Margaret was not keen on getting that duty rooster immediately. She did want to take a walk around the camp, to clear her mind out a little and to be alone, but to also talk with Hawkeye. She owed it to him to at least thank him for the effort he put in so that everyone could be free from Major Floyd and his men, especially her, but to also tell him something more, if he would allow it. For a long time (months, but it seemed forever in a place like Korea), something was brewing in Margaret's mind. Ever since she was married to Donald Penobscott and had experienced that night out with Hawkeye under enemy fire after receiving a letter addressed to Donald's lover on the side, she had been thinking over her feelings for the prankster surgeon. She respected him surely, but to love him as he so obviously did to her was something different to her, a foreign feeling that she should not shake off.
"He loves me, he loves me not," Margaret whispered to herself as she randomly picked up a flower from Father Mulcahy's garden and started peeling off the petals as she walked. "He loves me, he loves me not…"
After doing a short circuit around the camp and about to do another one, Margaret finally braced herself and braved her soul for the conversation she wanted to have in the Swamp. She luckily saw the light on where Hawkeye slept and noticed that BJ and Charles were not in sight (still probably relaxing in the Officers' Club with the others most likely, she reasoned). It was as good a time as ever to talk over feelings.
If Hawkeye would ever talk about his is another story.
Sighing, Margaret walked over to the Swamp and knocked on the door, hearing the dartboard bang a few times because of it. Without an answer, she entered anyway, seeing that Hawkeye was not just ignoring her, but paying more attention to a nudist's magazine that he just received in the mail probably weeks before. Volleyball had graced the cover in the most disgusting way, but Margaret ignored it (vile as she thought it always had been), clearing her throat and waiting for Hawkeye to acknowledge that she was there.
Soon, though, the surgeon saw the head nurse through the magazine, amazingly enough. Laying it down, he exclaimed, "Margaret! It's a pleasure. I always dreamed of this moment."
As Hawkeye patted the bed, Margaret fumed, throwing out all those feelings she wanted to confess. "Oh, can it, will you, Pierce?"
"You obviously came in here for a reason," Hawkeye reasoned, pulling himself up. "Do enlighten me upon the nature of your call."
"Well, perhaps there was a reason and perhaps there wasn't now," Margaret said with some hesitation.
"You're sounding more and more like Frank Burns by the minute and I'm saying this with a smile on my face," Hawkeye replied, sounding a little irritated by the thought of their former surgeon. "And I'm not going to be hitting you in the face, Major Baby."
"Oh, you never learn, do you?" Margaret threw her hands in the air. "I just wanted to come in here to say a little something, just because I didn't want anyone around, and you make it out to be like it's all some social call."
"And what if it's not?"
"What do you mean?"
Hawkeye sat up and faced Margaret. "I saw you out there, picking a flower and counting petals. Don't tell me this isn't just a social call."
Margaret's face bloomed red.
"Furthermore," Hawkeye continued, as if in a rant, "who in their right mind asks if someone loves them or not?"
"Well, who in their right mind complains when Happy Hour came and went?" Margaret countered, crossing her arms.
"Margaret, Margaret, Margaret…" Hawkeye stood up, uncrossing her stubborn arms. "You don't understand and never will."
"That's what I'm trying to do, you sick pervert," Margaret said, almost pushing the caring hands away. "I'm trying to come to some understanding with you and all you can do it sit there and whine and joke. And drink and read that stupid magazine. It's all you do in this stinking place."
"So did you, except for looking at those pretty girls." Hawkeye's hands seemed suspended in the air as he held onto Margaret's arms gently.
"Not as much as you." Margaret turned away. "And all I wanted to say…all I wanted to tell you was a simple thank you. Never more, never less."
Hawkeye was stunned. Margaret had said few things in the time they had spent together alone. Most of them had been scorn. Some had been kind, tender even. Others had been mournful of how unmilitary he was, especially at the beginning of the war. Nonetheless, the casualness of how she said it…how distant she sounded…it all seemed like a nightmare. He had watched as she walked around the camp perimeter. He saw her pick up the random flower and count who loved her and who didn't. Now, he saw that she needed to say something more than a simple thanks, but the callousness of it seemed more than just admitting that she needed help. There was more to her gratitude than that.
Margaret crossed her arms again, expecting Hawkeye to say something sarcastic or witty, but his tongue was tied. "What now, Pierce? One of my nurses dress up like a cat and made you silent?"
"No, no…" Hawkeye turned around, unable to face his disappointment as he went for the still, intent on getting a drink. "But thanks for stopping in to tell me that. Somebody had to get the job done."
"Because you knew I was innocent." It wasn't a question, but a statement.
