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Chapter Text

When Hawkeye and Trapper emerge from the OR, their conception of the passage of time was muddied by the glaring sun.  It seemed as though it had been up for forty-eight hours straight.  Hawkeye was peeling off his rubber gloves mid-stride, struggling with the way they adhered to his skin as if they embedded roots.

It had been another eighteen-hour session with several choppers up to their rotors in casualties.  Not a single person on the staff was unaccustomed to the grueling cyclical nature of airborne deliveries, but it never became less exhausting.

“I can barely feel my feet,” Trapper had said as he stripped himself of his gloves and cap and used the wad to mop at his brow.  The one hundred-degree weather wasn’t exactly energizing on top of everything else.

“That’s all right,” Hawkeye said back, squinting through the sun rays.  It seemed like with every passing day his eyes only got worse in the adjustment between long hours indoors and stepping outside into the gleaming sunlight.  “you don’t need your toes to operate.”

“Ready for a dry one back at the Swamp?”

“Ready as I am cute.”

“All right.  More for me then.”

Hawkeye was prepared to quip back, but the sight of a tiny be-spectacled entity under a wool jeep cap disrupted his limited concentration.  Radar was walking in their direction, his strides long and quick as a show of energy to which the two surgeons felt uncomfortably foreign.  Nonetheless, Trapper in particular thought that his steps were a little bit too jerky, even for Radar, as if his knees were locking involuntarily; but in the wake of a welcome break from intensive medical practice that left his body feeling like it had been the one under shrapnel fire, he chalked it up to his younger friend’s usual eccentricities.

“Say, Radar,” Trapper said, taking Radar’s arm before he could pass by to pause him mid-stride.  “What’d ya say?  You look like you’re in a hurry.  Tardy for a picnic or something?” he asked, nodding at the covered tray that Radar had in his hands.

“Oh, morning, sirs,” Radar said humbly, squinting upward through his glasses.  “I was just on my way to put some food out for the mutts that wander around here from time to time.”  He gesticulated with the tray as if to punctuate the veracity of his mission.

“Finally,” Hawkeye responded, “Somebody’s putting the mystery meat to its rightful use.”

Trapper appended, “You sure do like making friends with the fauna around here.  What’s wrong, are we not your type?  Not hairy enough for you?”

Radar hesitated as if perceiving Trapper as genuinely affronted.  “Oh no, sir, you’re, uh…plenty hairy—”

“It’s all right, Radar, we get it.  Our noses just aren’t wet enough for you.  It’s fine, we don’t take offense.”

Radar smiled a little at that, then wiped at his brow.  As was his compatriots, he was blanketed in a film of sweat.  But then again, he looked a little pale too, Hawkeye thought.  “Well, I better go,” Radar said quietly, perhaps noticing how Hawkeye began to scrutinize him if only for a second.  It was hard to get anything past his superhuman intuition.  “I need to get back as soon as possible to organize some papers for Colonel Blake and finish writing the morning report.”

Before he could depart, he was caught by the arm again, this time by Hawkeye.  “Hold on, Radar.  Are you all right?  Your adorable little cheeks aren’t quite as rosy as usual.”

Before the kid could answer, Trapper’s palm was on his forehead almost automatically.  “Yeah, and you feel kind of warm too.  Are you sick?”

Radar looked noticeably uncomfortable and shied away from the contact.  “Oh, it’s just the heat, sirs.  I’m fit as a fiddle.”

“Are you sure?  You look a little weak on your legs to me.  Do you have any muscle soreness?”

Radar shook his head.  “I’m just jittery from caffeine, sir.”

Hawkeye clapped a hand on Radar’s shoulder.  “All right, kid, go feed your pets.  If you need anything, you know where to find us.”

Radar gave a quick nod, a “Thank you, sir,” and sped off with the same wilting gait.  The captains watched after him with no small amount of concern, but if the clerk was insistent upon his good health and was able to function, then neither of them were in a rush to have a reason to head back into the OR.  Nonetheless, they exchanged mutually affected glances.

“We’ll keep an eye on him,” Trapper said, reading his friend’s likewise thoughts.

“Yeah, I’m sure he’s fine,” Hawkeye said.  “Now let’s go back to the Swamp and celebrate our liberation.”

“You know what,” Trapper said, “you go ahead of me and I’ll meet you back there.  I think I’m gonna head straight for the shower and spend a few minutes in there.  Or maybe a few hours.”

“Don’t shrivel your pretty little fingers.  You’re gonna need them for the next round of casualties.”

Trapper clapped Hawkeye on the back and headed for the pipes.

When Henry got back into his office after the last wave of casualties, he never thought that he’d perceive such a warm welcome from his uncomfortable wooden desk chair.  As much as he’d love to shove into his quarters and sleep for double the length of time that he had been on his aching feet, he knew better than to allow whatever convoluted paperwork that had to be taken care of to go by the wayside and get himself in trouble with General Hammond.  If it weren’t for his charge of an overly competent clerk keeping the place running, he’d have met that unpleasant fate long ago.

As he settled in on that thought, it occurred to him that he should read the morning report before commencing whatever other responsibilities were on his to-do list for that day.  He opened his mouth to shout for his clerk, but hardly before he could exclaim the second syllable, the little guy was in front of his desk with a small stack of papers saying “Here’s the morning report you wanted, sir.”

Amazing.  Henry nearly jumped out of skin; he would never get used to it.  Yanking the papers out of the kid’s hand he said for perhaps the hundredth time, “Radar, I wish you would stop doing that.”  And, as always, Radar quipped back with a remark that was equal parts sardonic and innocent with an inflection that made it difficult to discern if he was genuinely trying to be sarcastic.

“Well I can stop filling out the morning report, sir, but then how will you keep track of the personnel changes?”

Henry inhaled as if to retort with something equally clever, but he never found himself to be quite as quick-witted as his younger compatriots.  He just shook his head, infinitely irritated, but nonetheless endeared, and signed his initials.  When Radar took back the paper and prepared to send it to the administrative unit, Henry stopped him short and asked him to file a few things for him. 

It was then that Colonel Blake noticed a couple somewhat disconcerting things.  When Radar took the papers over to the cabinet, he leaned heavily on the piece of furniture as if it was supporting half his weight; his skin looked a little paler than usual, and his eyes had the glazed appearance of a person with a bad cold.  As if to solidify his reservations, when Radar closed the drawer and made to stand more upright, he bent down and massaged the side of his leg as if to obliterate a nasty knot.  When he made for the door with a small, if not noticeable amount of difficulty, Henry stopped him short again.

“Hold on, son.  Come here.”

Radar sighed heavily and obeyed.  It was strange to see him gesticulating resistance in any form; that was something Henry was much more accustomed to seeing from Hawkeye and Trapper.  Nonetheless, Radar didn’t vocalize his discontent with the order, he merely staggered over to the desk, keeping his hands braced as if he expected to catch himself in a fall; but it was obvious, counter-intuitively enough, that he was trying to make whatever issue he was having as inconspicuous as possible.

When Radar made it to the side of Henry’s desk, the colonel stood up and gave his clerk a good look.  He felt the kid’s head, much to the latter’s chagrin, and took on a displeased expression of his own.  “Are you all right?  You don’t look so good.”

“Yes, I feel fine, sir.”

“Then what’s all this with needing a cane?  Do your legs hurt?”

“Uh…they’re a little sore, sir,” Radar admitted ruefully, but then made for a quick qualification.  “I think I just pulled a few muscles running around yesterday, sir.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to be looked at?  I can get Hawkeye to—”

As Henry had said “give you a quick physical,” Radar had said in parallel, “No, I don’t think I need a quick physical, sir.”  And when this silenced the colonel, the kid added, “I do feel all right, Colonel.  Honest.” 

Blake was, of course, incredulous, but seeing as Radar was insistent and wasn’t passed out on the floor unfit for duty, he wasn’t sure about the solidity of the grounds on which he stood for a disagreement.  In any case, the last two days had been filled with so much drama in the OR that he wasn’t ready for another problem, nonetheless one that incapacitated his indispensable right hand.

“All right, Corporal,” Henry finally conceded, much to Radar’s relief.  “Just let me know if you need a break or anything. I can spare you a few minutes, I assure you.”

Radar said, “Thank you, sir,” and turned on his feel and exited before Henry could get even halfway through the word “Dismissed.”

When there was a commotion outside, Hawkeye barely heard it.  A few hours had gone by since the kerfuffle in the OR, he had downed a few martinis like they were water, quipped something vaguely insulting to Frank when he took off his boots and flooded the Swamp with the smell of his socks, and now he was so grateful for a moment’s repose that everything except the softness of his cot sheets had been all but blocked out. 

He was barely conscious when some kind of exciting phenomenon erupted on the other side of the compound and nurses were rushing past the tent walls to catch a glimpse of whatever it was; if Hawkeye heard the voices and footsteps, he hadn’t bothered to rouse and examine the situation himself.  Sleep, for all he cared, was just as exciting and twice as valuable.

So when Jones busted open the door to the Swamp and made a ruckus, Hawkeye was about ready to toss an anvil at his head.

“Hawkeye—” he began, and there wasn’t the faintest measure of tranquility in his voice.  But his comrade was nonetheless just as unpersuaded as ever.

“Jones, if you don’t get lost in three seconds, I’m gonna lace your soap bars with ground rose hips and you’ll be itching for a week.” Hawkeye threatened, half-buried in his pillow.

Jones was unfazed.  “Hawkeye, it’s serious.”

Pierce rolled bonelessly onto his back and groaned.  “Is it a patient?”

“Well…no, not exactly, it’s—”

“Then whatever it is, it can wait.  Now either join me in bliss or get out.”

“It’s Radar.”

That got Hawkeye’s attention, at least enough that he did his comrade the courtesy of prying his eyes open.  “What, did he get his hand caught in another pickle jar?”

“He can’t walk.”

With that, he awkwardly squirmed into a sitting position, his hair disheveled and covering his eyes, which were narrowed into a look of one part incredulity and another part disbelief with a sprinkle of agitation.  “What?  ’He can’t walk,’ what the hell does that mean?”

Jones’s voice rose to match Hawkeye’s incredulity.  “What do you mean ‘what does it mean’?  The kid can’t walk, his legs aren’t working.  He’s paralyzed from the waist down!”

“All right, all right.”  Whatever energy had evacuated within the last hour was back in full force with a vengeance and Hawkeye was pulling his boots on so frenetically that it was taking longer than if he had done it at a normal pace.  “His legs aren’t working.  Great.  Just another normal day at 4077.  How do a person’s legs just stop working?  Show me, come on.”

When Pierce had his boots and blouse on, he barreled past Jones and was out the door with his compatriot following closely in tow.  It only now came to his attention that nobody was seen outside the Swamp because they were all distracted by the commotion down the block, which he now understood to be the issue of an inexplicably paraplegic clerk.  At the frantic pace he was walking, even Jones was having a difficult time keeping up with his stride and answering the myriad of questions he had, pressing for details.  Jones was no help, though, answering one question after another with “I don’t know, you just have to go see for yourself.”

Halfway there, Colonel Henry noticed the pair and broke away from the cluster to meet them, looking more worried and out of sorts than Hawkeye had ever seen him—and as Blake was notoriously ungrounded in his practices, that was really saying something.

“Hawkeye, thank god,” he breathed hardly before he was within earshot and matching the captain’s stride. 

“Colonel, what’s all this I’m hearing about Radar being paralyzed?  His legs just gave out?  How does that happen?”

“I have no idea,” Henry cried, breathing raggedly as if he just got back from a marathon. 

“Well, has he been sick?  Has he lost consciousness, was he acting strange?”

“No! I mean, he may have seemed a little off this morning I guess, but I didn’t think much of it.  Just now we were just walking back to the office and everything was fine and the next thing I know, his knees buckle and he’s on the ground, stuck like an anchor!”

“All right, stay calm Henry.  I’m going to look at him.  Everything will be fine.”  As Hawkeye said those words, he believed them well enough, but even as he approached the condensed cluster of curious onlookers he still didn’t believe what he was hearing.  No stranger to paralysis, he’s studied a couple cases of it before; not the least the one in which his patient wasn’t physically injured, but hysterical from recent trauma.  But now the company’s otherwise innocent and happy clerk is out of commission with no known explanation at all?  He could only believe it when he saw it.

Trouble was, he couldn’t see anything.  There were far too many bodies crowded around in layers to see what he presumed was Radar crumpled onto the dusty ground.  The closer he got, the more eager he became to conduct his own examination and get everyone else out the way, so he had hardly any reservations about physically shoving the nurses aside and brusquely demanding everyone to make room.  When he finally pushed through the group and got to the other side, the first person he saw was not Radar, but Trapper, who was crouched down to Radar’s level with a hand on the kid’s shoulder, talking softly to him.  When he caught sight of his fellow surgeon, he said something quietly to the clerk and got up to meet Hawkeye at his full height.

“Jones got me to come over here first.  Kid can’t stand on his own two feet.  I’ve been interrogating him.  There’s no apparent physical cause.”

“So I’ve heard,” Hawkeye said, looking down at Radar who, just as everyone had said, was sat uselessly in the dirt, looking absolutely miserable with his head in his hands.  He looked back at Trapper.  “So he’s not injured.  No blunt trauma, no conks on the noggin, nothing.”

Trapper shook his head.  “He’s healthy as a horse so far as I can tell.  All the bells and whistles are in the right places.”

Hawkeye sighed, processing for a moment.   There were no bases that he could cover that Trapper, just as capable a doctor, couldn’t.

“Radar.”

The disparate clerk raised his head out of his hands, causing his glasses to fall back onto his nose, and looked up at the captain, realizing for the first time that he was there.  Hawkeye couldn’t read his facial expression well enough to construe if his presence was welcome, or if it just made the kid more embarrassed.  But whatever the case, he looked as cognitive as ever, if not beyond miserable.  “Yes, sir.”

“This is a great practical joke.  Now get on your feet.”

Behind him, Pierce could practically feel Henry bristling, but he was set in his resolve.  That didn’t stop Trapper from shooting his comrade a questioning look.  “Hawkeye, he can’t stand up on his own, he’s--”

“No injuries, no abrasions, no infections, no blunt trauma—there’s no reason that this should be happening.  How is it that a person’s legs just give out?”  He turned back to Radar, softening his approach if only somewhat.  It would have been enough for the perceptive clerk to pick up on.  “Come on, Radar.  Get up.”  When there was a brief, but potent moment of desperate hesitance, Hawkeye softened up even more and added, “Just—try your hardest.  I just want to see you try.”  He blocked Henry from approaching the kid by holding up his hand. “Nobody help him.”

