"He's a what? Geez, and to think I talked to him over the horn so often
and never thought--"
"No, no, that's not what I meant. Fairy as in fairy ring... fairy dust... fairy tales. You know? Little flying things. Except... uh... Radar doesn't fly." Hawkeye looked from Sparky to Father Mulcahy, his eyes widening along with a comical shrug of his shoulders. "As far as I know," he amended.
"So, what, now..." Sparky frowned, scooting between the priest and doctor. His eyes trailed over his friend's supine face and came to rest on Sidney, standing on the other side of the room. "He's got some kind of fairy disease?"
Strange. These words, so bluntly stated, left Pierce without correction. Out of habit he tried to re-state the condition in more precise terms, used to dealing with worried friends and relatives who only had a vague grasp of what was going on. Now, the doctor himself found himself with only a notion, all his years of practice more or less out the window. All he could reply was, "Well... yeah, we think so."
Sparky turned around to look at Pierce distressedly, obviously expecting some sort of explanation as much as Hawkeye had intended on giving one. He dampened his lips a second before turning back to Radar.
"Hey, hey Radar, it's Sparky."
"Come in, Radar," Hawkeye added in a low, hopeful mutter, falling back to put a hand on Mulcahy's shoulder and give him an appreciative nod, silently thanking him for bringing Sparky with him.
A nod of understanding was his reply, and the short phrase, "Radar needs all the friends he has, right now."
All eyes focused back on the center of the room, the operating gurney that Radar was lying on, the Malkavian ghoul leaning over him with a worried look. "Hey Radar, old buddy... can you hear me?"
A connection. Semi-automatic, not quite lucid, but there. "Yeah, Sparky you got those... you got those blankets we need?" Radar mumbled dozily through his unconscious state.
In a moment, the rest of the men in the room clustered close around, attentive to the sign of life.
Sparky, flustered: "Um, not yet, Radar, still working on those... you know the army keeps its eye on the calendar, won't give 'em out two minutes before the manual says they're needed."
Radar chuckled wanly, "Oh. Yeah. Well, can you dig some of last winter's up? We'd... we'd have ours, still, but we traded 'em in for mosquito netting, 'cause... 'cause we couldn't get our hands on any of that, either. The Army doesn't understand. They don't understand the changing of the seasons. They don't get that before the Winter comes the Fall, and the Autumn times can be just as cold as when there's nothing at all 'cause... 'cause you're there to see it. And when the winter comes, we'll all be gone."
By this time, of course, the rest of the inhabitants of the O.R. had gathered around. Their mouths hung open in wonder at what they were hearing. One and all had the same thought in mind. Sparky vocalized it first. "You mean, the war will be over before Winter?"
A tear seeped from the corner of Radar's eye. "Yeah. It'll all be over by Winter." Straight from the Pooka's mouth.
Hawkeye stood up, dazzled by the good news coming in over the Radar. "Radar, I could kiss you, you know."
The tear in one eye was matched by a tear in the other.
Hawkeye frowned. "I didn't know I was that bad a kisser."
Sparky leaned down, "Hey, Radar... what's the matter? If we're going home before Winter... you should be happy! Just think... meals that are a little younger than we are..."
"Not having bombs exploding around your house..." Sidney chimed in.
Mulcahy nodded, "To be back among the loved ones you left behind."
Hawkeye, struck by a thought, grinned, unable to restrain the facial expression until nearly all of his teeth were showing. "Christmas."
The one word didn't have any desire or pressing need to be explained. It threw the rest of the group for a loop, and, as sentiments of the holiday are wonted to effect, their respective hearts melted with yearning for what each of them remembered best. Hams and stuffings, presents and family, decorations, Christmas carols, and, of course, Santa Claus coming down the chimney late at night while all the people are asleep, his foreign, exotic furs telling of travels to places beyond the reach of man, where demonic madmen spit on their creations in coarse blessing for a little horse made so as to be unrelentingly linear and at the same time realer than any blurring black-and-white flicker across the new TV. A lashing of a whip tipped with tinkling bells lingered in their memories and each one turned away in confusion, wondering just where they'd come up with such a strange image.
And they were all taking in breaths to turn back to one another and comment on what they each just thought they'd seen-- when they stopped short, again. Sparky groped out into the air until his hand caught a stool, and he dragged it over to sit down on. Father Mulcahy crossed himself, blinking to make sure this wasn't a new manifestation of his enhanced awareness.
Sidney, for once, was shaken. He looked up across the table to Hawkeye, who was the only one to take the transformation more or less in stride, and to smile at the little bundle of white fluffy fleece that was worming its way out of a Corporal's uniform.
