The OR was fully lit that night, and all but one table was vacant. The lamp directly above it cast a halo of light over the spot where John was lying. It gave the whole room the appearance of a circus. The main act? Life after death. A Lazarus technique from the far reaches of the western world perfected by decent, God-fearing men who only wanted to play God themselves.
John looked so very unlike herself lying there, her body covered by a red-soaked sheet. She had no colour in her face. Even her blonde hair had lost its radiance. Half of her waves were matted against her neck with blood in an unruly fashion. This was not the John that anyone knew. And yet, studying her face, it was more like her than she had ever been since coming to Korea.
"But sir," Klinger pleaded, wearing scrubs that had been haphazardly thrown on over his pajamas, "I'm no nurse. I can't help you with this one. As soon as I get her anesthetised, I'm toast. I got no idea what I'm doing after that part!" His dark features looked abnormally pale. Even his gargantuan nose seemed dwarfed by the size of his distress.
Hawkeye tugged furiously at the ends of his latex gloves. "Klinger, I don't give a damn what you say. The longer she sits here like this, the longer it's going to take to bring her back, and the less likely it is to happen. I'll talk you through the hard parts."
Klinger backed away slowly. "Hawkeye, if something bad was to happen to her because I screwed up, I'd never be able to live with myself. Let me go and get Major Houlihan—"
"No!" Hawkeye barked, stopping where he stood to turn his full wrath toward Klinger. "Margaret doesn't need to be here. Nobody needs to be here to watch this. You and I shouldn't even have to watch this. It's disgusting." Pierce began to pace like a caged animal. "It's worse than disgusting. It's despicable. It's detestable. It's not even unreal. Unreal would be a miracle. This is our friend, Max. This is the woman responsible for a good portion of my sanity, and yours. No one else should have to face the thought that she might not make it through the night."
The colonel's heart went out at the doctor's concern. "Pierce," he said, walking to the other surgeon and calmly resting his hand on the taller man's back, "she's going to make it through the night and many more to come. Hunnicutt's waking Mulcahy, and Winchester is alerting Major Houlihan as we live and breathe. We're going to have a full staff in here and we're all going to work our butts off to make sure that our girl pulls through this with flying colours."
Hawkeye looked down at his CO with weary, horror-filled eyes. He looked so much older and so much more tired as he stood next to the limp form of Jane Johnson. His black hair seemed that much greyer, and his eyes so much less blue than they'd ever seemed before. She'd come in unconscious, covered with blood. So much she was almost drowning in it. John was so small it didn't seem possible that all of it came out of her tiny little body. Still, there she was, laid out like any of the multitudes of soldiers that came through day after day. But John wasn't a soldier, and no one yet knew how to face that reality.
"Oh my!" The shocked voice of Father Mulcahy drew the attention of the room to the door where the horrified priest stood, BJ barely a step behind him. In the fevered haste of dressing, the Father still managed to throw on his stole. The purple vestment hung haphazardly from his neck over his grey Loyola sweatshirt. He held his small, worn Bible in his left hand and quickly made the sign of the cross over his chest with his right. He and Hunnicutt filed into the room to stand beside Colonel Potter. Klinger moved away from Hawkeye and joined the collective.
"We'd better get masks, Father," BJ suggested, his eyes never straying from where Johnson lay. Mulcahy nodded silently beside him, but neither man moved.
"I want you to scrub up, Hunnicutt," Potter said, breaking the silence that fell over them. Everyone but Klinger and Hawkeye still had yet to take in the whole image of the OR empty except for the lone casualty on the table. The one casualty who until now had never been on the receiving end of the best care anywhere.
Hunnicutt swallowed a lump that had formed in his throat. He looked at Hawkeye so far away at that moment. Only Pierce's eyes were visible over his surgical mask, but one glance was enough. Hawkeye was determined to do anything in his power to save Johnson. He could not fail. He would not. The same thought ran through the minds of both doctors: this had to just another injured person for them to fix. They had pulled apart and stitched up plenty of kids before, hadn't they? This was no different. Just another body. Just another life to save. But they were lying to themselves. There was no way to make this impersonal. Just yesterday they had all been in the Officer's Club drinking and laughing and making plans for their trips home. The end of the war seemed a long way off, but that never stopped them from planning. They were all excited to see their families, and to get back to their lives. Because they all knew they were going home.
The colonel's voice broke into BJ's thoughts. "Hunnicutt, the faster you scrub up, the faster we can get this started once Margaret gets here." BJ hurried off to wash with Klinger in tow. Potter slowly approached Hawkeye, wishing it was someone else's tush on the table in front of him. "What's been done so far?"