The display that came afterward was hard to watch, even Hawkeye had to admit; Radar looked pathetic, his tortured expression almost tearful as he attempted in earnest to obey the staunch captain’s orders, struggling even to get his arms into a pose from which he could foist himself into a position conducive to standing.  His face contorted into a look of exertion as he at least managed to get his feet under him, but when he attempted to push off, his legs showed no sign of the slightest strength; in fact, they were completely uncooperative, and he fell back onto his behind.  It was strange seeing such severe physical incapacitation from a normally energetic teenager of all people.

Hawkeye had been the picture of strength and skepticism up until now; granted, he’d never take Radar for a phony case in a bid for a discharge a la Klinger…but it was hard to believe that he could be as genuinely immobilized as everyone had made it out to be.  Yet, here it was, right in front of him. He felt his cynical heart crack a little bit. 

When Radar was collapsed onto the ground again, Trapper looked at Hawkeye with an “I told you so” type of expression, but nonetheless with the underpinnings of the same type of unwelcome emotions that Hawkeye—and everyone else for that matter—was going through.

Hawkeye crossed his arms, struggling to process.  “What if someone helps him up?”

“We tried that already,” Trapper said.

“Well, try it again.  I want to see for myself.”

Hawkeye’s authority was met with little more resistance, and Trapper and Jones each took over one side of Radar, hooking their hands around the kid’s biceps.  Radar looked unaffected as if, the way Trapper had indicated, this had been done shortly ago.  In the next moment, he was hoisted up by his comrades, his face contorting in the same way it had when he tried by himself, and every ounce of his mental capacity was visibly fired into his effort to gain some semblance of footing.

It looked even more pathetic than before; it was clear that he was putting almost no weight on his legs and his only source of verticality were the vice-like grips around either of his arms.

The medical investigation commenced and Hawkeye fired one question after another.

“How much weight is he putting on his feet?  Try putting more pressure on your legs, Radar.”

Trapper and Jones tried lessening up on the strength of their grip, but just as they had, Radar’s legs shook like gelatin and he was almost on the ground again; the surgeons on either side recognized the undesirable fate and tightened back up, preventing his collision with the dirt.

“Can you straighten your legs?  Can you move them at all?”

Radar shifted, trying to experiment.  “Um…this is about the best I can do, sir.”  It wasn’t much.

“Try to take a step.  Let him try on his own, guys.”

Trapper and Jones adopted almost identical looks of skepticism, but they obeyed as much as they could without letting Radar fall straight onto the dusty ground.  The slight bit of pressure they forced the kid to put in his legs had him shaking like a leaf.  One would have thought that Radar was leg pressing three hundred pounds with how much effort he visibly put into moving one foot forward.  When he finally succeeded and his foot landed, the knee buckled as if his leg snapped in half and he pitched forward listlessly.  Hawkeye saw it coming and lunged forward to catch him, just as Trapper and Jones each tightened back up their grips on his arms.  The three of them lowered the kid slowly back onto the ground where he landed in a position that made his legs look like deflated pool noodles instead of carbon matter containing bones.  It was almost eerie.

The crowd still looked on in horror, intermittent whispers and remarks floating around like it was a spectator sport.  Hawkeye could hear things like “poor thing,” and “that looks painful,” left and right, and with Radar’s superhuman auditory perception, none of it was getting by him.  Couldn’t have been helping things to be watched like a sideshow.

“All right, I’ve seen enough,” Hawkeye finally said, much to the relief of his companions, especially Radar, who was looking as miserable and embarrassed as ever.  “Get this kid into postop.  Trapper—”

“Yeah, I got him.”

“I’m going to go prep a bed, I’ll see you there.”  As Hawkeye moved to retire, he stopped short at Henry’s side and leaned over to say quietly, “Can you get rid of the entourage here?” and left with that. 

The Colonel got the message.  “Everybody get back to work!  There’s nothing to see here, back to work.”

The crowd reluctantly obeyed their superior officer, dispersing slowly.  As the dense group of onlookers finally cleared, Trapper was busy gathering the clerk into his arms.

Henry bent down and said, “Can you carry him all the way to post op on your own?  I can get a wheelchair.”

Trapper feigned serious offense at Henry and said, “Don’t insult me.” 

“Pay attention, Radar,” the surgeon said as he got ready to haul the kid up.  “When you get married, this is how you’ll get carried across the threshold.”

Radar was humorless.  When Trapper successfully heaved him up bridal style, Radar articulated “ha, ha,” with zero genuine mirth to be found.  Trapper shrugged.  He tried.

Chapter Text

Luckily, there was one or two available beds in post-op after the latest influx of wounded so it wasn’t a hassle to find an open spot for the unit’s latest patient. Hawkeye had his doctor persona revved at full gear and was ready to conduct a more thorough examination now that the side show was over, but hardly had Trapper made Radar comfortable and Henry went to go fetch some water before Frank Burns burst into the room bringing his endlessly positive energy with him.

“What’s all this I hear about a certain corporal being paralyzed?” he demanded, loud enough for the furniture to hear him let alone anybody in sight and beyond.

Trapper uttered something to the effect of, “He always knows how to stage an entrance.”

“Oh, hey Frank. We’re doing great, thanks. And how about you?” Hawkeye jibed, prepping his stethoscope as he perched on the side of Radar’s bed.

“Pierce, now is not the time for your ridiculous antics.”

“When is it ever the time for you?” Hawkeye muttered in retort, only half-concentrating on the incensed major, the other half of his attention devoted to listening to Radar’s vitals through his stethoscope. The kid watched on with saucer-sized eyes, reticent and nervous. It was frustrating to Hawkeye, because it was evidently affecting his vitals.

Frank sputtered a little, but was sure to find his voice as always. “We can’t have an uninjured clerk taking up a bed that can be put to better use with casualties when there’s no physical cause for his disability.”

Hawkeye straightened out and removed the eartips of his stethoscope. “Frank, can’t you can it just this once? We’re kind of in the middle of something serious and your charm and wit aren’t exactly going to expedite the process.”

“Yeah, and Radar is just as important as anyone else,” Trapper firmly stated. “Besides, unless choppers show up again with more bodies, it’s not like we’re in dire need of real estate here.”

“Regardless,” Frank began, relentless as usual. “we are not equipped to deal with a medical problem of this nature. If he is experiencing a neurological or psychological calamity that is causing his paralysis, then he should be sent to a different hospital or back to the United States, or whatever, to a facility that is better equipped to handle his case. Keeping him for treatment purposes in a MASH facility with a non-operative complaint is irregular!”

Radar looked to Hawkeye with an agonized expression, clearly perturbed by the major’s reservations. “Gee, maybe he’s right, sir. Maybe I shouldn’t be taking up any space…’specially if somebody else needs it.”

“Radar, please. You couldn’t take up much space if you tried,” Hawkeye responded, never minding the smarting look that the kid always got on his face when someone made fun of his size. The surgeon turned back to his bristling superior officer. “Frank, we don’t know what his case is yet. Now why don’t you shove off so we can precisely figure that out, and then come in here with your list of grievances, hm?”

“Oh please,” Frank all but spat. “If it weren’t this…this squirt that you’re fond of, you wouldn’t be so adamant about going against regulations.”

“And so what, Frank?” Trapper demanded, getting hot in the face. “He’s our friend, and we’re not going to just ship him out before we at least conduct an investigation of our own. But then I guess you don’t know much about loyalty, considering you have no friends to speak of here.”

“Oh, you—” Frank sputtered again and then reeled it in. “We’ll just see what the Colonel has to say about this.”

Hawkeye had gone back to listening to Radar’s lungs, but when he heard that, he retracted the stethoscope, stood up, and rolled his eyes almost three hundred and sixty degrees at the belligerent major. “Frank, please, Henry would amputate his own leg for the kid if he had to.”

“Yeah, and you think he’s going to ally with you against Radar?” Trapper added.

Before Frank could retort, Henry finally reentered post-op, water in hand, adapting a look of exasperation almost automatically when he caught sight of Burns. “What in the name of President Truman is going on in here?”

“Nothing, Frank just has his tighty whities in a bunch as usual.” Hawkeye quipped.

“My tighty whities are not in a bunch.”

Trapper quirked his eyebrows. “So you do wear tighty whities?”

“No! I—hmph.” Frank turned fitfully to Henry like a child in the middle of a tantrum. “Colonel, given the nature of Corporal O’Reilly’s case, it is irregular, not to mention tactless, to have him take up a bed that can be otherwise used for much more tangible purposes on the off-chance that we will be of any assistance to him.”

Hawkeye came up and stood next to Frank. “And Colonel, will you please tell this delightful curmudgeon that Radar has just as much right to be here as anybody else?”

Before Henry could put in his two cents, Frank was reading the room. “Sir, the 4077 is not equipped for Corporal O’Reilly’s case, and if we keep him here because of our personal preferences, we’ll only be selfishly endangering his wellbeing. I only contend that he should be sent elsewhere in his best interest.”

Hawkeye rolled his eyes yet again, feeling the blood rush to his ears. “Oh, please.” Behind him, Trapper sighed dramatically in tangent.

But to the displeasure of all else who was present, Henry began to adopt a hesitant look of concession, his fingers nervously tapping up against the cup of water he was still holding. “Well…” he said, glancing around as he struggled to formulate an answer that was professional enough, not that being professional was his strong point. “Major Burns presents a valid point…as much as I…don’t want to be short a good clerk, I don’t want to keep him here if we’re…not equipped to--”

Hawkeye, as usual, was quick on the defense.

“All right, listen, we may not be neurologists, but we have extensive medical training, and, let’s face it, we’re some of the best doctors around. If we can’t examine Radar and at least come up with a diagnosis, then nobody else is going to be able to. Any other doctor might be quicker to give up on the kid than us.”

Henry took a deep breath, balancing the two sides out in his head, but when it came to holding onto Radar, it didn’t take too much to convince him. “Uh…well—”

“Henry, give us twenty-four hours—just one day—to figure out what’s going, and if that time passes and we’ve absolutely zero progress, then we’ll send Radar elsewhere. Okay?”

Henry spared a glance at the kid, bit his bottom lip, and then finally nodded. “All right. Twenty-four hours.”

Frank was affronted, of course, but he could hardly protest before Hawkeye and Trapper were at work recording all of Radar’s vitals, and Henry was at the kid’s side encouraging him to drink water. “Frank, if you’re not gonna help, come back in twenty-four hours.”

“But, Colonel, I—”

“Dismissed.”

When Frank finally spun on his heel and left in a huff, Hawkeye was beyond relieved, but knew that inevitably, they hadn’t heard the last of him. In any case, the clock was ticking and Hawkeye had every intention of making the most of the next twenty-four hours that he and Trapper were granted.

“His lungs are clear,” Hawkeye said. “Blood pressure is normal, heart rate is good. Whatever the problem is, it’s not affecting his vitals, at least not yet.”

Trapper was scrawling notes as Hawkeye talked, with Henry hovering over his shoulder and practically breathing down his neck. After a couple minutes, it became infuriating enough for Trapper say, “Do you mind, Colonel?” Which prompted Henry to mutter an apology and result to pacing around instead.

Meanwhile, Hawkeye was commencing another interrogation. “Now I need you to think real hard, Radar. Did anything out of the ordinary happen within the past week? Have you been experiencing any pain, did you run into any furniture, any blunt trauma to your legs, even the slightest tap? Have you felt any tingling, muscle soreness? Did you get a conk on the head, or feel a pop in your neck or back?”

“No, sir, I can’t think of anything, honestly,” Radar said hesitantly, looking genuinely perplexed as he internally retraced all his steps. He gave his head a scratch underneath his jeep cap, squinting into oblivion through his round glasses. “Just duty as normal.”

“How soon did the symptoms start?”

“Well…” Radar almost automatically wanted to lie and say that he hadn’t felt anything up until he finally collapsed outside an hour ago, but he looked up only to be met with scrutinizing gazes from everyone, as they were clearly anticipating it. Especially Colonel Blake. Historically, Radar wasn’t the best at communicating when he didn’t feel well for fear of the scary white coats. Of everyone in the compound, he was the least disposed to look for an excuse to end up in postop. “Well, to tell the truth, I guess my legs were feeling kind of funny this morning.”

Trapper had a thought, remembering how he and Hawkeye ran into Radar hours ago and thought that he looked off. But he held his tongue for the moment.

“What do you mean ‘funny’?”

“They just felt…kind of weak, sir. Like jelly. I just figured I was reacting weird to the caffeine or something.” There was a strange downward intonation, as if he was ashamed of his own foolishness.

“Hm. You got that, Trapper?”

Sure enough, the captain was scribbling away in his unintelligible chicken scratch on the clipboard.

Henry stopped pacing and turned to his clerk with an unnerved facial expression that was a little difficult to read as either angry or frightened. “Why didn’t you say anything, Radar? I even asked if you were okay this morning and you said everything was fine!”

Radar’s eyes went wide as he found himself having to jump to his own defense. “Well…I didn’t think it was a big deal, sir! I certainly didn’t want to make a fuss over nothing.”

Hawkeye got up off the edge of Radar’s bed and walked toward his two compatriots. “Let’s not jump down the kid’s throat, at least not yet anyway. Trapper, come over here, I wanna talk to you privately. Uh, and Henry—you seem pretty anxious, why don’t you go hang out in the office? Trapper and I got it covered.”

Henry was visibly taken aback. He hesitated, sparing a glance at Radar. “Oh…well, uh, I don’t know if I—”

“Trust us,” Hawkeye insisted. “It’s been a tough couple of days, and you could use some rest.” He walked over to Radar and gave the kid a heartful clap on the shoulder. “He’s in good hands.”

Even the bumbling Henry seemed to be able to take the hint…and, Hawkeye was right; if there was anybody he could trust to look after his clerk, or anybody else in the unit for that matter, it was him and Trapper. A pain in the ass though the guys were, they looked after their friends at the end of the day. “Well…all right. But you’ll notify me if anything comes up, yes?” he appended with authority.

Hawkeye smiled genuinely. “You’ll be the first to know. Scout’s honor,” he said, saluting.

With that, Colonel bid Radar adieu, ordered him to get better soon, and headed for the office. Hawkeye ushered Trapper to the other side of the room.

