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Title: S*C*A*L*P*E*L

Author: Thora Arwin

Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine. All for fun.

Category: Gen/Het

Summary: A normal day in the OR.

Chapter: 1/?

E-mail: xxxylin@yahoo.com

Note: The open heart surgery Hawk's referring to was performed on September 2, 1952. Two University of Minnesota surgeons, Dr. Walton Lillehei and Dr. John Lewis, attempted this surgery on a five-year-old girl who had been born with a hole in her heart.

Feedback: Well… I'd most definitely like some, lol!

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*****S*C*A*L*P*E*L*****

Chapter 01

Break My Heart, Hawkeye

"Scalpel, Lieutenant."

"Scalpel, Doctor."

"Clamp."

"Clamp."

"Sex?"

"Doctor?"

Hawkeye suggestively waggled his eyebrows. "Had to try," he said with a cheeky grin. "This hernia operation was getting kind of boring."

BJ snorted, then asked for a clamp himself. "Frank's patient would give anything for a boring operation." He shot a glare at Frank Burns who was sweating at the table on the other side of the operating room, up to elbows in blood. "Problems, Frank?"

"No!" Frank's face twisted underneath his mask. "Why don't you two mind your own business and let a surgeon do his work!"

Hawkeye looked up, impressed. "Surgeon? Thought it was Frank disguised as a nurse."

BJ laughed, then made a stitch. "That would be Klinger."

"Oh, damn, I thought I flirted with a new female doctor in pre-op."

"You're too much into detail."

Their attention swayed back to the operating room when Margaret stomped her foot.

"That's absolutely disgusting!" she shrieked. "Colonel, I say you apply some Army rules, Sir. We're not in a circus. Some of us are trying to work!"

"Work?" BJ asked suspiciously.

Hawkeye shrugged and returned to repairing the opening in the muscle wall of his patient. "She never ceases to amaze me."

BJ grinned. "Margaret, or the hernia?"

"Do I have to chose, or can I have both?"

Margaret's jaw dropped open. "Colonel, this is enough! I call for some rules! We're in the Army!"

The Colonel sighed and threw away a bloody tampon. "Wishing there was no Army, Major. Junior here's got a shrapnel stuck in his heart and I'm afraid my capabilities won't do him much good."

Hawkeye glanced up. "Need help, Colonel?"

"Could do, Pierce."

"All right," he gestured to BJ. "Beej, can you finish this for me?"

BJ wiped his hands. "What you got there, Hawk?" He nodded to the nurse. "Can you close this for me, Lieutenant?"

"I think so, Doctor."

"Good. Hawkeye?"

Hawkeye stretched his back, the comical pop in his shoulders reminding him they'd been in the OR for over twelve hours now and there seemed to be more patients in line than when they'd started. "Did herniorrhaphy," he told BJ. "But I think you'll have to reinforce the muscle with a wire."

"Will do."

Still stretching, he quickly made his way around the tables, the patients and Father Mulcahy, over to the Colonel's table.

"What's up?" he asked, inspecting the wound.

Momentarily he glanced at the soldier's face. A boy, maybe eighteen, with shrapnel cuts all over his pale cheeks and blue lips. His straw-blond hair was dotted with dried blood. Hawkeye sighed and shook his head.

"We need to slow his heart rate, Pierce. Sew up the hole from the shrapnel."

"Do you want me to pull a rabbit out of my hat too?"

The Colonel rolled his eyes and said in a serious tone, "we can't send him down to Seoul, he wouldn't last the trip."

"And he's going to die without surgery."

"I know you've read about this last week, Captain."

The tall, dark-haired doctor paused. "You mean cool the body to 81 degrees F, clamp the inflow of the heart and pray I sew up the hole in less than ten minutes?"

"That's the plan, Hawkie."

"Colonel, the first time anyone did an open-heart surgery like this was a month ago in Minnesota in extremely clean surroundings with two skilled professionals and a special cooling blanket. I'm more likely to pull that rabbit out of my hat- if I had one."

