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“Radar? Darling?”
Radar looks up from where he’s washing out his coffee mug in the sink, immediately concerned at Hawkeye’s strained tone and unusual pet name. It gets worse when he sees Hawkeye duck into the kitchen in slacks and a button-down, tying a tie around his neck.
“What’sa matter?” Without thinking, he moves forward to fold Hawkeye’s collar down over the tie, then smooths a hand appreciatively over his shoulder when he’s done.
“You know how to get to Erin’s soccer field, right?”
Radar frowns. “Yeah, sure, it’s right behind the junior high. What’s wrong?”
“Can you take her to her game today?”
Radar’s eyes widen. “I– sure, but– I thought you and BJ were gonna take her?”
Hawkeye shakes his head. “Big accident on the highway this morning. They’re calling in all the trauma surgeons. BJ’s pulling a double.” He pecks Radar on the cheek and heads towards the door, but Radar follows, grabbing his sleeve.
“But– but– I’m not her parent!” he protests. “What if the other parents ask me what I’m doing there without any of you three? Who am I supposed to be?”
“Do what I do, be her uncle.” Hawkeye glances at his watch. “I’m really sorry, I gotta run. You’ll do great, I promise.” With another brief kiss on his forehead, Hawkeye darts out the door. Radar stands there for a minute longer staring after him, chewing his lip pensively.
So that’s that, then. He’ll do it, of course he will, but… He shoves his hands in his pockets and wanders back into the kitchen, pausing in front of the fridge to look at the drawings stuck all over the doors.
They’re all done by Erin, at various ages: Erin and Peg (colored blobs helpfully labeled by Peg herself), Erin and BJ, Erin and Peg and BJ all together… there’s even a few with Erin and Hawkeye, with the same hearts drawn between them that are drawn between Erin and her birth parents.
None of them are of Radar.
And that’s fine! Really! Radar knows he’s only been on the periphery of her life for the majority of it. There was the time she accidentally called him daddy, sure, but she was so little then that she probably doesn’t remember it, and Radar tries his best to never remind BJ that it ever happened.
It just doesn’t help his feeling like he doesn’t really belong here, is all. Like he’s just a distant relative coming to visit for a while who Erin’s gotta be nice to, and then he’ll go home and it’ll just be her, her parents, and her uncle-who’s-sorta-a-second-dad like it’s supposed to be.
Radar sighs, packs up his feelings into a neat little ball he can worry at later, and goes to make sure Erin’ll be ready on time to leave.
“So,” Radar says, once they’ve turned out of the neighborhood and are on their way to the school, “what, uh– what team are you guys playing today?”
“The Sausalito Sharks,” Erin says. She’s tapping her cleats together absentmindedly as she stares out the window. “My friend Mary-Kate is on their team.”
“Oh?” Radar glances at her, then back at the road. “Does that make it hard to play against them, if your friend’s on the team?”
Erin shrugs. “It’s fine.”
Radar waits for her to say more, but Erin just continues to stare out the window, tapping her cleats over and over. Radar bites his lip. He hasn’t felt this awkward since that time Mulligan tried to set him up with Mai Ping at Rosie’s.
“Uh, you mind if I put the radio on?” he asks. Erin makes a quiet noise and shrugs again.
Oh, boy. What he wouldn’t give for Hawkeye to be here to smooth things along; at least Erin likes Hawkeye. Radar flips the radio to the latest-hits station and focuses on the road in front of him.
At least the junior high is only a short drive away. Radar breathes a quiet sigh of relief as they pull into the parking lot, and unlocks the doors so Erin can hop out of the truck and run over to the group of girls gathered at the side of the field.
As he climbs up the stands to find a seat, he notices a couple eyeing him with a mix of curiosity and mild concern. Radar’s a little amused– his face is so sweet he couldn’t scare a fly, Ma had always told him– but he figures it’s probably a bit strange to see an unfamiliar man with a little girl that isn’t his. He ambles down towards them, trying his best to look friendly rather than nervous, and sticks out his hand.
