Chapter Text
Henry’s Office, 1730 Hours
The first thing Hawkeye noticed upon setting foot in the Biology building was the overpowering stench of rotting fish.
“Dinner smells great, Henry!” Trapper said as he squeezed into Henry’s tiny office behind Hawkeye. The air in the room was about 10 degrees warmer than it was in the drafty hallway and it hit Hawkeye in the face like a brick wall. The window in the wall to their right was cracked open and a rusted fan, probably a relic from the building’s heydays in the 1960’s, rotated slowly back and forth in front of it. The low electric hum of it sounded like more like death rattle, or a car engine mere moments from exploding. Hawkeye would know. He’d been stuck driving his dad’s old 1989 Eagle Medallion station wagon for the last three years.
“Really, Henry,” Oliver chimed in from behind Trapper, as he too made his way into the office. “You shouldn’t have.”
“The AC’s been out all week,” Henry griped in lieu of greeting. He was currently sat behind his ancient mahogany desk with his shirtsleeves rolled up, looking hot and bothered and not in the fun way. He was in the process of pouring himself a finger of brandy from one of several bottles that they all knew he kept in his largest desk drawer. “You know how the specimen rooms get. And you guys can complain all you want,” he added, as the three of them crashed onto the threadbare couch that sat perpendicular to his desk. “But while you three clowns have been out throwing footballs around for two months, I’ve been stuck in here smelling that stuff the whole damn summer!”
“Who’s complaining?” Trapper asked. “I happen love the smell of warm formalin in the afternoon.”
“Home sweet home,” Oliver agreed. “How would we know which building to go to if we couldn’t smell it from across campus?”
“And it’s all worth it to spend even a moment with you, Henry,” Trapper said. “Did you miss us?”
Henry didn’t answer. Instead he looked up from pouring his drink to eye them suspiciously.
“You’re awfully quiet today, Pierce,” he said.
Hawkeye looked back at him and said nothing. He settled back against Oliver’s shoulder and slung a leg over Trapper’s knee, never breaking eye contact.
“Why isn’t he talking,” Henry asked.
“Oh, him?” Trapper jerked his thumb back at Hawkeye. “He’s trying to win a bet.”
Henry looked unimpressed. “What kind of bet.”
Hawkeye opened his mouth to tell him and then remembered himself, shutting it again very quickly.
Trapper looked over at him with raised eyebrows. “Well? Go on, Hawk. Tell the man.”
Hawkeye pointedly looked away from Trapper as if he hadn’t heard him speak.
“We bet him he couldn’t go without talking for the next 24 hours,” Oliver explained for him. “Whoever loses has to –“
“You know what,” Henry interrupted him quickly. “Nevermind. I don’t wanna know.” But he glanced curiously back at Hawkeye. “How much longer have you got, Pierce?”
Hawkeye narrowed his eyes at him.
“You’re not gonna tell him, Hawk?” Trapper nudged him in the arm with his elbow. Hawkeye ignored him.
“Oh, he's got about,” Oliver picked up his phone and looked at it. He smirked. He had a timer going on it, Hawkeye knew. “Fourteen hours.”
“Great.” Henry knocked back a sip of his brandy. “You know, this might be the first smart idea you guys've ever had. Pierce, if you can keep this up for the rest of the meeting, I might even throw some money into the pot myself.”
“You don’t wanna do that, Henry,” Trapper told him. “We haven’t told you what the money is yet.”
“Whatever,” Henry said. “You’re right. I don’t wanna know. Just do me a favor and keep it clean when Peter James and John get here with the sailboat, will ya?”
“What?” Oliver asked. “Who's Peter James and John?”
Trapper frowned at him. “What are you talking about, Henry?”
“You know,” Henry said. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and didn’t look at anybody. “The other TAs.”
“You hired new TAs?” Oliver asked brightly.
“Mm,” Trapper raised his eyebrows at Hawkeye. “Fresh meat. Don’t worry, Henry. We’ll show them the ropes.”
