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“You got any more of those cold towels?” It’s the third time in an hour he’s asked, and you have half a mind to tear the scalpel out of his hand and run this operation yourself, but instead you wet a cloth with water and press it to his forehead. It’s hot; his cap is stuck to his skin with sweat.
"Hold still, Doctor," you say; you're both trying to avoid drops of water falling into the patient. It's an awkward, feverish dance.
"That's very caring of you, Major," Father Mulcahy says. "Matthew 25:35. For I was hungry, and you gave me food, for I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was--"
You get the instinctual urge to tell him to shut up, you weren't being nice, just doing your job, but you've read the Army's full manual of job descriptions, and nowhere within it does it say that a nurse should care so much for any doctor. No matter how pathetically sick.
"Adson forceps when you have a minute," Pierce interrupts. "Sorry, Father."
"Say, Margaret, how much does it cost for hot stones on my back?” Pierce asks. "Really, I'd kill for just one big one. On the top of my head, please."
It draws a quiet, ashamed laugh from both the Father and Corporal O’Reilly, the latter of whom wisely averts his eyes when you glare at him.
He bends down towards the patient's abdomen, and you move with him, pausing briefly to dab at the sweat on his temples.
“I’d like to take your temperature with a thermometer,” you say, finally drawing your hand away. Even though it’s gloved, it feels like it’s glowing with heat.
His eyes crinkle in his very best imitation of a smile. “And I’d like to see this thermometer’s M.D. The war doesn’t stop on account of my fever.” He clicks his tongue, and drops a piece of shrapnel in a basin. “I thought you knew that by now.”
“After you’re done,” you insist.
"Yes, dear,” he says, turning his focus back towards the patient. Shrapnel falls into the basin like raindrops.
You press your fingers to the back of your hand, feeling the residual heat. You wonder if checking someone’s temperature with the back of your hand is a base human instinct. As natural as breathing, as sex, as death.
You don’t think anyone’s ever done it for you before.
The last patient is simple enough; debriding a boy’s upper shoulder. Pierce and MacIntyre usually call it war rash.
It's a vulgar nickname; yet looking at the boy's torn up arm, muscle red like rope underneath the O.R lights, you can't help but agree.
“Go to post-op,” you instruct Baker. “I’ll finish up here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The Father leaves eagerly, promising to leave you both lukewarm glasses of powdered orange juice in Blake’s office. Radar escapes quickly behind him, ripping his mask off before he's fully out the door.
The O.R is sickeningly silent. No music piped in. No lousy announcements. No stupid jokes.
"I could finish for you,” you offer, but he’s stubborn and you know he won’t say yes, in the same way that you wouldn’t.
“Grab a pair of tweezers,” he says, “you can take the junkyard that’s by his clavicle.”
The two of you work in silence punctuated only by the boy’s mechanical, etherized breathing. His eyes are glassy, red in a way that’s not from exhaustion or alcoholism. It’s only been a handful of months in Korea, and already the two of you have army-crawled yourselves through more hellish O.R sessions than you can count. Pierce’s breakdown– you shouldn’t call it that, but who in their right mind would send a telegram to President Truman? The time you found out most farm boy Army corporals don’t think to order in feminine hygiene supplies and had to spend a very uncomfortable O.R shift with gauze stuffed in your fatigues. The live grenade. The American sniper.
“Let’s blow this popcorn stand,” he says, tossing his pair of tweezers into the basin and leaning over to inspect your work. You know it’s satisfactory, but part of you wants his approval anyways. You respect his work. Maybe not him, but you respect his work nonetheless.
(You’ve never cared for Frank’s opinion of your work. Or any man besides your father for that matter.)
“I might just sleep in the office,” he says, after you’ve taken the boy to post-op and settled into one of Henry's guest chairs. Pierce is slumped miserably on Henry's desk, and you don’t have the heart to tell him to show some respect. Really, it's probably one of the more respectable things that's happened on top of that desk. “D’you think Radar would lend me his teddy bear?”
Probably, you think, the way they’ve got that boy following them around like some kind of camp pet. Pierce gulps back some of the orange juice– another boyish habit– and winces.
“You should go back to your tent.” Despite yourself, your voice softens. “Get some rest, Doctor.”
