Fragments
There's a door up ahead and Hawkeye feels the need to open it and find out what's beyond.
He's just about to touch the knob when the door swings open on its own. Hawkeye steps across the threshold and instantly shields his eyes because it's blindingly bright here… wherever "here" is. He takes a tentative step forward, then another… his only intent is to move to a point where maybe the brightness will diminish and he can see again.
Another couple of steps and then he stops. As if someone is dimming a light switch, the extreme brightness begins to fade. It's still starkly white, but at least Hawkeye can see, and he doesn't need to keep a hand over his eyes anymore. A figure approaches him and for a millisecond, he's scared of it, for no reason he can discern.
But then he can see the person's face, and he smiles, his shoulders relaxing. "Tommy?" he asks, and he doesn't know why he's asking because obviously it's Tommy, his old buddy from elementary school. "Tommy!" He closes the distance between them and pulls his friend into a bear hug. But Tommy breaks out of the embrace, takes a step back.
"You let me die," he says, and Hawkeye can see the anguish on his face.
For a second, Hawkeye's too stunned to reply. It's true, Tommy died on his operating table, but it's not like Hawkeye "let" it happen. He just hadn't been able to stop it from happening. Finally he says, defensively, "I tried, Tommy. I tried like hell to save you. There was too much damage…" He lets the thought trail off. It may be true, but it doesn't change anything for Tommy. "I'm sorry," he finishes lamely. "I'm sorry you're dead. I miss you."
Tommy turns around sharply as if he's heard someone behind him. "I have to go," he tells Hawkeye, and he begins to walk away.
"Wait! Tommy?" Hawkeye grabs hold of his arm. "Have you seen my mom?" All of a sudden, this matters to him more than anything.
Tommy says only, "It's peaceful," as if that answers the question, and then he pulls out of Hawkeye's grasp and turns away. In a blink, he's gone.
Hawkeye stands there, feeling lost, not entirely sure what to do or which way to turn.
"Hawk?" a disembodied male voice says then. Hawkeye turns in circles looking for the person it belongs to, but nobody's there.
"Who is it?" he asks, frightened again, even though the voice seems familiar.
"It's Trapper, you asshole. Forgot the sound of my voice already?"
Hawkeye realizes that's exactly who it sounds like. But Trapper… he's back Stateside, last Hawkeye knew. "You're dead? You're not dead—you can't be!"
"Who the hell said anything about being dead? Of course I'm not dead. This is a dream. Weird shit happens in dreams."
"I just saw Tommy Gillis. He's dead. So I thought…"
"Get a grip, Hawk. I have to tell you something. You listening to me? This is important. He's dangerous and nobody has any idea."
Hawkeye's confused. "Who's dangerous? Tommy?"
"No. Not Tommy," Trapper says. "Right three. You got that? Right three."
Hawkeye's heart is racing, he's keenly aware that Trapper's trying to tell him something vitally important, but it doesn't make any sense. "What does that mean? Right three?"
"See you in the funny papers!" Trapper says with the lilt in his voice that Hawkeye remembers so well.
"Trapper?" But there's silence now, and Hawkeye knows Trapper's gone, just like Tommy before him.
"Right three," he says out loud, turning the phrase over and over in his head, unable to make heads or tails of it. Did he hear it wrong? Was it actually supposed to be a name or something?
There's loud laughter then, and it's above him and outside of his head. It jolts him awake, pulling him from his dream. He looks around, dazed, momentarily unsure of where he is. Then he recognizes post-op, where he fell asleep on one of the beds after checking on his patients.
"Dr. Pierce?" It's Nurse Kellye, looking down at him with her kewpie-doll face. It was her laughter, along with Bigelow's, that woke him. "You should go back to the Swamp. I would think it's quieter there than here."
"Right three," he says, his voice still husky from sleep.
"What?"
"Never mind." He runs a hand over his face and slowly pulls himself off the bed. "Good idea, I'm going back to the Swamp."
He staggers there in the darkness, exhausted and still a little groggy from his fitful sleep. When he gets to the Swamp, he falls onto his cot, not bothering to change out of his clothes or even take off his boots.
On the other side of the Swamp, Charles is asleep… and murmuring.