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The following chapter contains references to the episode Deluge.
Claudia heard Frank's whining even before she entered scrub room. As usual he acted as if he was the only one inconvenienced by the circumstances. As if everybody else got a kick out of twenty-something-hour operating sessions. Somebody else was there as well, talking back to Frank.
"If it's a police action, why don't they send cops?" It was BJ's voice she heard. He and Hawkeye were already dressed for work, furiously scrubbing the dust of Korea of their hands.
"Everybody decent?" Claudia shouted before entering.
"We all are dressed up to dance if that's what you mean. But with Frank here we are not big on decency…" Hawkeye answered, smiling behind his face mask. They didn't talk about the kiss they shared, which didn't really surprise Claudia. For all his kindness and compassion, Hawkeye had a habit of running away from his feelings. For once it was all fine with her.
"If this is a police action, I am a flying lobster…" Claudia sighed and took her jacket of. Hanging it on a hook on the wall, she proceeded to unbutton another layer of her clothing.
"If you ever land, find me. I cometh from the country of lobster, I'll know what to do with you." Hawkeye said, lewdly raising his eyebrows, before they all left Claudia to change.
"Save your energy. We got a lot of bad cases coming up." Claudia shouted in response, getting into the white costume of a surgeon.
It wasn't long before she joined them in the OR and a few moments after that Colonel Potter showed up as well. He still didn't get a clear answer from HQ about what they might expect in the near future and was very grumpy about it. There were rumors of ceasefire going around, but no one would touch them with thirty foot pole.
As BJ noted the South Koreans they operated on were getting younger. No two way about it. It was making otherwise tragic situation even more dreadful. Not only were you seeing horrible belly wound as he did right in front of him now, but the bodies that were delivered on the operating tables hadn't even had a chance to live before they got a chance to die.
Trying to expose a bleeder, BJ got showered by blood at one point. Father Mulcahy rushed to irrigate his eyes and Colonel Potter took over. Hawkeye checked if BJ was alright and then called for retraction. He was dealing with a very serious chest wound and the patient's pulse was weakening. He had to work fast.
Claudia started with two chest cases that weren't as bad as it originally looked. It was a good things that they were first in line for a table, because they were still in grave danger, but once she got in their chests, she found the hearts intact and functioning normally. The profuse bleeding came from elsewhere and in both cases she was able to reconstruct the damage in time. The boy next in line wasn't so lucky.
At some point, when BJ was handling triage, Hawkeye took a two minute break. But they both were gone over half an hour, because most of the arriving soldiers had phosphorous burns that needed to be dealt with. By the time they made it back, there was a good pint of blood splashing around in Claudia's boots. Hawkeye started singing once again when he cut into his next patient. Frank shouted at him to stop.
"Continue, Hawk, or I'll fall sleep and fall into my patient." Claudia said, cutting off the litany of Frank's objections as she called for more sponges.
"Thank you, my dear Colonel Rester." Hawkeye's singy-songy voice echoed in the busy OR. "Any requests?"
Another batch of wounded was announced and Claudia went to perform triage, so she missed Hawkeye's performance anyway. Colonel Potter handled the first triage, both of the wounded on the two buses and those boys who were driven on the ambulance from the upper helicopter pad. BJ handled the triage of soldiers with the phosphorous burns and Hawkeye helped then, so she volunteered to go. It was better to oversee it than having to rely on Frank's judgement.
She just finished triage on the bus and was walking over to check the patients on the ground. The compound was again flooded with wounded, they were lying on stretchers everywhere and jeeps were bringing more and more. One of the new wounded was dead on arrival, all she could do was call over Father Mulcahy. That was when she heard the announcement.
"Attention, all personnel. According to Supreme Headquarters, the Army of the People's Republic of China has hit and ruptured the entire United Nations line. The Chinese have attacked with 33 divisions. That's 300 000 men, folks! According to headquarters, we now face an entirely new war."
Her eyes watered as if they had been given a direct order to. She started shaking a little and not because of the light clothing she wore that was not capable of providing enough warmth. It was because of the realization that she will not see the end of this war. Who knows if anyone here will? It hit her like a solid wave of desperation, knocking the breath out of her.
She never would have imagined leaving the world not knowing that the war ended and most people were safely back at home. But this was not the time for deep contemplation. "Klinger, this one goes first!" Claudia pointed at the man lying unconscious at her feet. Klinger and Private Adle got him on the board and carried him inside. The OR sounded like a busy hive.