"Radar! You're feeling better."
~
"Holy Moly..." Sparky uttered.
In two beats of a lamb's tail the little creature was free, kicking a weak hind leg out behind to try to free it from a clinging collar. It promptly settled down, sitting back to back with the stuffed bear in a priceless attitude. It swiveled its head this way and that before focusing its astigmatic gaze in Hawkeye's direction and bleating politely. Widening its forehooves, it leaned down and nudged the glasses that sat upside-down on the cot.
"Huh?" Hawkeye asked, as if Radar could reply intelligibly in his current form. A shift of his weight from one foot to the other accompanied his slow outreach of his left hand towards the object.
"Hawkeye--" Mulcahy spat out quickly.
He looked up, his eyes questioning.
Mulcahy settled down, nodding with a brief, "Be careful."
They were all fairly certain that something extraordinary was about to happen. It was a humming in the air, a faint ringing of the spheres normally reserved for secluded forest spots, that almost made them all forget they were in an operating room halfway across the world from home in the middle of a warzone. Yet while Sparky, Mulcahy and Sidney allowed themselves to pause in that moment of wonder as Hawkeye reached forward, not quite sure what, if anything, would happen, but fairly certain that Something would, Hawkeye took the experience one level further.
As a doctor, he knew what would happen when he touched the glasses. Nerves in his hand would report sensations up through his arm to the sensory strip on the lateral side of his brain, those signals would fire to the frontal lobe, where he would be told how cold the metal was, how rough the lenses were where they were covered with dust and grime, which would send off an automatic signal to another part of his frontal cortex allowing him to make some quip about the last time Radar washed his glasses. The message would them return to the motory strip, right next to the sensory one, and signals would shoot back down to his hand, telling him how to proceed. But all of that, he shoved aside. The little child of 5 years in him came out and replaced the doctor. As he reached, he began to smile. He knew precisely what was going to happen, and it had nothing to do with electrical signals and nerve endings firing. It was the rub of the magic lamp, the pressing of the spacecraft's super-turbo-button, the clicking together of the silver shoes: the others thought it would do something. Hawkeye knew it would do everything. He made contact. He believed.
And so it came to happen that, as one of the collected dreamers had an idea of what was going to happen, and as the others at least had their minds open and were ready for the worst (or the best), the M*A*S*H 4077th's Operating Room disappeared.
~
"No, no, that's not what I meant. Fairy as in fairy ring... fairy dust... fairy tales. You know? Little flying things. Except... uh... Radar doesn't fly." Hawkeye looked from Sparky to Father Mulcahy, his eyes widening along with a comical shrug of his shoulders. "As far as I know," he amended.
"So, what, now..." Sparky frowned, scooting between the priest and doctor. His eyes trailed over his friend's supine face and came to rest on Sidney, standing on the other side of the room. "He's got some kind of fairy disease?"
Strange. These words, so bluntly stated, left Pierce without correction. Out of habit he tried to re-state the condition in more precise terms, used to dealing with worried friends and relatives who only had a vague grasp of what was going on. Now, the doctor himself found himself with only a notion, all his years of practice more or less out the window. All he could reply was, "Well... yeah, we think so."
Sparky turned around to look at Pierce distressedly, obviously expecting some sort of explanation as much as Hawkeye had intended on giving one. He dampened his lips a second before turning back to Radar.
"Hey, hey Radar, it's Sparky."
"Come in, Radar," Hawkeye added in a low, hopeful mutter, falling back to put a hand on Mulcahy's shoulder and give him an appreciative nod, silently thanking him for bringing Sparky with him.
A nod of understanding was his reply, and the short phrase, "Radar needs all the friends he has, right now."
All eyes focused back on the center of the room, the operating gurney that Radar was lying on, the Malkavian ghoul leaning over him with a worried look. "Hey Radar, old buddy... can you hear me?"
A connection. Semi-automatic, not quite lucid, but there. "Yeah, Sparky you got those... you got those blankets we need?" Radar mumbled dozily through his unconscious state.
In a moment, the rest of the men in the room clustered close around, attentive to the sign of life.
Sparky, flustered: "Um, not yet, Radar, still working on those... you know the army keeps its eye on the calendar, won't give 'em out two minutes before the manual says they're needed."
Radar chuckled wanly, "Oh. Yeah. Well, can you dig some of last winter's up? We'd... we'd have ours, still, but we traded 'em in for mosquito netting, 'cause... 'cause we couldn't get our hands on any of that, either. The Army doesn't understand. They don't understand the changing of the seasons. They don't get that before the Winter comes the Fall, and the Autumn times can be just as cold as when there's nothing at all 'cause... 'cause you're there to see it. And when the winter comes, we'll all be gone."
