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The last week he spent in bed getting better, it rained the whole time. Sweet, crazy rain—hammering down on the roof like the summer showers from his childhood. The smell of it drifted in every time the door swung open. When he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend—only almost, on account of he wasn’t always so good at pretending—that he was back in his bed at home, and the summer rain would stop soon, and when it did, he’d go out to the field and step through the grass and the sun would be warm on his face and the dirt would smell so nice, the way it always did after the rain. And the war would be awful far away—only that was always where his pretending fell apart. And anyway, the rain here didn’t make the dirt smell nice. It made the nurses wet, which they didn’t like so much. When they brought the patients in from outside, it got them wet, too, and the doctors didn’t like that, either. Everyone’s boots got caked in mud, and then their mud-caked boots traipsed through post-op and the operating room and the office and the mess tent, and the mud and the blood and the grass—
Well, it didn’t smell so good. That was all.
Maybe there were farmers, here, and the rain would make their harvest good. Or maybe their poor bombed-out farms would flood and their creeks would overflow. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. And meanwhile the damp curled his hair and wilted Klinger’s cornflowers and he slept and slept and slept.
He dreamed of Hawkeye a couple of times—damp and dripping above him, smelling like mud and rain and blood. His damp fingers through his curling hair. Just dreams, though.
When he woke up, he was always alone.
*
“You know,” BJ said, on the third night of rain. Warm in his bunk, his fingers dry against the crisping pages of an out-of-date medical journal, wasn’t it funny how everything arrived here so out of time? Cookies, crumbled. Letters, last month’s. Tempus fugit, but time didn’t fly, here. It came here to die. “I’m not sure these nighttime wanderings are doing anything for your complexion, dear.”
Hawkeye—like a half-drowned cat—slunk in and glared. Stood, stooped in their doorway, rain running off in rivulets.
“You’re letting the draft in,” BJ said.
“I didn’t let them in, they broke down my door.”
“Hmm,” BJ allowed. He stuck his nose back in the dry pages of his journal. “Low-hanging fruit.”
“Why’d you bend the branch?”
“Thought you might laugh.”
“Ha ha, very funny.”
“Are you back on speaking terms with anybody yet?”
Eyes over the edge of the journal, watching Hawkeye’s shoulders slump. His boots squelched as he took a step further in. Tentative, borderline. Still dripping in the doorway, like he hadn’t quite made up his mind to stay. Answer enough.
“They’ll come around,” BJ offered.
“Sure.”
“No, really. They’ll come around. This rain’ll stop, and the kid’ll feel better, and the next time we’re in the OR you’ll dazzle us with your skills, and everyone will forget. Tempus fugit.”
“Time flies,” he repeated tonelessly.
“And it heals all wounds.”
When Hawkeye got like this—pale and morose, bad mood spreading like a shadow or an illness—there was no point talking him out of it. BJ tried anyway, most days. Around here, they’d gotten too used to it, he thought. They lived under the shadow, resented it, griped at it. He supposed it might be easy to forget about the poor sucker who was casting it.
“You’ll have to see him sometime,” he said, gentle. “It can’t hurt to try again. Maybe without the yelling, this time.”
“He doesn’t want to see me,” Hawkeye said, brittle. “And I don’t blame him.”
“He’ll come around.”
“Oh, everybody just comes around, is that it?”
“In the meantime,” he suggested, “you could try sleeping. Eating. Showering. Or—”
Hawkeye’s boots squelched across the floor, finally.
“—behind door number four, traipsing mud through our tent and staring moodily at the still.” He waited dutifully for a reply that never came, and went gamely on. “It won’t bite, you know.”
“Oh, it bites.”
“Well, sure, it bites.” He set the journal down with a final rustle. “Look, Hawk, I don’t mean to butt in.”
“Great. So don’t butt in.”
“It’s just I’m getting the feeling the rotgut isn’t the problem here.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Well, I’m not sure it helped.”
“You don’t say.”
“You know, if I wanted a parrot, I would have mail-ordered one.”
“I’m not copying you.”
“You’re not saying anything very original, either.”
“Yeah, well.” Rain pounded against the canvas. The smell of damp rolled off him in waves, crept in cool under their door. “Maybe I’m too tired to be original.”
Part of BJ wanted to hold him—grasp him around the arm, pull him down to sit, wrestle him, distract him, maybe—but the thought of warm, dry skin against that soaked, slimy jacket made his stomach roil. Both of them wet, and what would that do?
“Get some sleep, Hawk,” he said—gentle, still. It was all he could do.
Hawkeye perched on the end of his cot. Dampness spread out beneath him, reaching. He leaned forward, eyes on the still, dripping onto the floor. Silent, and that was the bit that sat so uneasy between them. BJ never got the last word. And he had the sense, now—and to be fair, he often did—that the real problem was right in front of him, but he couldn’t see it. Even in this light, even in this warmth, he couldn’t pin it down.
“I mean it,” BJ said, and reached for the lamp. “Sleep. The rain’ll stop.”
Maybe he’d have better luck in the dark.