“Morning!” he says cheerfully. “Walter O’Reilly, I’m here with Erin Hunnicutt.”
“We noticed.” The man shakes his hand first, grip firm, and then his wife. “Are you another uncle of hers?”
“Oh, uh.” Radar hesitates. He knows that’s the cover story the Hunnicutts use for Hawkeye, but he’s not quite comfortable with making the same claim, being ten years younger than the rest of them and all. “Not exactly. I served with Captain– I mean, with BJ in Korea. I’m staying with them for a bit.” All of a sudden he’s hit with the disconcerting sense of having a foot in two times at once, worse than his usual flashes of precognition. For a brief moment he’s nineteen again, stumbling over BJ’s name behind Rosie’s bar while BJ’s hand cups his cheek. He opens his mouth, already anticipating the kiss, when a jay cries from a nearby tree, startling him back to the present.
“–remember you now!” the woman is saying. “I saw you at one of Erin’s games a few weeks ago. You were talking to her uncle, the one with the odd name.”
Radar’s smile grows a little strained, but he forces himself to nod amiably. “Right. Hawkeye.”
The woman laughs. “Yes, yes, that’s it! Did you pick up a funny little nickname overseas, too?”
Thankfully Radar is saved from answering by the coach’s whistle, and with a polite smile, he disengages from the couple and returns to his chosen seat. The fall air is brisk, and he blows on his hands before clasping them together in his lap. He wishes he’d remembered to bring coffee, or even a thermos of cocoa. But his coat is warm, and he reminds himself to be grateful for that as the girls scatter across the field and the game begins.
Radar doesn’t know too much about how soccer works– he’d always played football and baseball with the boys back home, and no one had ever played it at the MASH. Mostly he just knows that it’s a lot of running, and only one person is supposed to ever touch the ball with their hands. But he’s watched enough of Erin’s games at this point to understand which team is ahead, and he knows when to cheer and when to groan, and as they close in on the halftime break, he’s finally starting to relax and enjoy himself.
Mrs. Davis, one of the mothers, begins to busy herself with the box of orange slices she’d brought as a snack for the players. Despite himself, Radar eyes the box hungrily as he stands to stretch and stamp his feet to warm them back up.
“Hunnicutt! Get moving!”
Radar looks up, immediately on alert, at the coach’s shout. He scans the field for Erin’s jersey and spots her on the far side, almost over the line, crouched down and studying something in the grass.
“What’s the matter with her?” one of the mothers asks. “Why did she stop running?”
Something’s wrong. Radar starts making his way down the stands, barely excusing himself to the people he passes. He gets down to the grass, eyes still fixed on Erin, but the coach intercepts him before he can set foot over the field’s boundary line.
“Sir, you can’t go on the field,” the coach tells him. “Not while the game’s still in progress.”
Nineteen-year-old Radar would have shrunk back and stammered out his apologies. But Radar at twenty-nine, just below Hawkeye’s age when he was wrapping Henry around his little finger, and older than BJ was when he saw his first dead soldier, isn’t cowed. He pulls on the memory of General O’Reilly like an old coat and squares his shoulders as best he can.
“Well, then, I’ll just stop it being in progress,” Radar replies, and marches right across the field without giving the coach a second glance.
He can hear mutterings from the other parents as he crosses the field, can feel the stares of the players, but he puts them out of his mind and focuses on Erin. As he gets closer, he sees that there’s a small, dark lump in the grass.
It’s moving.
“Erin? What did you find?” Radar asks. He gets down on one knee beside her. Erin looks up at him, eyes wide.
“There’s babies,” she says, her voice small. Radar leans forward to look, and she’s right. It’s a mother possum with four babies crawling in and out of her pouch, mewling in distress.
“Is she dead?” Erin asks.