Hawkeye put his hands down on the table's edge and sighed, "Klinger and I started her on a unit of whole blood. Her vitals are low. She's lost a lot, and there's too much internal bleeding for us to wait much longer. Where's—"
Before he could finish, Margaret came rushing into the room followed closely by a distraught Winchester. It was clear that her hair had been in rollers; only half of it fell in loose curls, the rest was flat and blonde against her head. "I came as soon as I was decent," Margaret shouted. "Where is she?" Without bothering to take the sight in as the others had, the major made a beeline for the operating table and set her eyes on John. "She's so pale," she whispered, her voice trembling. Her mind didn't even address the sight of her nurse's blood. All that existed to Margaret was John's slack, colourless face. Still staring at John's closed eyelids and pallid lips, she spoke to Hawkeye. "Why wasn't I told the second she came in like this?" Her words threatened tears, but she didn't dare lift her eyes to meet anyone else's. There was no way she was going to crack. Margaret Houlihan had come to do a job, to fulfill her duty. Tonight, her duty was making sure her friend came back to them.
Potter responded before Hawkeye could open his mouth. "The boys took it up with me before. There wasn't enough time to call in the hens before getting the fox out of the coop. John needed blood fast; Hawkeye and Klinger here happened to be the only two who could get it done as fast as it needed to be."
Margaret gently touched her fingers against John's cheek before pulling back in alarm. "She's cold."
Hawkeye snapped into action, his movements wild. "God Damnit, check her pulse!" he demanded, touching John's skin himself. The major was right. Johnson was cold. "Margaret, Colonel, go scrub up. Charles, give me another unit of A Negative and follow everybody else." The staff flew into action. All but Father Mulcahy. He stood to the side, helpless to do anything but look on.
"Hawkeye," the Father implored, desperately clinging to his Bible, "is there anything I can do?"
The look on Hawkeye's face made the priest's heart leap into his throat. "Pray."
As Father Mulcahy lowered his head to his chest, the rest of the group came racing back into the room wearing masks and scrubs and looking for all the world like whimsical clowns. A sad juxtaposition in such a serious place. Hawkeye wasted no time. Winchester took Nurse Johnson's hand and pressed his fingers against her wrist, keeping his eyes on the clock as he counted the seconds passing by. "Charles how is her pulse?"
Winchester shook his head and gently released John's wrist. "Twenty-three."
Potter, who had been busying himself with a band he'd placed around John's arm, added gravely, "Her blood pressure is fifty-two over thirty-five." There was an audible gasp in the room.
"Klinger, what was her last reading?" Hawkeye demanded as Margaret began to set up the surgical instruments without being told. "Beej, get her under." Charles moved from his place at John's head and allowed BJ to replace him.
"Sixty over forty, sir," Klinger answered, bringing the anesthesia closer so that Hunnicutt could properly administer it to the patient.
"Jesus, if it drops any lower she'll go into a coma," Hawkeye muttered thinking no one could hear him. One devastated look from Margaret convinced him otherwise. He let out another, more frustrated sigh. "Put her out. I don't want her waking up in the middle of this." The other doctor took his order and placed the mask over John's mouth. Her ragged breathing calmed and eventually slowed to a more even pace. Everyone held his or her breath as Hawkeye peeled back the sheet and pulled off the temporary bandages to begin.
He had no idea where to start. Her entire right side was ripped up from her belly to her neck. It was a wonder she hadn't been struck directly in the throat. As far as he could tell, her lung was miraculously unpunctured. It was the most miniscule of favours, but considering the extent of the trauma it was enough to be thankful for. The blood masked most of the entry wounds. That was the first task.
"Sponge," Hawkeye said at last, decisively. "Dampen it. We need to clean away as much of this blood as we can so I can at least see what we're dealing with here."
The OR was absent of its usual banter. Had this been any other patient, Hawkeye would most likely have been singing by now, something tasteless given the location. "I've got you under my skin," he would warble. BJ would join in a short time later. Houlihan would have admonished them, Charles would have made a scathing remark per the two surgeons' taste in music, and Potter would have quieted them all down in the end. Klinger would bustle about from table to table, trying to keep things as light as possible, and Father Mulcahy would have no reason to be standing by until post-op, in case one of the patients needed moral or spiritual support. Most importantly, John would have been in the midst of it all, tossing insults back and forth with Charles, providing harmony for the Pierce-Hunnicutt duo, doing any of the abundance of things that made the 4077th home.
Margaret and Hawkeye were mute as they pressed their sponges against John's white skin. The blood came away easily, but more quickly came to the surface. "I need pressure on this to stop the bleeding, Margaret!" Hawkeye exclaimed, tossing the blood-soaked sponge into a pan Klinger held at the foot of the bed.
