L*E*A*P 4077 Chapter 13: The Leap Out, a m*a*s*h fanfic

Finally! May I present to you, dear readers, the final chapter (before the epilogue) of L*E*A*P 4077. I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

In case you haven't already noticed, I do not own these wonderful characters. The only two characters that belong to me are Nurse Leah Brighton and Major Theodore Davis. M*A*S*H belongs to Larry Gelbart, and Quantum Leap belongs to Don Bellisario.

MASH 4077th

Ouijongbu, Korea

June 7, 1952

Sam helped the shaken nurse look over the unconscious corpsman. "He's got a concussion," he explained, even though his words were unnecessary. She's a nurse – remember? He chastised himself. "Would someone please get a litter over here!" he yelled. While the doctor part of Samuel Beckett was tending to the injured man, the leaper part was bemoaning the failed Leap. I couldn't help Hawkeye … Davis was still killed …Klinger is hurt …

"Sam, calm down," a gravelly voice ordered.

"Al!" he whispered, glad to be in the company of the short Italian.

"We had a power surge," his best friend explained. "Radar helped Gooshie get Ziggy back online." The observer scanned the area, making note of injured corpsman. "Where's that Davis nozzle?"

Sam cocked his head toward the kitchen. Al poked his holographic head and chest into the wall, which momentarily sliced his body in half. I'll never get used to that, no matter how many times I Leap. When Al pulled himself out of the wall, his face was a slight shade of green. "Geez Louise!" he gasped. "What the hell happened here? Sam, you didn't …" The leaper shook his head. The observer motioned to the pale-looking nurse. "She – she didn't …" Sam nodded. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a cigar. "Ah, geez Louise!"

Oh, boy is more what I'd say. He wanted to ask the customary what's going to happen to the people whose lives I leaped into, but approaching footsteps prevented him from doing so.

"For the love of God! What in Sam's hill is going on here?" The colonel noticed Klinger and stopped his tirade. "What happened?" he asked, lowering his voice.

"What happened?" "Somebody hurt?" "Igor, Goldman – go get a litter." The commotion increased as more and more people crowded around the scene.

"Concussion from a blow to the head," Sam told the commanding officer. "Most likely from a rifle butt."

"People, please move away from here," Major Houlihan ordered as she approached the "company clerk" and her nurse.

"These cads are like vultures," Major Winchester observed. "Someone gets hurt and they crowd around to delight in – Max?"

"I'd never have expected the Lord of Pomposity to address a mere 'Lebanese flunky' by his first name," Al said sarcastically.

Klinger's eyes flickered open. "Wh-what happened?" he slurred.

"That must've been quite a knock you took there, son," Potter told him. The other man tried to sit up, but Sam and Potter held him down. "Why don't you let us check you out for injuries."

Klinger shook his head. "I'm fine, sir," he assured the elder man. He rubbed the back of his head and grimaced at the sight of the blood on his palm. "Just got one helluva headache – tell you that much."

"Well, you took one hell of a blow to the head," Al commented.

"Did you ever catch that 'nozzle'?" the corporal inquired.

" 'Nozzle'?" Potter asked. He turned to the others. "What in tarnation is a 'nozzle'?"

Charles snickered. "If he wasn't in the state he's in, I'd attribute the strange word to his bizarre customs."

"Did you catch the nozzle?" he repeated. "There was this man dressed like an eggplant …"

"The only one in this outfit that would dress like an eggplant is you," someone called out.

The dazed corporal ignored them. "No! Right before I blacked out, I saw this man who was dressed in an eggplant suit – I'd check that box of cigars if I were you, Colonel – he was smoking a cigar. Kept waving his hands in front of my face and shouting at me about some 'damned nozzle'."

"Looks like this injury is worse than I thought," Potter quietly informed Winchester and Houlihan.

For once, Sam was glad to step away from the scene and let the other doctors attend to the corporal. "He saw you, Al."

Al nodded and studied the screen of the flashing hand link. "According to Ziggy, a head injury temporarily scatters the mesons and neurons."

"That's why Klinger was able to see you, right?" A thought occurred to him. "Do you think he can still see you?"

Al floated in front of the cross-dresser and got no reaction. "No, he can't see me. I think it was just before he blacked out."

"Are they going to be okay?" Sam asked. I don't need to specify the word "they" to him.

Al checked the hand link. "Klinger spends forty-eight hours in observance, but he's okay. Nurse Brighton …" A scream coming from the direction of the kitchen interrupted the reading of the statistics.

A private neither of them recognized burst out of the building, his body shaking. "Major Davis is dead!" he told the crowd.

"What do you mean, he's dead?" Potter asked the young man. Boy is more like it.

