Chapter Text
Henry was dead. Dead on his way home, never to see his wife or his kids ever again. Hawkeye pulled his attention back to the patient in front of him, the one he could save if he could just focus on resecting this bowel quickly and cleanly. Henry he sent to a waiting room in his mind, a ghost to haunt him later when he had the leisure to feel the pain.
He didn't dare say a word to Trapper. Talking would let Henry out of that liminal space where he had to stay. His ghost might look up from the nudist magazine Hawkeye had left in the imaginary waiting room in his mind, meet his eye, and Hawkeye would be done for. Half an hour passed while he ran the bowel, irrigated the wound, and made absolutely sure there wasn't the tiniest pinhole remaining. He left the wound for Margaret to close, and then he dragged himself past Trapper without popping the bubble of unreality that had settled over him.
It took another ten minutes to peel off his scrubs, towel himself clean-ish, and tug on his fatigues. He could have gone through Post Op, checked on a few patients, and then staggered to his bed. Post Op wasn't his problem tonight. He was tired. He'd head the other way, past the office, maybe check on Radar before crashing. The bubble fluttered in his head, like it was being threatened by a gust of reality. Maybe he'd just poke his head in. It was late. Kid was probably asleep. Reality could wait until morning.
The lamp by the radio was still on. Hawkeye took a couple of steps into the room to shut it off and chanced to look toward Radar's cot. The kid was asleep, his mouth open, glasses askew on his face. His face had a pale, almost bluish cast in the dim light. But the light was a warm yellow, it shouldn't--
He was on his knees without registering the movements that got him there. In retrospect, he'd heard the faint rasp in Radar's breath that was not a snore. Up close, the boy's skin was shiny with sweat, his lips and--he took a moment to bring a limp hand under the light--his fingernails had a bluish cast. Hawkeye slid his fingers to the boy's wrist--it was cold under his touch, but there was a rapid, thready pulse there. Okay. Okay. "Radar!" he shouted, practically in the kid's ear. There was a faint response, a twitch. A hard rub to the sternum produced a little groan, but no guarding, and Radar's eyes didn't open or even squint further closed. Unconscious, then, or stuporous enough to be nearly so.
He didn't want to leave Radar alone, feeling some kind of new-minted superstition that if he did, even for a moment, the kid would up and die on him, so he just turned his head and yelled, "I need some help in here! Radio room! It's Radar!"
Get the restrictive clothes off first, check his heart, get him to a proper bed, he thought. Radar was solid, but he was still small enough to manhandle. His right hand had something in it or on it. Gauze, clumsily wrapped and soaked through with blood. It wasn't bleeding enough to account for his critical illness, unless there were injuries elsewhere--"Come on, Someone's got to be able to hear me out there!"
Jogging footsteps. "What's up, Hawkeye?" in Trapper's false-casual drawl, and then a slight skid on the floor when Trapper stopped short. "Shit, Radar! What happened?"
"Rapid pulse, blue lips and nailbeds, cut on his hand it looks like he bandaged himself. We've got to get him out of these clothes, check for other injuries, and get him to a bed."
"What do you think happened?"
"Hell if I know, Trap! Right now my top two are he cut himself on something that poisoned him or that he took something to--to--"
"You don't think he would have--" Trapper started, then trailed off like he, too, didn't want to speak the thought into being.
Hawkeye flung up a hand in frustration. "I think, given what I'm looking at, we can't rule it out. Help me get his clothes off."
He heard Margaret before he saw her. She'd clearly paused at the door while they were yelling, taken in the scene, then put on her nurse face before interrupting. "I'll get--"
"Not Frank," Trapper insisted. "He'll be the opposite of helpful. Go find Klinger. Is there anywhere to put Radar in Post-Op?"
"There are a few beds free," she said. "I'll set one up."
"Good, great. Then have Klinger come in here and do a thorough search of this room and Henry's office for empty pill containers or injection vials."
"You're kidding me. He wouldn't," Margaret snapped, then she recovered. "Right. Do you want me to call Freedman in?"
Hawkeye had Radar's jacket off. Trapper had him out of his boots and was tugging down his pants. "It can wait until morning. We don't even know what's wrong yet, and Sid won't be able to help until Radar's conscious."
Margaret tapped the doorframe to punctuate her exit and left, presumably to find Klinger. Trapper got his arms up under Radar's legs. "I'm ready to go. You got his head?"
Hawkeye got Radar's head and back settled against his chest and wrapped his arms around his to lock his fingers together over his chest. His sight and hearing had the oversaturated, slightly distorted feel of adrenaline masking his desperate need for sleep. Lifting him was easier than it would have been if the crisis weren't fueling his exhausted body. They shimmied him back through the building into Post-Op. Hawkeye got the door open with his foot, bumped his way through, and swung Radar onto the bed Margaret had clearly pulled back for him.
Hawkeye took advantage of better access to get his stethoscope onto Radar's chest and immediately hated what he heard. "Hell. Trapper, get down here and take a listen. Nurse! Is there a nurse in here?"
"Right here, Doctor," Margaret said wryly. "You're so tired you can't see what's right in front of you."
