IMPORTANT!
Kooshball note: A completely unnecessary and especially violent filler on how Alex got hurt when she first came to the 4077th at the beginning of "Eyes of a Nurse". I'm not sure how bloody and violent it really is, so let me know what you think if you read it.
All five nurses laughed at the joke. It was three or four hours after Alex had "caught" Hawkeye and Margaret together, but she'd almost forgotten the whole thing. She was too busy celebrating with her closest nurse friends.
'And how did you get promoted after setting that Major's toupee on fire?' Marple asked between fits of giggling. Alex stopped laughing, sombre.
'I was thinking about that this afternoon,' she said. The other nurses stopped, and looked at Alex. She sat on her cot, and stared at the floor. 'I think I've figured out why.' Jefferson sat on the cot beside Alex, and hesitantly put an arm around her shoulders.
'How?' she asked.
Alex looked up again, her eyes wet. 'Before I first arrived here, at the 4077th, I'd been trained by one of the best surgeons in the country. Major Andy Cameron. He could fix a man in twenty minutes, and his success rate was higher than the 4077th's. He flirted with me, and I flirted back. We had some fun together, but eventually, the camp was over run by the enemy.' Alex paused to take a drink.
'He was killed, protecting me. I'd have died too, had the American army not arrived. I escaped with bruising, and a scar.' Her finger traced the scar on her cheek. 'I found out he had a fiancée back home. If he hadn't been dead, I'd have killed him myself. I eventually got over it, and came to the 4077.
'Life here was great. Drinking, gambling, it was my idea of heaven, besides the wounded, the bombing, and the entire war, I guess. Well, we got attacked by a solitary Korean. Sounds stupid, doesn't it? Well, you tell me how stupid it is, when a man is standing on the roof of an ambulance with a gun pointed towards your head.' Alex looked around at the nurses watching her with wide eyes. 'I saved a few people, Klinger, a surgeon called Trapper, myself. And Major Margaret Houlihan. She was nicer to me after that. She treated me like a real person for saving her. I'm assuming it was because of that incident, the last CO of here put me up for promotion.'
'What about the second promotion?' Crystal asked quietly. Alex smiled grimly to herself.
'I was at another MASH,' she said. 'I had adjusted ok, to the work. The nurses, the doctors and the corpsmen however, they didn't like me. They thought I was a tomboy. Maybe even… different, if you catch my drift.' Marple shook her head.
'What do you mean?' she asked. Alex fixed her with a stare, and the nurse flinched back.
'They thought I was queer,' she said. 'That I didn't chase men, at all, just women. That wasn't the case. I tried not to flirt with the men in camp too much; a lot were married, and there was a man there that condemned you for that sort of thing. I don't know where the idea came from. I never hit on them or anything like that. Even the fact I had been pregnant didn't change their minds. Only the second in command didn't mind me, Major Evans. I don't know why he thought differently from the others.'
Jefferson handed the box of rum brownies around, and each other nurses took one wordlessly. Except Alex. She stared past the box as if it wasn't there, and Jefferson soon put the box down.
'It was a few months ago. Just before I came here again. There was heavy bombing near us and everything shook. I risked my life pushing one of the other nurses out of the way of a flying piece of metal. She didn't thank me, she just spat at me. I tried to take order, the CO was dead, and no-one else was willing. Sure, Major Evans was my superior, now in command, but he was young, he had no experience in this sort of thing. He just followed my lead. That's how I got the second promotion, I'm guessing.'
'You came here all beaten up,' Jefferson said softly. Alex nodded.
'I'd made all of the personnel go into the mess tent. It was the closest thing we had to a proper shelter. I was in the kitchen, with some of the higher ranking surgeons and nurses, yelling at each other about what we should do. A bomb struck us, and the building began collapsing.' Alex's voice faltered a moment. 'The roof came down, killing the nurse nearest me and the torn metal ripped its way through my shoulder. As I fell with it, my leg got cut on a dirty knife, lying on the floor. Our kitchen was not known for its cleanliness, or its organisation. I was trapped under the roof, with the dead nurse within reach, and blood and screaming all around me.' Alex stopped again, licking her dry lips.
'Maybe I should stop,' she suggested, noticing the pale faces of her friends.
'No, go on,' Marple insisted. The others nodded, though they all looked a little horrified.
'I was stuck there for god only knows how long. Evans found me, and went looking for help, because I think many of the others were dead or seriously injured. I'd blacked out within half an hour of him finding me,' Alex continued. 'My shoulder was burning with pain, and my leg was starting to feel numb. I thought they were going to have to amputate it, but I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought. I was lying on mud, from the blood of the nurse next to me. I started hallucinating in the short while I was awake. I could see my brother, standing over me sadly, shaking his head. He was bloody too, and there were scars ripped across his face, his arms, the flesh barely hanging onto the bone. His clothes were torn and bloody; it was almost impossible to tell they were originally fatigues.' Alex looked around again. The others were horrified at what she was describing, but motioned for her to go on when she stopped.
'He spoke to me. I love you, he said, smiling sadly at me. But others love you, too, so I have to leave you here, for now. "No," I said to him. "Take me with you. Save me, Isaac." He just smiled, and closed his eyes as he bowed to me. I blacked out, and woke up in the 4077th. I couldn't believe that I had ended up back here. Back with my friends. Back with the lying son of a bitch I thought I loved.' Her sudden bitter tone made the others jump, but Alex didn't notice. She just smiled gently, her tone turning soft again. 'I guess it could have been worse, it could have been my sister out there, instead of me.'
There was a silence in the tent that lasted a few minutes.
'Come on,' Kellye said, trying to be cheerful. 'You've been promoted, so we should be celebrating.' Alex smiled.
'Yeah,' she said. 'Who's up for another drink?' The women scrambled for the bottle of whisky left on the table, and quickly tried to forget the tale Alex had just told them. It wasn't too hard, amongst the loud and off key singing, and laughter at each other's drunken attempts to keep a tune.
It was harder for Alex to forget though. She'd lost her ability to use her arm most of the time, she'd lost 50 percent of her eyesight in one eye, and she had to limp everywhere. Every time she dropped a glass and it shattered, or anything else for that matter, all she could hear were the screams of tearing metal and the shrieks of the nurse beside her as she died. She wondered what it had been like for her brother, hurt, at a MASH unit, doctors refusing to operate on him because of what he was. Alex believed she had lost more than anyone should during a war.