“They’re old meat, actually,” Henry said regrettably. “It’s Frank and Margaret.”
Hawkeye swung his leg off of Trapper and sat up off of Oliver in shocked outrage. He started to open his mouth and caught his voice in the back of his throat just in time.
“Damn, Henry. You almost got him with that one,” Trapper said, looking Hawkeye over speculatively. But then he turned to look hard at Henry. “That was a joke, right?”
“Well,” said Henry.
“Henry,” Oliver leaned back dramatically into the couch cushions. “You didn’t.” And it was at this exact moment Margaret walked into the room.
“He didn’t what?” She snapped at him, halting in the doorway and crossing her arms. “Dr. Blake,” she turned to address him sharply. “I hope these three morons aren’t here for the TA meeting.”
“Now, Margaret,” Henry started delicately, “that’s really not a very nice thing to call someone-“
“We’re actually here for the orgy,” Trapper interrupted him. “We’ve been waiting until you got here to start."
“Shut it, McIntyre,” Henry snapped. “What did I just tell you?” He plastered a pleasant look back on his face and turned back to Margaret. “Yes, we’re all here for the TA meeting,” he said. “Please come in and have a seat, Margaret. Um, how was your summer?”
Margaret didn’t answer him. She shot a nasty glare at Trapper and Hawkeye, for some reason, even though Hawkeye hadn’t said a word, thank-you-very-much, before she stalked across the floor to the two plastic chairs sat on either side of the geriatric fan. She took a seat in the one furthest from the couch and Henry.
“Dr. Blake,” she said sharply, turning in her seat to look at him. Hawkeye was pretty sure she and Frank were the only people who’d ever called Henry ‘Dr. Blake’ in the entirety of the man's career. “I would like to formally request to be scheduled to work with only Frank Burns this semester.”
“Yeah, I bet you would," Oliver muttered.
“Shut it, Jones,” Henry snapped again. He turned back to Margaret with the same pleasant look once again plastered onto his face. “Go on, Margaret.”
“I don’t want anything to do with these – these disgusting deviants.”
“Oh, boy,” The pleasant look dropped from Henry’s face as quickly as it had appeared. He let out a long sigh. “Look, we’ve been over this before. Guys – Margaret - let’s all just try to be nice to each other this year, okay? I know you guys all think you’re all so different, but really, deep down –“
“They're unprofessional and they’re disgusting and they’re perverts!" Margaret interrupted him. "And in more ways than just one. It’s sick! What I’m subjected to from these three, day in and day out-“
“Oh, you love us Margret,” said Oliver.
“Admit it,” said Trapper. “You’re only dating Frank because it means spending more time with us.”
Margaret ignored them.
“Dr. Blake. Do you have any idea – these three aren’t fit to be teaching assistants! You should see how they live! Every time I come over to visit my boyfriend – I have to climb over piles and piles of filth and look at that – that stupid – that thing shaped like a – like a –“
It took everything, everything in Hawkeye not to leer at her and say, “Like a what, Margaret?” Because he knew she was referring to the clay pipe shaped exactly like a very large penis he and Oliver and Trapper had found in a novelty beach store during spring break last semester that they currently kept proudly on display in the center table of their living room. It happened to be Hawkeye’s favorite thing to smoke weed out of and he always offered it to Margaret every time she came over, because it always made her turn a brighter shade of red than his station wagon. “What’s it shaped like, Margaret?” is what he would have followed up with. This was hell. He was living in hell. Thankfully, Trapper picked up his slack.
“Shaped like a what, Margaret?” He asked, face the very picture of wide-eyed innocence.
“Look, I don’t wanna hear about your weird personal lives,” Henry interrupted them sharply, as if the three of them hadn’t convinced him to come over to play poker several times over the course of last semester, whereupon he'd seen the clay pipe himself firsthand. "Back in my day, guys with this problem would just buy big tires for their trucks," was all he’d said then, upon noticing it.
