I know I should be working on Transplant, but whenever I watch a post-WTK episode of M*A*S*H I have to wonder how it would go in the Jeepverse (in which Hawkeye manages to catch up with Trapper, who chooses to stay behind), so I've decided to continue the Fic That Shall Not Be Named (it's embarrassing!) as a series. Enjoy!
Colonel Sherman Potter's newest unit, the 4077th MASH, was strange, to say the least. A Major who disappeared the moment he was ousted as CO and who wasn't worth his salt as a surgeon anyway. A Corporal who knew what was happening before it happened. Another who wore dresses just like his wife's. Two Captains who drank like fish and held barbequeues in the latrine.
And whoever the hell the man stood with them was.
He closed the files on Captains Pierce and Hunnicutt and looked him up and down. "Ad who would you be, son?"
"Captain John F.X. McIntyre." Like his compatriots, McIntyre seemed incapable of standing up straight.
"Well, I have no record of you."
"Ah." Hunnicutt remarked, nodding sagely. "That would be because he was discharged."
Sherman fixed an eye on the apparent civilian. "Then what the hell are you still doing here?"
"Couldn't live without him." Piece smirked, laying a hand on McIntyre's shoulder. "Beej and I intercepted him, tied him up and brought him home with us."
"You know about AWOL?" McIntyre asked. "Well, I'm PWOL. Present without leave."
"You have a family, McIntyre?" He asked.
"Yes, sir." McIntyre nodded, a pained expression on his face.
"Then take the next flight out. Go home where you're needed." His voice softened.
McIntyre swallowed and shook his head. "I can't."
As it turned out, McIntyre (or 'Trapper', as the rest of the outfit called him) was a damn good surgeon. A credit to the army, even if his conduct was appalling by military standards. Truth be told, Sherman had never had much patience for people who went around enforcing such things.
But the mystery remained. Dr McIntyre had a chance to get out of the living hell he and every other member of the US army were condemned to, and yet he hadn't taken it. What sort of horse's patoot passed up something like that? He had a life to go back to, and he clearly missed it, so why was he staying in South Korea?
The answer came after his inaugral shift in OR, when he found himself drunk on homemade gin from a possibly illegal distillery in the filthiest tent in the country. 'The Swamp' was perhaps the most appropriate name that any place in history had been given.
McIntyre had fallen back onto his cot in a state of intoxication earlier on, and Pierce had landed on top of him a moment later after getting up and seemingly forgetting how to walk. That in itself would have been unremarkable, but when Sherman looked back at them after a few minutes, the two appeared so entangled he couldn't quite work out where one ended and the other bagan, and he was sure it wasn't entirely due to the alcohol blurring his vision.
Hunnicutt appeared completely unfazed by the pair, so he didn't feel the incident was worth mentioning.
His suspicions were confirmed the very next day as he passed by the supply tent and moved to enter. He didn't see it was definitely them, but the voices from the other side of the rack of shelves were unmistakeable. It was Pierce and McIntyre, alright, and he was certain their activities violated all sorts of military regulations.
He backed out of the tent and closed the door. They weren't hurting anyone, and he knew full well what would happen if he put them on report. He'd lose two of his best men, and the men in question would face the end of everything they knew.
Best just to leave it. Heaven knows war caused enough pain; was it so wrong for the two to have some form of comfort?