When we pulled into the X-ray room at a little past 2 a.m. I reflected that it was much easier this time. BJ and I were already bantering back and forth. There were no questions about that four-letter word that had been hounding me since the first incident. No talks about VD. No anxiety attacks. Well, maybe a small one. And a little shaking. And some jumpiness. You know what, just scrap that anxiety bit. Otherwise though, just some contusions, abrasions, and fractured ribs. Yeah, it was painful, but it wasn't so degrading.

As long as I didn't think about how Donner had kissed me. How he'd touched me and gotten me hard.

Does that make it consensual? I knew that I couldn't control that response, of course, but... I'd gotten an erection. How could that not be –

A touch to my arm made me flinch violently. "Gah!" I half-shouted, my heart pounding in my throat and ribs protesting strongly. I realized that I had set sail for my own unpleasant little island and left BJ far behind.

"Hawk?" he asked worriedly. "You okay?"

I tried to breathe deeply but the first inhale reminded me of why we were in X-ray to begin with. "Fine," I reassured him shortly. "Sorry Beej." I wound up just spacing out my shallow breathing. I knew that that may not work out well in the long run for a brain needing oxygen, but it was what I had to work with. "Did you say something?" Had he touched me to get my attention? I must have missed something.

"Yeah, step over here," he instructed, waving me toward the X-ray machine. "Let's get an upright AP." I stood in approximately the right place and was then directed into position with verbal cues instead of the more usual physical nudges: "Come an inch to the right. No, sorry, my right, your left."

"You'd think after graduating medical school you'd be able to tell your right from your left."

BJ returned my lighthearted jibe as he continued his instructions. "One more inch. Are you sure you know what an inch is? You'd think after graduating kindergarten you'd be able to tell an inch from a centimeter. There you go. Good. Shoulders back. Thank you." He retreated behind the lead partition and continued his directions. "Take a deep breath. Deeper. Actually inhale. Yes, I know it hurts. Okay, good, one more. Hold it." I heard the buzz of the machine. "And, relax. Good job. Okay, let's get a lateral." I painfully reached up, resting my forearms on the top of my head, and placed my left side against the machine. "Perfect. Chin up. Breathe. Again. Hold it. Good! All done!"

"On behalf of your past, present, and future patients, I'm obliged to tell you that you sound like you're praising a dog." I dropped my arms and hugged my pained torso.

"Who's a good boy?" he said in exaggerated baby talk – or puppy talk, I supposed, in this case. "Who wants a treat?"

"What kind of treat?" I asked with feigned interest. "If it didn't come from the mess tent, I'm in."

"Here's the treat," BJ cooed. (I was going to have to do something about that very soon – I'd created a monster.) "After we develop the X-rays we get to go look at your eye and clean up your back and wrap your ribs again! And do a good job this time!"

"Hey, you try wrapping your own fractured ribs," I objected. "I thought I did a good job, considering."

He (thankfully) lost the puppy talk. "Hawk, you might as well have been wearing a tight shirt," he nitpicked.

"Let's develop the radiographs, then you can put your money where your mouth is," I challenged.

"You're on." Challenge accepted.

He removed the film from the machine and stepped over to the processing station. He dipped each radiograph in the developing solution and the stop bath, then washed it and held it up as it dripped dry. In the meantime I dumped the white gown into the dirty clothes basket across the way in the scrub room. I was back before the X-rays were done.

"They're a little blurry" – likely because I was still visibly shaking – "but yeah," he told me, "looks like probable nondisplaced fractures on your left 8th and 9th."

"Like I said," I pointed out smugly as he rolled the unwieldy machine back behind the curtain.

"Like you said," he acknowledged with good humor. "I'm going to stick this on Colonel Potter's desk – I know he'll want to see it – and then we'll go take care of those ribs. Oh, and your back. Uh, and your eye." I knew it was bad when my best-friend-slash-doctor began losing track of how many injuries I had.

I followed him quietly past Radar, who was stretched out in his bunk trying to fall asleep, to Potter's now-empty office, then back through to the exam room, feeling like a puppy shadowing his human.

"Alright, let's take a look at your shiner," BJ said, patting the exam table and snagging the ophthalmoscope.

