Reentry

(Author's Note: This can be considered a sequel of sorts to "Unanswered Question," but it can also stand alone.)

Reentry:
The act of going back to a prior location.
In medicine: Return of the same impulse into an area of heart muscle that it has recently activated.

Hawkeye had been home from Korea a little more than two weeks when the phone rang. He couldn't say that things were back to "normal" for him (what was "normal" anyway?), but he had fallen into a fairly comfortable routine already, and he figured that would lead to normal…eventually. He had to hope so. He still woke up in the middle of most nights believing he was in the Swamp, thinking he could hear the breathing of his sleeping tentmates, even though he was actually in his own bedroom and alone. He still had the occasional nightmare about bloody soldiers spread before him on litters, or of bombs going off too close for comfort, or of chickens clucking on buses. But on the whole, he felt like he was adjusting more quickly than he imagined he would. Becoming more like the civilian he'd been than the Army doctor he hoped to forget.

So when the phone rang, and he picked it up and said "Hello," he wasn't really expecting it to have anything to do with his time at the 4077th.

"I can't stop thinking about you," said B.J.'s voice from 3000 miles away. No "Hello," no "Hawkeye, it's B.J.," no preamble of any kind. Just those six words.

The world fell out from under Hawkeye. His heart sank and he closed his eyes, at first not knowing how to respond, but then saying without much thought, "You will."

"No I won't," was B.J.'s immediate reply, and Hawkeye realized that they were not just picking up where they'd left off two weeks ago, when they said goodbye or something like it back in Korea. Clearly there had been something pretty significant going on in B.J.'s mind since then, which was understandable since there'd been some things going on in Hawk's as well.

There was a silence as Hawkeye considered where to take this conversation. Joking wasn't going to work, and he wasn't in the mood for that anyway. His heart was beating hard and his legs suddenly felt unreliable. He dropped into the nearest chair.

"Hawkeye? You still there?"

The silence had gotten awkward, but Hawk still didn't know what to say, and so he did the cruelest thing he ever remembered doing. He said, "You'll be OK, B.J.," and hung up the phone before another word could be spoken.

Feeling instantly terrible, he nearly dialed his friend back to apologize and talk the night away. But he forced himself out of the house instead, so that when the phone rang again, he wouldn't be there to hear it.

As the days passed, Hawkeye started to forget the call and how dismissive he'd been. He'd beaten himself up about it at first, but then convinced himself he'd done the most reasonable thing out of all his options. OK, so maybe not the most reasonable—if you can't talk honestly with your best friend, who can you talk to?—but for the time being, he needed to distance himself from B.J. Or rather, he needed to make sure B.J. stayed distanced from him. Whatever the hell was going on, they would get past it with time.

But then B.J. called again, and this time his first words were, "Don't you dare hang up on me again."

Hawkeye felt himself being torn into pieces by a desperate voice on the other side of the country. "I think we need time, Beej. Pick up your life where you left off, enjoy your wife and daughter. My God, they were all you thought about over there. You and I need to disconnect…not forever, but for a little while. OK? I would think you'd had enough of Hawkeye Pierce after all the time we spent—"

"Maybe you didn't hear me the first time. I can't stop thinking about you. You are everywhere…in the grocery store, in the park where I'm walking with Erin, in church on Sunday—"

"That last one doesn't seem very likely—"

"What am I supposed to do, Hawkeye?"

"I already told you. Enjoy your family, try to get back to your old life. It'll happen, give it time, Beej. None of us will get over the trauma we just went through in a matter of weeks or even months."

"Except I'm not talking about the war, or Korea, or blood and death and artillery going off around us. I'm talking about you. And me." A pause, a sharp intake of air, and then this rush of words, "I'm in love with you. My God, I fell in love with you, and how crazy is that? All the time we had over there and I never once realized it, but after you were gone, after we were both heading home, that's when I saw…that's when it hit me. I'm home with my wife and daughter but my mind is far away. Not just sometimes, Hawkeye. Every moment of every day. They're being so patient with me…well, Erin doesn't really see that there's anything wrong, but Peg is trying to be so brave and patient, thinking I'll adjust soon and everything will be fine, but it's not about me coming home from war and maybe I just need to get my feet back under me. It's got nothing to do with the war, or with having been gone for years. It's me wanting you, wanting to be with you, feeling lost without you." There might have been more that he intended to say, but his words gave way to tears.