Radar doesn’t reply for a moment, watching the mother intently. It’s difficult to tell, what with the babies pushing and pulling her fur this way and that, but after a few seconds he thinks he sees her chest rise and fall.
He makes a decision.
“Does anybody have a box?” he calls back towards the stands, rising to his feet to survey the gathered players and the parents now clustered around the two coaches. Part of him, the part that got smaller after Korea but never really went away, cringes at the fact that he’s making a scene, probably embarrassing Erin, but he shoves it aside. The animals need his help, and that’s more important. “Mrs. Davis! The orange slices– can I have the box? And a blanket, or a– a coat or something!”
“What’s going on?” one of the fathers from the other team demands. “Get off of the field and let them get back to the game!”
Nobody wants to help. With a frustrated growl, Radar whips off his own coat.
“Stay back, Erin,” he says. “If she’s hurt, she could bite.” He’s grateful to see Erin mind him, taking two steps backward even though she’s still watching the possums with a single-minded focus Radar’s only ever seen on Hawkeye’s face before.
Slowly, watching the mother for any signs of movement, Radar kneels down beside her. The babies squeal; none of them try to flee, but a few burrow under their mother, most likely looking for her pouch. Radar makes sure his hands are covered by his coat, then scoops her and the babies up and into his arms. The mother’s tail flicks once, but she otherwise remains still.
So far, so good.
“C’mon, Erin,” he says. “Let’s get ‘em off the field.”
Erin follows him as he heads back towards the parking lot, uncharacteristically quiet. As they cross the field boundary line on the other side, Radar nods at the coach, who gives him a look like he’s covered in mud or something similarly distasteful.
There’s a tug on his sleeve. Radar looks down.
“Uncle Radar?” Erin asks. “Are they gonna be okay?”
He hears some tittering from the other adults, but he ignores them.
“I’m gonna do my best to help ‘em,” he tells Erin firmly. “You wanna go on and get back in the truck? I’ll drop you off at the house before I take ‘em to the hospital–”
“I wanna come with you.”
“Erin–”
“No. I know what my dad and uncle Hawkeye do for their jobs. I’m not squeamish.” Erin meets his eye with a steely stubbornness that Radar recognizes from BJ. “I wanna see what you do, too.”
Radar’s about to double down, mouth open to argue, but then he pauses. What was he doing at Erin’s age? Finding injured field mice and birds and keeping them in boxes under his bed until they were well enough to be let go again. And hadn’t he always hated it when his ma or Uncle Ed had chastised him about it? Hadn’t he always hated it in Korea when people treated him like he was a little kid, even though he’d seen just as many injured soldiers as they had?
He sighs. “Okay. Fine. Go on and get in, I’ll put ‘em in the truck bed.”
Erin grins and runs off towards the truck. Radar follows behind slowly, trying his best not to jostle or drop any of the possums in his arms.
“What are you gonna do with her?” Erin asks once the truck is moving and the soccer field recedes behind them.
“Depends what’s wrong with her.” Radar glances at the rearview mirror, but doesn’t see any movement from the truck bed. “If she’s just sick, we’ll put her and the babies in a cage for a few days and feed ‘em and keep ‘em warm until she gets better, then let her go. If she has broken bones…” He grimaces. “We might need to euthanize her.”
Erin makes a quiet startled noise. “Why?”
“Well–” Radar pauses. “You know how when you go to the doctor, you don’t wanna get a shot and all that, but you do it anyway because you know it’s good for you?”
Erin nods.
“Well, it’s just as scary for animals, maybe even scarier. And you can’t explain to them the way you can with people, because they don’t have words like we do. So if you try to put a cast on ‘em, they won’t understand and they’ll try to bite it off, or they could hurt themselves trying to get away.” Radar thinks back to the day they rescued Sophie, how the chopper pilot had wanted to put her down just because of a bullet wound in her flank. How BJ and Hawkeye had helped him lasso her and bring her back to camp for treatment. How much joy and comfort she had brought the 4077, especially Colonel Potter. How she wouldn’t have been able to do any of that if they’d killed her instead.