I eyed the table dubiously while my rectum reminded me emphatically of how sitting felt. "I'll stay standing if it's alright with you." For that and probably almost any activity in the near future.

A grim look flashed across his face before he managed to school his expression. "Of course," he said apologetically. He came to stand very close to me and tilted my head up ever so slightly with his finger under my chin. I looked up into his pretty blue eyes, trying to tamp down the sudden rush of anxiety caused by his proximity and his gentle touch.

He leaned in slightly and suddenly it was Donner who was bringing his face closer to violently slam his lips into mine. To thrust his tongue down my throat. I jerked my head back and shoved him away, backing up abruptly until I crashed into something with a wave of agony.

Just like that, the spell was broken. It was BJ I'd pushed, and I was cringing against the exam table, painfully sliding down its side to sit equally as painfully curled up on the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees. I breathed quickly and shallowly, head spinning.

"Hawk?" BJ asked, alarmed. "You with me?" He crouched a short distance from me but didn't reach out to touch me. Smart man.

"Yeah yeah," I said, trying to reassure both of us. "I'm fine. It's just... I... sorry."

"Not a problem," he replied in a pacifying tone, as if soothing a spooked animal. "Not your fault."

I heaved a painful sigh, then tried to straighten my legs to stand, electing, in deference to my ribs, not to reach back to push myself up using the exam table. All I really managed to do was squirm and hurt my injured ribs, back, and butt. BJ, divining my intention, stood and offered me his hands. With an uneasy half-smile of gratitude I took them and let him pull me to my feet, grunting at the resulting pain in my chest. He dropped my hands as soon as I was stable and stood there for a moment, observing me in case I had another meltdown, I presumed.

"I'm ready. Sorry," I repeated.

"Okay," he said, approaching me cautiously. Again he leaned in close, carefully raising my chin to tilt my head up minutely. With light touches he examined my face. I succeeded in keeping the shakiness to a minimum. When he gently touched my swollen eye socket I almost jerked my head out of his grasp but managed to restrain myself to a strong twitch.

"Sorry," he apologized. I knew he hated causing me pain. It was one of the burdens of being a doctor – sometimes you had to hurt someone to help them. And it was harder when the patient was someone you were close to. There was an awful lot of 'sorry' going around that night. "Alright, I need you to open your eye as wide as you can." He grabbed the ophthalmoscope and flicked on the light. I raised my eyebrows in attempt to lift some of the swollen tissue out of the way and widened my eyes following the resulting wince. My face throbbed in time with my heartbeat. "Look straight at me." I aimed my right eye at his face and hoped my left eye was taking the hint. "Good. Now look at my right ear."

"You do realize that I can't see your right ear with that light in my eyes, don't you?" I asked rhetorically, trying to soothe myself with sarcasm.

If BJ responded it must have been via facial expression, which I graciously chose not to point out that I was currently unable to observe thanks to the aforementioned light, at the risk of sounding redundant. "Okay, now look at my left ear."

"Why do I get the impression that you're not listening to a word I say?" I asked with mock irritation, but gazed at where I estimated his left ear would be.

"I'm too busy trying to get a look at your shiner while your mouth won't stop moving. You do realize that your lips are indirectly connected to your eyes, right?" I smirked but fell silent. "Alright. Look up." I made a show of rolling my eyes, but didn't drop my gaze until so directed. "And down. Good." He switched the light off and backed up a pace. "Good news! You have a periorbital hematoma, obviously" – I rolled my eye(s) for real that time; it didn't take a doctor to diagnose a black eye (I bet even Frank could have reached that conclusion) – "but there's no sign of ocular hypertension or hyphema. Any double vision?"

I shook my head. "You still look singular to me."

"Good. But your vision's still blurry?"

"Either that or my right eye's seeing far too many sharp edges."

He tilted the corners of his mouth up in the tiniest of smiles to humor my weak jest. "Your eye looked fine," he assured me, hanging up the ophthalmoscope. "I can't say the same about your eye socket. But if you're still having trouble with it in a couple of days we'll take another look."

Well, that was a relief. "I was just getting the hang of being a one-eyed surgeon," I protested jokingly.

"If you ever try that again I think Margaret and Colonel Potter will have to duel to see who gets to skin you alive first," he said seriously.

"Don't give up surgery to become a motivational speaker."

