Summary: It's a little rough, and it's just a few ponderings from Hawkeye. Interpret it any way you wish...
That's What I Get
Whenever I hear the chopper blades or hear the horns of the buses or jeeps carting in boys fresh from an ambush (which is the only thing that this 'Police Action' seems to provide a surplus in) my stomach clenches, my heart constricts and I want to run and hide under my covers. Not in the Swamp... in Maine. Just put up a sign that says Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce is not here... The doctor is out. But I can't run and seek solace in the dark, away from the people that depend on me to get them out of Korea alive. Or as close to it as possible, anyway. That's what I get for being a part of this damned war.
Whenever I hear a serious silence fall in the operating room, my heart just about stops beating, and so does my breath. It's because I'm trying to make someone else's heart beat and give them the breath I deny myself. And it's because I know that my fellow doctors... my friends... you are doing the exact same thing. We see the wounds, we feel the warm blood, we take out the disease that is war piece by metallic piece, and sew the tattered bodies back together. But we can't run from it, no matter how much we want to. I can't run from it, no matter how much my sanity's survival instinct kicks at me until I want to scream. That's what I get for being a doctor.
But then, I will look up from a patient and meet your blue eyes from across the room for what would probably be the millionth time in the seemingly never-ending OR session. A joke - from you or me, no one really knows the difference - breaks the silence. My stomach relaxes and my heart begins to slowly move the blood through my body again. Your eyes are serious (as they usually are) above the mask, but I can see the smile lines on the edges of them. I can picture your perfect grin and it causes me to grin back. It's enough to get me through another four hours of meatball surgery to when we're sitting, exhausted, back in the Swamp. That's what I get for having you as a friend.
It's usually after we take off the blood-stained scrubs and are both sitting as comfortable as we can in the Swamp, lighter fluid in hand, that everything from the past 24 hours starts to slowly become an intangible monster to me. Something that I'm afraid will grab a hold of me in the dark and never let go. And you know that. That's why you steer the conversation to the meaningless, to the absurd. It's why I let you. And why I join in happily. You do it to chase your own monsters away, I know you enough to know that - but from the look in your eye, from the gentle touch on my shoulder or my back... I know that mostly it's for me. Because you love me almost as much as I love you. Because of that love, I usually forget. But the nights that I can't completely forget... you just hold me. In this small, war-torn part of the world where we can't give each other much, it is your gift to me. That's what I get for loving you.
But I'm not as selfish as I make myself sound. The nights that you can't forget - or even the nights where you can - I can hold you just as well. That's what you get for loving me...
Eh... whadaya think?? Good, bad... ugly??