“We might not even have to,” he reassures Erin. “She might not be hurt that bad, and even if she is, I’m gonna do my best to take care of her so it doesn’t gotta happen, okay?”
Erin nods again. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Radar echoes, and briefly lifts a hand from the wheel to ruffle Erin’s hair. He doesn’t realize until after he’s done it that he’s never done that to Erin before, but she doesn’t seem to be upset. If anything, she seems excited.
Suddenly the day stops feeling like a failure, and more like an adventure. Radar grins at her and sits up straighter in his seat.
They’re gonna save some possums together. It’s almost like having his menagerie from Korea again, except this time he knows better how to help, doesn’t have to worry about treating injuries from mine blasts and shellfire. He’ll be able to let them go after and not worry about them being in a warzone.
The fact that Erin wants to help makes it even more special, somehow. Radar knows that his work can sometimes be a little… well, gross, the way that Hawkeye and BJ’s can be. But Erin had insisted on coming along. The nervousness Radar had felt around her just a couple of hours ago is starting to fade, much like the way his nervousness around BJ when they’d first met at Kimpo had dissolved by the time they’d made it back to camp, drunk and dirty and shaken by the injuries they’d treated along the way.
Radar only hopes that the momma possum’s injuries are nowhere near as bad as the guy BJ had tried to help.
They pull into the vet office’s parking lot shortly after, and Radar parks as close as he can to the front doors.
“I’ll get the possums,” he tells Erin as they unbuckle. “Can you get the door for me?”
Erin’s the perfect helper as they get down from the truck. Radar passes her the key for the office (they’re closed today, it being a Saturday), and Erin dutifully goes to unlock the door and hold it open for him as Radar carefully climbs into the truck bed and approaches his bundled coat. A few pokes through the fabric confirms that all five possums are still there, the babies still squeaking and peeking out of their mother’s pouch as Radar looks at them. The mother appears to be the same as earlier: unmoving except for occasional flicks of her tail.
It’s time to get them inside.
Radar gathers his coat in his arms and, making sure that they’re all tucked safely inside, climbs down from the truck bed and heads inside the office, Erin close behind.
“Here,” Radar says at the door to the exam room. “You can watch through the window, but don’t come in unless I call you, okay? I don’t want you to get bit.”
Erin nods, and Radar smiles at her reassuringly before bringing the bundle of possums back.
He lays them down on the exam table first, then washes his hands in the little sink in the corner and dons a mask and gloves. When he gets back to the table, the babies are starting to peek out from the folds of his coat, curious. Carefully, Radar picks each one up in turn, examining them all over for cuts, scratches, or broken bones. They all seem fine; two of them even wrap their tails around his fingers or wrist, which makes him giggle as he tries to get them to let go so he can put them on the scale.
Once the babies are all cleared, Radar brings them one by one over to the incubator and turns it on. He then takes a deep breath to center himself. Time to check the mother.
She still isn’t moving terribly much, though her eyes are open and follow him as he moves towards her. Radar does his best to telegraph his movements to not startle her; either it works, or she’s too injured to fight back as he picks her up and begins to examine her.
He checks each limb, gently flexing her joints to check for range of motion. She doesn’t make any noise, or flinch at any touch. He palpates her ribs gently, then begins to examine her tail. It flicks away from his hand, then returns and curls around his wrist. Radar smiles tenderly beneath his mask.
“That’s it, girl,” he says. “You’re safe. Let me look at your face now, okay?”
He lays her back down on the table and begins to gently part her fur to check for injuries. After a few moments, he sees it: bruising on her face, and some shallow cuts along her back and flank. Possibly a fight with a cat, or a small dog. The scratches look like they’ve already scabbed over, which is good. She’s probably just tired and in pain. Radar can help with that.
He spends the next few minutes in the comfortable, wordless space he gets into when taking care of his animals: cleaning the wounds, prepping the injection, cooing to reassure her as he administers it.
