Rating: K+
Wordcount: 2200
Warnings/Spoilers: Basic MASH spoilers and speculation.
Summary: The air is so still, the blueberries are so heavy on their branches, and all Hawkeye wants is to see the whales flow past the point, out North to the sea.
A/N: this started out small, and then grew big. MASH does that to me. this borrows from The Whales of August (1987), Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, as well as TSE's Four Quartets. the title comes from Swinburne's "The Garden of Prosperine." bonus points if you can guess what MASH episode this was inspired by. no beta, we die like men.(bn: FF ate my formatting. Go read on AO3 if you want that, same title).
even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea
In the dark water off the rocks, the whales slide out of the waves like a mystery in the darkness of the morning. The smooth swells of midnight waves are still pushing them along, undulating fins rippling through the ocean without a single sound. The whales shine black against the black rocks and black water.
That they are there, in Maine this August, delights him.
He laughs out loud for the sheer joy of the white foam bubbling where the whales rise and roll, dreamily in the long, slow, rocking of the waves.
Like a boy again, he wants to see as much as he can, and runs down the dirt to the point. It does not matter that the world is dark and full of sleep, he knows his way blind. This path has been beaten smooth by his bare feet hundreds of times.
The air is so still, the blueberries are so heavy on their branches, and all he wants is to see the whales flow past the point, out North to the sea.
just then,
he is diving
into the midnight sea.
and—
he rises slowly
out of the dark water.
like the whales,
He felt heavy, languid with the slow slide out of sleep. It's been a long time since he's slept in a real bed, warm with heavy covers. He's somewhere that still ripples with sleep, the deep warmth and ease that unspools his muscles, unloosens his joints until he can feel the roll and ride of the waves around him.
It is his Dad who wakes him, sitting in the hard-backed chair next to his bed. He doesn't even need to open his weighted eyelids, he can smell the scent of peppermint, rich tobacco smoke, wool and the sharp slight tang of antiseptic. It's all the smells of his childhood, of being a boy sick in bed with his own father to care for him, and it comforts him.
He took a deep breath, and another, letting it ride all the way through him, down to his toes. His leg hurt. That's probably why Dad is sitting next to him. What did he do this time?
His father is playing with papers, the rustle of sheet sliding over sheet, the mellow scratch of a fountain pen moving over paper in the rhythmic sounds of writing. Maybe he's filling in a patient chart, or simply writing a letter. But when his father shifted his legs next to him, the sound of fabric sliding over fabric half-lulls him into sleep again.
Between the covers and the mattress,
he is warm,
he is safe,
he is asleep—
but there is a pushing urgency, even as sleep came over him. Did he forget to bring in the firewood? Did he forget his lunch pail at school? No, school is out for the summer, and they don't need firewood in August.
He heard footsteps, and that decided him, pushing up on his elbows, swinging his legs to the left, opening his eyes fuzzily.
He whimpered, and shut his eyes again, hazy black spots swimming around the edges of his vision, as stabbing pains shoot up and down his left leg.
His heart pounded in his ears, as he tried to breath calmly, deeply, in on ten, out on five, on ten, on five, ten, five.
His father's lab coat rustled as he stood up, walked away
come back come back, I am safe with you here, do not leave me
then, came back again, with even footsteps, the edge of his father's coat draping over the bed, the creak of the back-slats of the chair as he sat down again, almost as if he had never left.
in on ten, out on five, on ten, on five, ten, five
He felt calm again, the certain uncertainty draining away, as if it had never been.
He stretched into the mattress, pulling the blankets around him, willing to go back to sleep. He felt tired and sleepy at the same time, like he hadn't had enough sleep for years.
He tucked down his chin into the pillow, draping his arm over his side, going boneless, like the Maine coon cats in the afternoon sun, ready for a nap.
"Dad," he murmured, half asleep already, "stay." And he's reaching out for fresh, plump, dewy blueberries on their bushes…
"Go to sleep, Hawkeye." That recognizable bass hushed him, but that isn't his father's voice.
The water breaks over his head, and he is drowningdrowningdrowning because this Korea, and Colonel's Potter's steel blue eyes are watching him, gravely and concernedly, not his Dad's, and it is his hands gripping his biceps firmly, not his Dad's and he is drowning.
He is weeping, soundlessly, tears sliding down his face, falling off onto his blankets, he is weeping and he cannot seem to stop, pulling in great heaves of air, breath shuddering against his throat, crying and breathing and choking with the great unfairness of it.
He can't breathe, and he can't stop crying, and everything seems so terribly quiet and far away and dark, and there is the trapping sensation of walls moving in on him, the collapsing of all the great pieces of the world from the top downwards, the shattering of the dome of heaven breaking on his head and there
is
no
light
left
breathe, son
Colonel Potter's bass rumbled, tucking Hawkeye's head under his chin, one steady, warm hand cradling the back of his neck, the other swaddling his arm and shoulder.
He is rocking, back and forth, ever so slightly on the edge of bed, rocking him as if he were a child, utterly inconsolable, in the calm, practiced manner of a man and a doctor and a commanding officer, but a father first. Hawkeye heard the steady heartbeat under his ear, as he turned his head into the Colonel's shoulder, and buried his eyes under the shelter of Potter's jaw.
"Just breathe, Hawkeye." Potter ordered huskily, holding him steady while the whole canvas kaleidoscope swirled around him, and his tears dampened the collar of the colonel's surgical scrubs. "Breathe with me, son." He breathed slowly, dramatically, and Hawkeye can feel the dominant rhythm of the colonel's chest restoring his breath pattern to a normal order.