"…We'll obliterate them all!" And with that Frank completed his motivational speech, putting more clamps in his patient to stop the bleeding. Hawkeye was still running around in the compound, prioritizing the most urgent cases. It was difficult, this time around they were all pretty serious. Claudia didn't even make it into the scrub room again, there was so many wounded and so many of them in such a bad shape. She stayed outside and tried to keep the injured from dying before they make it to an operating table. Some of them were in shock and needed to be given transfusions before the operation, so they waited in Pre-Op, but most needed help as soon as possible. With Hawkeye and Claudia working outside the OR, the others were operating without a break. It was becoming increasingly clear no one would be resting for a very long time.
"All 600 million, Frank?" BJ wanted to know, his voice heavy with fatigue.
"Most of them don't wanna be Reds anyway." Frank barked back at him.
"So why kill 'em?"
"Well, they can't have it both ways."
After Potter warned Burns about neglecting contaminated wounds, Radar came in. With so many injured, there were forced to utilize the mess tent and even Officers' Club. They were running low on everything except wounded and exhaustion. Radar slipped in the bus where blood was pouring onto the ground and gathering in puddles, running down the stairs that led out. His glasses shattered, giving him much obstructed view of the surroundings.
Pretty soon Claudia was drenched in blood. Her originally white surgical clothing was now in places light pink, but mostly dark scarlet. Hawkeye went into surgery now, but she wasn't able to leave yet. New wounded kept arriving as if there was no tomorrow.
By the order of Colonel Potter everyone got a thirty minute break. The worst cases had been handled and frankly the personnel couldn't keep functioning without some rest for much longer. After he took shower which was interrupted by an angry Major, he talked to Claudia about the situation. He was concerned about the safety of his people. It was standard practice to send the nurses away in a case much less dangerous than this.
After talking to him, Claudia was supposed to inform Margaret of the decision and discuss the details. She found Major Houllihan in her tent, eating an improvised sandwich.
"Major, we need to talk. Colonel Potter and I talked over the situation. He is doubting his decision to let the nurses stay."
"I can look after my nurses! There is no way…"
"Let me finish, Major. Colonel Potter put me in charge of the evacuation of your nurses. I convinced him to let you stay for the moment. But I need you and all of the nurses to understand there are no guarantees now and when it comes to it, I need them to follow my orders whatever they may be without hesitation."
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you."
She headed to the kitchen next, where BJ, Hawkeye and the Padre were making some awful sandwiches. She walked in just as BJ split a sandwich in two with big meat knife.
"Trying to lose some fingers so you can go home, boys?" Both Hawkeye and him grabbed their half of the sandwich and devour it in seconds.
"I am not so good with sharp objects to hit what I aim for." BJ shrugged their shoulders and smiled.
"Just what you want to hear from a doctor…" Claudia laughed, her body all aching and tired.
"I always wanted to be a ballerina, medicine is just a hobby."
"You wanted to be one or have one?" Claudia inquired and then paused because she remembered who was present. "Sorry, Father."
"Here, make yourself a sandwich before it's all gone." Hawkeye handed Claudia the bread and gestured towards the marmalade.
Claudia was half-way through her sandwich, when the PA announced new wave of injured. They all sprinted out of the kitchen, Claudia finishing her meal on the way. Colonel Potter was already sorting out the wounded when they got there. Hawkeye was sent straight to the OR and Claudia hopped in a jeep that took her to the helicopter pad. Two helis arrived as of yet with two injured soldiers each. She shouted orders regarding giving plasma and whole blood to particular patients, which patients had to go straight to OR and which part of whose bodies needed to get X-rayed. More helicopters landed shortly, so the process was repeated all over before she could get into one of the jeeps that was driving slowly down the muddy road.
The situation was desperate. If Radar doesn't find some plasma soon, all of their medical knowledge will be in vain. As if it wasn't enough, rain started pouring down, pounding on the roofs of tents and buses, soaking the 4077 personnel as well as the wounded. Everybody worked hard to get the wounded inside, but there were so many of them, even the mess tent and Officers' Club wasn't sufficient. They started to use the Klinger's and Father Mulcahy's tent, then moved to Colonel Potter's. The rain was getting stronger and stronger, whipping everything in sight. The gauze and bandages of the injured soldiers were completely drenched in rainwater before the wounded got to Pre-Op, where the floor was a slippery affair of rainwater mixed with crimson blood. Every once in a while a lightning illuminated the horrific scene and a thunder cut through the busied camp.
They ran out of clean gloves, so doctors now operated bare-handed. It was entirely different feeling to immerse your bare hands into someone's torso and hold their insides without the protection of the latex, running your fingers along the outline of a heart or feel a human liver against your skin.
