Author's Rambling

Attention, all personnel: the author has finished her paper and received a B in the course.  She had delayed updating the newest chapter in the hopes of making it worthwhile for the readers.  Reviews are appreciated (that's an order).

MASH 4077th

Ouijongbu, Korea

June 6, 1952

Colonel Sherman T. Potter skimmed over the requisition forms his company clerk had given him to sign.  "What am I putting my 'John Hancock' on this time?" he grumbled.

"We need to order mosquito netting," Corporal O'Reilly informed him.

"Coulda sworn we did that already."  He unwrapped a cigar and pressed it to his lips.  "Ah, nothing like a good stogie," he sighed.  He lit the other end and inhaled the aroma.

"They sent us ear muffs."  The company clerk wrinkled his nose at the stench of the cigar.  "I'll never understand what's so special about those things," he said.  "They're disgusting, they cause cancer, and they smell rotten."

Potter replied by blowing a puff of smoke.  "You don't know a good cigar when you see one," he said, tapping his pen against the signature line on the top form.  "In the summer, they send us ear muffs and wool jackets.  In the winter it's mosquito netting and lemonade."  Both colonel and corporal shook their heads at the Army's apparent lack of intelligence.  "Been this way for as long as I can remember."

"Did you – did we keep the mosquito netting they sent during the winter?" Radar asked.

The colonel raised an eyebrow at the company clerk's odd inquiry.  "Don't you remember?  You signed off on the forms to exchange the netting for blankets," he reminded the young man.

"I remember, sir," Radar quickly answered.  "It's just that we'd probably save time and money if we kept the supplies."  He glanced at the myriad of forms on the Potter's desk.  "And we sure wouldn't be wasting time signing these exchange slips."

"I'll be up to my keister in paperwork till next Christmas," Potter groaned.

"I'm sure the war will be over by then," Radar assured his C.O.

"If the peace talks keep breaking down, we'll be here till the end of the decade."  Should I broach the subject? The colonel wondered.  They had managed to avoid discussing Radar's "adventure" of the previous night.  Something's bugging the boy – I know it.  He did a quick once-over of the other forms and added his signature and initials where required.  "Care to explain yourself?" he finally inquired.

The tiny corporal gave him a puzzled look.  "Explain what?" he asked.  "Sir."

"I've never pictured you the type that gets physical when angry," the old man commented.

"I didn't punch Maj. Davis because I was angry," Radar informed the C.O.

"Then why in the name of sweet fanny adams did you punch him?"

"Because someone was in danger – and he was the reason," Radar snapped.

Potter was taken aback by the normally quiet boy's rough tone.  "Easy now, son."  He gestured for the young man to calm down.  "You know better than to attack a superior officer."  He leaned forward.  "Not only that – you could've been seriously hurt."  And that's the last thing I need right now.  "Next time there's a problem in my outfit, you'd darn well report it to me.  I don't want you taking the law into your own hands."  He took a puff of cigar.  "Do I make myself clear?"  No answer.  "That's an order, Corporal," he informed the young man.  Radar had stopped listening to Potter and was instead tuned to some invisible object near the door to the office.  "Earth to Radar," he called out.  "Come in, Radar."

A worried expression formed on the corporal's face.  "No!" he moaned.

"What's wrong, son?" Potter inquired.  "Choppers?"

Radar shook his head.  "Hawkeye's having a seizure," he informed the puzzled C.O. and abruptly left the office.

* * *

Sam tore open the flaps of the V.I.P.  Tent and rushed over to the ailing captain's cot. "Easy now," he whispered, gripping Hawkeye's convulsing body by the shoulders.  "Get me a spoon," he instructed Al.  The hologram raised a bushy eyebrow.  The leaper rephrased his request.  "Where's a spoon?" he asked.

"No spoons here," Al replied.  "What do you need a spoon for?"

"To keep him from swallowing his tongue," the doctor explained.

            "Will this tongue depressor help?" Al asked, pointing to the aforementioned object.

            Sam grabbed the tongue depressor and pressed it onto the captain's tongue with one hand.  With his other hand, he braced the man's body.  He vaguely remembered another Leap, another seizure.  I was Bigfoot in that Leap … no, my host just happened to resemble Bigfoot.   

