Disclaimer: All characters and affiliated miscellaneous are the intellectual property of...well, whoever the heck it is who currently holds the rights to MASH. This is just fan-fiction; don't take it seriously!
It was yet another long night. A night of pain, a night of blood, a night of death, always announced by the pulsing throb of helicopter blades or the protesting squeal of ambulance brakes in the compound. Time blurred, as it always did, while the ranks of wounded soldiers formed, and personnel scrambled to and fro—fetching supplies, bringing patients to the operating room, giving what scant comfort they could.
And among them all, Fr. Francis Mulcahy moved quietly, an unprepossessing figure in the midst of the urgent bustle of mortality. The young priest walked from patient to patient, distributing blessings and soothing words with equal facility, moving with haste only when called into the operating room to administer Last Rites.
The bright lights of the OR and the clatter of instruments greeted him as soon as he stepped inside, but that was not all. Mulcahy felt the familiar numbness steal over his senses, shielding him from the horrors he faced. It welcomed him with open arms, and he abandoned himself to it completely, grateful for the peace that steadied his shaking hands and kept his voice clear and strong; grateful for the detached calm that allowed him to perform the sacrament without weeping or retching.
He spoke the too-familiar words through a surgical mask—made the Sign of the Cross with a gloved hand as the soldier on the table slowly ceased breathing, then turned away as the orderlies moved in to whisk the corpse off the table. There was no moment of silence, no pause of regret, for time was a luxury that could not be afforded.
The numbness carried him out of the OR, where he stripped mask and gloves and dropped them into appropriate receptacles. It carried him past brisk nurses scrubbing at the long sinks, getting ready to relieve their fellows. He knew that if he had looked into their eyes, he would have seen his own resolute blankness mirrored in them.
All personnel who served at the 4077th developed mental armor. They had to. The lessons of mortality were taught quickly and brutally here, and the only possible responses were to learn to withstand the onslaught of horror or to succumb to madness. Some people took longer to adjust than others, but they all did.
They all did. It was only this knowledge that allowed the priest, even as detached as he was, to continue walking past a young nurse—a new transfer—who stood sobbing outside the building. Most of the nurses cried at first, but they either worked out their issues or were transferred, with ruthless mercy, by Maj. Houlihan.
None of us have the luxury of feeling. He would have liked to stop, to offer the young woman a word of solace, but there were others who needed comfort more. He could not pause even to collect himself, but rather reinforced his mental anesthesia as he walked, as his steps carried him around the building to what would likely be his last stop of the night.
Panels of white outlined his destination, looming large and ghostly against the darkened background of the compound. They were privacy screens taken from the ward, and erected by orderlies as the last barrier to death. The screens shielded those soldiers who would not be going to the operating room tonight; those soldiers who had been carried here, out of the way, to make room for those of their comrades who still had a chance.
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.
The young priest crossed himself, then lifted his chin and stepped forward to enter the domain of the dying.
Amen.