Work Text:
Hawkeye has a bad stretch in the OR, loses six kids in a row. Not his fault, just luck of the draw - there were so many casualties coming off hill 304, everyone at the 4077th lost at least one patient this round. He just had a string of kids that couldn't take a single second longer bleeding from their bellies. He knows this, and it doesn't make a spot of difference to him.
It's his fault. It's always his fault when he loses a patient. And yes, of course, he's a hypocrite, because if it had been anyone else in his position, he'd've done his best to talk them around out of the guilt spiral.
Hypocrisy be damned though, because he's who he is, and if he didn't believe in his heart that he's one of the best, he wouldn't be able to go into surgery at all. He's never thought that self-doubt has any place in the OR. If you don't believe you can fix these kids, deep in your soul, they won't believe it either. It's superstition, or intuition or whatever, but it's how he gets himself into that room day after day.
If he loses six kids in a row, does that make him the best? No. It makes him a failure. It makes him someone that could have, should have done something differently, better, fixed them, goddammit.
He doesn't speak to anyone for three days after that run. No casualties after that, not for a while. He does his post op work, he eats (or what passes for eating with him - he knows he's constantly on the edge of malnutrition, but he has troubling caring too much these days).
He spends all his spare time in his bunk. Sometimes he sleeps.
BJ seems almost frantic that he won't speak - keeps talking about calling Sidney, but Hawkeye just shakes his head. He's fine. He'll get over it, as much as he ever does, he just.... Needs a minute.
Potter, Margaret, Radar all come by to sit down and try to tell him it wasn't his fault. Even Father Mulcahy comes to offer his brand of absolution - Hawkeye likes and respects Mulcahy, but he has no use for God's will, or forgiveness. Certainly not now, if he ever did.
Finally BJ comes to sit at the edge of his bunk. Hawkeye doesn't look at him. He can't get to sleep, so he's just doing his best to disassociate from his surroundings for a bit.
"Benjamin," BJ says in a conversational tone. Hawkeye ignores him - what, BJ thinks the way to help is to just use Hawkeye's real name? Please. It's often interesting to him how often people think calling him by his given name will get his attention.
There's a pause. "Junior," BJ says then, the word loaded with some inflection Hawkeye can't place, and he can't help his brow furrowing. Junior?
And then it hits him, and this WAS the way to help, to distract him, at least momentarily.
"What did you say?" He asks and looks up at BJ, his voice a bit rusty with disuse. The answering smile on BJ's face is almost blinding in his obvious pleasure to hear Hawkeye speak.
"I think you heard me," BJ answers in his typical way: maddeningly, casually, fantastically.
"Did you say Benjamin.... Junior?" Hawkeye rasps, propping himself up on one elbow, and peering at his friend.
"I did," BJ replies, with one eyebrow cocked, and a small crooked smile on his face
Hawkeye thinks for a second, and scoffs, "No way. You're just getting me to talk to you."
BJ shrugs, as if he doesn't care if Hawkeye believes him or not, but it's clear that he's telling the truth, and this was his Hail Mary."God's honest truth, Hawk."
"BJ. Benjamin Jr," Hawkeye says wondering at the twist of fate that put them together, and then BJ is chuckling, and Hawkeye is too, and when Radar comes in with the mail, the two Benjamins are clutching each other laughing like hyenas.
It doesn't bring those six kids back, and it doesn't make this place better, but sharing BJ's name makes him feel weirdly understood, and when he goes to the mess tent that evening, he greets Margaret and the Colonel with a succinct, but pleasant 'good evening'.
Potter's eyebrows shoot up and he gives the two men a questioning look. Hawkeye shrugs, shoots BJ a fond look and replies to the glance with "Our BJ is worth a hundred bucks, Colonel."
Hawkeye and his best friend start to cackle, and he feels his rent heart mend one stitch at a time.