“Hawkeye, you know I get tingly and stuff when you take control like this,” Trapper joked as he and Hawk met at the far corner, hoping to be out of earshot…if, in Radar’s case, there was such a thing.

Surprisingly enough, Hawkeye didn’t reciprocate the jest. “So we’ve ruled out physical injury,” the captain said, rubbing inquisitively at the shadow that was permanently on his chin. “The kid hasn’t had a bump, scratch, or bruise at all in the past seven days or more it seems.”

“You know, this isn’t the first time we’ve dealt with paralysis without a physical cause,” Trapper offered. “Remember that other kid we dealt with, the one who couldn’t walk because of hysteria?”

Hawkeye sneered at the suggestion. “Trapper, please, he’s the company clerk. The most traumatic thing he undergoes is stubbing his toe on the desk leg in Henry’s office.”

Trapper sighed deeply and glanced back at Radar, checking that he didn’t appear to be paying attention to their conversation. When he was assured, he leaned in a little closer to Hawkeye. “Well, if it’s not physical, and it’s not psychological, then the only alternative is some…internal issue. An illness.”

Hawkeye looked aloft, as if he knew that Trapper would say such a thing and didn’t want to hear it. He only murmured a short “yeah,” in response, reticent, like a confession.

Both the surgeons were grappling with the same thought following Trapper’s suggestion…in fact, they had both been thinking it for the past hour, but neither of them wanted to verbalize anything too dramatic, especially not the in the presence Radar, who might get scared, or Henry, who might get hysterical and make some rash decision. At this juncture, it was Trapper who had the audacity to articulate the shared notion.

“Hawkeye,” he began tentatively, noticing how his friend was averting eye contact. “…I’m worried that this might be polio.”

Hawk adopted that “look” on his face…the one where he was ambivalent, a flurry of resistance that wasn’t of the anti-GI variety but rather coming from a place of evasion that was the cause for plenty of his idiosyncrasies, his silver tongue the most noticeable of them. “Well…gee, Trapper, I sure hope it’s not polio. In that case, Radar is as good as shipped out in a crate and he’ll be in braces or a wheelchair for the rest of his life. And for that matter, polio is transmitted through contaminated food and water.”

“And we all share those resources,” Trapper concluded.

“Which means if Radar really does have the virus, then we’re all at risk for it.”

There was a moment of grim silence before Trapper tentatively spoke up again. “Hawkeye, I hate to say it, but…maybe Frank is right and we’re in over our heads. Maybe we should tell Henry that we could have a poliovirus on our hands.”

“Are you crazy? If we do that, he’ll have to notify the administration, and they’ll notify the General, and if they think that Radar is infected with Polio, the kid will get sent away and everything here will get turned upside-down.”

“I know Hawkeye!” Trapper responded, sounding defensive as his Bostonian accent flared up a couple notches. “You think I want to send the kid away? He’s my friend too. But…what if Frank is right? What if this is bigger than we can handle and we’re just biding our time? And what if everyone here is in danger because of it?”

“Look—” Hawkeye held his hands up as if it would somehow temper the stress that his friend was practically emanating. “I’m just saying, we shouldn’t rule anything out, not quite yet. Let’s not just jump to conclusions and cause a stir prematurely.”

“Shouldn’t we at least swab his throat? Test for the virus?”

“Yes, we’ll do that. But it’ll take longer than we have to get results unless we really twist the arm of whoever’s running the lab in Tokyo.”

“Okay, fine,” Trapper conceded, although he didn’t seem any less worked up. “So what’s next then?”

“We’ll start by checking for a fever. Why don’t you go grab the thermometer?”

Trapper handed the clipboard over to Hawkeye and took a step toward the door to the OR to cooperate, but then he stopped short and glanced back to his fellow surgeon with a look of apprehension that wasn’t easily disguised.

There was a brief moment of silence. Hawkeye was impatient; “What?” he probed.

Trapper sighed deeply and then locked eyes. “Hawk…what if…” He paused again and worked at his thoughts some more, anxiously kneading them like putty. His voice dropped to a whisper. “What if Radar never walks again?” He saw the way that Pierce’s expression morphed, almost into some kind of distant threat…something that was subtle and undramatic, but still came across as saying don’t even think about it. This only prompted Trapper to clarify his statement. “I mean, paralysis isn’t something that just…goes away.”

“Forget about that. We’ll figure this out, we just need to think outside the box. Go get the thermometer.”

With that, Hawkeye was walking back over to Radar and Trapper disappeared into the OR to rifle through the tools. He sat down on Radar’s bed again and put on his best happy-go-lucky expression so that the impressionable corporal wasn’t persuaded to suspect that there was any reason for egregious concern.

“Okay, Radar. You’re obviously not hurt on the outside, which Trapper and I figure must mean that the problem’s on the inside. No big deal, but I need you to be very thorough and honest with me. Have you felt any symptoms at all recently? Anything like the flu, or a cold?”

Radar seemed to give the question some genuine thought, looking sideways. But there was something more in facial expression that Hawkeye couldn’t quite make out. “To tell the truth, I wasn’t feeling quite like myself this morning,” the corporal answered quietly, “But I didn’t think anything of it.”

At the end of that statement, Trapper had returned with the thermometer handy and gave it to Radar to place under his tongue. “You know, I thought as much when we ran into you, Radar,” the surgeon thought aloud as Radar peered up from the thermometer stick over the top of his glasses. “If you weren’t feeling well, you really ought to have said something. Then maybe he could have nipped this in the bud before your legs punched their card.”

“Well, you guys had been so busy with the last round of wounded,” Radar said, his voice muffled as he had to speak through his teeth to keep the thermometer in place, but it still rose to the volume that was a tell-tale sign of the young soldier getting flustered. Hawkeye checked his watch and removed the thermometer, and Radar added, “And it just didn’t seem like anything serious.”

Hawkeye bid no verbal response, only giving Radar a look of vague disapproval that was a little hard to read. Then he glanced at the thermometer and his face fell even more at the reading. “Great,” he muttered, handing the device to Trapper. “Fever.”

Trapper read the thermometer with no small bid for his own disapproval. He gave a short whistle. “One hundred point five,” he said. “So he is sick.”

Radar got a slight look of panic on his face. “What does it mean? Sick with what?”

“Well, we don’t exactly know yet, Radar,” Hawkeye responded. “A fever means your little body is fighting off something. We just don’t know what that something is. But don’t worry, we’re gonna figure it out soon enough and you’ll be back on your feet just like nothing happened. Uh, Trapper—”

“Yeah, I’ll get some penicillin. Bring his temperature down,” Trapper said, reading his friend’s mind.

When Trapper left again, Hawkeye sat down on the side of Radar’s bed and got in close to the corporal’s face. “Now, Radar, this’ll be easy enough to figure out, but we need your complete and devoted cooperation with everything, understand? When we ask you to describe symptoms or anything that could be connected to this…situation, we need to hear about every little thing, and I mean every little thing. Even stuff that doesn’t seem like it’s all that important, like paper cuts. Got that?”

“Uh, yes, sir.”

When Trapper returned to administer the penicillin, Hawkeye’s quixotic venture had begun and the three of them were in the thick of it. Macintyre couldn’t help but let a hint of resignation creep in as he listened to his fellow cutter comb through the same set of questions so many times that the bewildered clerk started to sound like a broken record. As all three of them know, they were in for a long twenty-four hours.

Chapter Text

Henry never felt more restless in the time since he had built his unit from the ground up, and when the phone rang with a call from administration, he nearly jumped out of his chair.

His condition by way of sobriety (or lack thereof) wasn’t exactly conducive to an intelligent conversation, and he if he tried, he couldn’t even recall how many rounds of brandy he had slammed within the last hour.  But when screamed for his clerk, nobody came, and it was the strangest, most unfamiliar, and certainly most unwelcome phenomenon that he ever had the misfortune of trying to process when he was drunk.  Oh right, he thought as the incessant ringing of the phone rattled inside his intoxicated skull, No Radar.  Radar’s not here.  That meant he had to do his Colonel duties on his own…which was an intimidating notion, considering that he wasn’t even sure what his duties were.

There was a brief gap of time missing after he adjusted to the excruciating absence, and then the phone was in his hand and a general’s voice whose name he forgot within two seconds was grousing from the other line.

“Hello, this is Sgt. Blenry Hake, how can I help you on this fine day?  Oh, hi sir…oh, y’sir, I’ll have th’s papers in…fas’er ‘an you can court martial a drunken colonel.  Well, I’m s’rry, sir, ya see, my, uh, cmp’ny clerk is…indisposed for th’ moment, so, things’re, uh, slow-going ‘round here.  Oh, he’s fine, Gen’ral, jus’, you know, sick.  With what?  With, uh, sickness.  Er, I’m not entirely sure, Gen’ral, but, don’ worry, he’ll be alright…uh, no I don’ have a substitute…well, yes, sir, I’ll get on that and get those doc’ments to you…by t’night.  Yes sir.  Okay, sir.  Good-sir, bye no.  I mean, good bye.”

He massaged his temple right after the receiver dinged and sent a shock of pain slamming in between his eyes.  Papers.  HQ was asking him for papers.  What papers were they again?  Requisitions?  Personnel adjustments?  Uniform changes?  Were there papers for that?

His response to his internal agony over a myriad of things that he couldn’t remember or understand was always his solution; “Raaaddaarrr!  Oh, damnit!”

He would never get used to not having that kid in his office.He was on his own, then.  At least for now.  But one look at the various papers scattered about his desk and he was at a loss before he could even construe a mission.  It took a couple more minutes of absent-minded staring and drunken stupor for him to pick up a paper and walk over to a fling cabinet with it as if he were going to file it away—but truthfully, he didn’t know what paper he was holding, and even if he did, he wouldn’t know where to file it or even if it was supposed to be filed.  Goddamn, he thought, Radar doesn’t get enough credit.  This job is harder than it sounds.

“Radar,” he called again, as if the corporal was in his standard spot right behind him.  “Where do I put this uh, this, uh…”

A knock on the office door rattled him out of his clerical trance.  “Yeah,” he said, squinting at the entrance through the alcoholic haze.

He still half-expected to see a 5’5” green bundle of naivete with a jeep cap and round glasses step through the door with a clipboard in one hand a pen in the other, but what he got couldn’t have been a more surprising alternative…at the very least, it helped to snap him out of it.  Klinger, in all his genderbending glory, always seemed to have that effect on people.  Drunken ones especially.

“I heard somebody’s short a company clerk, Colonel,” Klinger said with a peculiar, if nevertheless accommodating grin on his face.  “Or perhaps missing a short company clerk.”

“Oh, s’you know ‘bout Radar,” Henry slurred grimly, leaning up against the filing cabinet that he tried and failed to make use of. 

“I went to the OR to get some stitching thread for this run in my tights,” Klinger said, gesturing toward his calf, which made his colonel quirk his eyebrows in a peculiar fashion, “And I ran into Pierce and MacIntyre.  Poor little guy is in traction.”

“He’s what?”

“That is to say, he’s in good hands!” Klinger amended quickly.  “Anyway, Trapper suggested that I make myself useful by coming over here and taking his place until he gets better.  He said maybe I could be a bit of a distraction for you at the moment anyway.”

“You never come up short in that department, Klinger.”

Klinger smiled, satisfied with that response.  “Well, is there anything I can do for you, Colonel?”

Henry looked as if he had been asked a question to which he couldn’t possibly be expected to have an answer.  “You, can, uh…files these.”  He picked up a stack of papers from the edge of his desk that he hadn’t identified for one second and shoved them in Klinger’s direction.

The corporal took them accordingly and flipped through them, but his facial expression hadn’t held the slightest indication of comprehension.  “Uh, what are these, sir?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, where do you want me to file them?”

“Where they belong.”

“Where do they belong?”

“I don’t know, Klinger.  How did you ever make into the army as a company clerk if you don’t know this stuff?  I need things signed, I need to sign things.”

“Well, what would you like signed, sir?”

“I don’t know, aren’t you supposed to know?”

“I’m supposed to know what you want before you say anything, sir?”

“Well, one of us has to! Isn’t that what a clerk is for?”

Before the corporal could work at a response, the phone rang and the two of them exchanged eye contact as if to indicate that neither of them had seen or heard a telephone before.  Henry was waiting for the automatic response of an efficient company clerk to which he had become overly adjusted, and Klinger was waiting for the orders of the only person between the two of them that could have articulated what he, as a clerk, was supposed to even do.  Do clerk’s answer phones?  In their boss’s office?

Henry gave one look at the phone, and one drunken look at Klinger with his head bobbing like his neck was having a hard time supporting the weight of his skull.  “Well, are ya gonna answer that, or are ya j’s gonna stand there and look pretty?”

Just as Klinger obediently jogged over to the phone in his high heels and initiated a conversation with some obscure big wig on the other line, Henry was greeted with another unexpected and even more unwelcome sight. 

“Colonel Blake, I have a grievance that I’d like to report.”Of course it wouldn’t be a regular day in his office without Margaret Houlihan bursting in to complain about something, and of course not without Frank closely in tow with that indignant look that seemed to be permanently burnt into his face.

“What is it, Hot Lips?  I mean, I mean, uh—Major Houlihan.”

Margaret managed to ignore the drunken transgression.  “I have learned from Major Burns here that we have another case of paralysis on our hands in postop.”

“Uh, yes, that’s right, Major Houlihan.”

“Well, Colonel, this case is non-operative and therefore should not be examined in this hospital when we exist for the sole purpose of surgical procedures given to soldiers who come in from the front.”

“I know why we exist, Margaret,” Henry said as he started to pour himself another glass of brandy.  “I’m pretty sure I’m the one who started the whole thing in the first place.  You don’ hafta lecture me.  Frank, why would you put her up to this?  I thought we reached an agreement.  Hawkeye and Trapper have the next twenty-four hours to work on Radar at least, and if we make no progress, we’ll move on from there.”

Frank adopted a peculiar look on his face at that, and when Margaret turned to him with something resembling bewilderment, her next remark made it easy to figure out why.  “The patient is Corporal O’Reilly?”

“Oh,” Henry said, feigning surprise.  “Did he neglect to mention that little detail?”

“Well, I don’t see why it should matter,” Frank huffed back in self defense.  “Just because he’s a member of this outfit, doesn’t mean that he should have special treatment.  Pierce and Macintyre are only bucking to accommodate him so that the three of them can continue their hijinks in league with one another around here.”