"Everyone knew you were innocent, Margaret. It was only a matter of getting past that Army mumble-jumble and getting to who had done the deed and why. It was all elementary, my dear. All I did was follow the clues and, by chance, found the proof I needed. And it was a lucky of us to have people who cared and had been following Major Floyd. Don't you think?"
Margaret's heart softened as Hawkeye poured himself a drink and offered her one, nodding her head to both the drink and his last question. When she accepted the martini glass, the two sat down. Hawkeye faced Margaret from his cot while she sat in the chair next to the cot. The two still say nothing to each other, drinking silently. Margaret then cleared her throat again.
"So, why don't you tell me about what happened in Tokyo?" she asked quietly, as if to dispel the mood she was in previously. "You know, how it led you there?"
"Well, it wasn't easy," Hawkeye admitted, wanting to talk to someone about what had happened finally, but was very reluctant about revealing the details. "I had to thank Radar to giving us that clue to go there."
"What clue?" Margaret sipped on her drink, holding it out for more.
As Hawkeye filled her glass again and came back, he replied, "A ton of them. If we looked closely, there was something that led us to Tokyo. From Tokyo, we met with one person, who introduced us to another, and so on and so forth. It became a ridiculous adventure, and one that I am not willing to repeat."
"Why aren't you giving me specifics? I can order you, you know. I'm your superior officer."
"You can't order me to relive something I want to forget." Hawkeye motioned around them with the hand that held his drink.
"No, but you're not answering my question directly."
"Because, Margaret, there are so many things that I don't want to talk about."
"Like us?" Margaret almost put her hands to her mouth, but she held still as she drank, feeling the redness on her face from earlier drain out.
Hawkeye smiled. "What about us, Major Baby?"
"Oh, stop that." Margaret put her drink down, slightly drunk and feeling the effects of the still gin. "Ok, Funny Man, enough is enough. Do you love me or not?"
"Love is such a strong word," Hawkeye admitted, moving away from Margaret as she got up and fell back into her seat with dizziness. "If you want to call it love, then be my guest. I'm not giving anything away."
"And the wife and children back in…what was it, Crabapple Cove?"
Hawkeye laughed deeply. "That rumor? You seriously think I'm married and have kids?"
"What rumor? The nurses all swear it's true. You're just cheating on your wife."
"I only said that to get them away from me when the last ceasefire was announced and then denounced." Hawkeye laughed again. "Come on, Margaret. You're getting drunk or on your way to it, even bringing up such silly gossip about little old me. Take a shower, go to bed and wake up in the morning, being that major we all know and love."
"What if I can't be?" Margaret almost whimpered, scared that the conversation was slowly dwindling down to nothing but old scandals and jokes with drinks. "Nobody can pretend that this did not happen, Hawkeye. Nothing can alter what happened about a week ago, transforming us into people that we never thought we could be. We're more compassionate to each other, just us two, tiptoeing on something that we could not help. We sat there silently, all of us transfixed upon a lie that built itself to proportions that even I still cannot comprehend, but something that seems to have brought us together. And even those who could have helped us were unable to, but knew something more than we ever will."
"I helped," Hawkeye offered carefully, finishing his gin.
"And you were the only one who could," Margaret gushed out, putting down her glass to end the discussion they were having, knowing that they would never have the one they want here in Korea. "You're right, Hawkeye. I need to go to bed soon. I need to give Colonel Potter the duty rooster and I'll hit the sack."
"Come with me?" Hawkeye asked, patting his bed again.
"Oh, you're impossible!" Margaret exclaimed as she got up and headed for the door.
"Margaret." That one word stopped her just as she was at the door, ready to get the duty rooster and go to bed. It was the one call she could not afford not to answer, something that she longed to hear out of the man who had tortured and tormented her for most of the time she had been in the camp, with or without Frank Burns.
"Yes?" Margaret stopped, looking at Hawkeye.
"Look me up later, after this is all done," Hawkeye said. "You don't need to write me some silly letters or call me. Just look me up in Crabapple Cove after the war is over. I'll be there, to tell you everything."
Margaret had to do a double take, pinching her arm to make sure that what she heard was reality. She could not understand why Hawkeye Pierce had told her to find him after the war. It had seemed unattainable, because of all of the directions she could be turned to, but being in the Army seemed to slowly end for her, a phase in her life that seemed to end just when it was beginning. Her career was almost shot to pieces. Even without her father butting in to save her, could she survive if another attack was put forth? Could the tragedy that happened here at the 4077th still smear what was left of her Army career? Could a civilian life be what was best for her, a new life that beckoned to her often?
Perhaps it is best to fall back, be normal. I can't live with the Army for the rest of my life and not want to be married and have children.
"I will," Margaret finally promised, posed to leave. "I'll look you up later."