"I just motivated you to never do that again, didn't I?" he pointed out.

"You're supposed to empower me to do whatever I want in life!" I objected.

"I draw the line at encouraging antemortem autopsies."

I stuck my tongue out at him in a moment of unrestrained maturity before painfully removing my shirt (and wondering what had possessed me to put it back on in Potter's office, anyway). BJ broke out the gloves, antiseptic, gauze, bandages, and tape.

"Can you lay on your stomach up here?" He patted the exam table. As I struggled onto the table with a pained groan he asked, "Do you mind telling me how you're going to make sure this never happens again?" I heard the familiar snap of plastic gloves being pulled on. "I would really like to sleep tonight." After I finished squirming into a more comfortable position he removed the bandage and dressing, clicking his tongue at the sight of my abrasions.

"Father Mulcahy pointed out that he can't turn me in without exposing himself and what he's done to me."

"But the picture..." BJ protested as he began cleaning my wound.

"If that picture got out I would have him locked up for many years. I bet he'd agree to turn it over if I pointed that out to him. In detail." I put the entirety of my confidence into that statement, along with quite a bit of conviction that I didn't even know I'd possessed.

BJ paused for a moment in his ministrations. "So you would be willing to let this mystery cat out of the bag in order to see this guy put away?"

"No," I said frankly. "But he doesn't have to know that."

I could picture the assessing expression that I was sure crossed my friend's face as he evaluated my plan. "It's risky, but it could work."

"I can pull it off," I said with somewhat bluffed assuredness. I had to pull it off. Failure was not an option.

"Why didn't I come up with that?" he asked in an undertone, as if to himself, while resuming his attentions on my back. "I could have put a stop –"

"Beej, don't," I interrupted. "We were too close to this. I had to find someone with a different perspective. You can't blame yourself."

"Watch me," he muttered.

"Really. It's not your fault." The last thing I wanted was my friend to feel guilty about this mess. Well, one of the last things. Actually, there were quite a few things that I would really prefer not happen that would probably top that list. But BJ's guilt was on there somewhere.

"Alright, alright, fine."

I wasn't sure I believed him but let it go that time. "Oh, can you make sure there are no splinters in there?"

"Splinters?" He stopped his treatment again, presumably to look at me. The only good thing I'd found about my busted eye was that right then I had an excuse for not meeting his gaze. Only one side of my face could be up at a time while I was stomach down and I sure as hell wasn't putting my bruised and swollen eye down on anything.

"Yeah..." I said, humiliated. "Wood splinters."

"Wood – Do you mind if I ask how that happened?" I felt his gentle touches resume.

"I don't think you really want to know," I told him cautiously.

"I'm a big boy. I can take it."

I gave a mental shrug and braced myself for an influx of vivid and unpleasant memories that astonishingly didn't come. "Well. Uh. He caught me in the shower."

BJ stopped again. I heard him sit back on his stool. "In – in our shower. The shower we use all the time."

"That's the one," I said apologetically. "Sorry. Tried to tell you." It was probably different to know abstractly that something had happened than to know that that something had happened in the place you went to get clean.

"No, no, it's fine. I asked." He started touching my back once more.

"But now you're not going to be able to go in the shower without thinking about it."

"Yeah," he said, voice subdued. "How are you going to be able to take a shower?"

"Probably because you'll be there," I said, half-smiling.

"Good answer." I could hear the answering smile in his reply. A knot in my stomach that I hadn't even realized was there loosened slightly at hearing my friend's support. Then I heard his smile fade. "And you were right. You have several splinters. One of them is going to be a doozy." The squeak of the stool told me that BJ had stood, and a few footsteps later a drawer slid open.

"What, will it require a local or something?" I asked, mostly joking.

"Near enough." He sat back down, presumably with some forceps.

"Just one more thing I needed today," I sighed glumly.

BJ was silent for a moment and I felt the barest hint of cold steel on my back. "So what are you going to do about him?"

"Huh?" I felt a sharp tug and slight pain. Well that wasn't so bad.

"Your plan." A second quick pull with a bite.

"Oh. I figure I can make him transfer out." Another sudden tug and sting.

"So he can go do the same thing in some other camp?" Yet another pull and a prick.