“Don’t wanna,” he says insolently. “Frank’s there. Frank talks in his sleep. You probably already knew that, though.”
“Whether or not Major Burns talks in his sleep is none of m–”
“Oh, Lou-wheeze, I wish you hadn’t cut your hair,” Pierce says, his voice raising with each word. “What are we going to tell Mother? She always thought something was pink about me…”
“Enough! I’ll grab a spare blanket and you can stay in my tent.”
Before he can leer at you, you raise a finger. “No funny business. I’ll find myself a cot.”
He follows obediently behind you the whole way to your tent, your very own camp pet, and that’s when you’re sure he’s really sick.
"You’re not wearing bloody scrubs in my bed, Captain.”
“I always thought I’d make an excellent B-girl,” he says, reaching for the hem of his shirt. You turn your back towards the door, wondering if you should have just left him in post-op. This will be terrible for your reputation. Although, the biggest rumour spreader in the camp is Pierce, and something tells you he wouldn’t want him being nursed back to health by you to get around.
And anyways, caring for the sick is the Christian thing to do.
“Are you decent?”
“I haven’t got anything else to wear. All my good suits are at the cleaners.”
“There’s a shirt underneath my bed that will fit you. Pyjama pants, too.”
“Frank’ll kill me.” You sigh. This was an awful idea.
“They’re not Frank’s. Now, do you want them, or would you like to spend the entirety of your illness bunking with the non-coms in post-op?”
“Alright, alright,” he says. You hear fabric folding and the sound of a drawstring being tied. “Property of,” he reads, “General–”
“Quiet!”
You turn around, and thank God he’s mostly decent. His shirt’s on, a little bigger than what he’d usually wear, and he’s halfway to having his pants on.
You’ve seen lots of unclothed men. It’s part of the job. You’ve taken men twice your age to the washroom after surgeries; helped young soldiers get dressed and shaved. Yet, you pause for a moment. He looks almost wholesome in his too-big shirt and shorts. All-American, maybe, on another man. You stare at his legs for a moment. They look strangely domestic. White and bony and hairy. The kind of legs you’d see on the bottom half of a fishing boat, or peeking out of an apron, making pancakes on Sunday.
“What?” Maybe you're getting sick too. It must be catching.
“You look exhausted,” you say, your voice touching but not quite reaching that syrupy-sweet tone you use for Frank. Pierce, as tired as he is, would call you on it if you did.
“Excellent work, Sherlock,” he says, finally pulling the pants up. Glassy-eyed, he shakes his head. “Does that mean I have to be Watson?”
“You are the doctor,” you say, indulging a little in the joke. He smiles at you wearily, and you shiver-- not with fever; rather, discomfort. Like you're that poor boy with war rash, peeled back layer by layer.
He ties the drawstring of the pants clumsily before abandoning it, leaving the strings to flop lazily against his thighs. If he were your patient you would help him, but instead you watch him flop on top of your covers, wrinkling your silk sheets you got in Tokyo.
“Goodnight, Captain,” you say. You’ll have to borrow a cot from the VIP tent. Maybe get a cup of coffee, or take a shower. And you're back on shift in less than seven hours... sometimes, you really understand him when he wishes that the war would end. Even if it is highly un-American.
“You’re not gonna stay?”
“I don’t have any bedtime stories to tell you,” you say, allowing him a smile.
“Sit on the edge of the bed for just a moment, Margaret.” He sounds desperate, like he can’t stand to be alone.
“If I do, then I get to check your temperature.”
“You drive a tough bargain.”
“I’ll be back,” you promise. You have to get the thermometer, after all. You aren’t beholden to him– just doing a fellow medical professional a favour. Still, it is sort of endearing: the way his face falters as you head towards the door.
It must be the fever.
You take a quick walk to the supply room, feeling the cold air on your hot cheeks. There, you grab a basin, a spare pillow, a thermometer, and a spare Army blanket. Once you’re sure the coast is clear, you find your secret stash in the supply room and tuck a bottle of Canada Dry underneath your arm. It isn’t the most patriotic, but it’ll help get his fever down.
“Open your mouth,” you say. He’s laying there, half-tucked under your sheets, with his big sockless feet hanging off the edge of the bed. He raises his eyebrows, but there’s no snappy comeback.