“Let’s just get this damn meeting over with,” he said now. He picked up a sheaf of papers on his desk and stacked them loudly together in front of him. “Now,” he said, leaning over the desk to hand Trapper the stack to pass around to everyone else. Hawkeye looked his copy over with growing dread. It was the TA schedule. “I know, last year, you guys didn’t exactly get along. Roommate issues, or whatever, but like I said –“
“Henry,” Oliver was staring in horror at his own copy of the schedule. “How could you do this?”
Trapper’s eyes widened as he likewise looked his copy over. “You have me prepping every Tuesday with Frank?”
“Look, I tried to spread it out evenly, so that nobody had to work with Frank more than anybody else. It’s the best I could do with your stupid class schedules!”
“I’m not going to sit here and listen to this!” Said Margaret. “Frank is a wonderful teacher!”
There was the perfect joke about Frank being a wonderful teacher to only the guards at Guantanamo bay. It was right there and no one was going to make it except for Hawkeye. It was just right fucking there. He wanted to die.
“I unlearn things when I watch Frank teach,” Oliver said.
“He’s got a point there Margaret,” Henry said briskly, holding up his own copy of the schedule and not looking at her.
“Henry!” Trapper implored him. “Why would you hire him again? He’s the worst TA in the whole department! In the whole school!”
“Now, look, guys, I know he’s a pain in the butt, but-“
“He counted 10 points off on someone’s lab final for not capitalizing the first letter of their name!” Oliver cried.
“That’s because some of us care about accuracy and precision,” Margaret told him.
Hawkeye shoved his fist over his mouth in order to stop himself from saying, “I’ll accuracy your precision, Margaret.” Margaret’s eyes cut over to him anyway.
“And what’s your problem?” She demanded.
Hawkeye stared sightlessly at the floor with his fist still over his mouth and simply shook his head. Forget Frank’s students. He was the one in Guantanamo bay.
“Got something to say, Pierce?” Goddamn Henry.
“Henry,” Trapper mercifully cut in, the urgency of the Frank situation winning out over Hawkeye’s suffering, for now. “Remember that horse heart we were supposed to use for demonstration in the cardiovascular labs last semester? After Frank got ahold of it, it was butchered up so bad it looked like he’d tried to eat it!”
“With his bare hands,” Oliver added gravely. “Like some Game of Thrones shit.”
Hawkeye squeezed his eyes shut. He’d wanted to say the exact same thing.
“Yeah? And who had to drive out to that jackass horse doctor and beg for a new one?” Henry pointed at himself. “Me. We’re just gonna have to deal with it, guys!”
“What about the time that girl’s hair caught on fire, and he just said, ‘figure it out!’ and left the room?” Oliver recalled.
“That wasn’t his fault!” Margaret interjected.
Henry frowned at Oliver. “You never told me about that.”
“Henry,” Trapper got Henry’s attention quickly. “Don’t you remember when the rabbits got lose in the botany labs last year, right in the middle of the endangered horticulture practicals? And instead of chasing them down himself, Frank called the campus police?”
“I’d actually managed to forget all about that until just now. Thanks, McIntyre.” Henry took another long sip of his brandy.
“The fume hood, and the ether, Henry!” This from Oliver. “And the time he told Radar he was going to make him watch while he chopped all the heads off the frogs before the vertebrate lab!”
Helpless to do anything else, Hawkeye looked between Oliver and Henry, nodding urgently in agreement.
“Look,” Henry put his glass down with a loud clink. “No one regrets me hiring Frank more than I do! But we’re practically running on a skeleton crew here as it is, and Frank technically has experience. Most importantly, you four and Frank are the only people with the ‘required GPAs’ who ever sign up to teach these disgusting labs. So I really didn’t have much of a choi– Oh. Hi, Frank.”
Everyone turned in their seats. Sure enough, Frank himself stood in the doorway to Henry’s office. There was no telling how long he’d been there. His face looked drained of all color, but then again, that could’ve just been the fluorescent lights reflecting off the sallow pallor of his skin. It was always hard to tell.
“Welcome to the meeting, Frank,” Henry said after a long stretch of silence. “Nice of you to join us. You, uh, have a good summer?”