*
The rain ground their trucks to a halt, brought supplies to a trickle, got their ambulances stuck in the mud. In the village, fields flooded—and wells, and latrines. Funnily enough, the war went on.
“As if we didn’t have enough dysentery,” Margaret said. The air was damp and hot and sweet and turned her stomach. Rain pounded against the roof. Softer than shellfire, more consistent than mortars, and it shouldn’t have bothered her. It shouldn’t have bothered her at all, and so it didn’t. If she ground her fingernails into the skin of her palm enough, it didn’t.
“Don’t forget the typhoid,” Hunnicutt tossed over his shoulder. He moved to the next patient. The chart rustled under his hands. “And the cholera. And the—”
“It’s no laughing matter.”
“Who’s laughing?”
He smiled at her, still over his shoulder. She ought to have known better, maybe. Hunnicutt smiled when he was happy, when he was sad, when he was angry—he had a smile for every occasion. It only figured he had a smile for the rain, too.
She shook her head and stopped at the foot of Radar’s bed. Lingered, without a good reason. He’d been doing well. He was recovering fine. It was only that the rain had unsettled him—even now, he was half-twisted in the sheets. Even in sleep, he looked like he was listening. She tried to muster up the thought of him steaming open her letters, and found to her chagrin that it only put a lump in her throat.
She coughed to clear it and turned to Hunnicutt, still making his rounds on the other side. Bereft, without his shadow—or was he the shadow? She wasn’t always sure. She wasn’t sure they were, either.
“Where’s your partner in crime?”
He turned back to her, surprised. “What am I, my doctor’s keeper?”
“Yes,” she said.
That shut him up, at least for a second.
“I’m not sure,” he said finally. “I haven’t seen him.”
“You’ve been taking his shifts in post-op,” she said shrewdly.
“Some of them. Don’t worry, it’s not a selfless trade. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s taking all of mine next month, when the sun comes out.”
“Does he even know you’re taking these?”
“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” He shifted. “Margaret, I’m not even sure he knows what day it is. Besides, the colonel’s got him plenty busy. He’s in the doghouse as it is.”
“You’re a good friend.” She settled on the edge of Radar’s bed. Caught the soft ends of his blanket between her fingers. The rain pounded. “But you’re not helping him, you know. Stop messing around with the duty roster.”
“Sure thing, Margaret.”
“He’s not the only one who worries, you know.”
“I know, Margaret.”
“Why should he get to fall apart?” she wondered. A stray thread caught on the ragged edge of her thumbnail. “What gives him the right?”
“I’m not sure,” he started. “I’m not sure that’s what all this is about,” he said, and didn’t elaborate. Maybe he didn’t know how. “Margaret,” he said. He had a lovely soft voice when he wanted it to be. His daughter would be lucky. She’d come to him and he’d always have a soft voice and a smile for every season. “Margaret, you’re crying.”
“It’s just the rain,” she said.
In his sleep, Radar twitched. Margaret swallowed, resigned, and waited for the roar of helicopters.
*
He dreamed of choppers more than he dreamed of anything else, and wasn’t that funny? More than the field, which sometimes opened up to sea and sky and dropped his feet out from under him. More than Ma in her chair with her legs up by the fire, telling him about the farm and how the animals were getting on without him, which was too bad—he always liked that dream the best. Mostly, it was choppers—the sound of them, the way the sound moved, the way it pitched and whirled as they came real close, and the awful feeling in his gut when they were too far away for anybody else to hear them, yet.
The awful feeling was in his gut, now. He was on the edge of the minefield, a sea of muck, and Hawkeye was standing out in the middle, hands in his pockets. Mud on his boots. His dog tags glinted.
The awful feeling rose up his throat. He couldn’t say it. How could he say it? If he said it—
“Don’t worry,” Hawkeye said, taking a step. “I would never shoot the messenger.”
*
The operating room smelled even worse than usual. It was the damned rain—hammering down on their heads, rising up from the earth with great prejudice. The bodies arrived slimy with muck, drenched to their skin, and for that matter probably lousy with disease. The roof leaked. Every roof. Poor conditions made poorer. Every day challenged even his remarkable skills. Perhaps he would drown here—well, then they’d all see.
“This place is giving the Bay Area in the winter a run for its money,” Hunnicutt said, peeling his scrubs away. They clung damply to him, despite his best efforts. “I’ve never wanted so badly to be dry in my life.”
“What an incisive observation,” Charles remarked. “I suppose when the sun finally comes out, you’ll observe this for us as well, since we are all so obviously incapable of looking out the window.”
“Oh, I just assumed you got your butler to do that for you,” he replied cheerfully. Lopsided repartee. Pierce was out to lunch, and had been for days. Hunnicutt refused to follow his lead. In the vacuum left by his surliness, in fact, he’d doubled his efforts.
It would have been endearing, perhaps, if it wasn’t so incredibly annoying. Even as the thought crossed his mind, Hunnicutt was nudging Pierce along, where he’d settled formlessly—like particularly sullen ooze—against the bench. Peeling off his cap gleefully, untying his mask, half on his way to removing his shirt.
