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Hawkeye never wanted to join the army in the first place. He’s a doctor for god’s sake. They take the Hippocratic Oath for a reason, and that reason is not to sew up 16 year old kids with bellies full of lead. The front may not be close enough to see, but the 4077th definitely feels its impacts. Frank, all patriotism and mindless obedience, keeps the shrapnel that he removes from his patients like trophies he can parade around once he gets back home. He’s a shitty surgeon and a shitty person, so Trapper and Hawkeye swap annoyed glances behind his back and finally get around to autographing Frank’s mother’s portrait. Let it never be said the Hippocratic Oath includes pranks. As miserable as they are, Hawkeye finds some solace in his fellow doctors and nurses. Trapper has been on his side since day one, always quick with a sharp-witted reply. Houlihan, although she doesn’t admit it, will join Hawkeye occasionally when he sits in the mess tent late at night, drinking away the losses on the table. She can usually match him shot for shot. Ginger is always ready to dance, or sing, or just talk about nothing for hours on end. Her genuine kindness in the face of such cruelty really does wonders for the ever-cynical doctor. It doesn’t take away from the gruesome reality of war. Nothing can, not really. All the quick jokes and one-liners can’t keep a kid from dying under his hands. He can flirt with the nurses, but that won’t bring a smile to a dead man’s face.
Radar is quiet and apologetic as he tells Hawkeye the open-heart massage patient didn’t make it. His eyes are downcast behind his dirty glasses. Hawkeye can see Klinger sending him a nervous glance. Good thing he’s wearing a surgical mask. He’s not quite sure he could manage to hitch a smile on to his face or even choke out a joke. The dull, throbbing pain of being on his feet in army regulation boots seems so insignificant in the face of this news. Hawkeye had brought this man back from the brink of death. And he had died anyways. He was really just a kid, freshly 17 by the look of his peach fuzz. He had been passed out long before he had gotten to the operating table, and they had him on morphine for his pain. Had Hawkeye missed a stitch? Did he puncture something when he used the rib-cutters? Should he have followed him into post-op?
“Hawk, other people needed ya more.”
That’s Trapper’s voice, and Hawkeye realizes he’s been standing there for some time. He must have been talking out loud. The operating room feels so crowded and yet so cold at the same time. His chest feels empty. That’s odd. Hawkeye has cut open plenty of people in his time here at the M*A*S*H. He knows there are organs in there. His heart should still be pumping, warm and pulsing as its four chambers work together to keep his blood flowing. Humans are warm-blooded creatures after all. Faintly, he feels warm liquid spill down his cheeks. It soaks into his surgical mask. He blinks back the tears, the sweat, the blood. The scent of his own fear is cloying, pressed to his face by his mask. It’s suffocating. He wheezes in an icy breath and feels a cold, still heart under his fingertips. Stumbling to sit on the stool, Hawkeye doesn’t see anything but the guts of that kid under his hand. Someone says something, but he doesn’t quite process the words. He can’t hear much over the ringing in his ears, the thundering sound of a heartbeat echoing in his empty skull.
“Ready to get back in the game?” Sidney asks, suddenly loud and sharp. He sounds steady, but Ginger is handling most of the operation at this point. Hawkeye swings his head over. There’s a patient lying on the operating table. Right, surgery. “I don’t think I’m quite ready to fly solo yet.”
Hawkeye stands up- when did he sit down?- and peers into this kid’s gut. He falls back into the motions, holds his hand out for the clamp. Sidney leans back, relieved from his duty as impromptu and very out of practice surgical doctor. He peels off his gloves and Ginger takes over, finishing up the operation and urging Hawkeye to his next patient. Someone dabs his forehead and Hawkeye slices open another kid. It’s all the same, endless rows of chests too young to even have hair on them. Somewhere deep inside his head, an old memory starts to play, of Hawkeye aged 12, wishing to grow up faster. He was a gangly kid, all knees and elbows. Something sharp pinches his thumb and Hawkeye jolts.
He blinks several times. Frank had nipped his finger with the clamp by accident. Frank nervously snarls an insult that falls on deaf ears. Hawkeye mechanically removes the shrapnel and asks for a needle with stitches to start repairing the damage. Even with his hands buried wrist-deep in guts, Hawkeye is cold. His toes are completely numb by now. The spot where Frank pinched him tingles, but everything is muted. A nurse (Houlihan? Kelleye? Ginger?) pats his forehead. He pushes the skin together and then inserts the needle. Stitching is easy, something he’s done a million times before. Somehow, his stitches come out crooked. He doesn’t remember finishing them.
Like always, Radar comes in and announces there will be no more wounded for today. His cheery voice seems like mockery. There will be more later, tomorrow, next week, next month. This war is never ending, cycles of new kids being indoctrinated, sent to the front, sent to the hospital, stitched back up, and sent back out to the front all over again. Hawkeye has operated on familiar faces more than once, found more bullets in the bodies of boys who weren’t men the first time they came in, and wouldn’t be men no matter how much lead they were pumped full of. The helicopters will come first, then the trucks and trucks and trucks full of dying kids. There’s always more wounded. There’s always more wounded. There’s always more wounded.