Frank remained silent. He shifted on his feet. Someone who didn’t know him might’ve called it awkward, but even under normal circumstances Frank was always sort of like this. It was too much. Hawkeye was this close to turning away and burying his face in his knees and clamping his hands over his ears until this entire cursed meeting was over and he could lock himself in his station wagon or maybe even the specimen room for the next 14 hours.
“I was under the impression the meeting started at 5:30,” Frank finally said. His voice was noticeably even stiffer than usual.
He’d made it this far, so Hawkeye chanced a glance at the wall behind Henry’s desk, where there, in all its glory, still hung the combination digital clock/Billy-Mouth-Bass he, Oliver, and Trapper had taken (stolen) off the wall of a dive bar downtown last year and gifted to Henry for Christmas. It would sing a one-minute segment from Al Green’s “Take Me to the River” every hour on the hour, and ever since it’s relocation to his office wall, Henry had been late and/or several hours early to almost every appointment he had after noon, because, for some reason, the digital clock was set to military time and they’d never figured out how change it.
Currently, it’s somewhat sinister red numbers blinked 17:31.
“That was one whole minute ago, Frank,” Trapper said.
“Dr. Blake, I resent this disgusting display of juvenile behavior in a professional meeting,” Margaret snapped over them.
“Margaret, this is an undergrad TA meeting at -" Henry glanced at the clock "-late on a Friday afternoon, for the grossest biology lab in this entire school, that only you five freaks ever sign up to teach.” He poured himself some more brandy. “Pull up a seat, will ya, Frank?” he added a little too loudly. “And let’s get started, so we can get the hell out of here and I can go somewhere a little cooler to sit down. Like a sauna, or the inside of my wife’s crockpot. Or anywhere else that doesn’t smell like forty-year-old formaldehyde.”
“Is that what that smell is?” Trapper asked. “I thought that was Margaret’s perfume.”
“Really?” Said Oliver. “I thought it was Frank’s.”
Margaret looked between them and Henry in outrage. “Dr. Blake!” She said beseechingly.
“Yeah, yeah.” Henry snapped. He took another long sip of his new drink. Hawkeye also thought about asking him for some until he remembered he couldn’t talk. “Shut up, you guys.”
“Thank you, sir,” Margaret settled satisfactorily back in the plastic chair.
“You’re welcome, Margaret,” Henry said dryly. Hawkeye pulled a face at her from across the room. She opened her mouth at him in silent outrage.
“Frank,” Henry went on wearily, looking back to where Frank still stood stiffly in the doorway, staring intently at everyone with an absolutely deranged look in his eyes. “Will you please sit down. You’re starting to freak me out.”
“As long as I don’t have to sit anywhere near these – these perverted . . . ninnies,” Frank managed at last.
“Ninnies, Frank?”
“McIntyre,” Henry sighed. “The next time you guys make one of your weird little bets, why don’t you include a part in it where you don’t talk either. Frank, please sit down.”
Finally, Frank did. His muted footsteps across the ancient, patterned carpet of Henry’s floor were far louder than they ever would’ve been during regular office hours. He settled in the other misshapen plastic chair by Margaret and the clacking fan. He crossed his arms and practically turned his nose up, pointedly looking away from the three of them on the couch.
“Right,” Henry announced. “Now, can we finally get started?”
The five of the sat still and looked at him, blinking silently.
“Right,” said Henry again. “Good.” He cleared his throat and shifted the same pile of yellowing papers on his desk that Hawkeye was certain had been there since the dawn of time. “Now, look.” Henry’s voice had dropped into Seriousness. They all watched as he noticeably steeled himself in his new, comically large desk chair. This particular chair had been acquired for him back in February, after the springs in the seat of his old one had finally collapsed in on him. The funding to the Biology department had been cut the previous year, so Oliver and Trapper had gotten it by breaking into the surplus supply closet of the Sports Management department in the middle of a cold, dark Saturday night. There was still a long white scratch on one of the back windows of Hawkeye’s station wagon from where he’d met them on the sidewalk as the getaway car and they’d tried to cram the stupid thing in his trunk. In the end, it hadn’t fit, and they’d ended up rolling all clattering 57 pounds of it back to the biology building on foot.