“Come on,” he cajoled. “My toddler’s more cooperative than you are. Lift your arms and get out of this thing so we can go grab some coffee.”
The coffee was clearly bait, and it almost worked.
“You’re right,” Pierce said, muffled by his shirt as it went over his head. “That sludge is probably solid enough we could just go up and grab it with our hands.”
“That’s the spirit,” Hunnicutt said. “Charles, sludge?”
“Some of us have rounds to make,” he said, throwing his used scrubs into the laundry hamper emphatically. “And tastebuds, for that matter.”
“Tastebuds?”
“Don’t look at me, I gave mine a mercy killing the first week I was here.”
“I think mine went on sabbatical.”
“Gentlemen—and I use that word in the barest sense of it—please, excuse me.”
“We’ll set his sludge aside. Time can only improve it.”
“Sludge to go.”
“He’s right, we could always deliver it to you, Charles.”
“Please.”
“Alright, alright,” Hunnicutt said, pulling Pierce to his feet. “We’ll leave you to it.”
“Charles.” Pierce stood, an unwitting pawn in Hunnicutt’s obvious gambit. The sullen edge retreated from him. “…Look after him in there, will you?”
“By ‘him’, you mean—”
“For heaven’s sakes, who else would it be?” Hunnicutt interrupted.
“—our erstwhile company clerk—?”
“—erstwhile? He’s not dead, Charles—”
“For that matter,” Hunnicutt pointed out, “he’s got a name, too. Or have you not bothered to learn it, yet?”
(As a matter of fact, it was true that he tended not to bother learning the names of the help.)
“I resent the implication that I would provide anything but an exceptional standard of medical care, regardless of the patient’s personal relationship to you,” he thundered. “For the record, last night’s development had nothing to do with me.”
Pierce stopped in his tracks.
“What development?” he demanded.
Out of Pierce’s sight, Hunnicutt was engaging him on a rather intimate level with only his eyes, but damned if he couldn’t quite decode the meaning.
“Now, don’t get yourself into a tizzy, Pierce,” he said. “The boy’s picked up a mild infection. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing to worry about,” Pierce said. He’d turned a rather alarming shade of white. “Nothing to worry about, he says. Hear that, Beej? It’s nothing to worry about.”
“That’s what I hear.” Hunnicutt was still trying to communicate with his eyeballs. “Tizzy, Charles?”
“Nothing to worry about. Why am I only just hearing about it?”
“Like I said, it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Still, don’t you think it’s the sort of thing a guy might like to know?”
Charles took a step back—not, of course, out of any fear for his personal safety, but merely to regain a more appropriate distance. Hunnicutt, ever a reasonable fellow, wedged his body in-between them, placed a hand on Pierce’s shoulder.
“I’m sure Charles just didn’t want you to worry,” he said pleasantly. “Right, Charles?”
Ah, yes, an ever-subtle step on his foot. Typical, of a Californian.
“I’m sorry I said anything. To be perfectly honest, there was some concern over your potential reaction.”
The pressure on his toes increased.
“Some concern,” Pierce said, lips bloodless. A little wild-eyed, all told. “Some concern?”
“I believe that’s what I said, yes.”
Good Lord, the man was so angry his breath was practically rattling in his throat.
“You,” he stuttered. “You—good-for-nothing—”
“Alright, alright,” Hunnicutt said, still wedged between them, now almost assuredly the only thing between him and the real prospect of bodily harm. Toes notwithstanding. “Everybody just—”
The door squealed behind them. Damp wafted in, on the trail of a particularly pungent mix of mud and cheap perfume.
“What the hell am I walking into, here?” Klinger wondered, without any real judgement. His head was carefully protected by a rain bonnet. “Listen, sirs, if you can step away from each other for a moment—”
Charles took another step back, with extreme prejudice. Klinger eyed him curiously.
“—there’s a cart full of villagers, just rolled in. They look real sick. Colonel said to add them to the pile.”
Pierce took a rattling breath and removed Hunnicutt’s hand from his shoulder. Then, he stooped away without another word. The door squeaked on its hinges in his wake.
“No jacket,” Klinger remarked. “Brave choice. I take it he’s on it?”
“Yeah,” Hunnicutt said quietly. “He’s got it. Better give him a hand, Klinger.”
“Sure thing.”
As Klinger swept off, trailing that disgusting perfume, Hunnicutt fixed him with a glare.
“Charles,” he hissed, “I’ve been trying to lure him into the mess tent for two days now.”
“He’s a grown man, not a stray cat.”
“And you’re a rat, Charles. The next time you startle him off, I’ll scratch your eyes out. Then we’ll see who’s the real mangy stray. You’d better hope I don’t have rabies.”
He brushed past him without another word, trailing damp and the inveterate scent of that lighter fluid they both drank. Even untouched for days, the smell lingered in their clothes, in their hair, in their pores. If you cut one of them open, the fumes alone would probably pose a fire hazard.
Miserable place. Everything stank, even the people.
God, how he would have liked to leave.