By this time, of course, the rest of the inhabitants of the O.R. had gathered around. Their mouths hung open in wonder at what they were hearing. One and all had the same thought in mind. Sparky vocalized it first. "You mean, the war will be over before Winter?"
A tear seeped from the corner of Radar's eye. "Yeah. It'll all be over by Winter." Straight from the Pooka's mouth.
Hawkeye stood up, dazzled by the good news coming in over the Radar. "Radar, I could kiss you, you know."
The tear in one eye was matched by a tear in the other.
Hawkeye frowned. "I didn't know I was that bad a kisser."
Sparky leaned down, "Hey, Radar... what's the matter? If we're going home before Winter... you should be happy! Just think... meals that are a little younger than we are..."
"Not having bombs exploding around your house..." Sidney chimed in.
Mulcahy nodded, "To be back among the loved ones you left behind."
Hawkeye, struck by a thought, grinned, unable to restrain the facial expression until nearly all of his teeth were showing. "Christmas."
The one word didn't have any desire or pressing need to be explained. It threw the rest of the group for a loop, and, as sentiments of the holiday are wonted to effect, their respective hearts melted with yearning for what each of them remembered best. Hams and stuffings, presents and family, decorations, Christmas carols, and, of course, Santa Claus coming down the chimney late at night while all the people are asleep, his foreign, exotic furs telling of travels to places beyond the reach of man, where demonic madmen spit on their creations in coarse blessing for a little horse made so as to be unrelentingly linear and at the same time realer than any blurring black-and-white flicker across the new TV. A lashing of a whip tipped with tinkling bells lingered in their memories and each one turned away in confusion, wondering just where they'd come up with such a strange image.
And they were all taking in breaths to turn back to one another and comment on what they each just thought they'd seen-- when they stopped short, again. Sparky groped out into the air until his hand caught a stool, and he dragged it over to sit down on. Father Mulcahy crossed himself, blinking to make sure this wasn't a new manifestation of his enhanced awareness.
Sidney, for once, was shaken. He looked up across the table to Hawkeye, who was the only one to take the transformation more or less in stride, and to smile at the little bundle of white fluffy fleece that was worming its way out of a Corporal's uniform.
"Radar! You're feeling better."
~
"Holy Moly..." Sparky uttered.
In two beats of a lamb's tail the little creature was free, kicking a weak hind leg out behind to try to free it from a clinging collar. It promptly settled down, sitting back to back with the stuffed bear in a priceless attitude. It swiveled its head this way and that before focusing its astigmatic gaze in Hawkeye's direction and bleating politely. Widening its forehooves, it leaned down and nudged the glasses that sat upside-down on the cot.
"Huh?" Hawkeye asked, as if Radar could reply intelligibly in his current form. A shift of his weight from one foot to the other accompanied his slow outreach of his left hand towards the object.
"Hawkeye--" Mulcahy spat out quickly.
He looked up, his eyes questioning.
Mulcahy settled down, nodding with a brief, "Be careful."
They were all fairly certain that something extraordinary was about to happen. It was a humming in the air, a faint ringing of the spheres normally reserved for secluded forest spots, that almost made them all forget they were in an operating room halfway across the world from home in the middle of a warzone. Yet while Sparky, Mulcahy and Sidney allowed themselves to pause in that moment of wonder as Hawkeye reached forward, not quite sure what, if anything, would happen, but fairly certain that Something would, Hawkeye took the experience one level further.
As a doctor, he knew what would happen when he touched the glasses. Nerves in his hand would report sensations up through his arm to the sensory strip on the lateral side of his brain, those signals would fire to the frontal lobe, where he would be told how cold the metal was, how rough the lenses were where they were covered with dust and grime, which would send off an automatic signal to another part of his frontal cortex allowing him to make some quip about the last time Radar washed his glasses. The message would them return to the motory strip, right next to the sensory one, and signals would shoot back down to his hand, telling him how to proceed. But all of that, he shoved aside. The little child of 5 years in him came out and replaced the doctor. As he reached, he began to smile. He knew precisely what was going to happen, and it had nothing to do with electrical signals and nerve endings firing. It was the rub of the magic lamp, the pressing of the spacecraft's super-turbo-button, the clicking together of the silver shoes: the others thought it would do something. Hawkeye knew it would do everything. He made contact. He believed.
And so it came to happen that, as one of the collected dreamers had an idea of what was going to happen, and as the others at least had their minds open and were ready for the worst (or the best), the M*A*S*H 4077th's Operating Room disappeared.
~