"Someone stabbed him."

Sam stole a glance at Baby. She hung her head and tried to blink back the tears.

Satisfied that the "Lebanese flunky" was well cared for, Charles entered the kitchen to tend to the other injured party. "Get me some saline, some gauze, and another litter!" He called out. The major's next words allowed Sam and Baby to release breaths they weren't aware of holding. "I've got a pulse – barely, but it's still here."

Kellye went over to assist Winchester. Margaret began to help them, but decided that the major and the lieutenant were handling things nicely enough on their own. "Whoever stabbed him was an inch away from killing him," she informed the colonel. Her eyes found their way toward the quaking young nurse, who looked at her with pleading eyes before turning her face away. "Brighton?" she asked gently. The nurse didn't answer.

Sam rushed to the nurses' side. "He tried to kill her," he told the Head Nurse, keeping his voice low as to not attract attention. "You can't punish her. She acted in self-defense."

Margaret nodded. "I am aware of that, Corporal," she told him. She placed a hand on the young woman's shoulder. "It's okay," she said, trying to soothe her. "The major was stabbed by a sniper," she said, her tone-of -voice a warning to anyone who dared contradict her.

Nurse Bigelow ran toward the crowd, a smile stretched wide across her face. How can you be so happy at a time like this? Sam wanted to ask her. He didn't have to worry; Colonel Potter took care of the question for him.

"Captain Pierce's fever broke!" she announced to the crowd.

The people around Sam began to simultaneously cheer and cry. He was beginning to experience the warm and fuzzy feeling that accompanied the Leap Out. Al noticed and quickly related the facts displayed by the hand link.

"Hawkeye survives his illness and continues the family tradition of tending to Crabapple Cove, Maine's medical needs. Baby finishes her tour of duty and returns home by the end of August. She has some sessions with the psychiatrist Sidney Freedman to help her deal with Post-Traumatic Stress. She goes to school and becomes a therapist specializing in women who experience traumatic crimes. Margaret helps the 8063rd consolidate after the war and rises to the rank of "colonel" before retiring from the Army in 1994…" He whistled. "… At the age of seventy-two. Now that's one tough lady. Klinger marries Korean local Soon-Lee Hahn and stays in Korea for two years helping her search for his family. They return to Toledo, where he works as a TV repairman before opening a restaurant."

"… Hunnicutt did what?" Margaret was saying. "Why?"

"Whatever it was, it saved Pierce's life," Potter pointed out. "But where did he get such a cockamamie idea?"

"Sherman Potter retires from the Army and settles down on his ranch in Hannibal, Missouri, where the sign on the door reads 'The doctor is in' on one side and 'Gone fishing' on the other. He dies from a stroke in 1969."

"It was all Radar's idea," Bigelow informed her superior officers. "If he hadn't known what to do …"

Sam ducked down, hoping they wouldn't spot him before Al was finished with the report, but people were already milling around him. He felt hands lift him up into a makeshift chair. "For he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow," they sang.

"B.J. returns to San Francisco, where he is reunited with his wife and two-year-old daughter. He more than makes up to his daughter for the time he missed, but she wishes he would stop sending her Mrs. Hunnicutt's infamous fruitcakes."

Margaret, Potter, Igor, Goldman, Charles, Kellye, and other faces he didn't recognize were hooting, shouting, dancing, and just plain celebrating. It felt good when he helped people. Sometimes, he wondered why he created Project Quantum Leap. The answers were always the same. To make right what once went wrong. To make the world a better place. To change history for the better. * There was another reason; he got satisfaction from helping people. Maybe that's why God, Time, Space, or whatever causes me to leap chose me.

"Charles becomes Chief of Thoracic Surgery at Boston Mercy, but leaves the position…" Al raised his bushy eyebrows. "Whoa! Major Rockefeller ends up opening a clinic for homeless people. Who'd a thought." Sam nodded for him to continue. The blue and white light was already clouding his vision. "Radar returns home after his uncle's death and takes care of his mother and the family farm. He marries a woman he meets on R&R shortly before his discharge. He arrives at Alamagordo Airport next Tuesday at 3:15 pm."

What do you mean? Sam mouthed. How do you know all this?

"What do you think, Sam?" Al responded. "I get my information from a very reliable source."

Ziggy?

Al snorted before taking a puff from his beloved cigar. "Erin Hunnicutt."

Erin's family is going to be all right, Sam told himself. Even though they weren't her biological family, the friends and coworkers of B.J. Hunnicutt were closer than their own flesh and blood. That's how Al and I are. The blue light engulfed him, and he leaped.

* Taken from a Quantum Leap quote ("Mirror Image"?)