*
People came and went an awful lot, as the days wore on. It was a shame, though, how he couldn’t really see them so good without his glasses. They stayed blurry shapes until they got close. Lately, they even stayed blurry shapes. His glasses needed cleaning, only he wasn’t wearing them, so how did that make sense?
All he knew was that he was worried. He’d told Major Houlihan so, and she’d went to get the colonel, which had been real nice of her. Even blurry, she mostly looked the same. The colonel, too, really. People were mostly just shapes anyway, he supposed. Maybe it didn’t matter so much, how blurry they were.
“Colonel, sir, will they have a harvest, d’you think?” His voice was always so raspy, here. How could he be so dry, with all this water around? How could he be warm, with the damp that curled in under the door? “The farmers. The villagers, the—the people in the town. Has the rain washed it away?”
He thought of all those fields, flooded out, and the cattle up to their udders in muck, and the carts getting stuck in the mud and tears bubbled up behind his eyes. Stupid to cry like that, he knew better, he was a man, now, only even the colonel teared up sometimes, when a movie was real sad, or—or right now, even, though he couldn’t have said why.
“What’ll they do?” he wondered, tears leaking sideways down his face, itching at the corners of his eyes. “Oh, jeez, what’ll they do?”
“They’ll be alright, son,” Colonel Potter said. He leaned in—rain and cologne and that old-man smell—and the rough side of his thumb brushed at a tear and he looked away. Away from him. Well, he didn’t like to lie, so much. Everybody knew that about him. “You just think about getting better.”
“Their crops’ll drown. That’s what happens,” he rasped. “The soil gets too wet and nothing can breathe. Nothing can breathe, see, and so it can’t grow, and the crop yields—the crop yields—“
More tears slid sideways down his face, like he were upside down or sideways himself. Maybe he was. Maybe he was sideways, here, and he was just waiting for someone to put him right again. Only who would put him right? They were all sideways, too.
He wanted to ask if the minefield had been a dream, but he didn’t dare.
“Don’t you worry,” the colonel said. “The rain’ll stop. We’ve got good weather coming. They’ll be just fine.”
“No, they won’t,” said Radar, and the lie around them burst like a soap bubble. Maybe it was a relief, to have it burst. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He was sideways, after all. And you couldn’t depend on anything around here, lately, least of all the truth.
Colonel Potter met his eyes. He looked very tired.
“No,” he admitted, in that thin, old-man voice. “They won’t.”
*
Soldiers and villagers alike soon filled their beds. All the usual suspects: cholera, typhoid, dysentery. Disease spread in water like—well, like disease in water. He wasn’t so great with a metaphor. He wasn’t so great in the rain, either. What a disgrace, running around with mud tracked up your nylons! Nothing matched his rain poncho, and his hair kept poofing out of its set. Pure misery. Not to mention—and he wasn’t complaining, except for that he technically was—with the kid out of action, the entire camp had spiralled into chaos and anarchy. No one wanted to admit it, but that didn’t make it untrue. No mail for days, no paperwork, and whoever tried to step in and help quickly got the hell out of dodge, once they realized the magnitude of the task before them.
Klinger included, make no mistake. He wasn’t a paperwork sort of guy. The only details he cared to orient himself around were the minutiae of a nice topstitch, or which pearls were in season right now. It was just that—well, who was he kidding? He wanted to help. He didn’t want the kid to worry about how it was all gonna be when he got better. He ought to have been sleeping and resting, not trying to feverishly dictate duty rosters for the next four days to whichever poor nurse happened to be in the vicinity.
He was sleeping now, on account of it was the dead of night, and also he’d been drugged up to the gills.
“D’you think he dreams in lists?” Hawkeye wondered quietly, from where he’d stowed himself away in the corner like some sort of Dracula. Out of sight, out of mind, maybe, though he crept out every once in a while to stalk amongst the living and check their vitals.
“I hope so, sir,” he said. He was glad to be posted inside, for once, but post-op at night always gave him the willies. The low-light, the rasping breaths. People went at night, usually, when they went. Witching hour, or whatever they called it. The dead of night: when people got dead. The sound was worse, this week. Nobody breathed right in the damp. “Better than the alternative.”
“Yeah,” Hawkeye said. “Yeah, that’s right.”
He wasn’t so funny, this week. That was alright. You couldn’t be funny all the time. You had to run around some weeks with tears in your nylons and mud up to your knees. It wasn’t that, so much. It was more that he’d buried himself in typhoid patients and taken to skulking in corners and kept looking at everybody like he expected them to kick him in the shin.
Well, okay, and from what he’d heard, Father Mulcahy had tried, and so maybe that was justified. On the other hand, he was pretty sure Father had broken his toe in the process. Nobody had their head screwed on right this week.
“He’ll be okay,” Klinger said, pointing his head in the direction of Radar’s bed. “Right?”
“He’ll be just fine.”
Klinger had watched him check the kid over himself, but only once he was out for the count. Gentle hands on his forehead, quick and painless as he checked under the bandages, switched out the IV. Afterwards, he’d stopped and stared at the fabric cornflowers, looking baffled. Luckily, he hadn’t tried to put them in water—there was enough of that to go around, lately.