If Margaret had a momentary retraction, she quickly shook it off.  “Er, yes, Colonel, with the rate at which casualties have been coming in these past couple days, we simply can’t afford these sorts of transgressions.”

“Houlihan, as far as I’m concerned, if one of our own needs help and we’re able to give it, then we figure it out no matter what.  Now if you wanna march right inta post-op and kick the corporal out yerself, b’my guest, but you’ll have to go through Pierce and Macintyre first, and we all know how that usually goes.”

Although Margaret seemed more ready to concede, which was fairly unusual, Frank had his characteristic look of affront on his face.  “Colonel, you do realize that I can take this matter straight to administration and see what they have to say about it.”

“Frank, you whine to administration so much that they’ve got a section in their grievances cabinet labeled with your name.”

Frank seemed ready to blow his lid off, sputtering without being able to locate a response, but Margaret turned to temper him.  “Frank, why don’t we just go; haven’t we had enough nonsense to deal with this week?”

Frank was too eager to break up even a fraction of his tripartite rogue gallery.  “But, Margaret—”

Klinger, who had been chatting on the phone all the while, turned and interrupted.  “Uh, Henry—”

“Frank, I think next time you end up in a hospital bed here for one reason or another, I’ll make a note to ship you off to some remote treatment facility so that you’re not taking up ‘space,’ now how does that sound?”

“Sir—”

“I’m tired of those three constantly running around here going over the heads of their superior officers!  I don’t care if the pipsqueak is the company mascot, his case does not belong here and that’s that!”

Henry seemed to sober up, although the flush in his face deepened.  “Major Burns, you will refer to ‘the pipsqueak’ with his name, and if you demean him in front of me one more time, I’ll take you outside this office and we can make it a personal matter.”

Klinger was growing frantic.  “Colonel—”

Margaret and Frank were jointly flustered.  Houlihan said, “Are you threatening Major Burns, Colonel?”

“It’s more an appeal, Major Houlihan, to address his compatriots with some respect or get out of my sight.”

“But—they never respect me!”

Klinger all but shoved the receiver in Henry’s face, and the disgruntled Colonel belligerently swatted it away.  “Hold your bloomers, Klinger!  Frank, I have had it with your endless instigations around here, and now you have the gull to come into my office and disrespect my clerk, who is laid up with a serious condition that we’re working hard to fix because we care about him.  If you have such a problem with that, then go over my head like you always do, but I sure will have something to say about it, and believe you me, it will not be tied up in any army red tape.  Do you understand?”

Frank was effectively silenced, wading in chest-deep chagrin, but Margaret, with a contrite look, tried to save face for him.  “Colonel, the Major here is only—”

“Only testing my limits.  Dismissed.”

“But, Colonel—”

Klinger desperately stepped forward with the receiver in hand again.  “Henry—”

“Klinger, would you just tell whoever it is that I haven’t the slightest desire to talk to anybody right now?”  He turned back to the majors.  “You two are dismissed.”

“But, Colonel—”

“Are you sure you want me to say that to General Mitchell, sir.”

“Yes, corporal.”  Henry turned to the two majors.  “Diss.  Missed.”

While Houlihan and Burns left in a majorly chagrined huff, and Henry was coming down from his uncharacteristic lapse into ire, Klinger was obeying his command on the telephone.

“Uh, General, Colonel Henry says that he hasn’t the slightest desire to talk to—”

In the next moment, the phone was yanked out of his hand, and Henry, who only just managed to process the implication, was forcing a congenial smile on his face in hopes that the falsified grandeur would carry over across the grid underneath the layers of anger, exhaustion, and lingering drunkenness.  “General Mitchell, Colonel Henry Blake here, what can I do for you on this fine day?”

Klinger listened with quirked eyebrows as the one perceptible side of the conversation commenced and Henry’s face rose and fell in a variety of fascinating ways.

“Uh-huh.  Oh, er, yes, sir.  Yes, sir, I know, but please understand that our clerk is…he’s, uh, under the weather at the moment, and—well, yes, sir.  Yes sir, I understand.  I will, sir.  Okay.  Thank you, sir.  Buh-uh, bye.”

When Henry hung up the phone, Klinger couldn’t decide if what came across on his face was frustration, fear, or utter befuddlement.  “Everything okay, Colonel?”

Henry placed his hands on his hips and started pacing toward the office door, his gait taking on the teetering quality it had when he was deep in thought; it was a well-known idiosyncrasy that others took as a tell-tale sign that Henry was, as usual, at a loss.  “Well, the General needs papers for one thing or another because they’re records show that papers are missing and we’re the only unit who hasn’t sent in the papers that account for the things that are missing according to the papers.”

Klinger took all of two seconds before giving up on processing Henry’s mumbo-jumbo.  “What?”

“All I know is, they need papers.  That white crinkly stuff that comes from trees.  They gotta use their red tape on something, Klinger.”

“Well, what happens if they don’t get the papers, sir?”

“They said that if we don’t submit the requested forms within the next few hours, they’ll send a supplies officer over to investigate first thing tomorrow morning.”

Klinger gasped and looked positively appalled.  “They can’t come here!  My best dress has a stain in it and I can’t get it out!”

“Klinger,” Henry said forebodingly, coming back to his desk and leaning onto it palms-down.  His jaw gritted left and right.  “This is serious. I can’t have another strike. My keester’s been on fire more this month than a California forest in a drought.”

“Well, no offense, sir, but you don’t even know which papers to look for let alone fill out and send away.  Maybe we should go ask Radar for help.”

“No,” Henry said immediately, holding up a hand.  “We’re not going to bug them.  They need every spare second without us coming in and asking for help with my stupid problems.  Besides, we can do this ourselves.   We’re grown adults.  How hard can it be, anyway?  We just need to find the right documents and sign them.  Easy.”

Klinger looked dubious as ever, but knew there was no alternative course but to humor the discordant colonel.  “How can we get started, sir?”

“We can get started with you pouring me a glass of brandy.  I’m way too sober for this.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you feel this?”

Hawkeye dug his hand into Radar’s calf muscle.  The corporal flinched.  “Yes, sir.”

“How about this?”

Hawkeye picked a different stop and dug in deeper, causing another noticeable recoil.

“Yes.”

“Any pain?”

“Not really.”

“But you can feel pressure.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hawkeye murmured studiously as he removed his gloved hands and scribbled some mysterious doctor’s dialect on the clipboard that had since been abandoned by Trapper in favor of manning the thermometer that was being put under Radar’s tongue every fifteen minutes.  Hawkeye was hovering over his younger compatriot like a guard dog, and Trap figured that it was only a matter of time before he would lose his vigil over the temperature check as well, but it’s not like it was unexpected.  This was just what Hawkeye was like; protective, and not the least bit controlling.  If it had been anyone but Radar, those trademark idiosyncrasies might have been dialed back, but Hawkeye had a soft spot for the kid and everybody in the compound knew it.  Trapper was every bit as fond of him, but lacked the neuroses of his fellow surgeon that made him a particularly manic protectorate.

Radar, on the other hand, had been reticent and increasingly aloof the more frenetic Hawkeye became.  Having an undiagnosed illness was at least partly to blame, but the kid was smarter than he let on and seemed, to Trapper at least, to have an inkling of the gravity of the situation regardless of how ardently his guardians attempted to downplay it.  It was hard to tell if he was being quiet because he felt weak, or because he was worried that vociferating insistently upon any symptoms he may have experienced could bring about a scary diagnosis. Or maybe it was both.  But whatever the case, Hawkeye hovered and Radar was only fading.

It didn’t take long into the examination that a film of sweat began to appear on the patient’s brow and his eyelids started to droop.  The third time Trapper took his temperature, it had gone up in tiny increments until it finally hit another interval.  Two doses of penicillin were doing nothing to cure it.

“Can you feel this?”  Hawkeye reached under to the back of Radar’s calf muscle and pinched hard, causing Radar to yelp.  This awakened Trapper from his train of thought. 

“Hey!” Radar cried, looking simultaneously angry and like a puppy that had just been kicked.  Hawkeye’s mischievous smile didn’t help.  “Was that really necessary?”

Hawkeye gave the kid a couple pats on the leg.  “Well, believe it or not, I don’t just enjoy seeing you suffer.  We may not like it, but being able to feel pain like that is a good thing.  It means the nerves in your legs haven’t short circuited.”

“So it doesn’t appear to be a strictly neurological problem,” Trapper observed quietly, more to himself than to Radar, who wouldn’t understand the implications of that, nor to Hawkeye, who already reached that conclusion. 

As if in response, Hawk “hm’d,” and then picked up Radar’s boot and held it up in his hands so that his leg was elevated parallel to the mattress with his knee bent.  He kept one hand under the heel to support it and the other flat against the sole.  “All right, Radar.  Do me a favor and push against my hand as hard as you can.”

Trapper watched with interest as Radar’s face flickered into a look of apprehension and embarrassment.  Meanwhile, Hawkeye’s face didn’t waver; he wasn’t smiling or frowning.  It had defaulted into the stony stare of a cerebral doctor.

A moment went by and Radar strained in his face and let out a short breath, but almost nothing happened on Hawkeye’s end. The latter’s rigid expression fell slightly from its stoic omniscience into concerned disbelief.  

“Come on, Radar,” he said genuinely, and even the cool-headed Trapper couldn’t help but look nervous.  He almost felt bad for Hawkeye as much as he did Radar.  “I know you can do better than that.  I’ve seen you in shorts, you’ve got some sturdy little legs.”

Radar didn’t smile at the quip.  He just looked dejected, strained again. It had the exact same effect that it did last time, which was to say, next to nothing.   A loud sigh escaped from his chest that doubled as discouragement and the release of the breath he had been holding to accomplish what should have otherwise been a ridiculously easy task.  But, despite how hard he tried, Hawkeye felt almost no pressure against the palm that was pressed up against the bottom of Radar’s shoe.  When it was clear that the corporal gave it his all, Hawk gave the boot a pat and sat it gently back down on the bed.

“I told you not to skip leg day in the workout tent,” he jibed, although it sounded disheartened. New notes were getting scribbled onto the clipboard.  Despite Hawkeye’s effort at jesting, Radar was unreceptive and his head fell into his hands. 

“Hey, it’s okay, Radar,” Trapper said.  “It’s just a part of the examination.  We’re getting answers so that we can make you feel better.”

Radar looked up and sideways at Trapper in what almost looked like a glare. If it lasted another second, Trap would have felt even worse for the kid, having to deal with the fact that he clearly knew that this issue wasn’t as simple or as reparable as a common head cold.  But luckily, Hawkeye regained his attention.

“Temperature check.”

Radar looked exasperated as Trapper handed him the thermometer.  “Again?”

“Sorry, Radar, but we can’t have you maintaining a fever.  If the penicillin doesn’t kick in, I’m going to have to pray to the weather gods to usher in a cold snap and we’ll have you sit outside in your skivvies.” 

Again, Radar didn’t laugh or even smile.  He just begrudgingly put the thermometer in his mouth and pouted.  He knew it was overkill.  So did Trapper.  But neither dared to protest.

Hawkeye checked his watch.  “It’s been a bit,” he observed.  “Say, Trapper, why don’t you run to the mess tent and bring us back some grub?”

“Sure thing, mother,” Trapper replied, then looked at Radar.  “What’d you want, kid?  Six of everything?”

Radar glared up at him again, in a much more offhandedly condemning fashion this time.  Instead of responding verbally, he just deflated a little bit and shook his head almost imperceptibly.

Hawkeye looked up from the clipboard as if the silence struck him like lightning.  “Well, you better give the waiter your order before he moves onto the next table.”

More silence.  Radar looked at his lap.  Hawkeye and Trapper looked at each other.

“Is this a hunger strike to protest the war, or have you lost your appetite?”

“Uh, the second thing, sir,” Radar finally admitted through the thermometer, still averting eye contact, evidently afraid of getting reprimanded for not mentioning this sooner, and afraid of the implications as to the pending diagnosis. 

“And how long has that been going on?”

“You know, I haven’t noticed him at mess these past couple days, now that I think about it,” Trapper observed before Radar could respond, looking at Hawkeye with furrowed eyes.  Instantly a pang of guilt struck both of them, but Hawkeye especially.  How had he not noticed?

“When was the last time you ate anything, Radar?” Hawkeye asked, his inflection sounding almost threatening. 

Radar’s eyes flickered up to him for a moment, and then he looked back down and shrugged so slightly that a passing observer would have surely missed it.  Before Hawkeye could upbraid him, Trapper leaned over and removed the thermometer from Radar’s mouth, which garnered his fellow surgeon’s full attention.  After Trapper observed it, he obeyed Hawkeye’s silent demand, wordlessly handing it over without indicating whether the news was good or bad.  When Hawkeye saw for himself, an agonized sigh broke the tense silence.

Trapper thought he heard Hawkeye say “damnit,” under his breath, but he wasn’t sure.  Whatever the case, he put the thermometer aside and looked at the clerk, ready to either quiz him some more or drag him over the hot coals, but Radar’s countenance stopped him short.  As if cued, the Iowan’s skin had gotten suddenly whiter and he wavered back and forth a little, eyes glassy and sightless.  Hawkeye moved away from the foot of the bed and flew to the kid’s side in a second, gently guiding him to lean against the head of the bed before he tipped over.  Trapper circled to the other side, watching him carefully.  He removed his glasses for him and set them aside.

Hawkeye patted the side of his face a couple times in an effort to rouse him.  “Radar, stay awake.”  Figuring out the problem wasn’t going to be easier if the feverish clerk passed out in the middle of the examination.

Radar swallowed hard, squinted at Hawkeye, blinking dramatically as if trying to get him into focus, like he never noticed his glasses had been removed, and then finally managed a slight nod.

“Are you dizzy?” Hawkeye asked.

“Uh, yeah.” 

“Are you thirsty?” Trapper asked.

Radar swallowed hard again.  “Yes.”

Hawkeye looked at Trapper.  “I’m going to get a cold compress ready,” he said.  “Why don’t you go get some water and soup or something?  We need to keep his energy up.”

Radar winced.  “I don’t know if I can keep it down, Hawkeye.”

“Then we’ll start you on IV’s,” Hawkeye responded.  “But let’s do one thing at a time.”

When Trapper got up to leave, Hawkeye followed him and the two stopped at the door, jointly intending to have a private discussion.  There was hardly a medically trained duo in any surgical unit that could communicate so efficiently without words.  As such, when they locked eyes, they saw their own apprehensions mirrored in each other.

