Title: Live and Die on This Day
Characters: Father John "Dago Red" Mulcahy/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Rating: MA; Hurt/Comfort
Summary: When the camp loses one of their own, Father Mulcahy finds himself unable to console a grieving and angry Hawkeye Pierce through conventional methods, and must find another way to get through to the distressed doctor.
Author's Note: Based on the characters portrayed by Donald Sutherland and Rene Auberjonois from MASH (1970), the original film production. The title comes from the poem quoted by Liam Neeson in The Grey (2012). Great movie, by the way.
And, as always, please ignore any typos. I don't always catch them right away. Thanks for reading. -RW
Thunder rolled across the heavy grey clouds covering all of South Korea. Off in the distance, a flash of lightning sliced through the air. It had been raining non-stop for three days at the 4077th, turning the earth to thick, sticky mud and creating ankle-deep puddles out of potholes. It was wet and humid and miserable, and the only thing worse than the weather were the causalities that seemed to be coming in at regular intervals.
As fighting in the area grew heavier day-by-day, fear that the Chinese would take Old Baldy weighed down on everyone. The front line of the war had always been roughly three miles from the 4077th MASH—give or take a mile or two depending on which side had the advantage. Whenever the line shifted closer to the unit, it was time to bug out. If the Chinese took Old Baldy, it would mean a permanent bug out for the 4077th until the United Nations could claim it back, but by that time the personnel could all be reassigned.
Tension was mounting, and every solider from their side that came through the camp brought a little grimace to the faces of the Double Natural.
The camp's chaplain, Father John "Dago Red" Mulcahy had been one of the few who hadn't really cared about 'sides' of the war when it came to casualties. A body was a body, and all were children of God. To him, pain and suffering looked the same on the faces of allies and enemies alike, and it was his job to provide comfort in whatever form it took.
As a fresh round of casualties made their way into the camp, Dago hurried out from his tent to assist wherever he was needed. He'd learned enough triage and wound care over the last year to know the serious wounds from the superficial ones. One of the nurses he'd befriended had once told him that if he saw a lot of blood-soaked packing on a wound, then Dago's first priority should be to apply pressure, then pray. He'd laughed at the advice at first, but had quickly learned she hadn't been kidding.
Dago came across a young Korean boy who was lying on stretcher. The skin on one side of his face was charred, blistered and bleeding, but the most serious wound seemed to be the boy's belly. Dago knelt down in the mud beside the boy and placed his palm flat against the thick pads of gauze covering his abdomen. The boy groaned in pain, and Dago heard a slight squish as blood pressed out under his hand.
"It's alright," Dago told him gently, not knowing if the boy spoke any English. "You're at the 4077th MASH."
"D-Dago…Red…" the boy managed weakly, his slightly open eyes fixed on the priest.
A chill ran through Dago as he looked down at the boy who had spoken his nickname. No one beyond those at the 4077th knew him as Dago Red. The priest felt the urge to vomit as he truly saw the boy for the first time. "Ho-Jon…oh, God… Ho-Jon…"
The priest looked up, squinting against the rain that hit him in the face, and spotted one of the doctors. "Hawkeye!"
Hawkeye Pierce had been busy assessing a seriously wounded kid when he heard the distress in Dago's voice as he called out to him. To hear the normally unflappable priest suddenly so flapped filled Hawkeye with anxiety and he looked to the nurse beside him. "Get him prepped and on a table—I don't care whose."
The surgeon spun around and quickly spotted the priest through the driving rain, crossing over to him. He could see Dago's hand stained with red as the priest firmly applied pressure to Korean boy's abdomen. Dago's face, however, was what drew the doctor's attention. The look of absolute horror shook Hawkeye. The doctor knelt down across from Mulcahy, but before he could say anything, Dago spoke.
