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Post-op is boring from this side of things. When you’ve been a nurse for as long as Peggy has and listened to as much complaining from recovering soldiers, of course you start to know that in a theoretical sense. But it hasn’t been until now, unable to sit up on doctor’s orders and confined to a recovery bed even less comfortable than her own shitty army-issue cot, that it has finally hit home.
Working in post-op gives Peggy a sense of purpose in an otherwise tedious, futile war. Helping people makes having joined up again feel almost worth it. Lying around listening to the mutterings and discomfort of her fellow patients—some soldiers, some casualties of unlucky happenstance like her—leaves room in her head for that futility and those feelings of worthlessness to worm their way in.
But then there’s Hawkeye.
He isn’t quite his usual self; he never is when he’s worried about a friend. Or maybe this quieter version of him is the real Hawkeye, and the indefatigable entertainer Peggy has come to know is only the persona he puts on for the war, like her brash, quippy confidence. He never hovers, but he comes through post-op far more often than he usually would when off-duty and he always stops by her bed to flip through her chart and ask how she’s feeling. If she were an ordinary patient rather than a nurse and his friend, she’d be worried there was something more wrong with her than she’s being told.
“Hawk,” Peggy says, two days after the windstorm, on his fifth circuit through post-op. “Sit with me for a second.”
Hawkeye is at her side instantaneously. His hands are roving and anxious, clinical rather than sensual. “Does it hurt more than yesterday? Any trouble breathing? Did you try sitting up too soon?”
“Hawkeye. I’m fine. I just wanted some company. Recovery is boring.”
“Oh,” Hawkeye says. His hands go still and his shoulders relax, and a ghost of that familiar lecherous grin spreads across his face. “Well, if it’s company you want, I’m afraid I’ll have to take a rain check until you’re discharged, but never fear, I’ll come to collect. We were interrupted the other day.”
Peggy rolls her eyes and hopes that the feigned exasperation at the very least cancels out her irrepressible smile. Sex with Hawkeye is fun, but what she really enjoys about spending time with him is his humor. He and Hunnicutt are the only people in camp who don’t look at her askance when she makes an aside that’s too bold, too crass, not feminine enough. They make her feel worth spending time with for more than just her looks.
“When have I ever said no to you?” she asks, teasingly innocent.
Hawkeye pretends to think. “Oh, not that often. Probably… only every other time I ask, at most.”
“I’m a busy girl. Except for right now.”
“Irony of cruel ironies,” Hawkeye says cheerfully. That’s another thing Peggy likes about him: he’s always cheerful about being shot down. He might bat his eyes and beg for a bit, but he always takes a no with grace in the end and changes the subject. “Is that a bag of makeup?”
“Major Houlihan gave it to me,” Peggy says by way of confirmation.
“Why?”
“I guess she’d want it, in my place.”
Hawkeye cocks his head as he considers that, then nods. It makes sense for his understanding of the Major, too, even though he holds a sort of brotherly fondness for her that Peggy can’t claim to share.
“And you don’t want it?” he asks.
“I’m in the hospital. Who am I supposed to look pretty for?”
“I’ve heard some of the doctors are pretty handsome,” Hawkeye says, true to form. “Especially one of them, some guy called Pierce—”
“I’ve seen him. He’s so-so.”
“Maybe he could use some of your makeup, then.” Unruffled by the criticism, Hawkeye rummages through the small bag, examining and discarding powders and serums with less care than he probably would if he knew they belonged to Major Houlihan and not Peggy. “You really wear all this stuff even out here?”
“Major Houlihan does,” Peggy says. The difference between her and Major Houlihan should be clear enough.
Hawkeye is still frowning at the small pile of products on the bed beside her. “I’ve seen you put your makeup on.”
“I have to reapply, since you do such a good job of rubbing it off.”
Hawkeye’s smile is delighted; he loves it when she’s quick on the draw. Then the puzzlement returns and he leans closer to speak as though he’s asking her to share a secret.
“Why, though? We’re in a warzone, and, and you’re… you’re a practical person. Why bother?”
A practical person is Hawkeye’s kind way of saying that Peggy isn’t a bombshell like Margaret Houlihan. She doesn’t mind; she knows that as far as women to sleep with go, Hawkeye prefers her to the Major. And anyway, stick Hot Lips Houlihan in her second war and see how long she keeps up that full-face routine. Peggy has bigger priorities than impressing the brass with Major Houlihan’s high-wire act of femininity and military discipline. She just does what she has to in order to get through her days here and get home.
“I have curly hair,” she says.
Hawkeye blinks at her.
“I’m tall,” Peggy says, in the hopes that more examples might help Hawkeye get the point without having to say it too directly, “and my hair doesn’t agree with any of the popular styles, and I’ve got a face more suited to your body than to mine.”
“I like your face,” Hawkeye says, immediately defensive.
Peggy rolls her eyes at him. He’s sweet, but it’s a stupid, loyal kind of sweet, like an old family dog. “I’m no Margie Cutler, is what I’m saying.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Did you know this is my second war?”
She knows Hawkeye didn’t know that, because she doesn’t talk about it. Peggy Bigelow is calm and competent under pressure because that’s her nature, not because she’s done this all before. She can be an example of professionalism for the newer, more frightened nurses without having to lay bare the reality of war for them—the fact that while this will certainly be Peggy’s last war, it may not be theirs.
She also thinks it will be Hawkeye’s last war. Handsome though he still is, Peggy has watched a weariness overtake him as the months wear on, turning his hair prematurely grey and his face alternately puffy with fatigue and haggard with stress. And yet he never fails in his efforts to cheer up everyone else.
Hawkeye, of everyone, knows the importance of keeping up appearances.
“I didn’t know that,” he says. There’s something new in his eyes when he looks back to her—respect, she thinks, and sorrow. “I must say, you look fantastic for your advanced age.”
“I’d tread carefully if I were you and I wanted to collect on that rain check at some point,” Peggy says, though he hasn’t actually offended her in the slightest. She only wants to make Hawkeye smile again rather than watching her so sadly. “I wear makeup because I’m not as pretty as Major Houlihan and I have to if I want to be taken seriously at all. I wear less than she does because I’m thirty-eight years old and I’m tired.”
Hawkeye does smile at that, but it’s a sad one still. He laughs, too, even though none of it is really funny. “What does that make me, then, if I don’t wear any?”
Post-op is depressing enough without talking about cyclical wars and getting old. Hawkeye likes Peggy because she’s funny, and she likes herself better that way too.
She flashes him a grin.
“You could start. In fact, I have a few products I’m not using right here; you’re welcome to them.”
“Just the thing to finally send Margaret off the deep end,” Hawkeye says cheerfully, as though the mood has only ever been light. Peggy doesn’t know how he does it so easily. “How about a deal? You wear it, and I’ll kiss it off you. That way you can make sure it’s being properly applied.”
Major Houlihan would have kittens if she knew what uses her gift was being put to. That only makes Peggy want to do it more.
“Deal. Now go waste time somewhere else, before Major Houlihan sees you hovering and thinks she’s killed me after all.”
Hawkeye leaves with a jaunty salute and a blown kiss, and Peggy settles back against her pillow and lets the boredom creep back in. Even so, things are looking just the slightest bit brighter. Maybe she and Hawkeye are both putting on a mask for everyone else’s sake, but if they can manage to make each other laugh, maybe that isn’t so bad. It’s something to look forward to, at least.