"That's the best solution I could come up with." And then he stabbed me with something, hard. "Ow!" I shouted, sitting up suddenly despite my ribs and nearly cracking BJ in the forehead. "What the hell is wrong with you?! You're supposed to be pulling things out not putting things in!"

He chuckled darkly and held up the forceps. A relatively thick sliver of bloody wood fully two inches long was clasped there.

Oh.

"Now lay back down. I'm sure it's bleeding and I'd rather not get it all over the place."

I complied, disturbingly reminded of the image of Donner with my blood smeared over his belly.

BJ picked up our conversation from where we'd left off. "Why not press charges?"

I felt the sting of the antiseptic and jerked slightly. "Did you forget that he's blackmailing me?" That came out a little more sharply than I intended. "You know. The picture."

"What could be that bad, really?" he asked frankly, sponging the abrasion dry and smearing ointment on my back.

I wished I could tell him. I really did. But look at where it had gotten me with Father Mulcahy. I couldn't risk losing what I had with BJ. Instead, I ignored the question. "Also, there's the whole thing with telling a bunch of people what he did to me."

I felt him lower a fresh dressing in place. "Hawk, it wasn't your fault! There's nothing to be ashamed of." He bandaged the cloth down and backed away to dispose of the trash.

I eased down from the table. "If I hadn't put myself in that position in the first place, none of this would have happened."

"But it was him making the decision to hurt you. He's the one who raped you." And there was that four letter word again. "Lift your arms," he added, grabbing the tape.

"I wasn't raped," I snapped as I painfully complied.

"Are you telling me you wanted to have sex with him?" He began wrapping my ribs.

"No!" Of course not!

"Then you admit that it was nonconsensual?" he pressed.

I hesitated, debating the wisdom of denying that intercourse had occurred. I ultimately decided that it would be about as effective as trying to crack a cinderblock in half with my forehead. Both would give me a headache and still get me nowhere. "I guess, yeah," I admitted. When you put it like that. I thought guiltily of my erection.

"So your real problem here is with the word 'rape,'" he concluded bluntly.

"I guess," I repeated noncommittally. A familiar refrain sounded in my head: Men don't get raped.

"So you can't press charges because you can't admit that you were raped."

"Don't forget that whole blackmail thing," I interjected.

"There's nothing that you could have done that would be worse than this!" he insisted. "You're just going to let him get away with beating, raping, and blackmailing you?!" He completed the task, fixing the end in place.

"I'm getting rid of the problem," I said stubbornly, squirming uncomfortably in the tape. If I'd thought having my ribs wrapped was painful when I had done it, it was twice as bad when BJ did the job. He did it right, and my skinned back was screaming in protest.

"You're sending the problem to someone else! Hawk, he's a predator!" he emphasized. "They don't typically stop at one victim! You're going to let him go free to prey on some other person!"

Yeah, I was trying not to think about that. "I don't know what else to do!"

"Turn him in!" he entreated me. "Press charges against him!"

As much as I loved BJ, at that moment I really just wanted to shake him. Preferably by the neck. "I can't. I can't do it Beej. Please don't ask me again."

He huffed in exasperation but let the subject drop and moved on. Pursing his lips, he fell silent for a moment, then said cautiously, "Alright, I need you to pull down your pants."

"Come again?" I asked in disbelief, eyebrows climbing.

"I have to do a perianal exam," he informed me mildly, obviously uncomfortable but just as obviously determined not to show it.

I glared at him. "Oh no. Nuh-uh. No way." No one would be getting anywhere near my genitals for a long time.

"Just let me do a visual," he wheedled. It was almost as if he actually wanted to look at my anus.

"I don't care if you use a telescope," I replied scathingly. "It's not happening."

"I won't hurt you, and I promise it'll be quick."

"I don't think so," I told him firmly.

"We need to know the full extent of the damage," he reasoned.

"It's fine," I lied coldly. "There's no damage. I'm a doctor. This is my professional assessment."

"You're obviously in pain," BJ argued. I couldn't knock his observational skills.

I grabbed my discarded shirt (but didn't pull it back on – screw doing that again tonight) and draped it over my arm. "We're done here."

"Come on, Hawk. It's S.O.P. You know that."

"S.O.P. can kiss my ass." I paused for a split second as the irony of that statement struck me. "Figuratively speaking."