"I need everyone to pay close attention,” Henry went on. “I’ve got some real important stuff to discuss with you guys tonight.”
“Like letting us know which freezers are going to shut off unexpectedly over the weekend this year?” Trapper asked.
“Right,” Oliver jumped in. “We need to know which ones to use for the leftovers from the cat dissection lab. Who are we if we don’t help add to this building’s charming aroma?”
“Well, that lab isn’t until November,” Trapper pointed out. “And the whole building will be a freezer by then, so it won’t really matter.”
“True.”
Hawkeye’s vision blurred. He took a deep, steadying breath. The untold joiners to the jokes were banging against his vocal chords like a pack of rabid weasels barely held at bay.
“I’m serious, you guys,” Henry said seriously. He leaned forward on his desk to an attempt to really convey it. The new chair almost helped. “Now I know we had fun horsing around last semester – I’m looking at you, Pierce - but things have gotta be different this time around.”
“About time,” Margaret cut in.
“Different how, Henry?” Trapper went on.
“Different in how we’ve got a record number of enrollments on our hands this year.” Henry’s voice was as grave as Hawkeye had ever heard it. “Apparently, everybody and their mother wants to take Anatomy and Physiology I this semester. Which means, as I’m sure your half-educated brains have pieced together, a record enrollment in the anatomy labs.”
Hawkeye clamped the palm of his hand over his mouth and stared intently at the floor. His ears were literally ringing.
Oliver turned to Trapper.
“I think those are the labs we teach,” he muttered theatrically, not bothering to lower his voice.
“You bet that ancient one-wrong-pothole station-wagon Pierce drives around that those are the labs you teach, Jones.” Henry was clearly pretty worked up about this. “I’ve never had this many students in one of my classes in my entire life!”
Most of Henry’s academic career had been focused primarily on fisheries biology. Hawkeye had always suspected, given the décor of Henry’s office and just everything about him in general, that this had simply been a vehicle through which Henry could live out his one true passion in life: being on the lake with a beer in one hand and a fishing pole in the other. It had all gone wrong for Henry two years ago when the previous anatomy and physiology professor quit unexpectedly in the middle of the semester and Henry, against his will, had been tapped as his temporary replacement for rest of the year. The rest of the year which had, by now, lasted about four additional semesters, and summer school.
“Eh,” Trapper waved the hand that was attached to the arm he had slung around the back of the couch, behind Hawkeye. “That’s only because the dumb kids haven’t been weeded out yet.”
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t help us for the next four-and-a-half months, does it, McIntyre?” Henry said. “If anything, it makes our lives that much harder. Do you have any idea how many – how many emails I get? Christ, why does everybody wanna go to med school?”
Henry himself had actually gotten all the way through four years of medical school before quitting in his first month of residency in a dramatic career change to pursue his fisheries PhD. For years since, he’d only cared about the anatomy of various species of aquatic amphibians. Thus, the department heads had rationalized, with Henry’s background, how hard could a switch from fish anatomy to human anatomy really be?
“I’m in hell,” Henry continued. “Do you guys have any idea how hard premed students are to deal with? Everyone always complaining to me about their grades, and their – their stupid GPAs. I had a girl break down crying in my office last semester over an A minus. An A minus! And the dead grandparents. Christ. You know, I think this class kills more grandparents than the medical malpractice half of these kids are gonna commit someday ever will.”
“You know, Henry,” Oliver pointed out delicately. “We’re premed students too.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not my fault, is it, Jones?” Henry threw out, before frowning in Hawkeye’s direction. “What the hell’s wrong with Pierce?”
Trapper patted Hawkeye on the back. “Oh, he’s alright.”
“He looks like he’s about to pass out on the floor.”