“You and him talk it out yet?”
He shook his head. “No, no. He’s doing better. I don’t want to upset him.”
“Think you’ve rung that bell already, sir.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said quietly, pressed into the corner. There it was again, that kicked dog expression. “I know.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“Why’d I—what, why’d I yell at him?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know,” he said, a little too easily. He stuck his hands under his armpits, like he was cold, only the damp creeping in was the warm kind, tonight, and he already had two sweaters on under his doctor coat. “I’m not always in the driver’s seat. Besides, it doesn’t matter. What kind of jackass yells at a guy when he’s down?”
“You don’t need me to tell you that, sir.”
“That ‘sir’ feels excessive.”
“I’m just covering my bases, you jackass, sir.”
“There it is.” The back of his head thumped against the wall. His breath rattled in his throat. “Nobody’s asked that, you know.”
“What, the why?”
“No, the when. Yes, the why.”
“Everybody knows you guys are buddies,” Klinger said, matter-of-fact. “Friends don’t lose it on each other for no good reason. Look, I don’t blame you for being worried. I had my heart in my throat this whole week.” He smiled. “Boy, my mother, when I used to scrape my knees, she’d swear a blue streak. Only figured out when I was older it was just her way of saying how scared she was.”
His darts weren’t quite landing, he could tell from the look on the guy’s face. Still, Hawkeye shifted in his corner, a tentative smile curling the corners of his mouth.
“You’re not such a bad friend yourself,” he said.
“Yeah, well,” Klinger said, heat rising to his cheeks. Mud drying on the backs of his nylons. Nobody had their head screwed on right this week, least of all him. Still, you had to try, right? “Don’t let it get around. I got a reputation to uphold.”
*
“Father,” he breathed. “Do—do cows go to Heaven?”
Rain sounded tinnily against the roof. The first day had been rather musical, but if he was honest, the noise was becoming rather tiresome. It seemed to drown everything out. Conversation, music—prayers. It blended into the chorus of rasping breaths surrounding them. A distinctly macabre symphony. Not the most restful of environments to recover in, although apparently despite it all, Radar was coming along nicely.
“Well, uh,” he said, patting Radar’s knee gently while he turned his gaze to the ceiling and thought. The question was so sincere, it deserved a sincere answer. “That, uh—it certainly raises some interesting theological implications.”
To his dismay, out of the corner of his eye, Radar’s expression crumpled. Crestfallen.
“You’re saying they don’t.”
“I, uh,” he fumbled. “Well, now, I don’t know if that’s—”
“You can just say so, Father. You don’t need to sugarcoat it or nothing, just ‘cause I’m sick.”
“I’m sure they do, Radar,” he lied, easily. Easily, God forgive him, and with no regrets. “They’re God’s creatures, too, after all.”
“It’s just I—I keep thinking of them drowning,” he said. “And I know you might say maybe it’s worse for people to drown, and of course it is, but at least when you’re a person drowning you can have a thought like, ‘oh, gee, I guess this is it, I’m drowning’. But when you’re a cow, you don’t know much of anything, and so isn’t that worse? You don’t know anything, and nothing’s your fault, but you die, and you don’t get to Heaven, anyway, because you didn’t know you even could. That’s not very fair, now, is it?”
“You know, Radar,” he said, tentatively. He wasn’t always sure he was strong enough for these sorts of conversations, but if he wasn’t, then—well, what was he good for? Not much of anything, these days, he sometimes felt. Not good for much of anything. “Rain—well, it’s only natural.”
Radar’s eyes shone. He shifted uneasily.
“I thought sometimes it rains ‘cause God wants it to,” he said softly. “To punish us.”
Father Mulcahy swallowed.
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Radar.”
“It’s not me that’s done it, it’s all of us,” he said, exhausted. “It’s all of us, being here. Bringing the rain down. I was so busy—so busy trying to think of what I could get out of this war, I never thought—well, I never thought, before—”
“Sometimes rain is just rain, my son,” he said, so gently that the sound on the roof nearly drowned him out.
Radar stared up at him. He looked, Father Mulcahy thought, distinctly unsatisfied. Wrung out. Betrayed, even, but he couldn’t have said why.
“Yeah,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “Yeah, maybe so. Maybe sometimes rain is just rain.”
His breath slowly evened out into sleep, as the rain sputtered on. When he was sure he was asleep, Father Mulcahy pulled the blanket up to his neck and stood, toe throbbing. Unsatisfied himself, though he couldn’t have said why.
When he turned to take a limping retreat, Doctor Hunnicutt came up behind him and took him gently by the elbow.
“You know, I’d be happy to take a look at that foot for you, Father,” he offered quietly.
“Oh, it’s quite alright,” he said sheepishly. “Truthfully, I’m worried I may have overreacted. I feel rather foolish. I’m not—not prone to violence.” He tucked a curled fist close to his chest. “Or at least I—I try not to be.”