"She's not even open yet," Margaret countered, doing her best to curtail the bleeding. "If we spend too much time stopping the bleeding on the outside, we may lose the battle with the internal bleeding."She was right. Hawkeye looked helpless as he stood there, trying to figure out what to do next. Margaret knew. "Scalpel, doctor." She picked up the instrument from the tray and handed it to Pierce. He took it and marveled at it as if he'd never seen such a thing before.
Hawkeye brought the blade down and gently pressed it against John's skin at the place just below the bottom of her ribcage. He fought every urge he had to close his eyes and dragged the scalpel downward, watching as new blood welled up. "Sponge," he demanded, focusing all of his energy on the task at hand. Margaret followed the order immediately. All gazes were fixated on Hawkeye's fingers as he worked, grabbing forceps and plucking out pieces of metal. The dull tink-tink of shrapnel hitting the bottom of the collection pan was the only audible noise in the room aside from Hawkeye's odd command for suction, Metzenbaum scissors, and whatever else he needed. What felt like hours where only minutes passing. Soon, forty-five of those minutes had gone by, and John was still littered with metal.
BJ watched from his seat, fascinated by the sight before him. John was so still, so quiet. He couldn't even begin to pretend she was only sleeping. He checked her vitals like clockwork, dismayed by their inconsistency. Sometimes her pulse was strong. Other times, it was so weak Hunnicutt was barely able to feel it at all. Her blood pressure did not improve. It didn't weaken, either, but that was hardly anything to celebrate. Every now and then Hawkeye would look to BJ with the weight of worlds in his eyes. BJ, for his part, could do little else besides offering a comforting nod of his head.
"Clamp!" Hawkeye shouted suddenly, jerking the rest of the staff out of their stunned dumbness. "Margaret, clamp. I've got to stop that artery from bleeding." Margaret handed the instrument to the doctor, but he shook his head. "No, I need you to do it. Charles, get over here and help me with suction. I think I found where she's bleeding internally." The majors did as they were told, neither one bothering to pull rank. This was far more serious than petty army games. Charles had not uttered a single word suggesting he was above nursing duties. This caused about as much worry among the group as anything else that had happened that night. He took his place to Pierce's right and provided the suction the doctor had asked for. Charles glanced up at Margaret and met her eyes. A moment passed between them and was gone.
"There," Hawkeye spoke from between gritted teeth. "The shrapnel hit her stomach."
Colonel Potter came to the tableside. "How do you mean, Pierce? Did it knick the stomach, or go right through?"
"Punctured it at the edge. Which means we've got stomach acid in here we need to deal with." Hawkeye wiped his sleeve across his forehead. "Charles, keep that suction going. Is the clamp on tight, Margaret?" The blonde nurse nodded quickly. "Colonel Potter, I could really use a hand here."
"Whatever you need Pierce," the colonel said, stepping beside Margaret.
Hawkeye continued, "I need you to suture that artery while I get to work on the stomach. Take out any shrapnel you find on your way, but get that sucker closed."
Potter nodded. "Klinger, gloves."
"I'm on it." The Lebanese sergeant moved as fast as he had ever moved since joining the army, even counting his numerous attempts to escape. He produced another pair of latex gloves and slipped them over the colonel's able hands. Then he remembered something. The colour drained from his face and he swallowed loudly enough to be heard by the rest of the group. "Sir, what about Lyle?"
"Lyle who?" the colonel snapped, taking the silk Margaret adeptly handed to him to begin stitching up the holes.
BJ responded before Klinger had the chance, feeling a dead weight settle in his chest as he came to the same realisation as the sergeant. "Lyle Johnson. The only reason John ever went to the evac in the first place." He stomped his foot against the floor in sheer anger. "This is going to tear him apart."
"Good heavens, you're right," Father Mulcahy said softly. He had been so quietly standing by the staff had all but forgotten he was there. The Father was so badly shaken by the turn of events he doubted the tranquility of his presence. Perhaps it would have been better for him to wait outside.
"What was she doing coming back at this time of night anyway?" Margaret wondered out loud. Charles placed his hand over hers sympathetically. He, in turn, remained uncharacteristically taciturn.
"We'll ask her ourselves when she comes to," Mulcahy murmured in response. The colonel gave him a nod of gratitude before turning his attention back to Klinger.
"I didn't even think of the poor thing's brother," Potter admitted. "Get on the horn and call back to the 121st. Anybody gives you trouble, feel free to bring the phone in here so I can give them something to be troubled about."
"Yes sir." Klinger gave everyone in the room one last glance before running off to his office to make the call. Mulcahy closed in the ranks and the table was blocked from any outside view.