“Not neurological or circulatory,” Hawkeye said almost right away, eliciting a nod from Trapper.  “But chronic muscular weakness.  It’s like his leg muscles turned into tissue paper.  They’re so useless now that they can’t hold him up.  And if a pair of legs can’t support Radar, then it must be serious.”

Trapper nodded, ignoring yet another humorless joke.  “What on earth could cause that?  Muscular dystrophy?”

“What, overnight?  No, it can’t be.  He was walking as recently as yesterday.  Whatever caused his muscles to give out, it’s fast-acting.”

“Yeah, but he was having symptoms for longer,” Trapper pointed out.  “No appetite, fever.  If the sickness and the weakness are related, whatever it is had been in his system for at least a couple days.  Not to mention the incubation period.”

Hawkeye let out a deep, shoulder-shrugging sigh.  “Yeah.”  And then his face fell into a look of guilt and Trapper knew what was coming before a single word was uttered.  “Trap,” Hawkeye started, quietly, grimly.  “Why didn’t we notice?  I mean, the kid didn’t show up to mess, he’s been walking around with a fever, and it takes half his body to shut down for us to take a hint?”

“Hawk, come on,” Trapper said, disguising his own vague sense of guilt to save face.  “We’ve been swamped in the O.R. these past couple days.  Eighteen hour shifts.  I hardly notice if my shoes have been on the right feet.  And besides, Radar’s a big boy.  Well—metaphorically.”

Hawkeye couldn’t help but let a small smile escape at that, but it disappeared quickly.

Trapper continued.  “It was his own responsibility to let someone know that he wasn’t feeling well.  Same as it is with anybody else.  I mean—we look out for each other all right, but we’re nobody’s keepers.”

Hawkeye looked aloft, hands on hips, biting his lower lip.  He had a disparaged, discontented look on his face.  He said, “I guess,” but it didn’t sound like he actually agreed.

Trapper tapped the side of Hawkeye’s shoulder, bringing his eyes back up.  Earlier he had been the one to express doubts, but now they were in the thick of it and for all Trapper knew, it was time to save face when even Hawkeye became discouraged.  “Look, just keep him awake and work on getting his temperature down.  I’ll be back in a bit with some soup and water and we’ll go from there.”

Hawkeye gave a curt nod and turned to head back into the ward to get the cold compress ready.  Trapper spared one more glace at the feverish Radar, and then he disappeared through the tent entrance. 

Chapter Text

As Trapper walked out of the postop ward and through the compound, he kept his eyesight on the ground and his hands in his pockets, looking like a lost horse.  Others knew something was wrong with a passing glance when a couple of pretty nurses crossed his path and their flirtatious greetings were met with nothing than a disingenuous smile and nod.  Luckily nobody hazarded stopping him in his beeline to ask about Radar.

The Swamp was on the way to the mess tent and Trapper made a pit stop.  A quick drink might help him untense and process, he figured.  The last couple days paired with this brand new problem left him and Hawkeye virtually no downtime and he felt it taking its toll both in his muscles, and in his foggy brain.

When the door swung open, the stillery greeted him with an angelic halo, and there too was Frank on his cot, bible in hand, who Trapper was always ecstatic to see.

“Oh, hey Frank,” Trapper said with mock joviality as he sauntered over to the gin machine.

“Yeah right,” the major sniffed, not looking up from his bible.

Trapper offered no jibe back today, nor made an effort for conversation.  It wasn’t as fun when Hawkeye wasn’t around for him to bounce off of anyway, and even if he was today, Trapper figured he wouldn’t be in the mood given their current situation. 

But Frank always knew how to read the room.  As soon as Trapper poured himself a drink, that familiar voice assaulted his ears. 

“What are you doing here?  I thought you’d spend every second you could in postop.” 

Trapper sighed and submerged an olive with a disheartened plunk.  He teetered over to Hawkeye’s cot and sat down with a grunt.  “I’m fine, thanks.”  He paused and sipped.  Frank glared at him over his bible, unable to eloquently quip back as per usual.  Trapper took the moment of silence to welcome the soothing effect of booze and then continued.  “If you must know, I headed out to grab something for us to eat and just thought I’d rest here for a minute.  So if you don’t mind…”

Trapper leaned back and closed his eyes, but Frank would never take the hint.  Trapper expected as much, and so when the rodent like voice assaulted his ears, he didn’t open his eyes to acknowledge it.

“You ought to know that I fully intend to bring this issue to HQ’s attention.  Bartering away our valuable resources for an irregular medical case that we’re clearly not equipped to deal with in the first place—all in the name of…nepotism!”

“Frank, one of these days I’ll ‘nep’ your ‘tism,’” Trapper haphazardly retorted, eyes still closed, martini half empty. 

Frank’s mouth flew open as if to make a rebuttal, but it quickly snapped shut again.  His wits, or lack thereof, never ceased to fail him.  Perhaps in an effort to imitate his colleague’s apparent lack of interest in the conversation, he stuck his nose back in his bible and pretended to read, but not without repetitively stealing side-eyed glances at the occupied cot. 

Eventually, Frank opened his needle-lipped mouth again and this time managed to garner Trapper’s attention. “Oh, you may not be sorry now.  But let’s see how you and Pierce make a mockery of this unit when one of your little proxies goes missing.”

Trapper opened his eyes at that, leveling them at his adversary.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Frank didn’t answer, just squirmed a little; maybe because he was genuinely worried that he was stepping over a line, or maybe because he wanted to be reticent in an effort to ruffle Trapper up even more.  Maybe both things were true.

Whatever the case, Trapper rose from the cot and walked over to Frank’s, looking down at him as the latter ignored his presence by keeping his eyes strictly on his bible.

“Is that what this is about, Frank?” he challenged.  “You want to get rid of Radar so that Hawk and I will be cut down to size?”

Frank squirmed some more, and then hesitantly looked up at Trapper.  “Well, everyone in this place knows that you’ve got that little bugger at your beck and call.  Imagine trying to carry out your hairbrained schemes without an impressionable middle man that you have wrapped around your finger.”

Trapper leaned down a little, hovering over Frank as if to intimidate him with a sense of envelopment.  The major visibly shrunk back, so it must have had the right effect.  “Let me get this straight.  A good kid is laid up in a military hospital ward thousands of miles away from home with an undiagnosed condition that could ultimately lead to him being crippled for the rest of his life, and the only thing you can think about is separating him from us because you’re tired of our little pranks?  Is that all any of us mean to you, Frank?  We’re villains in the world you’ve constructed in your tiny brain that revolves around you?”

Frank tossed his bible aloft and stood up.  “Look, mister.  You and Pierce and O’Reilly and Colonel Blake have all been condemning this United States military outfit to a state of laughable debauchery!  Don’t think I don’t see how this little team of degenerates operates.  You and Pierce plot, and you get the Colonel in on it, and then you push that runt around to do your bidding.”

Trapper leaned in closer toward Frank, who, backed up against his cot, could only lean away with the threat of pitching backwards.  “Keep talking and I’ll do my own bidding all over your weaselly face.”

“Don’t you threaten me, soldier.  I’m your superior officer.”

“You’re a superior pain in the tuchus is what you are, Frank, and everyone here knows it,”  Trapper’s voice had risen to almost a yell.  “Now if you don’t mind, I have had a really difficult run this week standing on my feet for seventy hours straight in the OR, and now Hawk and I are trying to work miracles so that the lame can walk again. Right now I’d like to have a few minutes’ respite away from your nonsense. If you want, we can schedule a raincheck for this discussion and I’d be happy to saw off your butt and hand it back to ya.”

Trapper walked back over to the cot and threw back the last of the martini, leaving Frank standing there without a pot to piss in.  But surprisingly it was the disgruntled Bostonian who broke the uncomfortable silence.

“Let me tell you something, Frank,” he said quietly, not looking at his cohort.  “I don’t know what you think.  If you really believe that Hawkeye and I are only trying to help Radar so that we can maintain the integrity of our rogue gallery against you, or whatever.  But it just so happens that the real reason we’re bending over backwards, is that we care about him.  We’re his friends, Frank.  Henry, Hawkeye, Radar, Father Mulcahy, Klinger, and I, we have this bond between us, see, this loyalty.  I can stand here and confidently speak for all of us in saying that there’s not much we wouldn’t do for each other.”

Frank just stood there, quietly, unreceptive.  He crossed his arms and pouted like a child getting lectured.  Trapper walked toward him again, cavalierly, almost mockingly.

“You’ve got a lot of gull calling Radar names and knocking him down to just a pawn in this game of chess that you’re always losing.” Trapper continued, danger in his eyes and voice.  “But it figures that you wouldn’t know a damn thing about friendship and being loyal to each other.  You want to make waves over this, fine.  But it’s always all us degenerates against little old lonely Frank.  Ever think about that?”

With that, Trapper walked toward the door and started pulling his blouse and boots back on.  Meanwhile saying, “And another thing.  Call Radar names again, and I’ll punch your lights out.  Only Hawkeye and I have name-calling privileges.”

With that, he left and slammed the door, leaving Frank standing tight-lipped and steaming.

Hawkeye spent a couple minutes pressing a damp cloth up against Radar’s head and then took a lap around the postop ward to stretch his legs.  There were only a few other occupied beds that had patients not yet passed on to Tokyo, a surprisingly vacant tent considering the casualty volume they had experienced that week.  Beside the two or three recuperating soldiers who were napping or staring at the ceiling, the only activity in the ward were the nurses in and out with bedpans, sheets, and other wares as they went through their afternoon shift.  The chief surgeon read a few of the clipboards, exchanged a couple words with a nurse or two; one asked about Radar.  What was wrong with him?  Would he be okay?  Hawkeye had said, Nothing too bad, he’ll be just fine.  But as he said it, he felt unusually antsy. 

Trapper was taking longer than Hawkeye anticipated.  Meanwhile, Radar had become markedly despondent at an alarming rate and Hawkeye was getting creative with methods for keeping him awake.  About the fifth time he stuck the thermometer in Radar’s mouth since Trapper’s departure, the Corporal had asked,

“Is it going down?”

And Hawkeye responded, “No, but at least checking is keeping you awake.”

Radar sighed dramatically and rubbed an eye with his knuckle as if to punctuate. “Why can’t I go to sleep?”

“Because what fun is an interrogation without the interogatee? You’re just going to leave me here in this ward by my lonesome with a bunch of sick people?”

When the thermometer was removed, Radar made a strange face and let out a couple short coughs.  He must have anticipated Hawkeye’s reaction, because when the surgeon grabbed a flashlight and reached for Radar’s jaw, he barely gave the command and the clerk was already opening his mouth for a quick look.  Not without a noticeable pout, however.

 After a second, Hawkeye put the flashlight back in his pocket and wordlessly massaged Radar’s tonsils, causing the latter to squirm and snicker.  It was both out of place and delightful to see the feverish corporal alight with involuntary giggles in his situation, but Hawkeye had to admit that it was nice to hear the sound.  He would never verbalize that, though.  In any case, as soon as he retracted his hands, Radar went back to looking miserable.

“Your throat’s looking a little red,” Hawkeye said, looking into Radar’s glassy eyes.  “Is it sore?”

Radar squirmed a little bit, swallowed as if to test for pain, and then massaged his own throat.  “Just a little bit.”

As Hawkeye grabbed a cup of water from the side table that a nurse had left earlier and handed it to Radar, Trapper came in with a covered tray in hand.

“It’s about time,” Hawkeye said as he rose to meet him. “What happened, did you hit traffic?”

“You could say that,” Trapper muttered, setting the tray down on the side table.  “I had a little run in with Ferret Face and we had a chat.  I didn’t ‘hit’ him, per se, but I was tempted.”

“I’m guessing he came around, right?”

Trapper snickered humorlessly. “Yeah, right.”

Hawkeye “hmph”’d and Trapper glanced at Radar, who was sitting up sipping meticulously at a glass of water.  He was stripped of his blouse down to his t-shirt and his skin was a touch paler than it was before.  Trapper tugged on Hawkeye’s and the two put some distance between them and the patient.  “So how’s the kid?  Are we getting anywhere?”

“Well,” Hawkeye started lowering his voice, as if this discussion was top secret. “We’ve got new symptoms.  Chills and nausea and now he’s coughing.”

Trapper’s eyebrows quirked.  “Coughing?”

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said, matter-of-factly, and then superficially coughed to sardonically demonstrate.

Trapper ignored the condescension.  “Boy, Hawk, he’s going south.”

Hawkeye sighed deeply.  “Yeah.  His fever is pretty stubborn too, but we have it hovering around 100.”

“So what’s next?”

“Hm?”

“What’s next?  What are we going to do?  What haven’t we tried yet?  How do we treat this thing, we don’t even know what it is?”

Hawkeye got that look on his face, and Trapper knew that he bit into something rotten.  The combination of unevenly furrowed brows and a nuanced frown was a tell-tale sign that his cohort’s stubbornness was coming up at full speed.  “Well, we’re still in the examination phase, Trapper.  We’re figuring it out.”

“But we’re not making any progress,” Trapper retorted.  “And it’s been hours.  Clock’s ticking.  And this isn’t just a stomach bug or a scratchy esophagus, it’s muscular dysfunction, paralysis—”

“Yeah, so we’re having diagnostic problems, it happens.  All doctors deal with it.  What are you saying, Trap, that you just want to give up on him?”

“Oh come on, Hawk,” Trapper said, unable to suppress the urge to dramatically roll his eyes at the suggestion.  “Don’t you think I want Radar to get better just as much as you do?  I’m just worried that we’re biding our time over something that’s above our pay grade.  And furthermore, with these symptoms that he’s having, it’s sounding more and more to me like polio.”

“It’s not polio.”

“How do you know?”

“The symptomology just isn’t quite right.  It all happened too fast, within the past couple days as far as I can tell.”

“Sometimes the onset only takes a day.”

“That’s rare. Paralytic polio itself is rare.”

“But not impossible.”

“Look, I just know that that’s not it—”

“Okay, so you have a hunch.  But a hunch isn’t good enough.”  Hawkeye looked downward, a combination of incensed and unsure.  Trapper appended, “The thing is, that I’m just worried—”

“Me too,” Hawkeye interrupted, quietly but acidic.  “I’ll admit, Trap.  I’m not used to this feeling.  It’s just like—” Hawkeye faltered, his lips pursing at the corners, his eyes gravitating between various spots on the floor.  “I mean, I’ve been unsure plenty of times.  I’ve had to make coin tosses that people’s lives depend on. But I’ve never been at a loss like this.  And it doesn’t help that it’s Radar.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not used to not knowing what to do.”

