April 11, 1952
Tokyo, Japan to Boston

Oh, Trapper! I have to tell you something and I am excited about it, more so than ever before!

I know, it's a greeting that you didn't expect in a letter from me. Well, I'll start from the beginning. It's usually the best way to go about it. I am just too excited though!

I've been here in Japan for about two days now. Here I am in Tokyo finally, after spending almost two years in Korea and not being able to see how this city is "The Pearl of the Orient". I think I know why now though, although it's just another city. Honestly, I have not been here since before I was sent to the cesspool called the 4077th, so I am enjoying myself immensely, if you want to call it that. I'm sitting in our cozy hotel room right now. Hawkeye is shaving in the latrine at this moment (bathroom, I should say, as they call it that here) and preparing for our date tonight. Major Gregory Keller, who is watching me on orders of Colonel Flagg, sits in a chair observing me passively, smoking a cigar and laughing about the night before.

You know I've been declared the security risk. Some of it has been cleared up and I only have a guise, who happened to be on our side. Trust me, Trapper. However, I must tell you as much as I can before going on this date, so let me begin once more, before my rambling gets out of hand and I would need to stop somewhere. I have so much time on my hands, you know!

After a day of poker with a few of the other soldiers here (with Dean here too), Hawkeye and I have managed to attend one medical conference with a few more to go to. Hawkeye nodded off in the middle of it (naturally), asking me before his eyelids went down to take notes for him, since we were supposed to prove to Colonel Potter that we did something more than golf, have sex, drink, whatever. The lecture itself was on more effective ways for medical personnel to work in triage, something Margaret missed the week before, so I took those notes carefully.

Of course, I worked on the notes with such concentration and dedication, since Margaret might need them. As you probably don't know, the nurses now work in triage, to save time for the doctors. Other than almost working like doctors and slave-driving ourselves worse, it gives us more knowledge needed to determine cases and will save more lives. It's something that actually interested me too and I was pretty attentive and trying to ensure that nobody was seeing Hawkeye nod off so rudely.

After the lecture, it was a different story. Last night after that triage lecture was just beautiful though, Trapper. I was in a hotel room, together with Hawkeye without Greg Keller watching us. To be fair, he was otherwise occupied in his room and I'll tell you more about it later, once the story gets that far. Anyway, I was in heaven, despite my irritation directed at people who were at the lecture. I mean, there were nonmilitary and some non-warzone military personnel who thought they knew better and tried correcting me when I tried pointing out something at the Q&A session. God, you know about that. Now I know why you were always mad every time you came back from those Tokyo conferences!

In either case, Hawkeye and I got to share a room together, even though we were not married and just lived together like that. Pleasures of the flesh are usually on our minds when we're alone (and rarely do we have that, even in the Supply Room). Not last night for once and I kid you not. I just wasn't in the mood last night. I wanted to talk about something, but could not find the words for it. I was pretty upset.

All day yesterday, while attending the conference and then going to the bar later on with Dean and Greg behind us, I thought about many things. I would walk through the streets of Tokyo, laughing and pretending that the war wasn't in existence and that we were on vacation for life. I would walk hand-in-hand with Hawkeye and feel giddy and happy on the outside. On the inside though, I was crying. I would smile and giggle over the latest joke on the outside, but then cry when seeing a child with his/her mother on the inside. I would grin and reply with some sarcastic comment on the outside, but then break down and babble about my baby on the inside.

I was a mess of contradictions and I could not figure out what I wanted. All I knew was that I wanted Shannon and out of this war and I wanted her in my arms right now.

Hawkeye noticed somewhere in-between the bar and the hotel. He and I have gotten better at reading each other's minds and, when it comes to acting and pretending, he knows that I am still quite good at it. He also knows that I wasn't me and that I was hiding behind a mask. I stink of the spy still and he can spot it in an instant. Iréne Mountebain, a French woman who lived in West Germany before Korea, cannot exist for Hawkeye Pierce. Jeanie Morrison, the woman who grew up in the US and traveled the world, had to. The strange part of it all is that Hawkeye knew the difference between the two without asking questions, not even inquiring Colonel Flagg about it.

