'So what's the scoop on this lot?' Potter asked.
'MASH unit a few miles up was bombed. Lots of casualties, not enough supplies there to treat them, so we got them,' the corpsman replied, leaving the stretcher on the OR table. Colonel Potter sighed.
'How much longer is this dang war going to keep going?' he said loudly to himself.
'It could be worse,' one of the white clad surgeons offered. 'We could have been the target.'
'Put a sock in it, Charles,' BJ said, wondering how the person in front of him had even made the trip; there was a lot of blood loss.
'Those poor people,' Lieutenant Jefferson said. Jefferson was new to the outfit, barely there a week, and already had Major Houlihan nagging her to keep her mind on the patients insides, instead of how they got there. She was a tall, dark haired nurse, with blue eyes, and someday hoped she might become a female doctor, like a few other women she had heard about. Jefferson was helping Charles with his patient, a nurse stained with blood. The patient's left shoulder had been ripped open by something, and it needed sewing up. Her clothes were marked with thick red blood, and it made her hair stick together in knotted clumps. At first, Jefferson had thought that the injured nurse's hair had been streaked with blood, making it seem red, but on closer inspection, realised that it was her natural hair colour. There was a long pale scar down her left cheek, and a bulge under her right eyelid. The dogtags around her neck were rusted with blood, looking years old. Jefferson didn't even have time to read the name before Charles had finished and ordered her to be taken away.
'Any trouble?' Colonel Potter asked Charles in Post op.
'I'm a little worried by the woman in bed three. She should have woken up by now,' Charles replied. He led the Colonel to a bed, where a thin woman lay, blood and hair giving her face a red frame. Colonel Potter breathed in sharply, then turned to Jefferson, who was also on duty.
'Go get Captain Hunnicutt,' he ordered. 'Now!' Nurse Jefferson ran out of the Post op as quickly as she could, wondering why BJ would be so interested in the nurse she had assisted Charles with.
'What's wrong? One of my patients?' BJ asked, hurrying into Post op a few minutes later, tying the sash to his robe tightly as he walked. Jefferson was behind him, trying to get a second look at the red haired nurse again.
'No, one of Winchester's,' Potter replied, pointing to cot three. BJ went to the end of the bed, glanced at the nurse and picked up her chart. He dropped the chart onto the floor as if it had bitten him. He then moved toward the nurse and checked her dogtags.
'What is the fascination with her? She is just another nurse,' Charles said, obviously annoyed at being out of the loop.
'Just another nurse?' BJ stood up to his full height again, and looked around as if to see if anyone else was as appalled as he was. 'Look, Charles, that nurse was one of the best that this outfit has ever seen.'
'Calm down, son,' Potter said, before glancing at the woman again. 'I think we should call Hawkeye, and tell him Alex is back at the 4077th.'
Kooshball: Yes, "Alex" is now a trilogy! Sorry it's such a short chapter. Watch this space for more of Alex!