“You’ll feel better soon,” he promises as he pulls the needle out. “The hard part’s over. Hey, you wanna see your babies?”
The mother just blinks up at him slowly, then closes her eyes again and relaxes as the medicine starts to work. Radar handles her as carefully as he can as he brings her over to the incubator and puts her inside along with her babies. The babies, overjoyed, immediately start squeaking and crawling over each other as they wriggle back into her pouch.
Radar watches for a few minutes to make sure everything’s all right and that they’re settling down to rest, then sets the room to rights, discards his gloves and mask, and washes his hands once again. He writes a quick note to tape on the exam room door so the other doctors know not to disturb his patients, and then he’s shooting Erin a relieved thumbs up as he makes his way to the door.
“They’re okay,” he says as soon as she pulls the door open. “It looks like the mama got attacked by a dog or cat or something. She’s got some cuts and stuff, but she’ll be okay, and the babies are just fine.”
Erin grins wide enough that her eyes seem to sparkle, and Radar’s struck for a moment just how much of BJ is in her smile, how much of Peg is in her eyes.
He gets an idea.
He glances at his watch, then grins back at Erin and leans down to whisper conspiratorally to her. “You wanna help me cut up some food for ‘em?”
“Do I!” Erin exclaims.
“C’mon, then.” Radar gestures for her to follow and begins to make his way towards the back room of the office. “You can take care of the bugs.”
“Uncle Radar!”
What feels like an eternity later, they arrive back at the house. Erin immediately darts up the stairs to her room, and Radar lets her go. He’s not quite as tired as he used to be after a push of wounded, but the fading adrenaline still makes his limbs shake uncomfortably. Kicking off his shoes, he collapses onto the couch and only barely remembers to take off his glasses before he’s asleep.
He’s awoken some time later when Hawkeye picks up his arm from where it had been flung over his eyes and leans in to kiss his nose.
“There’s my dear Mercury,” Hawk says when Radar’s eyes finally squint open. “All tuckered out from playing daddy all day?”
“I wasn’t– I mean, not really.” Radar pushes himself upright, glancing towards BJ out of reflex. He knows how touchy he can be about the whole daddy thing, but the blurry view he has of BJ’s face doesn’t seem to be particularly upset. In fact, he even seems to be smiling.
“How’d the game go, Radar?” BJ asks.
“Oh, it went okay!” Radar rubs the remaining sleep from his eyes as he leans over to the side table to retrieve his glasses. “Dunno who won, though, we were only there for the first half.”
“What? Why?” The smile gives way to alarm, and Hawkeye’s hand curls around his knee.
Radar opens his mouth to reassure them– nothing’s wrong, Erin’s fine and she’s safe upstairs– but then the front door opens and Peg enters, kicking off her shoes immediately.
“Boys, I’m home!” she calls. She wanders into the living room and pauses, taking in the tableau: BJ standing behind the couch, his sportcoat half unbuttoned; Hawkeye, kneeling in front of Radar in his shirtsleeves, eyes intense. “What’s going on?”
“It’s really nothing,” Radar says. “Erin just found a possum at the soccer field that wasn’t doing too good, so we took it to the office so I could fix it up.”
“I hope you didn’t let her touch it,” Hawkeye says. Radar shakes his head.
“Of course not,” he says. “I put ‘em in the back of the truck so they’d be–”
“They?” BJ butts in. “Just how many did she find?”
“Just a mama!” Radar says defensively. “She had babies! I couldn’t just leave ‘em there!”
“No, you just let a twelve-year-old within biting distance of a wild animal!” BJ takes a deep breath and rubs his hands over his face. “Did you at least bring her back to the house first?”
Radar wants to sink into the floor. “Well…”
“Radar!”