There was a tense moment of silence where neither knew what to say and neither was looking at each other.  Trapper looked past Hawkeye at Radar again, and saw that he had abandoned the glass of water and was leaning heavily  back into the pillows, eyes closed.  It was a hard to tell if he was asleep, but Trapper thought that he wouldn’t mind much at this point—especially considering that keeping him up wasn’t helping them make any progress, and he would have preferred if there was no chance that this conversation was being overheard.

“Listen, Hawk,” Trapper said after a moment, regathering his friend’s attention.  “Thing is, now we’ve got a cough; a respiratory issue.  And if whatever is causing his paralysis is spreading to his respiratory system, Radar’s in big, big trouble.”

Hawkeye looked back at Trapper.  His expression was unreadable.  “You know what’s funny,” he started, distantly, “is that I would love to send Radar home.  I would love to give him a ticket out of here, I really would.  Hell, I’d want that kid to go home just about as much as I want to go home.  Maybe more.  But it doesn’t feel right when we have to send him back with a note attached that says, ‘Dear Ms. O’Reilly, we’re happy to reunite you with your son, but only half of him works.  Sorry about that.  Love, the 4077.’”

Trapper sighed.  “There’s nothing we could have done to prevent this.  I mean, this, getting paralyzed, the war didn’t do this to him.  Sometimes these freak things just happen and it’s nobody’s fault.  Don’t you think his mother would understand that?”

Hawkeye didn’t say anything, but seemed unconvinced.  He looked aloft and shook his head a little, and then looked back at Trapper and said, with authority in his eyes and voice, “I’m going to wake him up and get him to eat something.  And then we’ll see where we go from there.”

Trapper nodded, but Hawkeye clearly didn’t need his confirmation, because hardly a couple seconds after finishing his last remark, the surgeon was heading back toward Radar’s bed.  It was times like this that Trapper wished Hawkeye would get better at listening.  He wasn’t immune to receptiveness, and there were times that he even could admit that a different approach was required, but when it came to certain matters he became incredibly intransigent, and Radar happened to be one of those things. 

As such, it was abundantly clear to Trapper that Hawkeye was biding his time without regard to the most pragmatic course of action because this was, after all, Radar.  If it were anybody else, they would have been sent to Tokyo the moment a symptom of questionable implication surfaced. 

It made sense.  Radar was, in every sense, the kid brother of the entire 4077.  A beacon of innocence in an environment that culminated under corruption and violence.  Everybody knew that nobody detested the nature of war more than Hawkeye, how it ripped people to shreds for no justifiable cause, inside and out.  Radar was like a rare, undamaged flower that could have been plucked from the soil after a forest fire. If Hawkeye were to feel responsible for that last should anything happen to it--

Trapper shuddered at the thought.  He couldn’t be the voice of reason for Hawkeye.  Not this time.  If he disagreed about the best course of action, he’d have to take it over his best friend’s head at the risk of never being forgiven. 

“Frank, you’re not jealous, are you?”

“Jealous of that little twerp?  Of course not.  Why would I be jealous of him?”

Frank was pacing frenetically back and forth while Margaret combed her air indifferently in front of her small vanity mirror, suppressing an impish smile at seeing her lover so wound up; not an unusual occurrence, but sometimes she found herself just as passionately disgusted by whatever phenomenon had him in straits, and other times (like this time), she was more of a secretly bemused bystander.

“Of course you’re not, dear,” she amended, only looking at him via the reflection of him passing in and out of view in her mirror as he paced.  “But why don’t you just let this one go for now?  You said that Colonel Blake agreed to accommodating the corporal for twenty-four hours.  After that, he’ll be gone and you can stop with your obsessing.”

Margaret had to admit that, deep down inside, she wasn’t especially eager to kick Radar to the curb, despite all the times she had wanted nothing more than to rip his head off for staring at her inappropriately when he woke her from her peaceful sleep in the wee hours of the morning.  Even despite that, she had to admit, he was a good clerk, if not a nebbish eccentric.

Still, there was something endearing about the soft-spoken corporal, something that she couldn’t put her finger on in her better moments, but that always lingered even on the offset of one of her tantrums.  She knew how Frank felt about him, along with everybody else in the unit, and was quick to rally to his ministrations for the most part.  Every once in a while, however, her feminine rationalizations kicked in as a counterbalance to Frank’s immaturity and she was never afraid to voice a qualification. 

“Knowing them, they’ll find a way to keep their gang together indefinitely,” Frank said, clearly speaking of the gestalt of his tripartite adversaries.  “A deal means nothing to those careless mongrels!  They’d sooner compromise American intelligence to Korea than barter away a cog in their machine.”

“You speak of the corporal as if he’s currency,” Margaret chided, but on the gentle side.

“Even you, Margaret?  That miserable runt is obviously goldbricking besides!  And he’s allowed to get away with it just because—because—”

“Because everyone here cares about him?”

“Oh, Margaret!” Frank descended into his characteristic hysterics, practically collapsing onto Hot Lips from behind.  “I just don’t understand it!  I work twice as hard and my work is a hundred times more important, and I’m intelligent and I’m dedicated, and I’m handsome—I’m handsome, aren’t I?”

“Sure, Frank.”

“And yet I can’t help but think that if I suddenly started pretending that I had some horrible disease that nobody would so much as throw a milligram of Novocain in my general direction!”

“So you do envy him, Frank.”

“Envy him?  He’s—he’s diminutive, and pathetic, and childish, and eccentric, and—”

“I’m not denying that he is all those things,” Margaret said, resuming her pampering even as Frank hung off of her like a wet towel.  “But—”

Frank suddenly straightened up, looking at Margaret critically.  “You’re fond of him too, aren’t you?”

“He’s a good clerk.  If we got a new one, we’d have to break him in and everything.”

“You don’t think he’s goldbricking?”

“Honestly, Frank.  That’s something I’d imagine Corporal Klinger doing, but Radar?”

“Hmph!”

Margaret stopped brushing, gave her blonde locks a couple pumps, and turned around to face Frank, who was now rigidly upright, stiff as a board, looking for all the world like a defiant toddler.  “Why don’t you go to postop and visit him?  Maybe if you’re nice to him for a change, it’ll make you feel better.”

“Oh, please!” Frank fumed, his face a peculiar tint of pink.  “I have much better things to do than to play into that delinquent’s game!  I know better!  It’s probably some elaborate scheme hatched by all three of them!”

“If you have better things to do, then why don’t you go do them?” Margaret was reaching the end of her rope as it became increasingly clear that there was no consoling her eternally dramatic love interest.

“Margaret!”

“I’m on duty in an hour.  What would you like me to tell you?  I can’t remove Radar from this unit myself, regardless of how much I want to, and Colonel Blake is certainly not going to do it.  What shall I say that would make you feel better?”

Frank faltered, his needle-thin lips opening and closing at a loss for words.  Finally, when he spoke, his voice was choked and high as if he on the verge of sobbing.  “Margaret, if I were to all of a sudden collapse right here on the floor, would anybody help me?”

“Of course I would, darling.”

“Well I know you would,” Frank responded belligerently.  “But what about the rest of the 4077?  The doctors, the nurses?  Would they give a damn?”

Margaret shifted her weight onto one foot and looked down for a moment, almost smiling at the offhanded insecurity unraveling like a dull ribbon in front of her.  “I have to get ready for my shift, so if you’ll excuse me.”  She started ushering him to the door.

“But, Margaret—”

“Go visit them, Frank.  Be nice for a change.  It’ll do you some good.”

The infantile whining quickly transformed into indignant defiance and Frank retorted, “Over my dead body!”  Then he sucked in a choked sob and finally stumbled out the door, heading in the direction of the Swamp.  Margaret watched him go for a moment, and then turned back into her tent in synchronistic harmony with a mildly agitated roll of her eyes.

In a little while, she’d be in postop, and then she would be able to better asses the situation for herself.  Knowing Hawkeye, who has no doubt been closely monitoring the situation this entire time, there would be neurotic surgeon there to greet her, and that certainly wouldn’t make her shift bearable.  But, she had to admit, if anyone had to be so infuriating, at least it was in the name of caring for a patient.  Notwithstanding the countless other idiosyncrasies between Pierce and Macintyre that she couldn’t stand.

When Frank got back to the Swamp, he was greeted with a ghastly sight that certainly didn’t improve his mood one bit.  Expecting to enter and be engulfed in an overdue veil of peace and quiet with his two antagonists preoccupied, he was instead greeted with two overturned cots and an identically capsized desk.  Put together, they formed a barrier blocking off one side of the tent.  Frank couldn’t help but wail when he saw it; it looked like the place had been ransacked. 

“What the--?!”

He shouldn’t have expected anything else, but sure enough, when he involuntarily vocalized his horror, two heads—one under a helmet wrapped up in a silk scarf, and one under a fishing hat—popped up from behind the barricade.

“Oh, hey Frank!” Klinger greeted jovially.  “I thought you’d be with Hot Lips all evening.”

Frank was so taken aback that he didn’t correct the transgression.  “What the devil is going on in here?” he demanded, a barely restrained yell. 

“Haven’t you heard?” Klinger said, but before he could continue, a clearly intoxicated Henry cut him off.

“The General’s comin’ to tear us apart!” the Colonel explained, sounding as serious as he did drunk.  “We’ll never pass ‘spection and they’re gonna gun us down an’ use us as canon fire!”

Frank’s face screwed up into a disbelieving, incredibly confounded frown.  “What?”

“Henry’s right, Frank!” Klinger chimed.  “HQ called and said that the 4077 has been found guilty on seventy-three counts of third-degree thievery, and they’re sending in American air raids to scare us into submission!  It’s the worst case they’ve ever seen!”

Frank’s face somehow screwed up even more.  “They are not.  That’s silly!”

“This is war, Major!” Klinger fired back, erstwhile Henry leaned on the barricade next to him, calmly sipping a martini from the still.  “They’re nuts enough to call it on, they’re nuts enough to call us off!”

Henry’s head swiveled toward Frank, glass in hand. He added, “And nobody knows ‘nuts’ better’n Klinger.”

Frank advanced closer and got down to Klinger’s level, staying on the other side of the barricade.  “Who told you this?”

“General Hammond called this morning,” Klinger said, nothing in his voice sounding anything other than earnest.  As he was close, Frank could see over the barricade that he was armed with a baseball bat, tucked under his arm and contemplating his pink formal gown.  “Gave me the what-for.  Said that this morning was the last call for our appeal in writing and that we’re done for.”

Frank seemed to falter in his certainty.  “Really?”

“Oh yes, Major!  Better grab a helmet and join us, or you’ll be smithereens in a few hours!”

“Shouldn’t we tell the rest of the camp?”

“We tried, but everyone thinks we’re crazy!  Their loss.  We’ll be the only ones prepared.”

Frank looked desperately at Henry.  “Colonel?”

Henry’s head swiveled toward Frank like a ball on a pivot.  “Hm?  Oh, yeah, Frank, whatever Klinger’s sayin,’ should be ‘bout right.”

Frank stood crouched there for a moment, looking back and forth between the corporal and the colonel who was evidently too drunk to contribute anything intelligent to the discussion.  Rather than say anything, he just wiggled his eyebrows at Frank over the martini glass as he took another swig.

One last look at Klinger’s beseeching expression and Frank frantically grabbed his helmet from under his cot and leapt over the barricade with all the grace of a beached cod. 

Chapter Text

When Margaret walked into postop, she didn’t see Hawkeye right away; only a few occupied beds, a nurse checking on one of the patients, and a certain clerk laying in bed six with his eyes closed and a cold compress laying on his forehead.  She found herself gravitating toward him automatically, needlessly checking the clipboards of a couple of the occupied beds on the way.

“Nurse Baker,” she said as the nurse in question passed by with a bedpan.  “Have you seen doctors Pierce and/or Macintyre?” 

“They left a couple minutes ago, ma’am.  Not sure where they went.”

“All right.  Thank you.”

The nurse departed and Major Houlihan floated over to Radar’s bed, admittedly feeling rather curious as to the nature of his condition; the last she had heard, he collapsed in the morning and word spread that he suffered from paralysis, although nobody could figure what would cause such a thing, especially to a noncombative clerical pacifist who worked miles behind the frontline.  When it was put that way, it made Frank’s insistence of fraudulence more palatable, especially when a nurse as classically trained as Margaret was mystified by such an occurrence.  However, when she got close enough to look at Radar’s face more carefully, the incredulity receded.

She had to admit that he wasn’t looking very good; he was pale and utterly listless, and the cold compress was obvious evidence of a fever.  Her medical instincts kicked in soon enough and she was sat at his side, checking the compress to make sure it was still cold, and timing his pulse.  When she picked up his wrist, his skin was clammy and his arm was like a dead weight, but it caused him to stir a little and murmur something in his sleep.

“Corporal?” she asked, as soon as she wrapped up the pulse checking and gently sat the hand back down to the mattress.  “Corporal O’Reilly?  Radar?”

Radar stirred a little more, but Margaret kept her voice gentle so that he wouldn’t startle awake.  He seemed to sense her presence before regaining full consciousness, because his head lolled toward her and he muttered something incomprehensible before his eyes started to flutter open.  As soon as the grey irises locked onto Major Houlihan’s neutral visage, it seemed that the very sight of her startled him enough.  He fumbled at the side stand for his glasses and tried to sit upright.

“Oh—hello, sir.  Er, sorry, sir.  Ma’am.  I was just—resting my eyes,” he stammered as he tried to put the glasses back on his face, and Margaret couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, and simultaneously ambivalent about the kind of reaction that her very presence incited.  He sounded all the more pitiful, as his voice was unpracticed from sleep, and hushed from fatigue.

“That’s all right, Corporal,” Margaret said, gently, but with her military officiality.  She leaned back and removed the clipboard from the bed post, looking over its contents; the symptoms thereon caused her to crinkle her brow involuntarily.  He seemed to have almost every viral complaint—simple enough, if not compounded with incapacitating muscular weakness. 

“How are you feeling, Corporal?” she asked as she read, only looking up from the clipboard when Radar hesitated just a bit too long before answering. 

Trying to sit up caused the compress on his forehead to slide down, and Radar hurriedly grabbed it before it knocked his glasses onto his nose, then looked at it confusedly as if he wasn’t aware that it had been there.  He regained his composure after a moment and answered Major Houlihan shakily.  “Um—” he swallowed hard and cleared his throat.  “I’ve been better, sir.  But I’ve also been worse.  In some ways.”