"Well, you can do that as well if you want." Sherman rocked on his heels. "But it's time the world saw the third professional, Son." He stepped back from the table to allow Hawkeye some space. "Get a tub ready, people! And get Pierce lots of ice!"

Hawkeye sighed, then turned to the immobile boy on the table in front of him. One grenade could do such damage. Rip off a person's leg or… He found he couldn't finish on the thought so he eradicated it. He wondered if the goddamned war would ever end. And if the kid would get to see the end of it.

Bracing himself for the tough operation, he watched the nurses rush past to get ice.

"While you're at it," he called out sarcastically, "get me a second pair of hands. I'll need them."

After a few precious minutes they managed to lower the boy's body into the metal tub filled with ice. He'd been anaesthetized to stop him from shivering.

"Good luck, Son." Potter nodded at Hawkeye from his new table and new patient. "Gloves."

Hawkie took a deep breath and turned all of his attention to the boy in the tub. "Minnesota, here I come," he muttered to himself.

BJ gave him an assuring smile through his mask while adjusting the steel mesh into the muscle wall of Hawk's hernia patient. "If anyone can do it, it's you."

"It'll take a miracle to save this kid, BJ."

"Or you."

Hawkeye glanced sideways and watched Margaret come stand next to him. Her voice was firm; she seemed pretty sure.

He locked his eyes with hers.

"I'm going to assist you, Captain," she said, tearing her gaze away from his and getting the instruments ready.

He grinned. "Be my guest, Major. But I'm not sure I'll be able to concentrate with you so close to me."

Margaret shot him a glare. "You better."

"Or else?" he chuckled.

Major Houlihan screwed up her face. "I'm very good with a needle. You remember."

Hawkeye brought his hand up to his heart in fake agony. "Ouch." Then he smirked. "Where and when? I'm all yours, Margaret."

"Oh, go stuff a duck, Pierce," Frank spat. "Why can't there be more normal surgeons in here?"

"Like you, Frank?" Hawk asked.

"Like ducks?" BJ tried.

Frank groaned, the nurse next to him wiping his sweaty forehead for the third time in five minutes. "You two are just incredible. Nurse! Forehead!"

"I just did, Major."

"Then do it again!"

BJ raised a brow at Hawkeye and they shared a look.

Frank scoffed. "Plain incredible," he muttered again.

"Not like you, Frank."

Frank looked up. "Oh, really?" Then his eyes lit up. "Incredible as in incredible?" His IQ seemed to drop with every second in the OR. "Why, you mean that, Pierce?"

"Definitely," Hawkeye said. "You're incredibly stupid."

"Extraordinarily stupid," BJ added.

"Is that a word?"

"If it isn't, can I make it up?"

Frank threw his hands up, the scalpel almost grazing the nurse's cheek. "Duhhh, shut up you two!"

"Frank," Hawkeye said seriously, taking the gloves from Margaret, "your patient. That soldier would like that shrapnel out of his gut by St. Patrick's Day. And your nurse would like to keep both eyes."

"I hate you, Pierce. If it were for me, you'd roast in hell."

"The soldier, Frank."

"He can wait. I'm not finished with you!"

Sherman Potter shook his head in agitation. "Major, hold your horses. Clamp…" he threw away another bloody tampon. "…we'd all be grateful if you'd shut your mouth, Burns. Or shut yourself away completely."

"Colonel?!"

"Come see me in my office, Burns." He seemed to re-think that. "After we're finished in here."

"It'll be my pleasure, Colonel."

"Pleasure's on your side."

Hawkeye grinned. "I couldn't do it better myself, Sherm."

"That's Colonel to you, Pierce. Tampon."

BJ made another stitch and looked up from his table. "You ok over there, Hawk?"

"Couldn't be better. Just waiting for his temperature to drop."

"You'll be fine."

Hawkeye gritted his teeth. "Say that to the kid."

Margaret stopped rattling with the instruments and checked the thermometer. "Temperature 81 degrees F, Doctor."

He inhaled deeply through his nose. "Ok. Let's tango, Margaret. Scalpel."

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