“She wanted to watch!” God, he’s only been here a month and already he’s messing up with Erin. Radar wonders, briefly, if BJ’s going to tell him to get lost– that he’d botched his chance at trying to be another dad to Erin, and maybe it’d be better if he just went back to Ottumwa and stayed an occasional uncle they only saw on Christmases and birthdays.
“Hold on,” Peg says. “I did the same thing with my grandpa when I was eight. He found a wild turkey that’d gotten caught in a trap and he showed me how to let it go. We even splinted its leg. I would’ve thrown a fit if he’d made me go wait in the truck and not let me help.”
Hawkeye whips his head around to look at her incredulously. “Peg, I realize I may be in the minority of country yokels’ opinions here, but picking up injured wild animals and taking them home is not normal! It’s dangerous! Right, Beej?”
BJ doesn’t reply.
Hawkeye turns to him. “Beej, back me up here!”
Nervous, Radar risks a glance up at BJ’s face. Surprisingly, he doesn’t look angry; he looks thoughtful.
“Look at us, Hawk,” BJ says. “We’re four adults, three of us men, raising one kid all together in the same house. I wouldn’t really call that normal, either, would you?”
Hawkeye’s quiet for a moment. “I–”
“Hey, mom?”
The adults all turn around to see Erin traipsing down the stairs, a piece of construction paper in one hand. Peg clears her throat. “Yes, Erin?”
“Can I put this on the fridge?” Erin brandishes the paper. Radar can see what looks like colored pencil from his spot on the couch, but the paper is too floppy for him to see what’s on it.
“Of course, honey. Did you need anything else?”
Erin shrugs and heads into the kitchen. There’s a clack a few seconds later as she sticks her drawing to the fridge with a magnet. “Is dinner gonna be soon? I’m hungry.”
Peg glances over at Hawkeye and BJ. “Um. In about an hour, sweetheart. Your father and I need to finish discussing something with Hawkeye and Uncle Radar. Are you doing alright? I heard you had an exciting day.”
“Yeah, it was fun.” Erin takes a yogurt out of the fridge and starts back towards the stairs. She makes a brief detour to kiss her mother on the cheek, and BJ leans down so she can kiss him too. “Love you.”
“Love you too, Erin.” As Erin heads back up the stairs, Radar watches curiously as Hawkeye gets up and pads into the kitchen without a word.
“Hawk?” BJ calls. “We weren’t done.”
“Hang on a sec.” Hawkeye sounds thoughtful. “Hey, Radar, come in here.”
Radar glances over at BJ and Peg, unsure if he ought to listen. They really weren’t done talking about things. And Erin is their daughter, after all; if this is gonna end with them telling him he can’t bring Erin to soccer games anymore without one of them tagging along, he wants to know now, get the rule established so they can move on and he can do better. But BJ just shrugs, and as Radar stands, he and Peg follow him into the kitchen.
Hawkeye’s standing in front of the fridge, examining Erin’s latest drawing with a smile on his face. He steps back, gesturing at Radar to take a look, and Radar’s mouth falls open.
It’s him. Well– him, Erin, and the possums– at the veterinary office. There’s the momma possum on the table with her babies all around her, and Radar with his mask and gloves on examining them, and Erin watching through the window in the exam room door, eyes wide and interested.
And– his vision grows blurry, and he has to lift up his glasses to wipe hurriedly at his eyes.
There’s a heart on the paper, just like there is on all the drawings of Erin with BJ, Peg, and Hawkeye.
“C’mere.” The Hawkeye-shaped blur opens his arms and Radar stumbles forward into them, burying his face into Hawkeye’s chest as a hand cups the back of his head lovingly.
“Feels good, doesn’t it? Being a dad?” Hawkeye murmurs. Radar nods, unable to speak past the lump in his throat.
Another hand lands beside Hawkeye’s on his back, and then BJ is joining their embrace, pressing a kiss to the crown of Radar’s head. Even Peg stands close by, her perfume comforting as she touches Radar’s arm.
Maybe he isn’t gonna screw this up, after all.