"It's Ho-Jon…"
The words slammed into Hawkeye and he nearly fell backwards in his own shock as he looked down at the unrecognizable face of Ho-Jon Kim, a young Korean boy who had worked in the camp as a house boy before he'd been drafted into the South Korean army. Hawkeye had been particularly taken with Ho-Jon, and had written to his Alma Mater in the states to try and get Ho-Jon accepted to the college. Ho-Jon was one of the few South Koreans who had possessed a proper education. The dean of the college had written back saying that the college would accept him if Hawkeye found a way to send the boy overseas. It had been Dago Red who had thought up the idea of making a camp-wide pool to get the funds, but before they'd gotten enough money, Ho-Jon had been drafted and all of Hawkeye's hopes for the young boy had been ripped away.
A lump formed in Hawkeye's throat as he pushed the priest's hand away and carefully lifted the edge of the gauze. "I thought I told you not to get wounded."
"You fix me up, Hawkeye?"
"You're damn right I will," Hawkeye choked, looking up at the priest who was watching him anxiously. Hawkeye motioned for Dago to come with him, not wanting to talk over Ho-Jon. They took a few steps away from their wounded friend and Hawkeye grasped Mulcahy's elbow for stability as he leaned in. "Stay with him for now. I'm going to get the corpsmen over here to get him inside right away."
"Is he going to make it, Hawkeye?" The priest couldn't help but ask.
"I don't know… Put in a good word with your boss for me."
"Consider it done."
Dago watched Hawkeye turn and run towards the OR, mud and water splashing up under his boots. The chaplain sank back down next to Ho-Jon, putting pressure against his abdomen again as he closed his eyes to pray.
Moments later two young men ran over and took hold of either end of the stretcher. One of the boys murmured an apology as they whisked Ho-Jon away mid-prayer, but that didn't stop Dago from finishing the words. He took a brief moment to collect himself before he looked around at the other wounded still lying in the rain. He hated that the pre-op ward wasn't big enough to accommodate everyone at once, but he was at least thankful that—while wet—it wasn't cold.
Once all the wounds had been assessed outside and the minor ones tended to, Dago headed inside, peeling off his drenched rain slicker and hanging it up in the changing room as he grabbed a face mask and headed into the OR.
"Sponge," he heard Hawkeye say tightly. Even halfway across the room, Dago could see the sweat on Hawkeye's brow.
"Sponge, doctor." A nurse answered.
The rest of the OR was almost deadly quiet, the other doctors working on their own patients but attention honed into what Hawkeye was doing. The air was charged with anticipation as everyone held their breaths. Dago carefully stepped towards the table, his own heart racing in his chest.
"Hurry up, Hawkeye," Ugly John, the gas passer, warned from the head of the table. Dago had learned that those words were a cryptic way of saying they were losing the patient.
"I'm going as fast as I can." Hawkeye snapped.
Dago saw the slightest tremble in Hawkeye's hand as he worked to repair the damage. It was that tell-tale sign that told the priest the doctor wasn't going to be able to save him. He discerned that Hawkeye knew it too, but was determined to do the impossible. Dago prayed for a miracle.
"Come on, baby…" Hawkeye pleaded quietly with Ho-Jon. "Just a few more minutes. Stay with me just a few more minutes."
Dago's eyes flicked to Ugly John's face, watching the man's jaw clench and unclench anxiously. The anesthesiologist was shaking his head gently. "He doesn't have that much time, Hawke—"
"GIVE ME the time." Hawkeye growled. "Do your goddamn job and keep his ass alive until I can fix him up!"
"What do you think I'm doing over here? Playing canasta!" Ugly John roared back, making Dago jump slightly at the anger in his voice.
"KNOCK IT OFF!" Henry Blake, Lieutenant Colonel and commander of the 4077th, brought silence once again to the tense room.
Dago watched Hawkeye's shoulders rising and falling rapidly as the doctor panted, then he noticed Hawkeye's hands had stopped working. In almost the same instant, Ugly John pulled the stethoscope from his ears.
"He's gone…we lost him."
Tension broke into sadness at the news, but those still working knew they couldn't stop to grieve. Hawkeye's face, half hidden behind the white mask, and eyes obscured by amber-tinted lenses, was unreadable, but Dago cold feel waves of anger radiating off of the man.
