I watched Check-Up earlier,and this quote from Henry -
'Before you know it you'll be home sleeping on the couch because you started talking in your sleep.'
-gave me this idea.
John talks in his sleep. Louise knows that's only to be expected - after all, he spent a miserable year of his life serving in the war - and she understands; it's only when he stops talking about Korea that she stops being able to cope.
In the beginning, she'd just ignore it, hoping her husband would recover on his own. Then, when the dreams got worse and he'd toss and turn and almost wake up she'd do her best to console him.
He didn't awaken, but calmed down the very first time. She had breathed a sigh of relief, only to feel herself begin to worry soon afterwards. 'Thank God for you, Hawkeye.'
That's what he said. In the morning, she asked him who he'd spoken of, and he attempted -unsuccessfully- to dodge the issue.
She got it out of him eventually.
Hawkeye was, in fact, Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce of the US Army Medical Corps, and the man whom John had shared his tent with in the war. Apparently, although he never told her, as more than just a roommate.
On occasion, the dreams will shift from pain to pleasure, and those are the nights Louise hates the most.
The two rarely speak of those, or any, nights, but they manage to reach an agreement: Should John ever talk about Capt. Pierce whilst he sleeps, Louise is to wake him so he can move to the couch.
It doesn't make things easier.
After a year, Louise writes to Pierce - not in confrontation (she knows she should resent him, but somehow she doesn't), merely for closure.
When she received a reply, it's not from Pierce, but from the surgeon who took John's place.
Apparently Hawkeye talks in his sleep sometimes, too.
When John finds out about her correspondence with BJ Hunnicutt, he assumes the worst, but isn't jealous. He can't be.
He gets a vacant, glassy look in his eyes when she explains what's really happening.
Then one night, around the time peace is declared, John doesn't come home until the next morning. She doesn't ask, and he doesn't tell her, but she knows Pierce's journey home took him through their city. She knows who he was with the previous night, and she doesn't care. Things haven't been right since John came home, and it's been a year and a half since he's even bothered falling asleep upstairs.
Six months later they find out Pierce moved into their neighbourhood, and two weeks after that John moves out.
Louise is pretty sure he still talks in his sleep.
She's also pretty sure he doesn't get a lot of that.