Sorry for the delay. Here's the next installment!
"You know, I don't think I meant it." Hawkeye's words were quiet, and he said them without looking her way.
"Meant what?" Margaret asked.
Hawkeye picked at invisible lint on his suit jacket sleeves. "Earlier," he said, vaguely. "When we first ran into each other. You asked how I was."
Margaret was slowly beginning to catch on. Her usually direct friend was being hazy, and that was enough to sound a warning bell in her head. "You said you were fine. Good, great. You're not?"
There seemed to be a lot of lint on his jacket. "I wasn't. This year…," he paused to push a hand through hair that didn't look as though it had lost any of its gray in the last year home. "It's been hard to come back." She stayed quiet, waiting for him.
"I relapsed for a while. I stopped sleeping. I thought about setting up a still in my living room. I even gave up doctoring for a time. Not just surgery - all of it." He'd moved away from the jacket, and his fingers were scraping distractedly at the table top. "I couldn't handle the memories."
She didn't say anything for a long moment, trying to understand what he'd just told her. "You never said anything in your letters."
"Naw." He smiled ruefully and gave a little shrug. "I didn't know what to say. I didn't know if you'd want to know."
"Did anyone know?"
"My dad. Who then told B.J. Colonel Potter found out, eventually. I spent some time down in Missouri with him, Klinger, and Father Mulcahy. That helped. I talked with Sidney. That helped."
Just before they'd left each other, he'd suffered the hardest blow of the war. Or maybe it was just the last blow he could suffer without breaking. The baby on the bus had near about destroyed him. And watching him fall had almost destroyed the rest of them.
She slipped a hand into his, interrupting his fidgeting fingers. "Are you all right, Hawkeye?"
Hawkeye met her eyes for the first time since beginning the conversation. "I really think I will be. It's a waiting game, you know? They're not kidding when they recommend time as the ultimate healer. I've prescribed it a thousand times, but I never really knew it until now."
"What can I do?"
He tightened his hold on her hand. "What you've always done, Margaret. Be there for me."
Margaret tilted her head, studying his blue eyes. "Let me be."
"I guess that means you want me to tell you things." As far as joke attempts went, it was a poor one.
"Please."
He shifted a little. "It's not fun to hear."
"Hawkeye," she stopped him. "Tell me anyway."
Hawkeye smiled at her persistence. "Okay, but this has to go both ways. How are you, Margaret? Honestly?"
"Honestly? It's been a tough year for us both. But you and I … we'll be okay."
He looked to where their hands were still locked. "Yeah. I believe that."