All night at the bar, before we went to bed around maybe four in the morning, Hawkeye laughed with me, talked with me and even joked with me. After dancing to the Cliff Edwards' song, "When You Wish Upon a Star" when it played on a jukebox, I felt Hawkeye dug his face into my greying hair and down into my neck. Even that could not make me smile and could not make me happy. Inside, all I could feel was the pain that Shannon could not be his child possibly, might not be his child, and that was something we both had to deal with after the war ended.

And when I get Shannon back after the war and I go to live with Hawkeye in Crabapple Cove, how will it work? Will it work? I mean, we work well in war and have each other now, but when peacetime comes by, will Hawkeye and I be together still? Will the relationship be the same or will we lean on each other? I couldn't tell. I can't tell right now. That was what worried me though.

At night, deep into the night after spending most of it at the local bar and dragging Greg back, I claimed to be deadly tired at long last and not up to playing our favorite game. As I got into my side of the bed, I rolled over on one side. I had comfortable clothes on finally, something not drab olive green or Army issued, and my now super long hair was let down fully, the length down the middle of my back. At the moment, I was remembering how you and Hawkeye would ask me when I would grow it out that long and now I had it, a civilian style that was too far away for me. Disregarding that thought, I realized that I was warm next to Hawkeye when he embraced me and then I became cold, cuddling against my side of the blanket without him. My side was left untested, too cold to sleep on.

Oh, why was I making it that way? Why was I always so cold that day? Why did I have to be so miserable?

Hawkeye knew it right away. "Jeanie, what's wrong? You've been sad today. Talk to me."

Oh, God, there was that familiar voice in my ears, on the other side of the dark room where there was the warmth. It was a question from Hawkeye and it was that one that I never wanted to answer to anyone.

I rolled back over, tired of being cold already, and faced Hawkeye. I wanted to be back in his arms, to cry on his shoulder and say how unfair life was and how I'm still here and how I missed the familiar curves called love. I wished that I was holding onto my baby girl, wishing that I were someplace safer and not in Korea. I yearned to be someplace called a home and not working on wounded soldiers in the middle of a war and not knowing when my last day was going to be. I wanted to forget the war, even here in Tokyo, and go to someplace that I can call anodyne, without my past following me around. I am tired of the fighting. I wanted to go home.

I propped my body up with my arm. "I don't know, Hawkeye," I began, knowing what was wrong in the first place and admitting nothing so far. "I don't know what's up today."

Hawkeye sat up and looked down at me. He was serious once more, which was always a rare occurrence. There was no joke from him this time.

"You know what's wrong with you, Jeanie," he replied sternly. "Tell me. Tell me what's wrong. Please."

In an instant, I was tired of hiding everything from Hawkeye. I was tired of being that Iréne Mountebain person and showing many other faces to different people. I was tired of feeling so cold and wanted to feel the heat of the life I so craved. Giving in, I sat up fully and practically jumped into his arms. I tried not to cry, but I felt tears come, traveling down my face to show my own inner gloom.

"I miss my baby, Hawkeye," I sobbed, trying desperately not to walk into it. "I want to go home, wherever that is. I want to go home. My arms feel so empty. I want to go home."

Hawkeye just held me. "I know, Jeanie. I know."

I looked up at him, almost amazed and sniffling the last of my crying. "You do? You do know?"

My tears were wiped away by Hawkeye's careful fingers, some of them lingering on my face. It made me want something more, but I ignored that feeling too. The gloom was being pushed down, something I somehow felt glad that I was doing.

"Why wouldn't you?" Hawkeye asked me. "Everybody wants to go home. Why should you be any different? Jeanie, this is the second time you've been to Tokyo and it's the first time you're on leisure. You're going to feel like you're having a good time, but it's not home yet. You know that you don't have one and tried searching for it here there and everywhere, but didn't find it because nothing familiar is here except me, Greg and Dean. You're away from the war and you're still sticking around with a guard watching your every move."

