Author's note: A series of (very) short pieces about the 4077th.
These are not chronological, or meant to fit together.
Disclaimer: I own nothing from MASH, and am making no profit or anything else from these.
Second Author's Note: Review please? :)
Snow #1: Ugly John
Ugly John looked down at his cards. "I fold."
Trapper and Hawkeye hunched over their own hands, regarding each other warily. The pot had twenty-two dollars in it. John took another gulp of his drink. He didn't want to win at cards today. He just wanted to get drunk and pass out.
Hawkeye and Trapper were coping in their own ways. Everyone knew how hard it hit the doctors when they lost a patient. No one ever asked him, though.
Sometimes they were conscious before he put the boys under. Sometimes they talked to him, before he put the black mask over their nose and mouth and watched their eyes flutter shut.
"I want to see the snow, Doc," the boy had said. His face was shining with sweat, his eyes wide with pain. "It's snowing, isn't it?" John just patted the boy on the shoulder, twisting knobs on the machine. "I've never seen it before. Is it nice?" John slid the mask over his face.
"It is, son, it is. You'll see for yourself, soon." The boy's eyelids drifted down. "Hawkeye, hurry up!" John watched the boy's vital signs, irregular, fading.
"I'm coming," Hawkeye called, stripping off his bloody gloves and hurrying over as the nurse snapped a new pair over his hands. He glanced at the damage. "Scalpel." He began an incision.
"I'm losing the pulse, Hawkeye."
The tall surgeon swore, and began pumping the boy's chest.
John waited, emotions raging in his chest. He squeezed the black bag hanging to his left on Hawkeye's count. After a minute, he let go of the mask. "It's too late, Hawk," he muttered. The boy's eyes stayed shut.
Hawkeye stepped back. "Damn." John bent his head and didn't say anything. Hawkeye peeled off his gloves, stained red from their brief contact with the boy's blood. "Damn it." Trapper called him away.
John watched as the nurses picked up the stretcher with the body on it and carried it out of the OR. A new soldier was placed before him, drifting mercifully on the edge of consciousness. John adjusted the anesthetics and fit the mask in place.
"Ha!" Hawkeye shouted, scooping up the pot. "Flush, I win!"
John pushed back his chair. "Deal me out."
Outside the night was dark, a layer of clouds obscuring the stars. John stood outside the surgeons' tent, his face raised to the black. God protect you, he thought, wherever you are. Something tickled his nose, soft and cold. Then they were falling all around him, tiny white flecks that landed on his arms and in his mustache and melted in rivulets down his cheeks. He brushed at the snowflakes in his eyes. You didn't cry in Korea.