Hawkeye could only swipe at his own eyes and wait it out while his friend cried on the other end. If he tried to speak, he wasn't going to be heard, and he had no idea what to say anyway. After B.J. finally muttered an "I'm sorry" as his voice came back to him, Hawkeye took great care with his response. "B.J., you know I can't let you destroy your marriage. Whatever you're feeling now, whatever we're both feeling," he allowed, and he was aware it was the first time he was acknowledging any kind of reciprocation, "we have to move past it. What I said before, I know it's true…you'll be OK." He shut his eyes and summoned the courage to once again hurt the man on the other end of the line. "The phone calls? They stop right here. Forget about me." His own words had a finality to them that was already filling him with despair, and he panicked and back-pedaled a little, "I'm sorry, we'll talk again, I promise, but we need to let some time go by. All right?"

No answer for a long time. Hawk was thinking maybe B.J. had hung up when finally he heard, "OK," very faint and not at all convincing. "Bye, Hawkeye."

"Bye, Beej." But he was speaking to a dial tone.

Colonel Potter used to say that he thought the old adage "absence makes the heart grow fonder" was a load of buffalo bagels. In the months that followed that last phone call, Hawkeye found the adage to be a serious understatement. He knew he was the one who'd insisted on the "disconnection," as he'd put it. But the silence from California was driving him crazy. At night, as he lay sleepless in bed, he imagined that B.J. had completely forgotten about him, was back to being obsessed with his wife and daughter, was maybe even working on baby number two. Hawkeye himself couldn't find the strength to get back to dating, though his dad was after him all the time to get out of the house more. Months after the war, and Hawk still could not define "normal."

He had fallen in love with B.J. Hunnicutt long before Beej had his own epiphany after they parted. When exactly it had happened for Hawkeye, he couldn't say. Somewhere in the midst of the practical jokes, the endless OR sessions, the drinking binges and the long, lazy conversations in the Swamp in the middle of the night. Even when the two of them didn't see eye to eye, he had never known a better man, a more compassionate soul. His cynicism seemed to melt away when he spent time with B.J. His resentment turned inside out and somehow became tranquility, in a kind of magic that only Beej could orchestrate. Whenever Hawkeye felt the anger or the pain creep back in, he only needed to see B.J.'s smile to chase away the darkness.

Now, weary but sleepless, he sighed, at a loss to understand why home didn't seem like home and why "normal" was a word without meaning and why he had shoved away the one person who would be able to make sense of it all.

Autumn in Maine brought bright, mind-blowing colors—deep reds and oranges—that Hawkeye had forgotten even existed. Korea had seemed so...olive drab and brown. On one such picturesque afternoon, he came home from work to discover B.J. Hunnicutt standing on his front porch. He stopped dead in his tracks, had to do a double-take to be sure he was seeing correctly. B.J. had shaved off the moustache, his hair was shorter, but otherwise he looked as Hawk remembered. Without the weight of a war on top of him, he was looking especially youthful and vital, a bright beacon giving off positive energy. Hawkeye couldn't keep the emotion out of his voice as he said, "Am I dreaming?"

B.J. shrugged and gave a weak smile. "It's me. I'm here. I couldn't do it anymore, I couldn't do what you asked—forget you? That's not going to happen. Sure, what you said made perfect sense. I have a wife, I have a little girl who needs her dad…you made perfect sense. But since when does love make any sense? I tried to go without you as long as I could, but here I am," he waved his arms around, "here in Maine, because this is where you are. Because this is where I need to be." Neither of them said anything for a beat or two, and B.J. added, a hint of desperation in his voice, "Don't turn me away, Hawk, I don't think I could—"

"No."

B.J. stopped short and blinked. He cocked his head like a puppy—and every bit as endearing. "Did you just say no? No what?"

Hawkeye shook his head, his eyes welling with tears. "No, I'm not going to turn you away."

A slow, sweet smile came to B.J. and Hawkeye melted at the sight. Curse that Hunnicutt, he was right, this is where he needed to be. For a moment they just stared at each other, then B.J. gave a little laugh and said, "Well damn. I'd gotten so used to being rejected by you, I don't know how to act."

"For starters, how about coming over here and giving us a hug?" And in the next instant, B.J. was in his arms. Hawkeye shut his eyes, held on tight, and thought, this is what it feels like to be home.