Not moving his hand from his mouth and unable to look at Henry directly, Hawkeye simply shook his head. He kept his eyes fixed on the faded carpet. It was the only safe place to look.
“That would be funny,” said Oliver. Hawkeye elbowed him as hard as he could.
“Do you see what I mean, Dr. Blake?” Frank cut in. “They are disgusting! This is entirely unprofessional behavior to display in the middle of a lab meeting!”
“I don’t know,” Henry said thoughtfully. “I think this is the most professional I’ve ever seen him.”
“Dr. Blake, I would like to add that I agree with Frank!” Margaret spoke up.
Henry gave a weary sigh. “Addition noted,” he said. But Margaret wasn’t done.
“What are you doing anyway, Pierce?” She asked him. Hawkeye could only barely manage to shrug.
“He’s got a rare form of a disease, Margaret,” Trapper told her in mock outrage. “Have a little sympathy!”
“Oh yeah?” Frank decided to speak up for some reason. “Sounds like a bunch of baloney to me. Probably some childish excuse to get out of writing a lab report, or something!"
“Not so, Frank,” Oliver corrected him. “His tongue has turned into a slug.” Hawkeye looked at him almost gratefully and then back to Frank again. He nodded in agreement.
For a truly beautiful moment, it looked like Frank was actually considering the real possibility of Hawkeye’s tongue turning into a slug, thinking it over with the slimy pit of shockingly witless little snakes Hawkeye suspected lived in his mind.
“It did not!” Frank finally concluded.
“Nothing gets past you, Frank,” said Trapper. For good measure, Hawkeye stuck his tongue out at Frank, who visibly flinched backwards.
“Will you guys shut up?” Henry wasn’t in the mood for any of it. “And I mean you, too, Pierce. Now, I was just about to give you guys a real rousing speech about how you four are the best TAs I’ve ever had, and you’re making it really difficult for me to get it out.”
“There’s five of us here, sir.”
“Yeah, yeah, Frank, whatever. What I’m trying to say is, we’re all gonna have to put our grindstones to our noses this time around. Keep our hands on the wheel - Pierce.”
Hawkeye gave him an exaggeratedly offended look.
“I’m talking about that time with the dead rats!” Henry elaborated.
Hawkeye gave Henry his most Confused look and shook his head as if to say, “that wasn’t my fault!”
“You were there!” Henry seemed to understand him. “It was your station wagon! I mean it, okay?” He looked back to everyone else. “Now, if we’re gonna survive this semester, no more funny business, I mean it! And I know you guys can handle it, or I wouldn’t be saying this to you. Like I said, you all are the best TA’s I’ve ever had. You guys’ve got a real knack for getting things graded on time.” A year ago, Hawkeye would’ve assumed this was a joke. But after two semesters of working with Henry, they all knew he was being completely serious. “And now that you’re all juniors–“
“And a senior, sir.”
“God, Frank. Will you please just - look. Class rank aside, we’re all gonna have to be on our A-game this fall. Otherwise, we’re all gonna drown over here. You got it?” He gave each and every one of them an I-really-mean-it-this-time look, with both of his eyebrows raised.
“Relax, Henry,” Trapper somehow sank deeper into Henry’s couch, stretching his arm even further back across the cushions. If he’d dropped his hand a few centimeters, it could’ve been resting on Hawkeye’s shoulder. “You know we’ve got it! Like you said, we’re the best TAs you ever had!”
“That’s right,” Frank cut in.
There was a stretching silence where nobody said anything. Where nobody was going to say anything. Hawkeye’s vision blurred. One of the weasels wiggled its way out.
“He wasn’t talking about you, Frank!” His voice said without the rest of him.
“HA HA!” Simultaneously Trapper and Oliver whipped around to look at him with identical exclamations of victory. Trapper grabbed his shoulder and shook it back and forth. “I knew he couldn’t do it!” He said. Goddamn it. This was all Frank’s fault.
“It’s not fair!” Hawkeye exclaimed, yanking his shoulder out of Trapper’s hand. “I wasn’t expecting Frank to show up!”