"Where's that morphine, lieutenant?" The colonel called over his head, uncurling Hawkeye from his embrace, taking his radial pulse gently.
His thoughts felt sluggish, confused, as Potter settled him back on his pillow, pulled up his blankets, smoothed the wrinkles. He ought not to be falling to be pieces like this.
"It was only a dream." Hawkeye murmured, turning his gaze aside from Potter's knowing glance, feeling utterly exposed.
He could shut his eyes, block out Potter, Post-OP, Korea, the whole damn war, but it won't work. It wouldn't last. Only he had thought that it was real, that he was home, that he had seen blueberries and the water and the whales swimming past the Cove point in mid-August. And that meant something he couldn't explain to himself, except that he feels all hollowed out.
He hasn't seen his father in over two years and feels like weeping again.
The Colonel injected the morphine into his IV, and sat on the side of the bed next to him, one hand bracing, and the other in a quick, deliberate movement stroked down Hawkeye's hair, and rested on his shoulder.
"Don't be ashamed of wanting to be home, Hawkeye." Potter said softly, meeting Hawkeye's eyes directly. There is care, and kindness, and sympathy there—thirty years worth of being away from everything he loves—an ocean of separation roiling beneath that steady, blue-eyed determination. "You almost were, we almost lost you, son."
"I was home." He choked out, gripping the blankets with his fists, wanting to thump the mattress beneath him but already knowing the futility of it.
"You were dead." Potter bit back throatily, his face white, his lips set in a thin line, his eyes flashing under his glasses.
Hawkeye's whirling mind stilled, and he felt adrift, as though he were watching himself talking to the colonel.
He dimly remembered the pulsing pain down his leg in the O.R., pushing it out of his mind with the adrenaline and mule-minded stubbornness that said one more boy was not going to die on his table, damnit, and the wet, sticky mess in his left boot, the steady drip and pool of red blood on the floor. Was it his?
"Dead for two minutes on my table." The colonel rushed out, in a single out pouring of breath, and then repeated, more softly, more intensely:
"My table." sounding as though he wanted to shake Hawkeye or take him out behind the woodshed for the sheer rebellion of daring to expire on his surgical table. The echo of that soft, intense sound broke over Hawkeye with a hint of the private desperation in the colonel's voice.
He can picture the scene vividly: the milling sea of white coats in the O.R., the spirals of grey film on his vision, deliberately banging his injured thigh on the leg of the surgical table to stave off unconsciousness for a minute or two more—he's got a boy's guts and life in his hands—the slow vision of the floor rushing up to meet him, the corpsman picking him out of his own pool of blood, the colonel checking the leg wound, checking his pulse, checking his heart, crawling up on the table, pounding on his chest, because Benjamin Franklin Pierce is not going to die in his MASH, his hospital, his table, not today.
Hawkeye looked at the cloth partition surrounding his hospital bed, wondering how many nurses, or corpsmen have walked past today to see if he's still made it. He can hear, dimly, BJ talking in his low, patient doctor voice, and the steady staccato sound of Margaret giving orders to someone. This time, they had to wait to see if he would wake up.
Potter took a breath, deliberately looking over his glasses, over Hawkeye's head, and spoke again, clinically, almost coldly,
"That sniper bullet took a half inch deep stripe out of your hamstring, hip to knee, and lodged right above the patella. Mostly superficial—except the two pints of blood you left in the O.R."
The colonel has on his face the patented expression that reads 'that was damn foolish,' but he doesn't say anything. Hawkeye wanted to protest, that he had taken cover under the bus with his patient, but that the boy couldn't wait, that he had had to tie a quick pressure bandage around his leg, stuff himself into his scrubs and get to the O.R. That there was no time for anything else, because there was a boy's life on the line.
The colonel ought to understand that. He opened his mouth to explain, defend, justify, hearing the click of army boots beyond the curtain, the low hum of order restored in the Post-OP unit of MASH 4077th, knowing that BJ and Margaret, Charles and Klinger, Fr Mulcahy and the Colonel all must understand his reasoning.
"Hawkeye," The Colonel's voice broke, and all at once Hawkeye realized that it was fear, fear that made Sherman Potter's voice break, and his face white, and his hands settle on his shoulders as if they are not going to leave, not ever. Hawkeye wanted him to say something, to tell him it was damned foolish, to tell him it was against all orders, against all common sense, but all Sherman Potter does is to look at him, with the long, searching glance of a man who has nearly lost something precious to him. The cold weight of that knowing fills him up—that the Colonel, like Fr. Mulcahy, is capable of crushing tenderness.
"I miss my Dad." Hawkeye said, turning his face aside. He knows if he looks that the Colonel will be looking with that damned steady glance again. He doesn't say anything, as if knowing that nothing he can say could ease the bone-deep ache.
For a long while, or so it seemed to Hawkeye, there is only Colonel Potter sitting without moving next to him, the sound of even breathing, the lights in the ward growing dimmer, and the sharp, clear agony of his home receding further and further from his heart.
where are the whales now?
He shut his eyes.
are they flowing past the point, out to sea?
"I know, Hawkeye." Potter responded quietly, leaning over the edge of the hospital bed and pulling the blankets up over him again, and lingering, with the steady, warm press of his hand over his clavicle.
does my Dad see them?
"Go to sleep, son." The colonel's voice hushed, sounding the way a distant bell does in the mist, hanging out over the water, steadily rolling in the dark, the echoes never failing, "I'll stay."
channel-lights
out in the deep,
he saw,
calling
and these are the anchors