Chapter VII: Saving Private Kirby
Scarcely daring to breathe, Mulcahy prayed silently as he watched the surgical team's efforts to resuscitate Private Kirby. The 4077th's medical personnel were the finest in Korea, and he had the utmost faith in Colonel Blake's and Major Houlihan's abilities, but there were never any guarantees.
From what he could tell, Blake was giving it his all, trying to restart Kirby's heart by compressing his chest -- sometimes rather forcefully -- and Houlihan was probing for the site of the mysterious blood loss.
"Still nothing, sir," Bayliss reported.
"Aw, hell." Blake muttered a few other choice words but never let up on the compressions. "Father, you'd better get over here. This boy's Catholic."
Oh, dear.... Mulcahy had hoped it wouldn't come to this. He was never exactly eager to perform last rites on dying men, but now, given present circumstances, he wasn't even sure it would be ethical to do so.
He was technically prepared to do it. Before reporting for duty, while the first helicopters were landing, Mulcahy had run straight from the colonel's office to his tent to pick up his Bible, stole, and other "tools of the trade." He tried to tell himself it was just force of habit that sent him in that direction, but in truth, whether it was still permissible to make use of them or not, having those things close at hand made him feel a bit less...lost.
People moved aside for him as he made his way to the head of Kirby's table and stood across from Blake, who was continuing to fight tooth and nail for the boy's life. "Colonel," he began, "I don't know if I should...."
But the look in the normally easygoing Blake's eyes stopped him cold. "Father, as far as I'm concerned, you're still chaplain around here, and this kid needs you -- as in right now. At this point I don't think he gives a rat's patoot what you look like."
"You are still a priest," Houlihan added gently. "You must be -- God knows, I'm not."
Mulcahy simply nodded, not trusting his voice. That was what he'd needed to hear...needed to make himself believe. With renewed conviction, he got out his purple stole, kissed it, and draped it around his neck in preparation for the sacrament.
As he recited a prayer over the unfortunate Kirby, he heard Bayliss note once more for the record that she could detect no pulse. Blake, exhausted, finally let his arms drop to his sides and walked away from the table.
"Wait a minute," said Houlihan, a note of hope in her voice. "I think I've found the bleeder. If I can just reach it.... There!"
At that exact moment, with Houlihan wrists-deep in bowel, Mulcahy touched Kirby's forehead, anointing him with the sign of the cross -- and a most remarkable thing happened.
Kirby went rigid, his back arching up off the table, and drew breath in a harsh gasp. When Mulcahy pulled his hand back, understandably startled, the patient collapsed once again.
"What the hell?" Blake hurried over. "What did you do?"
Houlihan, having somehow managed to keep hold of the nicked blood vessel she'd discovered, finished clamping it off. Then she stared at Mulcahy across the table, mirroring his expression of muted shock. They had both been in contact with the patient when the spasm occurred -- could Kirby have become an unwitting conductor for the electricity they shared?
Bayliss broke the silence that had fallen over the O.R. with good news: "I'm getting a pulse! It's weak, but it's there."
"Henry, what's going on over there?" asked Pierce. Two tables down and occupied with his own patient, he hadn't gotten a clear view.
After double-checking Kirby's status for himself and asking a nurse for more Type B whole blood, Blake shook his head in amazement. "A goddamn miracle is what it looks like. Raising a kid from the dead qualifies as a miracle, doesn't it, Father?"
Mulcahy felt faint. Perhaps not a miracle, exactly.... But if lives could be saved, whatever had been done to him and Houlihan suddenly looked more like a blessing than the curse he had assumed it to be. "Sir, Major Houlihan and I may have an explanation for this, but it's only theoretical...."
Blake glanced at Mulcahy and Houlihan in turn before refocusing his attention on his still-critical patient. "I think you two have been holding out on me. As soon as we're done here, I wanna see you guys in my office. Capeesh?"
"Yes, sir."
"Yes, Colonel."
--o00o--
Ten hours later, Margaret Houlihan sat numbly on a bench in the deserted scrub room, unable to muster up the energy to finish changing out of her whites. She had seen some incredible things in her nursing career, but she'd never participated in a save quite like today's. Private Kirby, snatched from the jaws of death by a stupendous fluke, was going to pull through. But he owed his life not so much to the skill of the surgical team -- though that was an important component -- as to the sick, twisted experiments of some Commie Dr. Frankenstein. The thought made her queasy even as she marveled.
She and Mulcahy had shocked that patient back to life. There could be no other explanation. And the potential consequences were staggering. On the most basic level, they would have to take steps to make sure no one accidentally touched both of them at the same time. Up to now, by sheer luck, they hadn't electrocuted any innocent bystanders, and Houlihan hoped to maintain that record.
But it was the more complicated issues that were really making her head spin. For one thing, the look she'd seen in Mulcahy's eyes after it happened -- like he had just witnessed the actual hand of God at work -- made her wonder if he would now argue in favor of preserving the new status quo.
And the idea that one of them might not want to reverse the switch was worrisome indeed. Whatever benefits this shared electricity might have, Houlihan wanted to go back to being herself the very second it became possible. Not once since waking up in a body not her own had she honestly believed it would end up being permanent. If a thing could be done, it could damn well be undone. It was only a matter of time.
When that time came, would Mulcahy willingly give up a power that had saved a life?
A hesitant voice interrupted her musings. "Major? May I speak with you?"
Houlihan looked up to see her other half standing in the doorway. Unsurprised, she waved a hand over the bench, and Mulcahy walked over to sit down beside her -- at a respectable distance.
"We should be meeting with the colonel right now," he began, "but there are so many things you and I ought to discuss...I hardly know where to start."
For now, she was remaining noncommittal. "Hmm. Such as?"