BJ ignored my retort. "I really should have done it last time, but…." But neither of us had desired to go there. In addition to being humiliating, a rectal exam would escalate the attacks to an even more uncomfortable level of reality for the both of us.

"No. Absolutely and irrevocably no. End of discussion."

"Would you rather Colonel Potter do it?" he asked carefully.

"No! Christ, get off it, will you? It's not happening! Nope, nah, nay, non, nein, iie, aniyo, and ad infinitum for 'absolutely not!'"

Apparently something in my tone – or maybe the sheer number of languages I'd employed – convinced him that further argument would be futile. Eventually, after a minute of frustrated silence, he waved to the door. "Fine. Let's go get some ice and put you to bed."

Savagely burying the conversation that had just occurred, I adopted a coquettish grin – the effect almost certainly ruined by my split lip and swollen eye – and purred flirtatiously, "I thought you'd never ask."

A reluctant smile blossomed on his face. "Had I known you were interested I would have skipped right past the X-rays, eye exam, splinter removal, and rib taping straight to packing ice around you in your cot."

"I'm always interested," I murmured slyly, then added practically, "but I think it's going to be a little too cold for that tonight."

"You know it will help."

"But... cold," I argued eloquently as we stepped out of the exam room.

"What about not letting your head swell to the size of a watermelon?"

"Maybe a baby watermelon wouldn't be so bad."

"You can have my blanket," he offered chivalrously.

Awww. But still no dice. "Unless you're volunteering some warm body to lie on top of me – er, beside me, definitely beside me – and keep me warm, I'm not interested." I wasn't all that picky as to who the warm body would belong to, either. As long as they didn't mind me shaking all night long – and not necessarily from the cold.

"You're impossible."

"I broke the mold."

"Thank God."

I laughed and followed him through the kitchen door. Somehow I'd let him walk me there despite my protests about the ice. Eh, whatever. I'd humor the guy. Until I got cold. Then the ice was going in his cot.

Finally, with ice in tow – and I made BJ carry it – we set out for the Swamp. Upon our arrival I tossed the dirty shirt on the floor and painfully dropped my pants to my ankles. BJ was a sweetheart and removed my boots, my trousers, and (God save him) my socks. I absolutely refused to think of Donner as my friend stripped me, and was for the most part successful. The pain from my various injuries helped by making the experience sufficiently different from the attacks. And who would have imagined that I'd be thankful for that?

Once properly undressed I sank gingerly onto my stomach in my cot. BJ wrapped the bags of ice in towels and various pieces of reasonably clean clothing and positioned them around my chest, placing the smallest over my left eye. As soon as he had carefully positioned the last bag and gently covered me with both of our blankets I said, "Uh oh."

"What?" he asked me warily.

"I forgot to go to the little boys' room." I tried to keep the mischief out of my voice.

"You're kidding," he said incredulously.

"Yeah yeah," I admitted, then added teasingly, "How'd you know?" I heard a disbelieving laugh and bet that if I hadn't been so broken everywhere he would have smacked me.

As exhausted as I was, the pain kept me awake for what felt like forever. I couldn't toss and turn but I did shift my weight frequently, causing the melting ice to slosh around. Eventually BJ's cot creaked and I deduced that he'd sat up. Apparently I wasn't the only one having trouble sleeping that night.

"Hurting too bad to sleep?"

I frowned. "Yeah," I conceded.

"You were just taking APC capsules right?"

"Yeah. I knew I might have to operate."

"Well you don't now. Let's get you on something a little stronger."

"Dihydrocodeine?" The opioid was a favorite of doctors for broken ribs because it suppressed coughing in addition to relieving pain.

"Yep."

"You won't hear me complaining."

BJ fetched me a bottle full of the drug and a cup of water. Not too long after I took my dose I experienced the ecstasy of reduced pain. I was finally able to escape into unconsciousness.

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Author's Note: All medical practices in this fic are based on the show and whatever information Google could provide me on procedures done in the early 1950s. I have no first-hand experience in this area (and elected to stop the research short of breaking my own ribs) and apologize for any mistakes I may have made. I wanted to go into this much detail in order to realistically depict the consequences that Hawkeye would have had to deal with. I hope I've done it some justice.