"Radar, I really gotta go. My Colonel's shoving some work in my lap."

"I gotcha, Sparky, just see what you can do about those blankets, huh? Winter'll be here before too long, and we really need 'em."

"Yeah, I know. I'll get moving on that when I get a second. Bye!"

Radar hung up the phone and took a second to take off his glasses and rub at his eyes. He was really, really zonked. He didn't know how Sparky managed to keep up that pace. While he was beginning to piece together Sparky's schedule of the past few weeks from the conversations they'd had, and was just about to begin to wonder just /when/ the Evac's clerk EVER sleeps, he was interrupted.

The Korean woman came bursting through the office doors with a stream of explanation coming out of her mouth, resembling more a mournful wail than any lucid speech, and a small boy of 7 or 8 in her arms with a rather bloodied knee.

Radar, knowing that most of the camp was still awake at this hour (about 1 AM), felt no qualms about using the PA system, jumping to the speaker and calling for the chief surgeon. "Hawkeye, please report to pre-op," he called, his voice trembling a little with sadness for the poor mother and wounded child, and, moreover, with a funny sense that something was terribly not right about this situation."

He led the woman to post-op at a quick pace, and Hawkeye, arriving at about the same time in his bathrobe and with signs of an affectionate nurse's makeup smudged over his mouth, seeing the poor child, laid aside whatever quip he'd had at the ready and zeroed in on Radar as they headed inside. "What happened?" He rubbed his mouth on the sleeve of his robe and smeared the lipstick over his cheek.

Radar explained as Hawkweye took the child and laid him out, examining the wound. "She says he went out of the hut to go to the latrine, and when he didn't come back very soon, she went after him, and found him on the ground not too far from the woods. Said that he was crying and talking about the doctor who was going to help him, then he fainted."

"Hm. Those ads we put in the paper must be working, people are starting to ask for us by name," Hawk murmured. "It looks like there are two sets of wounds here," he spoke louder, starting to sanitize the bloody knee. "Both fresh. . . one a kind of scrape, looks like your everyday playground trauma. Then-- an animal bite? I guess. Radar, go tell the nurse on duty to get me a rabies shot set up, in case."

"Should he be unconscious, though, Hawk?" Radar asked, worriedly, trying to comfort the wailing mother.

"I'm not quite sure what's happening with that. Could be pain. Doesn't look like shock. And it definitely doesn't seem like he could have lost enough blood to be like this." He shook his head. "Get a unit of blood set up for him, anyway." To the mother he smiled, "He should be fine, don't worry, mama." Which Radar duly translated.

During this interaction, the child stirred a mite, and his eyelids slowly opened to the sight of Hawkeye over him, preparing to stitch up the wound. The child's eyes focused on the red streak that crossed from Hawkeye's mouth across his face, and he shrieked lowly, a single word that Radar, puzzled, translated as, "Another one!"

~