A hand tapped him on the shoulder.  "Alright, son, we'll take it from here."  Sam released Hawkeye and stepped back, allowing his Host's C.O. to approach the cot.  Colonel Potter shouted orders to a nurse as she entered the tent with Major Winchester and Father Mulcahy.

            "How's his presh …" Charles started to ask, but was left slack-jawed at the sight before him.  A look of fear turned into a look of anger when he noticed the "company clerk" had neglected to put on the required surgical mask.  "Are you mad, corporal?" he scolded.  "Put on a mask!"

            For some reason, those words made Sam tremble.  Must be psycho-symerging with Radar, he reasoned.  One of the negative aspects of leaping was the merging of the minds, which meant that the leaper displayed thoughts and actions of the host.  One of the first and most problematic of these occurrences was his Leap into Lee Harvey Oswald.  Oswald had taken over his mind so completely that he nearly committed murder.  Psycho-symerging with a warmhearted person such as Radar was infinitely better than somebody like Oswald, but he still would rather be in his own body and in his own time. 

            "Shame on you, Sam," Al teased in a droll voice.  "As a doctor, you should know better."  The observer was gnawing on the tip of an unlit cigar – a sure sign that he was worried about the current situation.

            "There wasn't any time," Sam explained to the major and the admiral.

            "Oh, my!" Mulcahy gasped.  He absent-mindedly tugged at his collar.

            Al noticed and cringed.  "Let's hope they don't need the padre for last rites," he commented.

            "Amen to that," Sam muttered.  A medical treatment for meningitis surfaced in the back of his mind, but he was drawing a blank on its name.  "I thought Hawk – you could use some help in the prayer department," he explained to the chaplain.  He watched as a nurse administered a shot into Hawkeye's arm.  Potter and Winchester hovered around the cot and worked to ease their friend and coworker out of his seizure.  "Now if only God – or Time – or Fate – would listen," he added under his breath.

            "He always listens to our prayers, my son," the chaplain assured the "company clerk."

            Sam gave the man a tiny smile in return then focused his attention on sifting through his Swiss-cheesed mind for the name of the procedure.  The captain's convulsions subsided and he drifted into a restless sleep.  "Cortisone therapy!" Sam blurted out as the term broke through the holes in his memory.  "He needs to be administered shots of cortisone," the doctor explained to the puzzled looks he was receiving.

            "Why don't you let the trained doctors deal with medicine and you go do whatever it is that a company clerk does," Charles suggested pompously. 

            The quantum physicist glared at the surgeon.  "The more you delay treatment, the lower the chances of survival." 

            "That's with any type of illness," Col. Potter reminded him.  "Why don't you go finish those reports you were working on," he suggested.

            "The reports can wait," the leaper snapped.  Captain Pierce's condition is more important than Army paperwork.

            "That was an order, Corporal."

            Sam nodded in defeat and exited the V.I.P. tent.  He proceeded to pace in front of the tent, kicking up dirt and rocks.  Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the Hologram floating through the canvas wall. "Why won't they let me help?" He asked his friend.  "Damn it, Al!  I'm a doctor." 

Al twiddled the cigar between his fingers. "Sure, you're a doctor, but Radar's just a boy playing company clerk," he reminded Sam.  "And as far as everyone here's concerned, you're Radar."

* * *

Project Quantum Leap

Stallions Gate, New Mexico

February 12, 2002

            Dr. Donna Alessi-Beckett stabbed her piece of fish with her fork.  "Are you sure these flounder filets were fully thawed?" the physicist asked.

            "Are you kidding?  That would take too much time," Lieutenant Colonel Erin Hunnicutt quipped.  She dipped a piece of fish into a puddle of tartar sauce and brought the fork to her mouth.

            Dr. Sammi Jo Fuller wrinkled her nose.  "How can you eat that junk?" she asked.

            "I've been raised on military gruel for over thirty years now," Erin explained.  "It's just a matter of training your mouth to become tone-deaf."

            "How's the Retrieval Program coming along?" Donna asked Sammi Jo.

            The young woman cast Donna a regretful look.  "Not as great as I'd like," she admitted.  "There are still some glitches."

            "I'm sure you're doing the best you can," Erin assured her.

            Donna nodded her approval.  "You have got to be one of the most dedicated members of this staff."  The compliment made Sammi Jo beam.