"No…" he growled, throwing down the instruments and locking his hands together over Ho-Jon's sternum as he started doing chest compressions. "Don't you die on me, Ho-Jon. Don't you die on me!"
"Hawkeye…" Ugly John was shaking his head again. "He's dead, Hawk. You're not going to bring him back."
Hawkeye refused to listen, and instead told one of the nurses to bag him. Dago could see the hope in the woman's eyes as she complied, knowing that if anyone could save Ho-Jon at this point it would be Hawkeye Pierce. The tension mounted once again in the room as Hawkeye continued to perform CPR on the boy, but after three minutes, it was Trapper John McIntyre who ended it.
"Close for me," he murmured to the nurse, then turned around and gently grabbed Hawkeye's shoulders, pulling the surgeon back from the dead Korean boy.
"No!" Hawkeye fought to get away from Trapper, but the other man held tight.
"He's gone, Hawk." Trapper said simply, albeit sadly.
Peirce stood rigidly in Trapper's grasp, his eyes fixed on Ho-Jon as he tried to accept that he had lost this fight with death. A strangled sob escaped the surgeon and he ripped free from Trapper, kicking the instrument tray as hard as he could, sending instruments flying as the tray and everything on it clattered loudly to the ground. Hawkeye stormed out of the OR, punching one of the plywood walls with all of his might for good measure along the way and leaving a fist-sized dent in the wood. The others stared after him for a long minute before resuming their work.
"Henry?" Trapper said, obviously asking for permission to go after his friend.
"How many waiting?" Colonel Blake asked to no one in particular.
"Six critical, four that can wait." Someone answered.
"I can't be down two surgeons," Blake told Trapper regretfully. Pausing in thought, Henry queried, "Padre?"
Dago looked at Henry but knew what he was going to say. "I'll see to Hawkeye."
"Thanks, Red." Trapper said softly, looking at Ho-Jon's lifeless body before taking a deep breath and calling for the corpsmen.
"Wait!" Dago called out, making the others look at him. "I need to pray for him first."
Again the room fell silent as the priest prayed for the boy. Dago had known that Ho-Jon was a Buddhist rather than Catholic, and so he asked God to help the boy along his journey into the afterlife, rather than specifically asking for God to take him into Heaven. The silence remained as Dago nodded to the waiting corpsmen, then turned to leave in search of Hawkeye.
The camp grounds were deserted in the mid-day downpour, with all personnel either in the OR or taking shelter inside from the rain. Dago had a strong feeling that he wouldn't find Hawkeye inside anywhere, and let his feet guide him to the most likely place the doctor would be. In his quest to seek out the surgeon, Dago had forgotten to get his rain slicker, and was already soaking wet by the time he reached the river that ran along the outskirts of the compound. Usually little wider than a small creek, the river was swollen now from all of the rain.
As expected, sitting on the shoreline, was Hawkeye—knees drawn up and arms hugging his head. His white scrubs were splattered with mud and blood, and soaked straight through. The priest approached him slowly, wondering if Hawkeye could hear him over the sound of the rain. When he was two feet away, he finally spoke.
"Hawkeye?"
The doctor didn't answer, and Dago lowered himself to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with the other man, the slightest of touch between them. Though Hawkeye remained quiet, Dago could tell that he was crying, and so he simply sat there, offering solace by his mere presence.
"I failed him." Hawkeye finally said in broken voice.
"You didn't," Dago countered softly, but surely. "His injuries were too severe, Hawkeye…you know that."
"I told him I was going to fix him."
"You did the best you could, Hawkeye."
"My best wasn't good enough." Hawkeye snapped, his head coming up as he looked at the priest with utter self-loathing. Hawkeye had taken off his glasses and Dago could see the redness rimming his steel-blue eyes from the force of his tears. "What good am I as a doctor if I can't save the ones who matter?"
"The ones who matter?" Dago trailed off in disbelief at the statement. Anger surged through the mild-mannered priest and he looked at Hawkeye with indignation. "How dare you!"
