We were instantly hit by a wave of pandemonium, chaos, bedlam, you name it and we had it. I still couldn't fully get used to the sight of those poor kids, broken in so many pieces just waiting to be put back together by yours truly, Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce, known as Hawkeye to the ones I love.
Triage was a great preview into just how much death and destruction we were dealing with, and today seemed to be an excellent day for some of these young men to enlist in heaven's army.
"Looks like Father Mulcahy will have his hands full today," I said to myself as I pulled a sheet over another kid's face. I cursed the fates for the hundredth time that day and prayed to whomever to give me the strength to play God. I checked over some of the bad cases, ordered some plasma, some whole blood, some x-rays, it was all routine to me. What a terrible thing to have blood and death on a schedule. It would have sickened me if I had the time to be ill. Unfortunately, I didn't. I had soldiers to stitch together.
Fifteen minutes later I was scrubbing up with BJ, Frank, and Margaret, the head nurse. Col. Potter was already in the OR, giving a few last minute orders before he got down to business. I finished scouring my hands and Major Margaret Houlihan, or Hotlips as she hated to be called, handed me a towel.
"I see someone isn't his usual chatty self," Frank said, grabbing a towel from Hotlips and carelessly drying off his hands. "Did you run out of snotty things to say Mr. Wisenheimer?"
"It just so happens, Frank, that I covered up two bodies not five minutes ago. And if you don't zip it you're going to make three."
"Doctors, please," pleaded Hotlips, "I have new nurses in there and the last thing they need to hear is officers bickering."
"It might make them forget about all the blood and guts they're about to see," said BJ as he took a towel from Margaret.
"We wouldn't want that," I countered. I threw my towel into the laundry, took a deep breath, and headed into the OR.
I stood in front of my table as I accepted a gown and gloves from one of the new nurses. Her touch, although new to me, seemed familiar and I closed my eyes for a moment, just thinking about what I could be doing with that nurse instead of pulling nine irons out of teenagers.
"Doctor," I heard a voice say. I opened my eyes and there was a body lying out in front of me, scarred, bruised, bleeding, and waiting for me to gouge him open and take out whatever the enemy had shoved in.
I looked up at the nurse and she looked back at me. We studied each other for a moment. Did I recognize this nurse? She must have been a new one since I knew just about every other nurse in the outfit biblically. The familiarity boiled up inside me, but where did I know her from?
"I'm not a doctor or anything, but the last time I checked you need to open a patient up in order to begin operating," she said, her sarcasm a welcome sound in a room full of gravity.
"Well, maybe I should just let you operate and I'll sit back and watch," I said and laughed.
"I did learn from the best," she said, and handed me a scalpel. "I bet I wouldn't be half bad."
"Pray, who did you learn from?" I asked, making my incision. I finished and looked up at the nurse, but she just smiled at me and readied herself to assist.
Soon enough, I was fishing for shrapnel in the belly of an American soldier.
"This would be easier if I had a really big magnet," I said, tossing a small fragment into a metal bucket, the sharp ping resonating through the room.
"I can't understand why we do this to each other," my nurse said after being silent for some time.
"Who does what to who – clamp – nurse?"
"Clamp." She handed me the instrument. "How we can do this to them or they can do this to us. How human beings can destroy each other over something as trivial as land."
"You're beginning to sound like our resident whiner, lieutenant," Frank said harshly, throwing a bloodied sponge into a bucket under his table, and missing of course.
"My voice is deeper," she said, and I laughed out loud.
"Lieutenant!" Hotlips screamed. "Report to me after your shift."
"Yes major," she muttered and handed me a sponge.
"You certainly are my kind of woman," I said, fishing out another piece of iron. "You've managed to be beautiful and sarcastic, you've insulted Frank and Hotlips, and you're a brilliant nurse."
"I know I've heard a speech like that before, Dr. Pierce," she said. I stopped and looked up at her. Her eyes were mischievous and I could tell she was enjoying watching me struggle.
"Have the other nurses told you about me?"
"Enough to confirm what I already know."
"Why do you seem so familiar to me?"
"Because I know you. Whether you remember me is up for debate, of course."
"Why would I have met someone like you and then just let you get away? Suction."
"Suction. Because you were working harder than anyone in the history of medicine and you didn't have time for a little old nurse like me. And, rumor has it you were living with someone."
"Ah, my days of residency in Boston, Massachusetts. At least that narrows it down a bit. Retract that bowel for me, will you nurse?"
"Got it, Hawkeye," she said. I stopped and looked back up at her. Hawkeye? She had just called me by the nickname that my father had given me and was reserved for those people that I love the most. Needless to say, I was blown away again.