“Has anything like this ever happened to you before?”

“No, sir.  Sorry—ma’am.  I mean—I’ve been sick before, but I was always able to stand up while I was sick, if I wanted to, not that I’ve wanted to, although now I think I’d like nothing more.”

Margaret felt a smile creep onto her face at the corporal’s winsome prattling, although she dismissed it quickly enough to not compromise her character.  “When was the last time you had your temperature taken?”

“Oh—uh…” Radar looked at his lap and fiddled with the hem of the blanket, his expression reading as that of a student trying to solve complicated math.  “It must have been…gee, I’m not sure.  Probably not long ago.  I don’t know how long I was asleep.”

“Did Captain Pierce tell you where he was going before he left?”

Radar looked around the postop ward, it donning on him only then that Hawkeye and Trapper were nowhere in sight.  When he looked back at Margaret, he swayed a little bit from the motion.  It might have been that he hadn’t fully woken up yet, or that the fever was making him woozy—perhaps both.  In any case, Margaret automatically reached out and grabbed his shoulder, lowering him back down. 

“No, sir,” he said quietly, when he was out of danger. 

“That’s all right.  And it’s ‘ma’am,’” Margaret said.

“Sorry, sir.  Ma’am.  Sir.” 

Radar’s eyes started to flutter and Margaret removed the damp cloth from his hand where it had started to create a wet spot on the blanket.  He seemed like he was in pretty bad shape, she realized with regret—unable to stay awake, feverish, and when he moved at all, he moved stiffly. 

“You seem like you’re in pain, Corporal,” Margaret observed.  She felt his forehead, and then tested the water in a basin on the sidestand to make sure it was cold enough to rewet the compress.  When she was satisfied, she submerged it, squeezed out the excess water, and pressed it back onto his head.  His eyes flinched under the cold touch, but he immediately settled back down and sunk listlessly into the mattress.

Radar’s voice was weak when he responded.  Margaret had a brief flashback to when he was feverish from vaccinations and the two of them were in an eerily similar position—although, this time his reason for being in postop was unpromisingly mysterious.  “Um…a little, sir.”

“Where?”

“My legs, mostly.”

“Can you describe the pain?”

“They’re just…” Radar tried to adjust his position slightly, but it was clearly a strain on him.  Margaret gently pushed him back down and rewet the compress.  “…sore.  And they feel…heavy.”

Margaret frowned and looked at the clipboard again, reading every symptom and note for the third time.  One or two unpleasant theories popped into her head.

“Before you started feeling sick, what were you eating and drinking?”

At first, Radar seemed not to hear the question.  But then his face tightened a little as if the thought of food revulsed him.  “I don’t remember exactly,” he said quietly.  “Whatever was being served in mess, I guess.  And I drank water and coffee, same as everyone else.”

“Hm.  Is there anything I can get for you, Corporal?”

Radar’s eyes glazed over just then.  He slurred when he spoke. “No…ma’am.  Thanks.”

Margaret nodded slightly, continuing with the cold compress.  Radar’s eyes were closed again and she couldn’t tell if he was sleeping, but he was certainly out of it.  Despite all the times she had yelled at him and accused him of perversion and a dozen other transgressions, which she had for nearly every male member of the 4077, she couldn’t help but abandon her sub-stellar paradigm in favor of feeling sorry for the young clerk.  Frank had been right in a sense…somewhere buried deep inside of her, she had to admit that there was fondness for him.  There was, despite the habitudes she could do without, an appealing quality in his inherent sweetness and his endless attempts to please his superior officers, a quality that Pierce and Macintyre certainly didn’t share.  Perhaps Margert would have an improved opinion of those two hadn’t corrupted the teenager.  Even so, if they were weasels, Radar was an impressionable, nearsighted puppy.

“Isn’t he a little young for you, Hot Lips?”

Margaret started, but recovered quickly. Sure enough, Hawkeye and Trapper had reentered the ward, the two of them visibly low on energy, but never abandoning their mischievous ambience, even for a caper like this.

She ignored the glib.  “It seems as though not much progress has been made here.”

“I didn’t expect you of all people to pay Radar a visit.”

“Actually, I’m here on postop duty.  It’s my shift.”

Trapper sneered.  “And you had it in your heart to give him some bedside service.  It’s okay to admit that you care, Margaret.  You might even convince us that you have a soul.”

Margaret looked affronted enough to satisfy her company, but still ignored the joke.  “Where were you two just now?”

“We went into the office to find a textbook that might help us out,” Trapper said, setting the book down on the side stand to punctuate.  Margaret flipped through it momentarily.  Trapper added, “Henry wasn’t there.  Any idea where he might be?”

“No, I tend to avoid keeping track of that man’s activities if I can help it,” Margaret responded with acid.

Hawkeye circled around and crouched down to Margaret’s sitting level.  “Fair enough. He’d be beside himself if he were around anyway,” he said, and then looked at Radar.  Margaret immediately recognized his expression, a neutral one behind which egregious concern floated and threatened to spill out, the kind of look that only a doctor could get used to seeing.

“Did he talk to you at all since you’ve been here?” Hawkeye asked, feeling Radar’s forehead.

When the hand retracted, Margaret went back to mopping Radar’s brow with the compress.  By now, the clerk seemed to have fallen back into a deep enough sleep that he was entirely unreceptive to the “doctor hands” for which he would have had a childlike aversion if he were conscious.

“A little.”

“What did he say?”

“He mentioned soreness in his legs and said that they felt ‘heavy.’  If he could stand on his own, I would have thought this was just another flu case.”

“His muscles are like overcooked pasta,” Trapper confirmed, standing behind the two of them.  “We’ve been investigating all day, and it seems to us like there are no neurological issues.  He can move them around all right, and the nerves are working.  But all his strength took a vacation.  Like his quadriceps atrophied overnight.”

Hawkeye turned to Margaret.  “Did you ever know a teenager who was perfectly healthy one day and a paraplegic the next?”

There was a contemplative pause, and Margaret rose to her full height, leaving the compress in the basin. Hawkeye followed suit and the three huddled together on instinct and spoke in hushed voices as if there was danger in any one of the nearby unconscious patients stood a chance at hearing them.

“Doctors, I hate to suggest this,” the head nurse started tentatively, with an unusual measure of authentic hesitance.  “But have you considered that we could have a poliovirus on our hands?”

Trapper immediately looked at Hawkeye, who was looking grimly at Margaret.  He was concerned that his colleague would react with the same acidity with which Trapper had been treated for the same suggestion earlier, but Pierce’s response was a welcome surprise.

“I swabbed his throat this morning and sent it to the Tokyo lab for testing,” Hawkeye said quietly.  “I gave the driver a note telling them to put a rush on it, but so far no word.”

Trapper was comically surprised.  He wasn’t sure if Hawkeye was lying to stave off Margaret’s ire or if he got the swab when Trapper wasn’t paying attention and just neglected to tell him.  “You did?”

Hawkeye nodded. “The last thing I’d want is to find out that it’s polio, and we may not get an answer before our time table comes up.  Furthermore, I seriously doubt that it is.  There are a couple hundred people here utilizing the same resources at the same time and not a single other virus has manifested any reported symptoms.  But we have to be sure.”

“You neglected to mention this to me,” Trapper said, feigning severe offense.

“Sorry, I was distracted,” Hawkeye deadpanned back, nodding toward Radar’s cot.

Something occurred to Margaret.  “Shouldn’t somebody be in the office in case we get a call about it?  You did say that Colonel Blake wasn’t in there.”

“And neither was Klinger,” Trapper added.  “I figured they were taking a smoking break, but maybe one of us should go look for them.”

“I can’t go,” Margaret said quickly.  “I’m on duty here.”

“And I’ve got a Charlie horse,” Hawkeye lied, rubbing his knee. 

In reality, he didn’t want to leave Radar again, especially since the kid was visibly going south.  And since Trapper was conscious of the fact that he didn’t mind as much, especially when it meant he could breathe in some air that hadn’t been bottled up in the postop ward, he volunteered.  Another quick stop at the Swamp might do his nerves some good anyway; the longer this issue went on, the longer they were on the fritz.  Intermittent respite did him well; Hawkeye was the opposite in that periodically turning away from his fixations only drove him crazier. 

“Yeah, all right, I’ll go look for those bozos” Trapper said, clapping Hawkeye on the back once he finished his routine.  “Don’t miss me too much while I’m gone.”

“You know I always miss you when you’re not around, dear.”

Margaret made a vaguely disgusted noise and stalked off to check on other patients.  Hawkeye and Trapper let themselves exchanged humored smiles before the latter exited to perform his assignment and Hawkeye turned back to Radar.  The kid’ skin glistened with sweat and his eyes twitched, making his sleep appear fitful.  Hawkeye knew that Radar was prone to restless sleeping, not the least due to nightmares and god knew how a fever might exacerbate that.  If it got too bad, Hawkeye assured himself, he would wake Radar up again.

For now, he settled for sponging his brow with the compress, knowing that it was a fruitless endeavor.  But somehow the simple act was a distant, vague consolation that made him feel somewhat less useless.  After a moment, Hawkeye noticed that Radar’s glasses were on; he must have worn them when he was addressing Major Houlihan.  Hawkeye gently removed them one stem at a time and replaced them on the side table.  As he resumed his trite endeavor to keep the fever under control, Hawkeye tried not to get overwhelmed with worry and a sense of failure. 

It wasn’t working.

Trapper stopped by the office first, and sure enough, his quarries were still AWOL.  The supply shed was next, then the mess tent, until finally Trapper dragged his feet over to the Swamp to award himself at least a couple minute’s respite.  But when he stepped through the door and got a look at the place, he stopped short and stared.  Very few things were able to break through Trapper’s unflappably suave composure, especially not at the 4077, where he was sure he had seen it all. 

And yet, there was something about the condition in which he found the Swamp that had him momentarily frozen.  When he finally regained his senses and closed the door behind him, moving in closer to investigate, he froze once again and this time a scream escaped his wind pipe in spite of his better nature.

There in front of him, behind a wall constructed of overturned furniture and blankets, Klinger and Frank popped up and hollered like warriors with makeshift weapons in their hands—Klinger with an old bat, Frank with a ping pong paddle.  The latter had soot used as war paint under his eyes and Klinger had his bushy hair contained underneath a helmet that was enveloped by a floral silk scarf.  As soon as Trapper became privy to the absurdity of such a display, which was in a matter of seconds, he unbraced and went straight for the stillery (which was thankfully untouched despite the chaos).  He internally reprimanded himself for being surprised at something like this, having gotten used to the antics of the 4077.  The main difference was that he wasn’t in some way responsible for this nonsense.

“What the hell are you guys doing?” Trapper demanded as he stumbled over to the gin machine.

When Klinger and Frank saw that it was Trapper, the former immediately relaxed, but Frank leapt up to his feet and was immediately on the verbal assault.  “Macintyre!  Don’t you know what’s going on?”

“You’ve finally cracked up?  You lost your marbles in a patient?”

Frank pouted briefly, and then became hysterical again.  “No, you insolent fool!  The 4077 is coming under fire any minute now!  You best join us or get blasted to smithereens.”

Trapper almost choked on his martini from laughing so hard.  The guffawing made Frank pout some more.  “Frank, you really have cracked up!” Trapper managed through his mirth.

“He’s right, Captain,” Klinger appended, leaning over the makeshift barricade, bat still in hand.  “The army is wrapping the red tape around our throats!  We’re done for!”

Trapper managed to stifle the last of his laughter and keep it down with some effort; he made his way over to the barricade and Klinger stood up to his full height to level with the significantly taller surgeon.  “Klinger,” Trapper said, “What’s all this really about?”

Klinger seemed to know that Trapper wasn’t one to fool with like Frank was, because his answer was reasonable enough; “HQ called this morning and said that they’re missing paperwork or something or another to account for missing inventory, and all the other MASHes are cleared.  They said they’re going to have to launch an inspection unless they get what they need.”

“That’s it?  HQ’s upset over paperwork?”

Klinger shrugged.  “Essentially.  But I looked around everywhere and I couldn’t find anything useful and I didn’t know what to sign or to send or to write, or—”

Trapper held up a hand.  “I get it.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” Frank interrupted, the pitch of his voice hiked up to that insufferable whine.  “I thought you said there was going to be an air raid!” 

“He also says that his petticoats need to be hung to dry,” Trapper said with a quirk of his eyebrows. 

Frank wheeled on Klinger.  “You tricked me!  You…you…”

“Frank, it’s your fault for going along with a crossdressing fruit cake in the first place.”  Trapper turned back to Klinger.  “You killed two birds with one stone!  Mess with Ferret Face and look crazy, all wrapped up in one scheme.”

Klinger smiled devilishly and said, “You got me there.”  Frank made some incomprehensible noises in a fit of rage and dramatically stumbled over the barricade and toward his cot, so angry and red in the face that he was unable to articulate.  Trapper laughed openly at him as he watched him go.  Somewhere in between the gasps, he thanked the belligerent major for a much needed laugh and then turned back to Klinger, suppressing the last of his chuckles.

“Uh, anyway, Klinger, you better get that red tape sorted out,” he said in earnest, willfully removing the smile from his face with some difficulty.  “The last thing we need is administration poking around here.  Especially when we’re trying to keep the situation with Radar on the downlow.”

Klinger nodded, a bit solemnly.  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.  But I’m just a corpsman; I haven’t the slightest idea where to begin with all that paperwork.”

“Can’t Henry help you?”

“He doesn’t know what to do either.”

“Figures.  Speaking of, where the hell is that air head?  I’ve been wandering all over the compound trying to find him.”

Klinger gestured to a spot on the floor behind the barricade and said, “Sleeping off the sauce. See for yourself.”

Trapper edged forward and looked over the capsized furniture at the floor on the other side, and sure enough, there was Colonel Blake prostrated on his side, snoring like an overgrown infant with an empty martini glass held loosely in his hand and a liquid stain on his shirt.  Trapper rolled his eyes.  “That’s great,” he said.  “I always knew he couldn’t handle the pressure.”

“He was all out of sorts this morning without Radar in the office,” Klinger explained sympathetically.  “How is the kid doing, anyway?”

