyone up. He heard Mikey shifting in the other room. He snatched up the phone.

“Hello?” he whispered

“BJ Hunnicut?” The female voice sounded tentative. It was vaguely familiar, but BJ couldn’t place it.

“Yes?” He lowered his voice when he heard Mikey shift again in the other room. “Who is this?”

The voice warmed. “BJ, this is Margaret. Margaret Houlihan.”

He suddenly placed the voice and the face that went with it. “Margaret? I haven’t heard from you in…” BJ paused.

“Five years.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “It’s been awhile.”

“How are you?”

She gave a laugh that he remembered well. “I’m doing well. I’m engaged to be married, actually.”

“Congratulations. Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Well I’ll put it this way,” Margaret said coyly. “In three months I’ll be Lieutenant Colonel Margaret Winchester.”

“Winchester? You’re marrying Chuck?” BJ laughed incredulously. “I didn’t know you were together.”

“Since the war,” Margaret said fondly. “He’s a good man.”

BJ sat down on the edge of the couch, stretching the phone cord to its limit. “You sound happy,” he said softly.

“I guess I am…” She sounded embarrassed, and suddenly a little awkward. “But that isn’t why I called. I thought maybe you hadn’t heard the news.”

BJ laughed nervously. “Uh oh.”

“Hawkeye’s father died two days ago. The funeral is this weekend. Charles and I are driving up with John McIntyre, but I think we’re the only ones who will be able to make it,” Margaret said in a rush.

BJ pressed his hand into his face. “Oh. Damn. Was he sick?”

There was a pause at the other end of the line. “He killed himself,” Margaret said finally.

BJ felt his stomach drop. “Oh,” he said again, wincing. “How’s Hawk taking it?”

Margaret sounded even more tentative. “I don’t really know. He seems to have stopped paying his phone service. I haven’t spoken to him. I only know about his father from some rumors at the hospital. He still has some friends there.”

They both fell silent. BJ didn’t know what Margaret was thinking on her end. “After you see him, let me know how he’s doing, okay?”

“I will,” Margaret promised. “I’ll tell him to call you.”

“Thank you. And you take care of yourself, okay?”

“I’ll try,” Margaret said affectionately. “We should try to have a reunion some time, just to catch up. Would you want to do that?”

BJ smiled wearily. “Yeah,” he lied. “You look into that.”

**

The cemetery was too cold for anyone but the dead. A number of cars lined the twisting little road that cut through the cemetery, and you could tell the Maine cars from the one from Massachusetts because only the one from Massachusetts had been shut off. The rest idled merrily, pouring plumes of white exhaust into the air.

The Pierces had not been Catholic, so there was no priest—solely the gravedigger waiting in his car nearby. Six little old ladies had braved the cold to come to the burial, more out of community duty than out of mourning, though Daniel had been well loved. Hawkeye stood to the side, hugging himself and wishing that the old ladies would leave so they could all head out. Margaret, Charles and Trapper all stood slightly apart from him, also in silence.

Daniel Pierce had been cremated and his ashes now sat in a small cardboard box on the ground with a photograph propped up on top of it. The photo had been a rather old one, taken by a friend of the family because the Pierces didn’t own a camera and weren’t very much into capturing the Kodac moment anyway.

Finally the old women filed past Hawkeye one by one, kissing him on the cheek and giving him small but brave little smiles. “He’s with God now,” said one of them. “He was a good man,” said another.

The gravedigger moved in. They had charged Hawkeye an extra fee for having to break through the icy ground. He didn’t want to see his father buried. Margaret shifted beside him.

“Thanks for coming up,” Hawkeye said to them, breaking the silence. Charles solemnly shook his hand.

“We nearly had to hire a dog sled,” Charles said stiffly. Then he added, more quietly, “Coming was the least we could do.”

“We’re so sorry,” Margaret added, throwing her arms around his neck. Warm, moist air pressed against his neck as he hugged her. Hawkeye closed his eyes. She kissed his cheek and pulled back.

Trapper hung back, hands in his pockets. He gave Hawkeye an awkward smile. “We miss you down at Boston General.”

“You or the nurses?” Hawkeye returned and he saw something relax in all three of them. Putting his own hands in his pockets, he added “Do you need a ride somewhere?”

“We have a car,” Charles said, pointing. Only three cars were left parked by the curb. Hawkeye just shrugged.

“Let’s get out of the cold,” Margaret begged. “Hawkeye, is there someplace we could… sit down and talk?”