“Well, tough cookies, Pierce,” Frank snapped.
“Frank, you don’t even know what this is about!” Hawkeye snapped back.
“I do too!”
“Do not!”
“Do too!”
“Jesus Christ, you two!” Henry threw his hands up in exasperation. One of them was holding his drink and half of it splashed out onto the floor behind him. He didn’t seem to notice. “It’s the first damn day of the semester! Pierce, if you don’t cool it with the wise-cracks, it’s back to that resort hotel I rescued you from in the first place.”
“What? I - quite literally, I might add - haven’t said a thing all day!”
“Well, you’re saying things to me right now,” said Henry.
“You know, worse things could happen,” said Trapper. “He looked real cute in that maid outfit.”
Hawkeye turned to him. “Aw, you think so?”
“You know I do.”
Frank had gone beet red.
“Dr. Blake! Are you going to allow this. . . this deviancy right here in the middle of the biology building?”
“Frank, for god’s sake.” Henry’s be-lured bucked-hat tilted back somewhat as he rubbed a tired hand over his eyes. “It’s just a joke.”
“Is it,” said Hawkeye.
“It better be!” snapped Frank.
“If you’re that concerned with deviancy Frank, why don’t you go change your major to something you can actually handle, like dropping out of school completely and getting a job mowing my lawn!”
“We’ll see who’s mowing who’s lawn, Pierce!”
“Alright, you two,” Henry spoke over them. “That’s enough. And there's nothing wrong with mowing lawns. Some of my best friends are lawn mowers." He drank some more Brandy. "Boy, I tell you what,” he shook his head. “My Salmonid Behavior and Life History TAs never gave me this much trouble.”
“I’ll turn you into a salmonid!” Margaret said.
Everyone turned and looked at her.
“What?” She demanded. “I was talking to Pierce!”
“You guys are making me wish I was a salmonid,” Henry told them. “Now, are we gonna sit here and waste the rest of my Friday night, or can we please get going with this meeting? Some of us have got families we never get to see anymore because of this stupid class!”
“I thought we were your family, Henry,” said Trapper.
“Oh, shut up, McIntyre.” This from Margaret. “Dr. Blake is right! You three need to shape up this year and start taking things seriously!” She turned to Henry. “You can count on Frank and I to do an excellent job this semester, sir,” she told him.
Henry sighed. “Yes, Margaret, thank you-“
“You can count on Frank to do a excellent job eating horse hearts,” muttered Hawkeye.
“What?” Demanded Frank. He whipped around to Henry. “Dr. Blake-!”
“No eating horse hearts this semester, Frank,” Henry rubbed his fingers over his eyes.
“I would never! That wasn’t me!”
Henry dropped his hand from his face. Everyone in the office looked at Frank.
“That was a joke, Frank,” Henry said. “Or, at least, I thought it was." He looked at everyone else. "Was someone actually trying to eat the horse heart?”
“Certainly not!” said Frank.
“That’s what I thought.” Henry finally finished off what was left of his drink. “The cafeteria food can’t be that bad.”
“It is,” Hawkeye assured him.
“Can we please keep this meeting on track?” Margaret cut in.
Henry cleared his throat awkwardly. “Yes, thank you, Margaret.” He picked up the yellow stack of papers on his desk and shuffled them together again. “Everybody shut up. Now – since we got that out of the way, we need to work out a schedule for proctoring the lecture quizzes.”
What followed was a 20-minute shouting match about class schedules and studying and play rehearsals and it finally ended with Henry throwing his hands in the air and declaring:
“You know what? You guys can just figure this out yourselves. Don’t the five of you practically live together, or something?”
“Absolutely not!” Margaret exclaimed, at the same time Frank once again said, “Certainly not!” and Hawkeye shrugged and said, “Yeah, true,” and Oliver said, rolling his eyes, “Basically,” and Trapper said, with a shrug, “Sure.”
“Well, that doesn’t tell me anything,” Henry snapped. “Just figure it out, will you? I’ve got a freaking anatomy and physiology class to teach.”