Listen
(Author's Note: A response to the prompt "sounds.")
The sounds, B.J. decided, were the worst part.
He'd arrived in Korea less than a week ago, and he was still adjusting. To the people, to the way of life, to the work, and most of all, to the sounds.
The sounds of war were at times unbearable. Sure, it was awful to see the wounds and the blood, to see all the ways the human body could be maimed by bullets and bombs. But as a doctor, he could handle it, because he was trained to fix all that. He could sew up the wounds, make the blood stop running, repair the holes, put everything back together.
The cries and screams of the injured, though… he had no defense against those. The sound of distant (or not-so-distant) artillery… he couldn't block that out. You heard it day and night. When the bombs were going off, when the fighting was close, there was no escaping it. You had to hear it, and hearing it also meant feeling it, because it vibrated all through your body.
The sounds were the worst.
A couple of days ago, when Hawkeye had asked him how he was doing, he confessed that the sounds were bothering him. Were driving him a little bit crazy, in fact. Were sometimes scaring him to death. Hawkeye had nodded but had offered no comfort. Hawkeye wasn't one to give false hope.
Sighing, he turned over in his bunk, restless and anxious.
"B.J.?" Hawkeye's voice from a few feet away.
"Yeah?"
"You're doing a lot of tossing and turning over there. You OK?"
He looked over at the shape that was Hawkeye in the darkness of the Swamp. "It's just the noises."
"It's quiet tonight," Hawkeye pointed out.
"I hear them anyway," B.J. said in all honesty.
There was a long pause, and B.J. thought his tentmate must have fallen asleep. He fidgeted again, causing his cot to creak.
Then he heard Hawkeye begin to softly sing, the sound sailing over to him, comforting and warming him.
"Somewhere over the rainbow…
way up high…
there's a land that I heard of…
once in a lullaby."
"Somewhere over the rainbow…
skies are blue…"
As Hawkeye continued to sing, B.J. felt the tension drain from his body. He closed his eyes and smiled, and it occurred to him that this was the first beautiful sound he'd heard since coming to Korea.