“You could come to Chez Pierce. We serve the worst coffee outside of the Army,” Hawkeye offered as they picked their way through the snow to the cars.

“That would be lovely,” Margaret said.

“We’ll follow you?” Charles said. Hawkeye nodded. He circled the hood of his car and hopped into the warmth, then sat, heating his hands at the heater vent. Charles, Margaret and Trapper got into the car in front of him. The engine revved, groaned, stalled. Once, twice. Hawkeye got out of his car and strolled over to theirs and knocked on the window. Looking sour, Charles rolled down his window.

“Do you need a ride somewhere?” Hawkeye repeated.

“We never should have turned down the dog sled,” Charles replied.

“Mush, mush, Charles.” Hawkeye returned to his car and the other three extracted themselves from the other one. Charles slid into his back seat, Margaret next to him, and then Trapper tried to get in next to her.

“I don’t bite, folks,” Hawkeye said wryly.

“Margaret, you can sit in the front. Ladies first,” Trapper offered.

“I don’t trust you back here with Charles,” Margaret replied after a pause.

“Close the door, it’s cold,” said Charles in irritation.

“Margaret,” said Trapper.

“Trapper,” said Margaret.

“Would you please,” said Charles. Trapper slammed the door and got into the front seat. Without a word, Hawkeye put the car in drive and pulled out onto the road.

“I thought Margaret would want to sit with you,” Trapper said to Hawkeye, awkward again.

“You can call the tow truck from my house,” Hawkeye said. “I left my jumper cables in my other pair of pants.”

***

Margaret wandered around the small living room, a cup of coffee warming her hands.

The men sat at the table, making small talk. It had been awkward enough that Margaret had had to get up, to move around. This was ridiculous. This was Hawkeye. Why couldn’t she deal with this?

The kitchen was too small for all four of them so Margaret had edged into what looked to be a living room. The room was so dark and dirty that the freshly cleaned area stood out even more. Four dents in the rug suggested that an armchair was missing. Margaret wouldn’t have been as good a nurse as she was if she were squeamish about death but this room was too stale, too empty. She stepped back into the kitchen, where the three men sat.

“Lillehei is a quack,” Charles was saying firmly, chin and eyebrows raised. “And so are you if you believe this can have any use in surgery.”

“But cross-circulation can increase the chances of survival in open-heart surgery patients,” Trapper insisted. “I don’t know about you but I happen to think that’s a good thing.”

“And it’s the only technique with a possible two hundred percent mortality rate,” Charles countered archly.

Hawkeye sat staring into his own empty coffee cup. Margaret automatically moved to the coffee pot and refilled Hawkeye’s cup, causing a pause in the conversation as she leaned between Charles and Trapper.

“It’s getting late,” Margaret offered into the silence. “We should get going if we want to make it home at a decent hour.”

Trapper pushed back his chair. “I’ve got a conference tomorrow that I need to get back for.”

“Hawkeye?” Margaret peered carefully at the weary looking man, using her nurse’s eyes to see the fatigue and malnourishment in the wrinkles on his face. “Will you be okay alone? We can stay if you need us to.”

Seeming to revive himself, Hawkeye shook his head. “No, I’ll be fine. You go.”

“It’s no trouble for us to stay,” Charles added softly.

“It’s not a very important conference,” Trapper added belatedly. “I don’t really want to go at all.”

“No.” Hawkeye shook his head and got up. “You should get back home. Don’t worry about me. I can get along fine by myself. I always have.”

The last line, meant to be a joke, fell flat. Margaret winced but felt slightly relieved that she wasn’t going to have to stay in this small cold house in this small cold town. Charles got up as well and the four of them maneuvered awkwardly to gather coats and scarves without bumping into each other too much in the small kitchen.

The air, when Margaret stepped outside, felt to her like the void, like death. It froze the air in her lungs and she had to gasp to get the air moving again. Charles huffed impatiently behind her and she moved down the porch steps to their car, which was idling in the driveway. Charles unlocked the doors and Margaret got in the passenger’s seat. She buckled her seat belt and stared at the darkness pressed against the windshield as Trapper and Charles got in and the dome light lit the cocoon of the car. Then the last door shut and Margaret was suddenly staring across the grass to the door of Hawkeye’s house. The door was shut but the square window was lit in butter-colored light and Hawkeye’s silhouette stood there, watching them. She stared at that silhouette as they backed down the driveway, watching until the light suddenly flicked out and the house was left in darkness. They drove away.

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