"Hawkeye? How many people in Boston called me that?"
"I dunno. I guess you'd have to ask good old Trapper McIntyre for that one, wouldn't you Hawk?"
"Oh no," Frank yelled out. "Anyone who knows Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper McIntyre is obviously trouble."
"I'll take care of her, Frank," Hotlips said and wiped his brow. "I'll make sure she falls in line."
My nurse leaned in close to me. "Does she realize that I can hear her?"
I shook my head. "Major Houlihan doesn't believe that anyone under her can hear her. Unless of course it's Frank's turn to be under her."
The nurse chuckled and packed off a bleeder for me. I shook my head. "What I'm dying to know is who you are and why you know so many intimate details about me." I pulled out the last piece of shrapnel and sighed. "Burt first give me three-oh silk."
"Three-oh," she said and handed me the needle. I began to sew up the gash in my patient's stomach.
"You know it's going to bother me all night, this business of a nurse who knows me but I don't know her."
"You'll know who I am soon enough, Hawkeye," she said, and smiled.
I smiled back.
Ten hours later I had forgotten all about Hawkeye Pierce, as I'm sure he had forgotten about me. Major Houlihan rotated me away from his table as soon as she could, hoping my remarks would stop. Of course, putting me at Major Frank Burns' table was the worst mistake she could have made. I didn't know how he could have been a doctor, but I was afraid several times he was going to try to sew up the patient with a scalpel instead of a needle.
Needless to say, after I told Frank what I thought about him, Major Houlihan scheduled me in post-op. Before which, she had taken me aside and told me that she respected me as a nurse, but if I didn't stay away from Captain Pierce she would write me up for insubordination. I, of course, was planning on disobeying orders.
I could tell almost instantly that this wasn't going to be the experience I had thought it would be. The military aspect of medicine seemed pointless; salutes and inspections clashed with the blood and mess of surgery.
Before I stepped into the operating room, Major Houlihan, one of the most military people on the post, had taken all five of the new nurses, including me, aside and briefly told us what we were going to be expected to do in OR that day.
I'm not expecting anything fancy, she had said, and I don't want any of you to try and be heroes. I simply want you to assist to the best of your ability. Things move quickly in there and if you can't keep up, nudge one of the nurses or myself and we'll relieve you.
She paused for a moment, letting her cold blue eyes sweep over the group, no doubt making mental notes on all of us. I looked at the other nurses out of the corner of my eye. They all looked so scared as if each of them were going under the knife instead of simply helping. I hoped I didn't look like that too, although my heart was clawing its way up to my throat and there were eagles flapping around in my stomach.
OR was a mad whirl, constant action upon action. When you weren't helping a doctor you were running back and forth getting supplies, sterilizing instruments, tossing x-rays on the screens, and hoping that no one could see your heart beating frantically within your chest.
Despite my efforts a quiet smile crossed my face. That was what it was all about. It sounds grisly, but the OR thrilled me. I didn't like all the death, all the destruction, all the pain, but I loved knowing that I was helping to make that pain go away. Helping the patients, forming a blood pact with the doctors…
Hawkeye. His face floated through my mind and I paused to remember. Reminiscing about the past was a strong point if mine. I lived in the past, through my accomplishments and the people I had known, they were what defined me. It was almost as if I had no present or future. My life was a photo album and every memory, every movement, every action, every person was just a picture in my mind, frozen in time and space.
But Hawkeye was different. Every memory I had of him was a movement of some kind: shaking Trapper's hand, taking me over his shoulder, his mischievous smile spreading slowly across his face when he got an idea for a new prank, waving at me from the platform of the Boston-Maine Express Train as I sped away from Massachusetts…
What a shock it was seeing Hawkeye there. Not just seeing him but working with him again. How amazing it would have been if Trapper were there too, then it would have been like I'd never left Boston. Sure, I must have not made a lasting impression on Hawkeye but he sure changed my perspective on life and together, he and Trapper made me see the world from a completely different angle. They taught me that life is all a game, a show, an amusement, and that we as doctors and nurses should do everything to preserve it. Life isn't serious, they had said, but death is.
As I sat in post-op, I kept thinking about Hawkeye and how bizarre it was to be in the same hospital as he was, not to mention the same country. I would have thought someone as smart as him would have found a way to evade the draft and stay out of the war. I guess if Hawkeye was here I didn't feel so nameless or faceless. I had a friend, or at least someone who knew I existed past the green uniform and the white mask.
All in all, I was happy to be there. Happy to have him there.