I giggled nervously, trying to dispel the mood. "Come on, Hawkeye. Greg isn't all that bad. And he's not in here, like he's supposed to be. He gave us privacy."

"He's a lightweight." Hawkeye rolled his eyes.

We had to leave the bar early because of Greg, Trapper. True, we had to drag him from the bar after he had three shots (widely spaced and slowly slipped). It was all in fun though, even after we put him to bed in his own room. Then, Hawkeye, Dean and I decorated his face with make-up I brought with me and Hawkeye and Dean gave him a haircut (well, he was almost bald anyway). It was fair play, since he passed out with his boots on.

Besides, if we didn't leave that bar when we did, all of us were either going to the stockade or going to be dishonorably discharged. It was all because of a general that didn't take lightly to being made fun of for his lack of hair and the wig he had to wear. However, seeing the face of the general that we were making fun of at the bar was funny, since he fit the stereotypical Army guy anyway. Even I would have said nothing, although I had been smart enough to keep my thoughts to myself.

"I knew that, Hawkeye," I said, remembering about the bar visit vividly. "You could have asked me. It's why I always took him out for a beer when we were in West Germany. I could get him drunk fast and would put him to sleep. He hated me for a long time for it, so much so that he wouldn't talk to me. Hell, he didn't talk to me until recently and that's because of the last time we went to the bar together. The girls who worked with us and I got him so drunk and did a makeover worse than what he had now."

I moved back to my cold spot on the other side of the bed and curled into a ball just as Hawkeye suddenly and on an impulse wanted to get up out of the bed. I watched him slip easily out of the bed, cross over to his luggage on the other side of the room and pull out a small box. Coming back to me, he smiled.

"This isn't the greatest of times to give this to you, but now is usually a good time, better than later because of how much I need to see you smile." Hawkeye came back to bed and sat me up as he handed me that box.

I accepted it, opened it and felt my mouth open as I saw the object and picked it up, studying it as the box dropped to the other side of the bed. Oh, God, Trapper, it was a ring. It was a very old ring, silver, thin and sporting a slightly fainted winding floral design on all of its continuing curves. It was a ring nonetheless and its message was pretty clear.

"It was my mother's," Hawkeye explained quickly, as if to hide his own grief as carefully as I did. "It was her wedding ring."

I looked at Hawkeye like a shot out of the water when hearing the last sentence and I was shocked, to say the least. "Hawkeye, I don't deserve this. I would have thought – no, Hawkeye, what were you thinking when –"

Hawkeye just took my hands, Trapper. He entwined all four hands together, the ring inside of my fingers, and interrupted me. "Because, Love, I wanted you to. I want you to wear it."

"Your Dad…" I started, but then stopped, trailing my sentence. I felt my heart skip a beat.

"He sent it to me with his best wishes," Hawkeye reassured me. "He also says that he hopes to meet you soon, when the war is over."

Hawkeye then smiled and it was that smile that always lights up a room in an instant, making you feel like everything was all right and that life was great. It made me beam with love for him and accept the unvoiced offer. Do you remember it from long ago, Trapper? Do you remember that special smile, especially when you played pranks on Frank and Margaret?

I laughed, shaking nervously. "What kind of proposal is this, Hawkeye? We're in Tokyo, in the middle of a war, and you can't say the words you want to say. You're hiding something from me."

"When this war ends, I think you'll understand." Hawkeye sighed, letting go of my hands and almost turning his back away from me. "Your brother also wishes us well. He's excited."

I smiled again, not surprised that my own brother knew before I did. "That's Dean, all right. He would be excited over something like love."

I then opened my hands again, still clasped together from when Hawkeye had them in his grasp, and held the ring in my palm, looking at it closer. The design that I thought was floral was actually thin vines and some tiny flowers at what seemed like corners. There was also a name towards the bottom of the ring on the plain inside saying "Addolorata".