"Excuse me?" Hawkeye narrowed his eyes.
"How dare you demean and devalue the lives of all the other men fighting this war. The men who have been irremediably wounded; other men who have died! We were all terribly fond of Ho-Jon, Hawkeye, and we're all devastated that he's gone, but who the hell are you to say which lives are the ones worth saving?"
"I'm the goddamn surgeon that was dragged into the goddamn war and forced to do the goddamn impossible! That's who I am! I'm the one who stands there day after day, night after night, sometimes 24 hours straight, covered head to toe in the blood of innocent boys, elbow-deep in their lower intestines, working my goddamn fingers to the goddamn bones trying to save their goddamn lives so the goddamn army can send them back to the goddamn front line again! Was Ho-Jon more important than those other kids on the table right now? You're goddamn right, he was! We fucking knew him, Dago! He lived here! He was one of us! He had a goddamn future!" Hawkeye's tirade broke at the end as he dissolved into another round of heart wrenching sobs.
The priest knew that Hawkeye's rant was emotionally charged, but he also didn't doubt that Hawkeye truly believed in what he was saying. That revelation made Dago feel very torn about the man next to him. He wanted to give Hawkeye comfort, say something that might change the way he felt and soothe the pain, but Hawkeye's claims angered him. He knew Pierce was young—barely even thirty—and impassioned by injustice but that was no excuse for his dismissal of others who had come before Ho-Jon and would continue to come now that he was gone.
"You are a phenomenal doctor, Hawkeye." Dago finally said, some of his own aggravation sullying his comforting tone. "I've seen you save lives that were nearly forfeit the moment they arrived in this camp. You are talented…but you're not God. You don't get to say who lives and who dies. You don't get to assign a person's worth simply because you know them personally…and you should be ashamed of yourself for thinking so."
Hawkeye's tears had dried once again, but the bitter look of loathing remained on his face, indicating that he disagreed with the chaplain.
Dago shook his head sadly, water drops flicking off the ends of his wet mop of hair. "I'm so disappointed in you, Hawkeye."
Hawkeye looked at the priest and gave a harsh, humorless laugh. "The disappointment of a priest means very little to me, Father."
The derisive way in which Hawkeye spat out Dago's title made the chaplain bristle with outrage. He sat there for a long moment, dumbfounded by Hawkeye's cold detachment. There were a million things vying to be said on the tip of his tongue, but Dago managed to hold back his anger, swallowing the spiteful words before he finally managed to find a neutral tone. "It's obvious you need some time to grieve alone. If you'll excuse me, there are others—boys who were saved—that probably have a greater need for comfort than you do, my son."
Dago hadn't intended to let his anger seep in through his words, but he couldn't help but feel slightly justified by the final remark as he climbed to his feet and headed back to camp, leaving the surgeon alone with his thoughts in the pouring rain. Dago trudged back through the mud to the OR, pulling a pair of dry scrubs off the shelf and changing into them. He grabbed a towel and briskly rubbed it over his hair to help it dry, then picked up a new face mask and went back into the OR. The numbers were dwindling quickly as they carefully hurried through the remaining surgeries. Henry looked up as Dago entered and did a double take at the priest's attire.
"How's Pierce?" He asked.
Dago saw Trapper turn slightly at the mention of Hawkeye, obviously eager for the report. Nothing a night of boozing won't cure. Was the first thought that popped in the priest's head. Forgive me, Father… Was the next. "I think, perhaps, that Hawkeye would respond better in the company of friends." Was what he said out loud.
"Don't worry, Dago," Duke Forrest said from the table next to Henry. "We'll take care of him."
"Yes…well…" Dago paused for a moment, trying to find the right words for the situation. "Good luck."
All eyes followed the chaplain as he crossed to the other side of the room and went through the doors to the post-op ward.
TBC
Into the fray once more,
Into the last good fight I'll ever know.
Live and die on this day.
Live and die on this day...
-From The Grey (2012)