"Pierce, you look awful!" Margaret's cry is a sound for sore ears, though not necessarily a pleasant one. The jeep Radar drove me home in had barely stopped before Margaret was pulling me out of the jeep, and swimming before my eyes. 'Course, it's hard to tell where anything ends when it's all the same color and texture.
"Margaret, would you hold still?" She's spinning in rapid circles around my head, an I'm pretty sure I groped her… accidentally of course… as I fumbled to get out of the wobbling jeep. I must look truly terrible if she didn't even call me on it.
"Hawk?" another voice, deeper meets my ears, and the baritone is a salve on my abused ears. No offense to Margaret, but the high feminine voice, while great for a sore anything else, just sounds shrill against the pounding behind my eyes, between my ears, the back of my cranium, and… well, it just sounds shrill against the pounding of everything above my clavicle.
"Beej!" I smile at him, feeling more than a little woozy, but glad to see something other than green. I've always been fond of BJ's blue bathrobe. I wonder absently if his wife picked it out.
"What the heck happened to you? " he was helping me stand now. Strong sure hands lifting me easily. I am not a small man, but BJ is a giant among men and had always beaten me in arm wrestling matches.
Radar is dancing around anxiously in the background, wishing to help but not knowing how. "He, uh, crashed his jeep and knocked his head loose." Radar was obviously sheepish about criticizing me, even if it was something so widely renown as my poor driving skills. I idly recalled the time I'd come back from Tokyo a day early and Henry had known I was coming by the dust cloud that my tires had left behind me.
"Ah, now the dazed expression makes sense." BJ was smiling, but worried as he wrapped an arm under my shoulders. "See, I was confused, happy hour isn't for another ten minutes." They were dragging me toward pre-op.
I knew I would be fine from here, so I closed my eyes and surrendered to the unconsciousness I'd been fighting since my tumble from that army jeep.
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For a moment, I actually thought I was back at Androscoggin after a particularly enthusiastic binge. There was once when I woke up the next day slumped over the skeleton in the anatomy department wearing my lab coat , and nothing else. It took me a few seconds to remember where I was, and that the state of my crania was in no way voluntary. Strangely enough, it was the lack of stale alcohol on my breath that brought the previous day's events trickling back into my mind. I sometimes wonder just how much of my college education was learned, and how much was imbibed…
"Beej?" I whispered, before holding my head with both hands and cursing myself for thinking that making noise was a good idea.
"Heya, Hawk."
"How's the prognosis?" I was smiling. I knew, if there was any brain damage, it would have manifested by now. I just wouldn't have woken up from my concussion.
"Well, I think you'll be just fine, even if all I did was hit you in the head with an Axe."* I could hear the smile in his voice too, and I could just imagine it on his face. I'd decided I wouldn't open my eyes with this sort of headache. Talking was unbearable enough. If I opened my eyes, I might have to see Frank, and that would be unbearable. Of course, hearing him wouldn't be much better.
I paused, and he interpreted my silence correctly, answering the question I hadn't asked. "We didn't' have the equipment to give your skull proper drainage, and we were worried about the pressure in your skull damaging your brain. So, I took a chisel and a hammer, and punched a hole in your skull to relieve the pressure. Once the pressure was gone, you stabilized on your own."
"You fibber…. You were just trying to get back at me for stealing your socks." his chuckle was warm, but just a bit frantic. I recognized the signs in him - he had been worried I wouldn't' make it, and now that I was going to be alright there was too much emotion to fully hold in. I'd seen him go through it many times, just as he'd seen me. Every time a touch-and-go patient made it through unscathed, the swamp gin would taste sweeter, the mess tent food almost palatable, and the …. Well, I best leave it at that.
I trust BJ with my life, but who could resist searching for the hole someone had punched into their head? My questing fingers found a warm pair of hands and held tight. I could do self exploration later, not that I was likely to feel much with the thick bandage wrapped around my scalp. "How long was I out?
"Only 12 hours."
"You're off shift."
I feel BJ tensing at my pronouncement. I feel no need to clarify further, he caught my meaning. He sat by my bed the entire time, probably had to go back to work soon, and would be doing so on no sleep. I smiled and squeezed his palm. "Thanks." I could feel him relax.
"So, when does Colonel Potter say I can move back into the Swamp?" I did a mental check of my faculties, shocked at just how sore I was, but I didn't feel anything more major damage. I gave a brief yawn, and BJ rubbed his thumb across my wrist.
"I'll ask him next time I see him." He gave my hand a squeeze, then rose to his feet, tucking my arms beside my under my blanked and pulling the woolen cloth up over my shoulders, like I usually sleep. "You just get some rest."
"Okay… but next time, just yell at me when I steal your socks, okay?" I heard him chuckle as I drifted off. My eyes hadn't opened, so the slip into somnolence was a quick and quiet one. One moment awake, the next, darkness.
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*Almost a direct quote from Duke Forrest in M*A*S*H: a story of three army doctors. Sameish situation, I just took liberties with the characters and timeline. The reference to the cloud of dust was also a book reference.