“We all care about Radar,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Still. I wonder if I shouldn’t apologize.”
“He wouldn’t take it. He’d say there’s nothing to apologize for.”
“No,” he said quietly. “No, I don’t suppose he would.”
“You did him a favour, Father,” Doctor Hunnicutt said, guiding him towards a seat by the door, seemingly whether he liked it or not. For such a gentle grip, it was terribly unyielding. “If you hadn’t raked him over the coals, he would have done it to himself.”
“That doesn’t comfort me, particularly.”
“You think it comforts me?”
With no preamble, he settled him down and had his shoe and sock off before he could so much as question it. Gently, he prodded along his big toe with warm, dry fingers.
“I must admit—ow—I must admit, Doctor, you’ve managed to stay quite a reasonable middleman in all this.”
“Comes with the territory,” he said.
“The territory?”
“I’m a coward,” he said. “I don’t like to choose sides. Particularly,” and he slid his sock back on carefully, “when no one’s really right or wrong.” He grinned. “You lucky devil, you’re the proud owner of one bruised toe. No breaks. Just try to keep off it for a few days, and don’t go kicking anything else.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Really,” he said, determinedly sunny. “This’ll all blow over. The rain will stop, and everyone will make nice again. It’s just a matter of time.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard.”
“Oh, has the colonel been making the same rounds?”
“Let’s just say you’re both singing a similar tune.”
“Oh, well, then.”
When you looked closely at it, the smile, Father Mulcahy thought, was rather ragged. It would be kinder not to point it out. They were all doing their best, given the circumstances.
“Thank you, Doctor,” he said warmly. “I’m sure you’re right. And I know he won’t want to take it, but if you see Hawkeye, would you send him my way? I’d like to try, anyway.”
“Sure thing, Father,” he said, although something faintly uneasy crossed his face.
“Where is he, by the way?” Father Mulcahy stood gingerly. He left his shoe for later. His feet would only get wet anyway. The camp was so full of puddles that by now it was more of a lake. “I haven’t seen him around, lately.”
“Oh,” Doctor Hunnicutt said. “He’s around. Just not where any people are, unless they’ve got typhoid or a shrapnel problem.” He shook his head. “Why does everyone always assume I know where he is?”
“Because,” Father Mulcahy said gently. “You do.”
Behind them, in his sleep, Radar gasped. Doctor Hunnicutt sighed. Then, he smiled.
“And that,” he said, as the sound of choppers roared overhead, “is my cue.”
*
As if summoned by ritual, Hawkeye had appeared at the chopper pad, always more tangible, always more present than he seemed anywhere else. For days, he’d lurked at the edges of places, always drenched and on the borderline. Here, he was solid. Here, BJ could see him. In the light of the OR, he was even more terribly visible. A grim and silent shape as he worked, sharp around the edges. His hair didn’t curl when it was damp, it just clung to his forehead. Every so often, Baker leaned in to wipe at it without being asked.
“Terribly sweaty in your corner, Pierce,” Charles said, which brought Colonel Potter’s eyes up. For that alone, BJ found he couldn’t quite forgive him.
“You’re not exactly free of perspiration yourself,” he shot back, although it wasn’t precisely true. “Besides, don’t they have humidity in Massachusetts?”
Over Charles’ incredulous chortling, Colonel Potter scoffed. “You think this damp is bad? You should have seen the Argonne back in ’18. I think I’m still drying off.”
Deflect, distract. From what, he wasn’t totally sure.
Hawkeye didn’t look up. He only continued.
*
As the hours wore on, more ambulances rolled in and the rain finally gave way to a proper storm. With every crack of thunder, Margaret flinched. She’d watched for lightning and counted seconds as a little girl. Measuring distance, assessing risk. Here, she couldn’t afford the distraction. Every rumble came as a surprise.
“Margaret,” Hunnicutt had said quietly, a few hours in. “Why don’t we flip the next patient, so you can see out the window?”
He was always trying to solve everything. He hadn’t learned, yet, that not everything could be solved. Some things could only be endured. She’d shaken her head and got on with it. There was plenty to get on with. A deluge, to match the deluge. Mud-spattered boys, half-drowned and clammy, one after the other as the night dragged on. Pierce and Hunnicutt’s two-man show was still on standby, and so the only sound was the thunder and the rain and the murmur of voices. Sutures, suction, silk. Baker, trying in vain to get Pierce to take a sip of orange juice.
“Have mine for me,” she heard him mutter. “I know too much about how they make it.”
“Doctor, I didn’t see you in the mess today,” Baker insisted quietly.
“Well, exactly,” he replied raspily. “Don’t you know? That’s where they make it.”
It was the closest thing to a joke she’d heard out of him in days, and she found herself caught somewhere between relief and irritation. Predictably, the irritation won.
“Baker, let him be,” she said, over a roll of thunder. She swallowed sharply. “If he wants to die of dehydration, that’s his business.”
“It’d certainly be ironic,” Hunnicutt said, glancing up briefly. Worried, by the shape of his brow. Hands too occupied to linger on it.