"That was my mother's name." Hawkeye was still quiet in his corner of the bed, finally looking at me with a deeply saddened face, pained about the past. "It's Italian. It means 'sorrows'. My mother was a very sad person, even after she was married and had children." He paused, as if thinking of the right words. "My sister was the same way almost, the exact replica of Mom. Loretta was only eight. I was ten."

I knew what Hawkeye meant. He just didn't tell me these things randomly and without details for a reason, but through serious moments and sometime, in a situation like this, in sentences that hardly made sense and had a deeper meaning. In what was a long time ago, he told me about his mother and sister and how they died from an epidemic, a little more than a week apart from each other. Nine days, nine lousy days…and there was nothing that his father could do to save them. A lot of people died from it, Trapper, and that was heavy on one's conscience.

I didn't have the names of Hawkeye's family or anything that indicated that they lived (other than how they died), but that they existed and then didn't. I could tell that it still hurts Hawkeye to talk about it. The ring seemed like a new beginning though, a new beginning in the next generation that survived the carnage.

"After they died, our mountain laurel bush in the front yard stopped blooming." Hawkeye looked like he was pondering something again and was talking as if he was far away from the present. "Loretta was born the day it first bloomed, which was why she was named that. Her name is actually Italian for 'laurel' and Mom thought it was appropriate."

I smiled a sad grin hearing the story. Hawkeye was making me gloomy again almost, letting me dive into his soul to see the truth behind his blue eyes. Should I follow it? I knew I had to. I did for a little bit, but pulled back up slowly to be the strong one. I needed to let Hawkeye talk it out. Oh, he even continued musing and muttering for a minute or so, taking me back to that place called home for him, that small town named Crabapple Cove, Maine.

"Mom's name was too hard to pronounce for Dad, so he called her Annabeth, because of her middle name. It was Elizabeth." Hawkeye paused again. "You remind me a lot of my mother or what I remembered of her. You're just as quiet and unhappy as she was and you both carried a lot of baggage. But you're also the best of everything I've known, and you are you, Jeanie."

I didn't know what this meant, so I took it as is, Trapper. I didn't know how else to. I also did not know how to reply. It was difficult to talk when someone tells you that you remind them of their dead mother and that it was a good thing.

"Thank you, Hawkeye." I laughed, trying to get Hawkeye to face me again and smile, like he was making me by this strange proposal. I barely succeeded, only getting him back to my arms by kissing him fully on the mouth, muttering an "I love you!" in-between.

Hawkeye responded to the kiss and grinned again, back to his normal self again. "Let's see if it fits you, Jeanie." He took the ring out of my hands and held up my left hand.

I watched as Hawkeye slipped the cold ring on my ring finger, grinning as I did. Why? Well, Trapper, it fit perfectly. The ring fit my finger perfectly. It wasn't loose or tight. It was flawless, hiding the name of the person who wore it before me, mothering two children before some illness took her and her daughter away. Now, it graces the tiny fingers of me, the person that the elder Dr. Pierce's son loves, the person he met in Korea and who seemed to have stole his heart away.

God, Trapper, I'm becoming sentimental and I hate it, but I love Hawkeye and being in love with someone just takes your breath away. You know it. You saw it. What can you see out of this almost disastrous, albeit happy, event though, because we are in a war? What can be done? Like I told you already in a letter last week, Margaret is engaged to some idiot of a colonel. Now, it seems I'm engaged to Hawkeye, if that is what he wants. We can't marry in war like Margaret can. We aren't Regular Army and he knows it. We'll be more practical about it.

Maybe this is why Hawkeye says that after the war, I'll understand better? Who knows with him sometimes? I have to guess with him at times because he is so random and joyous.

Oops, I must run now, Trapper. Hawkeye is about ready to go out and is waiting for me. I'll send his greetings to you, even if he won't say it to my face. Just please, do something about this hostility. Send Hawkeye a note or something and end this animosity. And all this just because you left without telling him. I'm tired of being the middle person!

Sending love to you, Louise, the girls and, as always, to my daughter. Kisses from this now-engaged woman!

Love, Jeanie