            Damn you, Sam, Donna silently scolded her absent husband.  What possessed you to leap prematurely?  Was it me?  Was it those nozzles in Washington?  She had been aware of his desire to make the world a better place from the moment they first met.  Their idealism and love of quantum physics were some of the traits that drew them together.  It didn't matter how hard Sammi Jo worked on the Retrieval Program.  The only person who could bring Sam Home was Sam himself.  Unfortunately, his mind was so Swiss-cheesed, it was a miracle if he could even remember his full name.  He certainly didn't remember his own wife.  That wasn't Sam's fault, though.  Donna had made it explicitly clear to Al that Sam was not to be informed of his marital status unless he himself remembered it.  Samuel John Beckett was – as Al liked to put it – a prude and an overgrown Boy Scout.  He wouldn't be able to pretend to be somebody's husband or lover if he knew that Donna was waiting for him in the present.  His guilt might jeopardize his Leaps – and that would delay Sam and Donna's reunion (a reunion seven years coming).

            Dr. Verbena Beeks and Dr. Tina Martinez O'Farrell approached the table, trays in hand.  "Mind if we join you?" Verbena asked.

            "Yes, we mind," Erin answered.  "You can only sit here if you've brought Guatemalan chocolate."  When Tina backed away from the table, Erin broke out grinning.  "No gourmet chocolate?  That's too bad."  She gestured to an adjacent table.  "Pull up a chair anyway."

            "Erin, please reconsider my offer," Verbena said to the surgeon.  "Remember, my door is always open.  And all sessions are completely confidential."

            "I can't help it," Erin confessed.  "I inherited my wonderful sense of humor from my father."

            "Then you most definitely need therapy," Donna teased.  The five women burst into peals of laughter.  Erin had repeatedly entertained them with tales of her father's antics at the 4077th MASH in Korea.

            "What's the progress of the current Leap?" Tina inquired.  Despite the floozy way she acted, she was an intelligent woman.  She had been blessed with good looks, but it was her brain that had gotten her brought onto the Project.

            "The lapse in time between Captain Pierce's declining condition and the incident with Nurse Brighton and Major Davis is too close for comfort," Erin informed the others.  "And we've already established that Dr. Beckett can't be in two places at once."  Although two of the people she had mentioned were familiar to her, she separated the personal from the professional by referring to them by their official titles.

            "Al told me that the doctors in Radar's unit wouldn't listen to his suggestions," Donna said.  She knew the reasons behind their actions, but it didn't make her – or Sam – feel any better.

            "Those surgeons may not believe Sam, but that crazy man might," Sammi Jo stated.  All eyes turned toward her, waiting for an explanation.  Donna could see the glint in the woman's eyes; it was the same look Sam got whenever he had an idea.  As far as Sammi Jo knew, a man named Will Kilman was her father.  That title really belonged to Samuel Beckett, who had entered her mother Abigail's life during three consecutive Leaps.  Sammi Jo resembled her mother on the outside and her father on the inside.  She had Sam's high I.Q. and his photographic memory.  The only ones who knew about the relationship between Samuel Beckett and Samantha Josephine Fuller were Al, Sam (when the memory cared to surface from the holes), and Ziggy.  Donna had found out when she was reviewing past Leaps to prepare for a visit from Chairman Diana McBride.  She never told anybody what she had discovered.

            "What 'crazy man'?" Donna asked.

            "Radar was telling me about this friend of his," Sammi Jo explained.  "The one that prances around in backless formals."

            Verbena sprinkled pepper on her pasta salad.  "I'm confident in my level of sanity, but even I have to admit I'm a little confused."

            "He's trying to get a Section 8," the young physicist continued.  "If he truly is …" she pointed to her temple and made a circular motion "he'll believe Sam.  And even if he doesn't, Sam could at least convince him to look after Nurse Brighton.  Now do you understand what I'm …"

            "You mean Klinger?" Erin suddenly blurted out.  Sammi Jo nodded.  "I wouldn't set Klinger on the major if

I were you," she advised.  "That man's got a temper that could make a Doberman pinscher cower under a table."         

             "Well, I was going to suggest that I leap …" Sammi Jo admitted.

            "Absolutely not!" Donna interrupted.  "It's too dangerous."

            "That's what I figured you'd say.  It might have worked.  You never know, right?"

Donna couldn't help but smile at her optimism.  It was too bad that Sam couldn't see her work at P.Q.L.  Come home, Sam, she silently prayed.  Please come home.