“Well, you know what they say,” Pierce said, almost absently. Head down, hands at work. He hadn’t looked up for hours, she thought. Not once. “Misery loves irony.”
“Doesn’t it just,” Colonel Potter muttered.
And on it went, until they were done. There should have been daylight, but the storm broiled ahead, splattered raindrops against the windows, left the sun behind clouds.
“Next customer,” Pierce rasped, as they wheeled his last patient away.
“Hawk,” Hunnicutt said gently. “We’re fresh out.”
Finally, he looked up.
“Oh,” he said faintly, so pale it was hard to tell where the mask ended and his face began. “Too bad. I was just getting warmed up. For my next trick—”
Baker caught him around the arm before he could fall.
Hunnicutt jolted beside her, snapped off his gloves. “Hey,” he said sharply, clambering across the detritus of tables and abandoned equipment to reach him without a second thought. “You alright?”
“Sure, sure,” he said, waving him off, tearing his mask free. He let go of Baker, squeezed her shoulder in quiet thanks, bent to find some purchase on the operating table instead. His whole arm trembled. His breaths were so loud they nearly drowned out the rain. Margaret’s gut twisted with the wrongness of it.
“Good grief, son,” Colonel Potter said with a face like stone. “I never pegged you for the sort to make the same mistake twice.”
Pierce glanced up, surprised.
“Yeah,” he said softly. He blinked a few times, looking genuinely hurt. “Me neither.”
He peeled his gloves off and left, lopsided, hand trailing unsteadily against the wall. The outer door squealed and stayed open with a bang. Cold damp whistled in, and Hunnicutt turned back towards them, mouth working.
“Colonel,” Margaret began, skin prickling.
“Well, well,” said Winchester.
And Baker was looking at them all that way she did sometimes, that way all the other nurses did sometimes, like they were all crazy and didn’t they have any clue what was really going on? You only got a good view from the balcony, maybe that was it. Maybe when you were part of the circus, you couldn’t see the top hats for the elephants.
“Colonel, with all due respect,” she said. “He’s not bombed, he’s sick. I’ve been standing next to him for hours. It was like having my own private boiler, complete with the scary boiler noises.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake, Baker,” Margaret demanded. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything?”
Baker shifted uncomfortably.
“I thought you knew,” she said. “The way you chewed him out the other day for leaving, sir—”
Colonel Potter sighed and swiped his glasses off so he could grind his palm into his eye. Lightning snapped, and thunder followed, and Margaret flinched.
“Hunnicutt—”
“I’ll get him,” he said, already halfway to the door, already with his gown mostly off. “I’ll get him.”
*
He didn’t have to look far. For one thing, he’d left a trail of abandoned scrubs—hat, mask, gown. For another, he’d only made it a few steps before a puddle had gotten the best of him. BJ found him shuddering in the mud between the OR and the Swamp, cheek to the ground, resigned to his fate. In the faint light, his dog tags glinted. BJ stopped at the edge.
“What are you doing, Hawk?” he asked tiredly.
“Waiting for rain.”
“You’ll wait forever.”
“I hate it here,” he hissed into the mud, like a prayer, like air from a tire. “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it—”
“I know,” BJ said, and slipped and slid towards him without a care, muck up to his elbows, reaching for him. “I know, I know.” Reached for him, and with slippery hands, he pulled him close. Muddy hands at his heart, at his brow. Rain-slick fingers that lingered at his lymph nodes, brushed the line of his jaw while they were in the neighbourhood. “Baker was right. I could fry an egg on you. Come on,” he said. “Come on, let’s get you washed up.”
“I won’t come clean.”
“Sure you will,” he whispered. “Sure you will. We all will.”
*
In the end, he put up such a terrible fuss about being in post-op that they stowed him away in Radar’s cot, instead. What had that saying been earlier? Misery loves irony.
“I can’t understand it,” Potter had griped. “That Swamp of yours is much too wet, and we’ve still got a bed or two left.”
“Colonel,” Hunnicutt had said to him, brows knit together, so sincere in his belief that the reason was obvious to everyone. “He doesn’t want Radar to worry.”
Well, fine, and fair enough. Pierce liked corners, anyhow, all the better to skulk from, even if his legs hung off the end of the cot. It was warm and dry and they’d wrapped him in his own bathrobe. Maybe that was all that mattered. Warm and dry and quiet, especially now he’d shooed Hunnicutt and his snoring away. Earlier, the man had fallen asleep on the floor beside the cot, legs sprawled in front, hand on the IV like he was controlling the flow of it himself.
“Get lost, you mother hen,” Potter had told him, and he’d staggered up sheepishly, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “It’s the flu, not the plague.”
“It could be typhoid.”
“It’s not typhoid.”
“He’s been up to his neck in typhoid patients all week.”
“And you’re all vaccinated to hell and back, Hunnicutt,” he’d finally thundered. “So scram. I can keep an eye on him from here.”
And so he had—from his desk, at first, until Pierce’s fitful muttering had compelled him closer. He’d dragged his office chair beside the cot, and dragged the scotch with him, besides. It was the clink of his glass against the bottle that finally woke him.