Hawkeye realizes he’s been standing at an empty table for some time now. He blinks, zoning back in a little from wherever he had gone. It’s quiet. There are a few nurses cleaning up, and the last patient is being hauled out to post-op. Hawkeye blinks. His eyes sting. He’s still in his scrubs, gown, and gloves. His mask is still up. There’s blood on all of it. They rarely get blood on their skin, given the layers that they wear to maintain sterility, but Hawkeye swears he can feel the blood on his skin, congealing into a sticky, ugly mess that he’ll never be able to scrub off. The floor wobbles and his ears fill with static. The numbness in his toes creeps up his legs til his knees shake. He swears he can feel the velvet smoothness of that lifeless heart on his fingertips. The silence where blood should be flowing. His hands move mechanically to pump the life back into it. But he is grasping at empty air.
“Hawk.”
Trapper is leaning on the doorframe. He’s out of his gear, just wearing his scrubs. Dark circles hang under his eyes and he is still sweaty, his curls flatted from his hat and sticking to his forehead. It’s obvious they’re both exhausted. Trapper doesn’t try to smile or crack a joke. He knows what happened. He knows what this is. Hawkeye stares at him with dead eyes.
“Let’s get cleaned up.”
Hawkeye walks his numb body over to the garbage. He fumbles with the plastic cuff of the gloves, unable to feel anything. The blood spreads to his sleeves and some actually gets on his skin. Hawkeye nearly throws the glove to get it away from himself. He stumbles to the sink desperately. The faucet spits cold water and he scrubs and scrubs and scrubs. The blood won’t come off of his hand. The scrub brush might work better. More red blooms around his fingernails and Hawkeye pushes harder, digs the coarse bristles into every crack and crevice he can find. The blood just keeps bubbling up, dripping dark red on the inside of the sink.
The water shuts off.
Hawkeye stares at the faucet with frantic blue eyes. There’s a hand on the handle. He follows it up to the wrist, then the forearm, and that attaches to a shoulder. Over the shoulder is a person’s face.
Trapper. Hawkeye’s brain makes the connection. When did Trapper get here?
Something warm wraps around his hands. Hawkeye looks down. It’s Trapper’s hands, bigger than his and cupping his fingers close. There is still blood on his hands. It might infect Trapper.
Hawkeye jerks his hands back as hard as he can muster. His best friend holds on. It’s unbearable. Pierce can’t even look at him. But the burning warmth that Trapper holds his hands with is slowly melting the icy numbness in his fingertips. Trapper says something, but it just sounds like a mash of incoherent sounds to Hawkeye. It’s not until Trapper is wrapping his fingers in bandages that Hawkeye connects the dots, and by then Trapper has already stripped him down to his scrubs and pulled him out the door.
They go to the Swamp, because where else would they go? Hawkeye misses the warmth of Trapper’s hands. Trapper yanks off his scrubs and Hawkeye stares shamelessly at his back, his slightly pudgy stomach concealing a strong core, the line of his hips. He wonders if Trapper would let him just touch. He looks so warm and Hawkeye is so, so cold. The hollowness of his chest seems to mock him, echoing his heartbeat into his ears louder and louder.
Trapper’s hands are on his shoulders and Hawkeye nearly buckles right into his best friend. His numbness is spreading. But Trapper lays him down into his bed and tucks his blankets around him. Hawkeye wants to ask for something more, wants to feel the fire of MacIntyre’s skin on his. Words fail him. Somehow, he understands.
Instead of going to his own bed, Trapper sits down on the edge of Hawkeye’s. His warmth feels like a furnace compared to Hawkeye’s porcelain cold skin. Hawkeye reaches for him without thinking, wraps his arms around Trapper’s neck and pulls him down. All that he can think about is how nice the pressure feels, how hot Trapper’s skin is on his. The numbness that has lingered in his feet starts to abate into static. Hawk realizes he is clutching Trapper’s shirt when his knuckles start to ache, forearms sore from hours of surgery. The steady, calming beat of Trapper’s heart echoes through his empty chest. As Trapper inhales, he presses down more on Hawkeye. The pressure is grounding and Hawkeye almost wishes he were heavier. His feet start to regain feeling and Hawkeye wiggles his toes. It hurts to release his hands from their clenched position, but it feels better once he relaxes them. He feels more than sees Trapper’s smile.
“You back?” he asks. His voice is soft and quiet and all for Hawkeye. Trapper pushes himself up and off of Hawkeye just enough so that he can peer through the darkness to see his face. Hawkeye stares back up at him. Trapper looks so tired, sallow and sunken in the artificial light spilling in the swamp from the outside. Hawkeye has never loved him more.
He doesn’t tell him this. Instead Pierce nods. His throat aches from being clenched for so long, holding back sobs. Trapper leans back down. He presses his forehead to Hawk’s, firm but not painfully. The warm feeling spreads a little into Hawkeye’s chest. Trapper John presses a long kiss to his forehead and lays back down. Hawkeye lets tears leak out of his eyes and lets himself feel.