Hawkeye didn't have the energy to spar with her. "Doesn't matter. Right, Get an IV in him, he needs fluids and morphine." He heard Trapper swear softly beside him. "Let's get him into Fowler's position."
Trapper bent to raise the head of the bed to reduce the stress on Radar's heart while Margaret worked at his side. Hawkeye crossed the room to grab an oxygen tank and mask. "While you're up, would you get some number three silk and fresh bandages? It looks like his hand could use a couple of stitches."
"Sure." Hawkeye collected the supplies from a tray near the surgery door and handed them off to Margaret. "I think your hands will be steadier than mine right now."
Margaret acknowledged the admission with a nod and got to work on Radar's hand. "There's glass in here. Dr. McIntyre, could you find me some forceps?"
"On the tray," Hawkeye told her. "Do we have that morphine drip, yet?"
"What if he took morphine?" Trapper suggested. "We don't want to put morphine on top of morphine."
Hawkeye shook his head. "He wouldn't be tachy if he had. This sounds mushy, like heart failure."
"I'm racking my brain to figure out what he might have taken," Trapper muttered. "He's young and healthy. What else could it be?"
"I don't know. For now, we treat it like heart failure, try to get him through the crisis." God. He just wanted to sleep. Henry dead, and now Radar trying his damnedest to die. "He feels everything so much. Maybe this is just a broken heart."
Max sat in the middle of the radio room, in Radar's space, surrounded by papers, knickknacks, and replacement radio parts. He'd pulled the bed out from the wall to peer into the corners. He'd shaken out the bedding and gone through Radar's discarded clothes. He'd looked under and behind all the stacks of paper, under the desk, behind the radio. He'd even pulled out the filing cabinets to look behind them. There was nothing. If Radar had taken pills or injected himself--and he struggled to imagine Radar using a needle on himself in a crisis--he hadn't left any evidence in the room.
He did find droplets of blood and soiled bandages, but apparently, Radar had cut the palm of his hand on something, so that didn't mean much. There had been a pen case on the table, silver and rattling. Klinger opened it. Inside was a glass thermometer, broken into three pieces. There was dried blood on the pieces and in the case, mingling with the spilled mercury from inside the thermometer. He closed the case. At least he knew, now, how Radar had cut himself. This was no time to wallow in his feelings. He tucked the thermometer into his pocket and hurried back to Post Op. Hawkeye and Trapper would want to know.
Hawkeye and Trapper were sitting on either side of Radar, who looked like hell as far as Klinger could tell. "Is he dying?" he blurted before he could stop himself.
Hawkeye looked up wearily. "I don't know yet."
"I found this--in the room. It's not pills or anything." Max held out the pen case with the pieces of thermometer inside. "Could mercury poisoning do this?"
Hawkeye took the case from Max and twisted it open so the pieces of thermometer fell into his hands. "No," he said. "Not this amount of mercury. The symptoms and the timing are wrong, too. Thank you for finding this, though."
"It's nothing. Is he going to make it through the night?"
"I don't know, Klinger. Go back to bed. There's nothing more you can do here," Trapper told him.
"Coffee so you can stay awake?" he asked. He needed to do something. He wasn't going to be able to sleep. He'd close his eyes and all he'd be able to see would be Radar's face. Or Colonel Blake's.
"Yeah, Klinger. That's--that would be good."
"I'll be right back." Klinger hurried off to the mess tent to make fresh coffee. It might not be good, but it would at least be hot.
It had been an hour since Hawkeye found Radar dying in his bed, and the kid was still breathing. The positioning change had improved matters somewhat, even though his heart still beat rapidly and muddily in his chest. Trapper returned from a brief circuit of Post Op to sit across from him. "How is he?"
"Put your ear to his chest and you can hear the ocean," Hawkeye mumbled with his chin resting in his hand.
"That good, huh? You slept yet?" Trapper asked, as though the answer weren't obvious.
"Nope." he rattled his empty coffee cup. "I keep pouring coffee in, but it's not working anymore. I'm sleepy and jittery at the same time."
Trapper gripped his shoulder and gave it a little shake. "You need to sleep, Hawk. Klinger searched Radar's room again. There's no sign he took any pills or injected himself with anything."
"There's nothing that we have that would cause these symptoms if he took it." Hawkeye shook his head. It wobbled on his hand. "It doesn't make sense. Radar's nineteen. If he had a heart issue, it ought to have shown up in his enlistment physical."
"You know these things aren't always obvious until they suddenly are," Trapper said. "You've got that blaming yourself look on your face. Cut it out."
"I can't lose them both on the same day. I'll--I don't know, I'll implode." He slammed his hand onto his knee. Beside him, Radar twitched in the bed.
Trapper kept his hand on Hawkeye's shoulder. Hawkeye let himself lean into it a little. "We won't. But if there's something banging around in that noggin of yours that could help us figure out what the hell went wrong with him, you'll need sleep to find it. Come on, take two hours. I'll keep an eye."
Hawkeye eyed to empty bed next to him. "Fine. But I'm not going back to the swamp. I'll just close my eyes for a few minutes right here. That way if you need me, I'll be right here." He let himself fall onto the bed and flipped himself wearily over so he was facing Radar. "Don't let Frank touch him, Trap," he mumbled, then his eyes glued themselves closed.