“Can’t a guy rot in peace?” Pierce croaked, glassy-eyed, still fish-belly white. Every breath crackled. “Whatever happened to letting the dead rest?”
“Unfortunately,” he said, taking a sip, “I think you’ll find that’s against regulation, at least when it comes to surgeons.”
“It just figures.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Suspiciously clean.” He squinted. “Didn’t I take a mud bath?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to. For instance,” he said, “I’m loath to know what exactly compelled you to spend eight hours in surgery with your brains cooking in your skull.”
Pierce only blinked up at him, slowly.
“Dear Ann,” he rasped. “My colonel’s been giving me mixed-signals.”
Potter looked down at his glass.
“I was afraid of that,” he said.
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid that you’d take our talk a little too literally.”
“Oh, our talk,” he giggled. “Is that what that was? Sounded more like orders to me, sir.”
“And what orders would those be?”
“Be inhuman,” he said, terribly serious. Turning on a dime, always. Turning away from you, turning towards you. “Be a monument.”
“That wasn’t what I was saying, and I think you know it,” he replied, equally serious. “But if that’s what you heard, then I’m sorry.”
“What else could I hear?” Pierce shifted, uneasy, uncomfortable. He was always shifting, he was never still. Was he always uneasy, here? Was he always uncomfortable? What a question. Weren’t they all? “You know I’d stay in that operating room until my fingers fell off if I thought I had to.”
“I know.”
“I’d stay there until doomsday. I’d stay there until the Styx overflows.” His voice broke. “I’ll stay there until this war ends.”
There was no sense lying to him.
“You will,” he said.
“I won’t be a hero about it,” he whispered, exhausted. “And I won’t be sane about it, either. I can’t save him, and I can’t save you, and I can’t even save myself, so why should I have to pretend, huh? What right do you have to depend on me? I don’t even want to be here.”
“Nobody wants to be here, son.”
There was so much judgement in those watery eyes. He was missing something. They were all missing something, and they’d keep missing it.
“Right,” he said, betrayed. He rolled his head away, listless. “Right, sure.”
“And besides all that, you did save him. Or don’t you remember that part?”
“Oh, sure. I sewed up his skin and broke his faith.” He swallowed. A bead of sweat trailed slowly down his neck. “He was meant to be untouchable, you know.”
“Now who’s putting who on a pedestal?”
“I’m up to my elbows in guts seven days a week, but not his.”
“Everybody’s gotta grow up someday.”
“Not him.”
“Even him. Even you.”
“Colonel,” he breathed unsteadily. “I hope you leave younger than you came here.”
He closed his eyes and turned away.
***
“Radar,” Father Mulcahy said gently. “I appreciate the enthusiasm, really.”
“Well, pardon me, but that doesn’t sound like your ‘appreciate the enthusiasm’ voice, Father.”
“I don’t think Genesis is a particularly appropriate choice, that’s all. You’re still meant to be resting.”
“I’m feeling much better,” he protested, straining upwards onto an elbow. “Look, see?”
“Radar—”
“Just the part about the flood, Father,” he insisted. “Just that part.”
Father Mulcahy shook his head and put his bible under his arm. He leaned in. “What’s brought this on?” he wondered. “You’re not still…well, you’re not still worried about the rain, are you? Our good weather’s coming. They say it’s going to be warm.”
“I know,” Radar said, the fight draining out him. He sank back into the pillows, breathing hard. “No, I know. I’m not worried or nothing. Only I—I don’t know. I’m just thinking, that’s all.” He swallowed. “The war’s not just changing me, I’m changing it. And what right have I got, to change anything?” He closed his eyes, exhausted. “I just—well, I got to wanting it all to be easy, but maybe it’s not.”
“Few things here are.”
“…I yelled at him, too, y’know.”
Father Mulcahy smiled, fondly. His toe throbbed.
“I know,” he said.
“I wanted him to make it easy, and he wouldn’t.”
“He doesn’t, as a rule.”
“Will he come, d’you think? He is alright, isn't he? I dreamed—” His brows knit together. “Well. It was just a dream, I guess.”
Father Mulcahy leaned over and pulled the blanket up to his neck.
“He’s already been,” he said, skating delicately over the truth. Well, some conversations could be kept warm for later. Every ordained man worth his salt knew that much. “While you were sleeping. He doesn’t want to bother you. He really—he really does worry about you, you know. We all do.”
“I know,” he mumbled, eyes still closed. “Colonel Potter said so, too. I’ll talk to him, I promise.” Half-asleep already in a watery patch of sun. The rain still pattered against the roof. It was gentler, now. Petering off into nothing, the way storms often did. “He couldn’t bother me,” he sighed. “Gee, he couldn’t bother me. D’you really think it’ll be okay, Father?”
“Yes,” he said, and couldn’t tell if he was lying or not, God forgive him. He couldn’t always tell, anymore. Maybe that was the trick. Maybe that was the trick, after all. He smiled, to really sell it. “Yes. Of course I do.”