Trapper looked behind to see Frank clearly eavesdropping, but as soon as they exchanged eye contact, he went back to pretending to read his bible.  Undeterred, and at this point not caring very much, Trapper simply leaned in a little and lowered his voice, although he already had it out with Frank to the extent that he didn’t care if he heard.  “To be honest, not so great,” Trapper admitted, and felt bad for the look of worry that sprawled all over Klinger’s face.  “I’ll spare you the flowery details, but he’s going south, and we’re having a hard time figuring out exactly what he’s got.”

“What’s the prognosis?”

Trapper shrugged.  “I wish I could tell you.  I don’t ever remember being at such a loss.”

Klinger paused for a moment as if in deep contemplation, searching the cornfields of his mind for a hint of inspiration.  Something occurred to him; “Didn’t you guys have a case like this before?  Where a patient seemed fine, but couldn’t move?”

The surgeon was shaking his head before Klinger could even finish the suggestion. “That was a battle fatigue case. Trauma-induced hysterical paralysis.  Radar might be fatigued, but when has he ever battled?  Besides, the kids got symptoms.  I’m not entirely sure, but I have a feeling that the two issues are related.”

Klinger nodded sadly and seemed to deflate.  “Poor little guy.  Maybe I ought to go visit him—”

“Better if you don’t,” Trapper interrupted, and when Klinger looked a little hurt, he explained; “Hawkeye’s really beside himself over this and now’s probably not the best time to break his concentration.  You know how he is.  Besides, Radar is out of it.”

The corporal nodded. “Sure, I get it.  It would be awful if the kid got sent away for this and without us knowing what’d ever happen to him…this unit just wouldn’t be the same!”

Frank from his cot, not looking up from his book, muttered, “It’d be a whole lot better if you ask me.”

Trapper spun around.  “Nobody asked you!” he fairly yelled. His fuse was shorter than usual, and he was eager as ever to beat the weasel’s nose in.

Frank, this time, looked up from his book and scowled bravely, like a toddler daring to defy his parent.  “Go ahead and try it, Macintyre!”

Trapper took one loping step forward and Frank yelped like a poodle, held his book up to shield his face, and almost fell off the other side of cot, his fall buffered by the mesh wall of the tent.  He scrambled to regain his composure with the grace of a beached fish, and, when he finally perched himself back on the cot, didn’t succeed have as well at trying to look unperturbed. 

Trapper tore him down with his glare alone.  He triumphantly said, “Mm-hm,” as if mutually confirming that Frank was not of the mentality to get clobbered today.  He might have tried to mess with him more, but Klinger spoke up and got his attention back.

“Hey, well…is there anything I can do to help at least?”

Trapper set down the martini glass with some conviction and grabbed Klinger’s arm to goad him over the barricade; the corpsman struggled to do so, inhibited by his heels, but Trapper didn’t take note of that and pulled him to the door insistently.  “Actually, yes,” the surgeon said, “That’s why I came looking for you.  I need you to stay in the office.  We’re waiting for an extremely important phone call that’ll help us determine what to do about Radar.  You can handle picking up the phone if it rings, right?”

Klinger freed himself from Trapper’s grasp and smiled as the latter held the door open for him.  “That, I can do, sir!” he exclaimed, eager, for once, to make himself useful.  He marched out of the tent with a purpose with Trapper following after him, leaving Frank, once again, steaming alone in the Swamp. 

Chapter Text

Ordinarily, Hawkeye would have scoffed at the thought of entertaining himself with a game of Go Fish…but while he indeed scoffed, the feigned derision was far more yielding, as Radar seemed willing to do little else. When the surgeon jauntily approached his bed with a deck of cards, the indisposed clerk expressed, numbly, that he didn’t feel like thinking hard enough for a worthwhile game of poker.

Go Fish it was. Somehow, at this juncture after hours of unsuccessful poking, prodding, monitoring, and fruitless interrogations had gone by, Hawkeye almost preferred to keep Radar occupied with a meaningless game than allow him to fall back into an unhealing sleep. After losing thrice in a row, he allowed his meager investment in the child’s play to manifest in genuine frustration, which at the very least seemed to be amusing to his otherwise melancholic company.

“You know something kid,” Hawkeye started, peering surreptitiously over his fan of cards. “Thomas Jefferson purchased Louisiana over a game of Go Fish.”

Radar hesitated. “Er…that…doesn’t sound right, sir,” he said in quiet earnest.

Hawkeye grinned. “Maybe it was just a bottle of wine, then.”

Radar’s mouth quirked into a disingenuous smile so fleetingly that it was as if the haphazard strain on his facial muscles was an exertion, and surely enough if morose demeanor was undisturbed. Hawkeye exhaled deeply, grieved beyond even his own ability to anticipate at such uncharacteristic despair; he never remembered feeling so emphatically engrossed in another’s melancholy, and he wasn’t at all anxious to perpetuate the sensation.

“Radar,” he said, lowering his fan of cards to abandon the game in favor of the sincerest effusion that he could muster. “You’re going to get better. I promise you we won’t rest until you walk out of this postop ward by yourself.”

Radar’s chin was tipped toward his chest, allowing only his keen grey eyes to seek out Hawkeye’s above the rims of his glasses. There was a moment of silence throttled by insincerity and doubt, until at last the company clerk found his voice, soft and hesitant as he set down his own set of cards and deflated. “You can’t promise that.” Hawkeye inhaled to retort, but Radar interrupted, almost abashedly, like he was making a confession. “I heard you and Trapper earlier. I heard you guys talking about polio. And about how you can’t figure out what’s going on.” His head dipped further and his eyes found their way into his lap. “Besides, your twenty-four hours will be up soon.”

Hawkeye almost winced at the physical manifestation of sorrow in his chest, but barely recovered with an utterance that poorly disguised his lamentation. “Damnit. I knew we should have taped your ears shut.”

And if it wasn’t bad enough already, Radar looked up again and straight into Hawkeye’s own troubled irises—this time they were brimming with unshed tears glistening behind his lenses. “I’m going to get sent away, aren’t I?”

Hawkeye’s eyes narrowed. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“But what if I have got polio? What if I never get better? What if it’s something you can’t treat? I won’t be any use here without my legs, Hawkeye. I won’t be any use on the farm in Iowa. I won’t be any use anywhere.”

Hawkeye clapped a hand to Radar’s knee in order to stop the fearful barrage. “You are not getting sent away without my personal vote of confidence that you’ve contracted something beyond the 4077’s ability to treat. Paralysis has a lot of potential causes, not just polio. We’re going to get you back on your feet, corporal.”

There was a moment where Radar seemed ever so slightly assuaged, then another where that fleeting light flickered out again, as if only to preface the painful bout of coughing that followed. It lasted a short moment, and Radar was noticeably fighting to quiet and shorten it, but Hawkeye’s disposition perceptibly changed almost immediately. He was off the mattress and back again in a split second, pushing a cup of water from the side stand into the hand that wasn’t being used to stifle the dry hacks.

When the brief fit quieted, Radar gratefully sipped at the water, then sat in unrecollective silence as Hawkeye put it back on the side stand. When he found his place back on the mattress in front of the clerk, he looked into the grey eyes with what almost seemed a fury—but to those who knew Hawkeye, it was more likely a grievous, rarely undisguised worry.

“Is your breathing okay?” The surgeon asked, nay demanded, abruptly enough that Radar’s eyes widened and he hesitated a bit too long for Hawkeye’s liking. “Answer me honestly,” the latter said, before Radar could process. “If you have the slightest trouble breathing, you need to tell me.”

Radar looked into Hawkeye’s blue eyes, his own still glistening with fright, before answering quietly. His voice rasped, an unwelcome indication of his troubles. “Um…a little right now, I guess. Figure it’s my asthma.”

“You’re asthmatic?”

Radar nodded. “But I haven’t had an attack since I was a little kid.”

Hawkeye leaned back, suddenly despondent. “Of course you are,” he said quietly, derisively, completely to himself. “All little weirdos with glasses have asthma.”

The sudden unseeing quality of Hawkeye’s directionless gaze was alarming to say the least, and it certainly wasn’t lost on the hyper-intuitive clerk, who sat and waited quietly for Hawkeye to explain his distant fixation. The surgeon had little desire to do so, however, preferring to ruefully admit to himself that if Radar was giving any indication of respiratory problems, then it was game over; at least as far as keeping the clerk at the 4077 was concerned. Trapper was right, Hawkeye internally scorned, We’re in over our heads.

“Hawkeye?”

He looked up at the sound of his name with a new wave of doubt, and he knew that Radar knew it was there. When their eyes locked momentarily, it was Radar who looked away first, gathering up the discarded playing cards just to give his hands something to do in a moment of quiet resignation. Hawkeye watched him do it, and felt as if the gesture was the first of many serving as a means to prolong the inevitable goodbyes.

As Radar gathered up the cards and worked them witheringly into a neat stack, Hawkeye clapped him on the arm to get his attention.

“I’m sorry, Radar.”

Radar looked up at this, one eyebrow quirked in question, but otherwise silent.

“For the whole situation,” Hawkeye continued. His hand came away from the arm with noticeable reluctance. “I’m going to step out for a minute. Anything you need? Anything I can do to make you feel better?”

Radar faked another smile, although this one was for simple courtesy and lasted ever so slightly longer. “If you could stop by the coops and feed my animals, that would be really neat,” he requested quietly, his eyes alighting an iota with the mention of his pets. He then added, with sinking spirits, “Since I can’t really seem to do it myself right now.”

Hawkeye forced his own best smile (which wasn’t much) and patted Radar’s ankle before rising from the mattress. “Sure thing, kid.”

Hawkeye had exited the postop ward just in time to see Trapper and Klinger coming his way; at the sight of the dark-haired surgeon, Trapper said something briefly to the orderly, gestured vaguely in the direction of the O.R.’s office unit, and with a rare soldierly gusto, he took off ahead and bypassed both the surgeons. His skirt and petticoats fluttered majestically after him.

Hawkeye and Trapper closed the distance between them right after, squinting as the last hour of sunlight bathed the Korean landscape in an orange glow.

“So you captured the Klinger,” Hawkeye said, looking over his shoulder as the orderly let himself in the office door.

Trapper nodded. “He’s going to wait in the office to hear from Tokyo. Hopefully tonight—”

“Forget it, Trapper.”

The look on Trapper’s face did better at conveying his confusion at Hawkeye’s abrupt despondency than any inquiry he could have verbally articulated. Like a parent owed an explanation, he simply looked into his friend’s blue eyes until Hawkeye, looking askance, explained further;

“Respiratory symptoms. Could be nothing, but if we choose to ignore it, and it gets worse, then he’s even less than just half-useful. Maybe Ferret Face was right the whole time. We’re just not equipped to take care of this issue.”

Trapper always seemed to Hawkeye to know exactly what to say—and when Trapper, in this instance, allowed a brief moment of silence to pass before clapping Pierce on the back and gently submitted, “Come one. Let’s go have a belt,” Hawkeye showed no resistance.

When the door of the swamp swung open and thwacked up against the threshold, Frank Burns yelped like a lapdog and nearly fell out of his cot.

“Relax, Frank, it’s just us,” Trapper deadpanned, somnolently approaching the still. “No air raids today.”

“What’s his problem?” Hawkeye asked, but with none of the spirited acid that usually coated his inflection when referring to the Major.

But instead of a response from Trapper as expected, Frank exclaimed, “This outfit is undisciplined and crazy, that’s my problem!” and as neither of his underlings had the energy or desire to perpetuate the argument, a tense silence followed. At that moment, Hawkeye fully absorbed the environment and only then processed the slumbering form of Henry Blake, who somehow managed to right Trapper’s previously capsized cot and make himself comfortable in it amidst the shambles of the barricade Klinger had constructed.

It was far from the strangest thing Hawkeye had witnessed, and as he was sure he would hear about it in the foreseeable future, so no questions were asked; he merely accepted the dry drink as it was handed to him and, with a silent toast, he and Trapper downed it in one swig.

Frank seemed almost distraught that nobody was trying to pick a fight with him. He looked up from his book at the uncharacteristically forlorn captains. “To what do I owe the pleasure of not having to hear your voices, Captains Macintyre and Pierce?”

Hawkeye spoke up first, “We’re not in the mood, Frank.”

Shrewd enough to sense a crucial vulnerability, Frank couldn’t help but strike with venom. He said with curiosity and concern so obviously feigned that it was saccharine, “Trouble in the postop ward?” His tone read clearly what all understood; he had won.

This time, Trapper pitched in; “Drop it, Frank,” he warned, putting emphasis on the name.

Before things could escalate further, Hawkeye set his glass down on the settee and headed for the door.

“Going so soon?” Trapper asked, putting his own glass down and heading after him.

“I told Radar I’d go feed his animals for him,” Hawkeye said, and then his expression changed to an alarmingly vulnerable look of regret and sadness. “He’s so—I just thought, whatever makes him happy, you know?”

“Good riddance,” Frank muttered. The volume was low enough that it came across as uncertain that he even meant to be heard; but, to his misfortune, both of his compatriots did, and both reeled around at him with undisguised fury. But, Frank, smug in his victory, was apparently undeterred. “That’s just another thing we won’t miss about that runt around here!” he cried, watching with pleasure as Hawkeye’s eyes brimmed with ire. “All those creatures and varmints he lets into the compound! If headquarters only knew! I bet you every single one of them carries diseases, and ticks, and fleas!” Frank shook his head in hyperbolic condemnation and capped it off with a “Disgusting!”

Hawkeye was on the advance, armed with his best verbal fisticuffs, but to the surprise of his cohorts, stopped mid-stride.

Anything Hawkeye could have said would not have unnerved Frank more than the way he just stood there for a prolonged moment, standing above him, looking ahead with sightless eyes lost deeply in a seemingly puzzling thought. His face went from its initial anger, to a blank page, to something that looked like profound contemplation, and then suddenly to a look of realization. Trapper strode around to his friend’s side to watch this thirty-second progression for himself, and hardly opened his mouth to ask before Hawkeye snapped back to the present.

“Frank,” Pierce breathed, his ire all but forgotten. “I think you’ve done it.”

Trapper, on the other hand, hadn’t entirely dispelled his eagerness to pick a fight with the major. “Hawk, what’s—”

Hawkeye turned to him with enough rapidity to make him step back. He looked like he was about to explain, but apparently decided better of using up precious time to do so; without another word, Hawkeye spun around and was out the door, heading in a jog toward postop. Frank and Trapper were left dumbfounded behind. The latter gave the former as derisive a look as he could managed, and then ran out after his friend.