Mulcahy tugged at the fingers of his left hand, betraying his inner disquiet. "Well...it seems that our recent tribulations may serve a greater purpose than we'd first imagined."
Her heart sank a little. She'd pegged him accurately.
He struggled on. "And when a remedy for our situation is found, we'll be faced with a more difficult decision than we might have anticipated."
"Father," said Houlihan, turning toward him, "let's cut to the chase. You know I understand better than anyone else what you've been going through, from taking a damn shower all the way up to questioning your identity as a priest. Now look me in the eye and tell me you want to live like that for the rest of your life."
"I -- I don't know that I can," he admitted softly. "Unless I accept this as a sign that the priesthood is no longer my true calling."
"Is that what you really feel?"
"No." Barely a whisper. "But what we did for that boy...."
"Was an accident," Houlihan finished firmly. "An unintended, unforeseen, and very lucky accident. In different circumstances, we could just as easily have killed someone with this...this lightning in a bottle."
Mulcahy looked stricken, as if he hadn't thought of that possibility. Fair enough -- the man was a priest, not an electrician. His mind naturally tended to weigh divine considerations before practical ones.
Nevertheless, in this case it was important that he take the practical ones into account. To reinforce her point, she reached out to take his hand, letting the tingle creep deliciously up her arm from the point of contact. Knowing full well that it was having the same effect on him.
"To us, this feels...nice," Houlihan explained, using the least provocative descriptor she could come up with, "but going by what happened in the O.R., if anyone else came in contact with us right now they'd get a painful shock. And if it was strong enough to start a heart, it's strong enough to stop one."
"Oh, my," sighed Mulcahy, who seemed in no particular hurry to reclaim his hand. "That does shed new light on the matter." He frowned, considering. "But it's so difficult to see the right path...."
When she found herself suppressing an impulse to drag the chaplain to the scrub room floor and tear off his clothing, just to soak up more of that prickly tingle in its purest form, Houlihan figured it was time to let go of him. She did so as casually as possible, but once again the severed connection left a hollow, lonely aftertaste.
"Consider this," she tried, her tone gentle but insistent. "Are human beings meant to have this kind of power? Instant life and death -- that's more God's domain, isn't it?"
Mulcahy's gaze was thoughtful, but she noticed he had anchored his hands to his knees in a white-knuckled grip, as if to prevent them from reaching out for her. "I think today's events have given us both a lot to consider," he said at last. "A pity that the state in which I find myself isn't exactly conducive to rational thought."
"I know what you mean." Houlihan's smile was shyly reflected back at her, and she got lost for a moment in studying her former face, imagining yet again what it would feel like to....
"There you are!"
So intent were they on each other that both nearly jumped a mile when a third person spoke up. It was Radar O'Reilly, standing not six feet away, and they hadn't even heard him come in. "I've been looking everywhere for you guys. The colonel told me I'd better not come back to the office without you."
"Damn it, Corporal, don't sneak up on people like that!" snapped Houlihan. "This is a private conversation."
"Geez, I'm sorry, ma'am. But I swear I didn't hear a word -- this time you weren't even saying anything!"
"This time?" she growled. The little sneak....
Ever the diplomat, Mulcahy moved to stand between them. "Major, please -- Radar's done nothing wrong. We are, after all, in a public area."
He was right, of course. But even though they hadn't been up to anything overtly scandalous, somehow she couldn't help feeling like she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
O'Reilly seemed eager to put an end to the whole business. "Um, okay, then. So...are you comin' or not?"
After exchanging confirmatory glances with Houlihan, Mulcahy smiled warmly at the clerk. "Lead on, my son."
--o00o--
It wasn't until much later that Mulcahy finally sank down on the edge of his cot with a weary sigh and bent over to untie his bootlaces. The discussion had dragged on late into the night and, coming on the heels of the rest of the day's events, had left him absolutely wrung out, in both body and spirit.
While closeted with Colonel Blake, he and Houlihan had confessed most of what they knew about their mutual electrical charge, which wasn't a lot, and outlined their theory regarding what had happened with Kirby. Out of embarrassment and more than a trace of guilt, Mulcahy had limited his commentary on the phenomenon to generalities, keeping the more personal physical aspects to himself. He was grateful that Houlihan chose to do the same.
Having heard the whole story, Blake, no more of an electrical expert than they were, had asked Radar to place a discreetly worded telephone call to the Army Corps of Engineers in the hope of locating someone more qualified to assess the situation. As far as Mulcahy knew, the lad was even now at his post, continuing to work on that assignment.
Sometime after midnight, Radar had also managed to track down Captain Dickinson and had learned that the confiscated North Korean materials were already on their way to I-Corps for analysis and translation. Blake cursed loudly when he heard this news and lamented that squeezing blood from a rock was an easier task than getting sensitive information out of I-Corps. Especially if one was trying to avoid explaining exactly why that information was required.
As a consolation, Mulcahy had retrieved from his tent the handful of documents he'd managed to salvage and turned them over to the colonel. The indispensable Radar would be checking into getting a local translator to decipher them.
So at this point, things were pretty much up in the air until the company clerk's fabled resourcefulness could work its magic.
About one issue, however, Mulcahy's mind was made up. As the evening wore on, sitting within arm's reach of Houlihan in the colonel's office, he had concluded -- reluctantly -- that, for now, the safest thing for both of them would be to avoid each other's company. There might not be a need to go as far as strapping himself down, as he'd half-seriously suggested earlier, but he had to acknowledge that each contact with his counterpart was fast eroding what little resistance he had left. If they were to touch again -- to share any more of that maddening, terrifying, glorious sensation -- Mulcahy feared he wouldn't have the strength to let go.
Exhausted as he was, sleep was torturously slow in coming.