Claudia was running around Pre-Op, trying to do everything herself. Getting plasma and whole blood into the patients, checking the vital signs to decide which ones were stable enough to survive surgery was one thing, but she also had to deal with soldiers screaming in pain because she couldn't keep up with so many of them. She administered sedatives and pain relief as quickly as she could, but couldn't skip the preliminary check-up in case they couldn't be put under just yet. Agonizing wails sounded all around her, cutting deep into her. After about an hour, Klinger and another corpsman came to help. They didn't even have enough boards to carry the wounded, so sometimes they had to carry wounded in their arms.
Radar suddenly shouted to get Klinger's attention and they both turned their attention to something outside Pre-Op. Claudia tightened a bandage wrapped around a sergeant's torso and went to see what was so urgent. She noticed Frank and Margaret looking out of the OR and then her eyes landed on what everyone was so concerned about. A fire with so much ether in OR was putting everyone in grave danger.
"Stand back." She shouted and rolled the laundry bin outside into the rain, protecting her hands only with a blanket she snatched from Klinger. Hissing with pain, she watched the burning laundry soaking with rain and mud on the ground. She wasn't burned, but the rigged side of the bin cut her arm as it fell. Now it was her blood trickling down her hand.
"I'm alright, Klinger get some alcohol and a bandage. Radar, get the sandwiches to the OR. We're good in here." Klinger brought the items she wanted. Claudia clenched her jaw to prevent herself from screaming when Klinger poured the alcohol over her hand. She barely finished bandaging her hand when an explosion shook their surroundings. She was closer to the door than Klinger, so the shock wave hit her harder. The windows in the door shattered, throwing the glass or whatever cheap material it was in their direction. The door themselves shifted a little with one half stuck opened.
She was lying on the floor with her hand next to Klinger's feet, trying to breathe. She must have hit the ground hard, her head was spinning and as a souvenir she received a big headache. There were loud screams coming from the directions of OR, she hoped everybody was alright in there.
Forcing her aching body to move, she rose to her feet. Klinger did the same just a second later, gasping with shock. "Are you ok, ma'am?" She heard him ask. For all his crazy shenanigans, he always did his job with extra care and empathy to those who like him were thrown into this hell.
"I am fine. You?" She laid a hand on his shoulder to steady herself a little. He was wearing warm thick blue dress that was very soft to one's touch.
"I think I am okay. But crazy about getting out of here as usual."
They found two wounded corpsmen in front of the doors. One had a piece of metal lodged in his thigh and another's arm was broken when he was thrown against a wall. Both were conscious and screaming with pain. War sucks so hard!
Hawkeye and BJ were sitting in the Swamp, not moving, just staring into the distance. Still dressed in bloody surgical gowns, they silently listened to Frank's snoring. How did their lives become this tragic? The PA system announced the 4077 got some award and no one could care less.
BJ was the first to stand up and force himself to go get a shower. Hawkeye stayed in his place, hunched over in his chair, trembling with weariness. Claudia's rest was delayed by a patient developing complications, so she remained in Post-Op for another forty minutes to monitor his condition and tell the nurses what to watch out for. "I think we stitched up more soldiers than there are people on Earth…" She said as goodbye, sighing afterwards.
When she walked in the Swamp, Hawkeye was slow to react to her presence, but he did look up when she took his hand. Leading him through the empty camp was a very silent affair, everyone was probably catching up on sleep. They didn't speak at all. He didn't even ask about the bandage on her arm.
After entering her tent, she untied his face mask and surgical gown and gently helped him out of them. His half-closed eyes showed only a little of the beautiful blue she always liked to admire. For a moment he thought she would disrobe him completely, but she stopped when he was in his shorts and a t-shirt.
Looking at each other, they stood a few inches apart. His hand came up to lightly caress her cheek, wiping the tears away. Her eyes dropped to the floor for a second and then darted to the bed. They were both dead on their feet. They were very close, no doubt about that, and right now they needed each other's company more than ever. After the events of the past few days they needed some sort of reassurance, the comfort of human touch, anything…
Understanding this wasn't sexual, Hawkeye laid himself on his side, back to the tent canvas, leaving as much space for her as possible. She took of her bloody surgical clothes and completely spent collapsed next to him. He wrapped his left hand around her, pulling her closer to his chest. Claudia resumed quietly sobbing into his shirt and shaking lightly with each sob.
They fell asleep quickly, overwhelmed by all they had to endure recently.