You stare anywhere but his face while the thermometer’s in, holding the end of it like you do with the boys in post-op, so that he doesn’t squirm and ruin the reading.
“101.2,” you read. Not dangerous but close. “Take some acetaminophen.” You open the small bottle you keep in your tent, and hand him two, along with the ginger ale.
“Are you this nice to all your patients?”
“You did good work today,” you say, sitting on the edge of the bed. He offers the drink to you after he washes his pills down, and you shake your head.
“What else was I supposed to do?” His voice sounds rough. "Leave you to become ranking surgeon and nurse?"
You toss the spare pillow at him, ignoring his question. “Get to bed,” you say. “I’m on duty at six tomorrow, but I’ll sit with you until I’ve got to go."
You turn your legs so that you’re both facing each other, with his head resting on the pillow. God knows you won’t be able to sleep tonight. “MacIntyre will be well enough to take care of your patients.”
“Our,” he says, “our patients, Margaret. You did more than Frank on his best day.”
“You’re the surgeon,” you say, ignoring the jab at Frank.
“You’d be a better surgeon.”
“Where do you suppose I go to medical school? On whose dime?” Your father hadn’t paid for your nursing school; there’d been a scholarship and two years of paying off debt and living in a rented room afterwards.
“The Army,” he mumbles. His eyes flutter shut for a moment. “Has to be good for something. You’d be a better surgeon than a lot of guys.”
“Thank you, Captain,” you say. “I’m quite happy being an Army nurse.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” he says. “Captain. That’s not a name for a person. My parents never called me that. My dad calls me Hawkeye–”
“The Last of the Mohicans,” you interrupt; he’ll tell this story to any nurse who’ll listen.
“But my mom, my mom always called me Ben.”
“Ben,” you say, trying it out. It almost suits him. Maybe an older version, or a wild, teenaged one. Your Hawkeye, the 4077th’s Hawkeye, is someone in between.
“She died when I was ten, you know,” he says softly. “TB. I think that was the last time anyone ever called me Ben.”
“I’m sorry, P–,” you blush despite yourself, and start again. “I’m sorry, Ben. Hawkeye.”
You are sorry. Sorry that he’s sick, sorry that his mother died. You’re sorry that he doesn’t like the Army; he hates it worse than Corporal Klinger, but instead of wearing dresses and pearls, Hawkeye’s loathing clings to him like talc powder. It’s a thin veil, held together with gin and horrible pranks, but right now, you see right through it.
He looks just like one of your patients. A scared child. You wonder if he ever played with toy soldiers, the way you did growing up.
“Goodnight,” you say, shifting uncomfortably. His leg presses against yours, searingly warm, and you don’t move. It’s so cold in Korea. Sometimes you understand his wanting to go home more than he would ever know.
The problem, you decide, is that he doesn’t understand. The Army is all you’ve got. There will be no welcome party when the war is over. There aren’t any letters from home, save for Mother asking for money, or your sister announcing events you won’t be missed at– birthdays, weddings, baby showers.
This-- this dry, frigid Army camp, sitting on land where it's mostly unwelcome and wholly unwanted-- is the only place where you're wanted. He would find a place anywhere, all he would have to do is show up and be invited in to the warmth. The world works differently for people like you-- not just women, but specifically you.
Someone whose bluntness and fear can't be pasted over by lipstick and setting powder. Someone who would really appreciate a Major Houlihan of her own, sometimes. Someone who can be soft, who is soft, just doesn't know how to explain that you're only soft because of your rigidity, not in spite of it.
"I hope you don't think I'm too harsh," you stammer out. You don't have the right words for it. Not now, not ever. "It's very difficult being in charge sometimes."
“Thanks, Margaret,” he says, his words gentle. “You’re not half-bad, you know? I'd take you over Florence Nightingale any day."
You don’t know what to say. It's so strange when people are nice to you for the sake of being nice. Not to get a day off shift or to get into your bed.
Well, you think, smiling a little, he has already gotten into your bed, and he's got the day off tomorrow. Far be it from Pierce to compliment you like a normal man.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” you finally manage. He’s fallen asleep, the smallest hint of a smile on his face, wrapped in your silk sheets. "Of course," you whisper, "you're no Schweitzer."