THIRTY ONE

AN: Thanks to Jas & Jenos for your comments. Please keep reading & reviewing. Hope y'all enjoy this installment.

Oct. 20th: 0530 hours

"…But, Major Houlihan," Lieutenant MacAllister protested, "I was scheduled to have the afternoon off. I've already made plans!"

"This is the Army, Lieutenant! Personal plans do not exist. We do what we are ordered to do," the blonde officer replied. "You can follow orders, can't you?"

"Yes, ma'am, I can," the red-haired nurse answered stiffly. She was struggling to keep her temper reined in.

"Then, report for duty at 1100 hours, as usual. Dismissed. I have to get packedfor Tokyo." Sitting at her desk, the older woman shuffled papers & returned to her reading.

When MacAllister hesitated, Houlihan looked up, "I said, you are dismissed!"

"Yes, Major." Still angry, the younger woman left the other nurse's tent.

"No can do, Lieutenant. I can't get through," the company clerk explained to the woman pacing in his office. "I'll try again, in a few minutes."

"Keeping trying, Corporal," she directed. 'There's no sense in him making the trip out here if I can't spend any time with him."

"I'll find a way to contact him," Klinger promised, "and I'm sorry that your plans were changed."

"Me, too." Peering into Colonel Potter's office, MacAllister noted, "Good, he's not in there. Klinger, cover you ears," she advised as she headed towards the door.

"Cover my…?" The man started to ask. The slamming of the door and an explosive torrent of words in an unfamiliar language was all the explanation he needed. Shaking his head sadly, the clerk tried again to reach Lieutenant Cochlan's outfit.

Heading towards the mess tent, Major Winchester heard the slamming door and the spate of angry words that followed. He recognized the voice but not the dialect. Turning, he saw Lieutenant MacAllister storming towards her quarters.

"Lieutenant," he called to her, "is everything all right?"

She paused, "Fine and dandy, sir." Her response was polite. He could see the anger in her stance, however. She resumed walking.

He caught up with the woman and tried another tactic, "What language were you speaking?" he asked curiously.

"Spanish. Do you understand it?"

"No."

"Good," she replied. "Because what I was saying shouldn't have been said in polite company." MacAllister added, in a soft, tightly control voice. "Sir, right now, I'm so mad at Major Houlihan that I could chew nails and spit out horseshoes!"

"An interesting analogy," Winchester remarked. "But what, pray tell, has provoked this language lesson?" At the Texan's hesitation, he said, with sincerity, "Sarabeth, when you first arrived, I told you that...if you felt the need to talk...I would be willing to listen. I meant that. I still do."

She nodded. "Thank you." Looking around, she gestured to her tent. "Let's go inside the ranch house. "People know if you sneeze twice around here, so I don't reckon I can say the things I want to say out here."

Once inside her quarters, she said, "I'm not intending this to be a complaint between nurse and doctor or from Lieutenant to Major. It's just ranting between friends."

"Understood," the man nodded.

"Now," she began, "I understand why Houlihan is on my back like a duck on a June bug in the operating room. She likes her nurses meek and mild. I don't fit into that mold. I try hard to keep my mouth shut...I don't often succeed," the Texan added ruefully. "I don't like it; but, I do understand that part."

"But, it is outside the OR where she really aggravates me! My hair ribbons are a good example. She says they have to go: that they aren't military. I know that. But they make me feel better. The rest of my uniform follows the military dress regulations: every button is buttoned; my insignia is set at exactly the right angle on my collar; the one boot I can wear is always shined. Why isn't that good enough for her?"

"My ranch house is another example. I came in, as a new nurse, and I have my own tent. At the same time, there are nurses who have been here for over a year, and they're still four to a tent. I asked the major if one of them could move in with me. That would give her, and the other nurses in that tent, more room. But Houlihan refused, saying that my tent was designated for the second-in-command nurse only."

Sarabeth continued before Winchester had a chance to reply. "And speaking of second-in-command...my three week grace period is nearly up. My ankle isn't healing like I want it to. I'm not getting enough rest because of these double shifts. But even that would all right, if I were actually being trained for the position as I am supposed to be. Instead, I'm doing every inane thing that she can dream up...like counting how many rectal thermometers we have. Every time I finish one of the moronic tasks, she finds something else equally idiotic. Or else she has me redoing the first one again!"

"And today," she whirled to face the man who was listening to her, "today was the last straw! I was supposed to have my second shift off--butI would still be the on-call nurse--in case anything came in.. As soon as she posted that schedule, I contacted Mitch. He managed to get five hour leave and was coming today. We were going to Hawkeye's "Sock Hop and Swap" this evening. I was really looking forward to spending some time with him."

"This morning, Houlihan tells me that my schedule has changed. I'm back on duty and I can forget any personal plans that I've made. And to make it even more irritating, I know that Parnelli was the snake in the grass who informed her he was coming."

MacAllister sighed unhappily. "This isn't really working. You know what I do when I'm this mad and frustrated back home?"

"Go out and punch cows?" Winchester inquired with a grin.

Grinning in return, the woman said, "That would sure be a cow-rageous thing to do! No, what I do is: saddle up and ride out to one of the back pastures, pick up a handful of rocks and start throwing them as hard as I can at a target. I keep chunking them until I can't raise my arm anymore or I'm over being mad."

He questioned, "Just curious, do you throw stones at people?"

"Nope: I just pitch rocks at trees and fence posts and ant hills. Although," she added truthfully, "I have chunked a few rocks at Fannin. But he deserved it!

"No doubt," Major Winchester agreed. "Well, then, let's go."

"Go where?"

"Sarabeth, Korea has a multitude of rocks waiting to be 'chunked'."

She thought about his suggestion. Her smile grew larger and her eyes began to sparkle again. "You are so right!"