Disclaimer: If you believe anything to do with MASH is mine, book yourself into the 4077th and I'll get Sidney to come down.
Sometimes BJ felt that the four white walls of the OR held his whole world together. When time collapsed upon itself, and space seemed restricted to the distance between the patient and the instrument tray, BJ tended to forget. He forgot that soon the deluge of casualties would be over and he could go to the swamp and soak his aching feet; he forgot that when he got drunk he would experience a dreamless sleep; and he forgot that back home he had a young daughter that was finger painting and pestering Peggy as to where daddy was.
What BJ never forgot was that every time he stepped into the OR he was confronted with bodies that had been mutilated in a way that had never been described at med school. BJ considered himself a good surgeon, but when he looked at the young men who had been ripped apart by bullets he found himself fumbling with the scalpel. He knew he was perched on the edge of the abyss and one wrong move could result in the patient never recovering.
"Forceps," BJ directed, holding out his hand.
"Forceps," the nurse confirmed.
He looked up and found himself focusing on Hawkeye, the one doctor who never fumbled or dropped instruments. This was either due to the fact that Hawkeye had been in Korea so long that no injuries surprised him anymore, or because he was simply a better surgeon than the rest of them. BJ sincerely hoped that it was the latter.
"Fly me to the moon,
Let me play among the starts.
Let me see what spring is like-
On Jupiter and Mars.
In other words…"
There was the grating sound of metal on metal and Charles looked up, his eyes drawn into an intense frown. Beads of sweat dripped off his nose, and his rubber jowls were glistening, reflecting the glare of the light.
"Can't we turn that racket off? Maybe have a little culture in here? Or is that too much to ask?" Charles snorted, glaring at his nurse when she handed him his next instrument without him having to ask for it.
"I agree with Charles," Hawkeye piped up. "When I've patched this guy up I'm thinking of rearranging his facial features so that he looks like a Picasso."
"Or we could have them bleed to the rhythm of a Beethoven symphony," BJ added, finally picking up the small fragment buried in the abdominal muscles. BJ indicated that he was finished and asked for some surgical silk. For once, his gown was not stained with blood and he was glad; it seemed awful to discard gowns that were stained with the remains of someone's body. Blood. Muscle. Gristle.
"Next patient doctor," Margaret intoned as the corpsman dropped a body on his table. For someone that had never been in battle before he had been conscripted, BJ was becoming awfully good at deducing what had caused particular injuries. The man in front of his was clutching the twisted remains of his left leg: BJ guessed that he had stepped on a mine.
"I'm going to have to amputate," BJ gulped, trying to maintain a cool exterior. It was always a difficult decision to choose to amputate; many of the surgeons avoided it whenever possible, as they knew that when these men got home that would be maligned as oddities.
"Are you sure?" Potter asked, pausing in his work.
"This guy doesn't have much of a leg left to be amputated. Hawkeye, you want to help?" BJ replied. Hawkeye nodded, and told Charles to take over from him, changing gowns and holding out his hands for a new pair of gloves.
"New gown and gloves here," Hawkeye directed over the bustle of the other doctors.
"Pretty young to be living the rest of his life without a leg," BJ mentioned, wondering for a minute if there was anything they could do to ensure the young man kept his leg.
"But at least he'll always have an excuse for being legless." Hawkeye, now wearing a new gown and gloves, exposed the arteries and tied them off to make sure that there would be no major blood loss when the leg was removed.
They worked in silence, except for the occasional snide remarks, usually aimed at Charles. BJ talked less than his counterpart; his entire attention was focussed on the task in front of him. Hawkeye was working automatically, asking for instruments, cutting, stitching and flirting with nurses all at once, giving the impression he could have been cleaning a superficial wound.
The stump fell onto the table with an inglorious thud, before being picked up and taken off by an orderly. BJ proceeded to hold the flaps of skin in one hand and stitched them together with the other, suddenly filled with hatred for the North
Koreans that had placed the mine resulting in an amputation; biting burning hatred that this kid would never have the opportunity to run and skip and jump. To through eggs at a teacher's car and scamper off down the street. To get down on one knee and propose to his girlfriend.
The last patients had been attended to and the doctors moved out of the OR, stretching their legs and trying to breathe in as much fresh air as possible.
"I think that a belt of brandy and some Beethoven is required after that session, gentleman," Charles announced, moving swiftly off to the Swamp. "May I suggest that you find alternative arrangements so that you don't disturb me foe some time?"
"And to think we spent all that time dirtying the place up for you," Hawkeye said, pulling BJ's elbow to direct him to the Mess Tent. "Some people are so hard to please."
The two mean walked in silence, there feet following the same path that they did every day, and BJ thought that maybe it wasn't the death that everyone hated in Korea; it was the monotony. Or maybe it was both. The fact that you walked to the Mess everyday before casualties were announced and you took the same path to the OR, knowing that there would be some kids that wouldn't survive no matter what you did.
"What's on your mind?" Hawkeye asked, opening the door of the tent. "Cat got your tongue? No that's the cook."
If Hawkeye had expected some biting witticism in reply then he was sadly disappointed.
"Did you care when that kid had his leg taken off?" BJ questioned, looking his friend straight in the eye.
"What do you mean, do I care? As in do I pity him or what?"
"Do you care?" BJ stubbornly repeated the same sentence, as if repetition was the key to understanding.
"BJ, what you've got to understand is that he was one of the lucky ones. Yes, he lost his leg, but he's still alive." Hawkeye picked up two coffee mugs and filled them, handing one to BJ. "It's cold."
"Lucky? Think about all the things he'll never be able to do! He'll be looked at as if he's a freak, this man coming home without a leg."
"What about all those kids that go home missing a lung, or a kidney, or with internal injuries that mean they can't ever exert themselves? What about Barlow who was in last week that had those fragments in his lower abdomen? He'll never have children," Hawkeye asked, sipping his drink and gazing at his friend.
"But you can't see those things. They're not different. They're not going to be judged."
"Humans are the most adaptable species on the planet. Chuck a group of people in a lake full of jelly and in a hundred years they'll have gills that breathe through gelatine. It seems bad, but they'll all adapt and get used to it," Hawkeye sighed. "I don't like it any more than you do, Beej."
Suddenly BJ felt his insides collapse as if someone had pricked with a pin. "I know. I'm just so angry. I'm angry for them and the things they'll never do. Hell, I'm angry about the fact that I'm over here and Peggy and Erin are there and I'm missing out. I miss them like someone's cut my arm off.That's a kind of amputation, isn't it? Familias removalis?"
"Sometimes the worst injuries are the ones that you can't see." Hawkeye closed his eyes, and rubbed at his temples, probably imagining the nurses that he would be seeing later, as he tried to forget that tomorrow would be exactly the same as today.
And remembering the automatic way Hawkeye had treated those patients, BJ realised that sometimes the invisible injuries were the ones that did the most damage.
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