It was driving me crazy. The nurse who was at my table seemed so familiar to me, but I just couldn't find her in the deep chasms of my memory. I knew she was around during my residency, but past that I was drawing a blank. Unfortunately, my curiosity had to take a back seat to the operations I was doing and I didn't get to really put my mind to it until I was wearily taking off my gown. I was happy to get the blood-soaked garment off my body, and BJ shared the sentiment with me.
"Boy do I hate it here," he said, pulling off his white scrubs and revealing his green slacks underneath.
"You know," I started, "I was just thinking that. Thinking about how nice it would be if the war ended tomorrow."
"Come on, Hawk, where would the fun be in that?" BJ asked, throwing his clothes into the laundry. "I'm going to run to post-op, check on one of my cases."
"Wait, let me come with you," I said, and hurriedly stripped off my scrubs.
"What's the rush?"
"That new nurse, the one who was working on my table early in the shift."
"Was she the one that told Frank he'd be a better surgeon if someone removed half of his brain, stomped on it-"
"And stapled it back in," Hawkeye finished, laughing. "That certainly made the rest of surgery bearable."
"Maybe it's your mutual contempt for Frank that's hitting your familiar button."
"I dunno," Hawk said, shaking his head. "It can't be that. I mean, I know I know her, but I don't know where I know her from, you know?"
BJ laughed. "You're getting a little jittery. Could this be another one of those long-lost lovers from your past life?"
"That's the thing. I have no idea if this should be a woman that I need to remember or a woman that I should forget. But I need to know who she is before I can get to the remembering and/or forgetting."
"Well, let's be off to post-op and we can unmask your mystery nurse."
BJ opened the door and I ran in, grabbed a lab coat and searched for her. The eight beds of the post operative ward were lined up like soldiers lying at attention. The white sheets and brown blankets just added to the utter lack of color that plagued the camp. I scanned the room, looking for the girl that was driving me crazy, but I only saw nurse Kellye and Hotlips. Not a trace of the new nurse could be seen. She had eluded me once again. My mind a mess, I yanked a chair out from under the post-op desk and fell into the seat, dejected and frustrated. BJ sat on the desk in front of me.
"No luck?" he asked, tucking his stethoscope under his lab coat.
"I must have just missed her," I said, looking at BJ.
"You'll find her, Hawkeye," he said, reassuringly. I smiled at my friend.
Despite his kindness and sincerity, something about BJ always made me a little bitter. Maybe it was because he had replaced my best friend, Trapper John McIntyre, who I had missed saying goodbye to by ten minutes. BJ had filled his place surgically very well, having a lot of talent as a doctor, but he was different than Trapper. Trapper's sly smile, wild blonde hair, and love for the opposite sex was alien compared to BJ's wide, kind grin, kempt brown hair and affection and devotion for his wife and his daughter.
I missed the competition, the constant comparing of conquests that Trapper and I had made a game of while we were there together. The things we pulled and weren't reprimanded for made us feel like we had the power and not the bozos with more stripes or stars on their clothes. We were the common kings, making jesters out of our superiors and laughing all the way.
Then Trapper left, snuck out behind my back without so much as a goodbye and I lost all the glory, all the power. BJ came in, shiny and new from the states, and, although he didn't know it, he reduced me to a mere person again. BJ was like a brother to me but he would never be Trapper John.
Underneath it all, I guess I was envious of BJ. He had all the things that I always wanted: a solid career, a home, and a family. He was full of idealism about the world, although Korea was slowly sapping it away, and he had so much to go back to as soon as he was freed of this hell-hole.
Jealousy was always my least favorite emotion.
I sighed and sunk lower into the chair, checking the clock to see how long until my shift in post-op started. But something was in my way. Someone was in my way. Not just someone…she was in my way.
The shoulder-length auburn hair, the flawless complexion, the curious green eyes, and the woman that was shrouded in mystery not ten seconds ago was suddenly bathed in the light of recognition. It had all completely clicked in my mind.
I looked at BJ and smiled, gesturing over to her with a small flick of my head.
"Say BJ," I started, raising my voice so she would hear me. She smiled but didn't look up from her work as I regaled BJ with me tale. "Did I ever tell you about the time when I was in residency, there was a big meeting of all the hotshots in Boston coming to hear a lecture from some world-renowned crackpot doctor who couldn't thread a needle, let alone operate?
"So, on the day of the lecture, this girl asked me if I would go up and kiss the speaker flush on the mouth. I told her if I did, she'd have to kiss me right after. She agreed and when I kissed this guy, the whole place was in an uproar. And while I was waiting for the girl to come and kiss me, I was arrested."
"They had grabbed you before I could even pucker," she said, coming up behind my chair. "But Trapper and I busted you out of the joint in good time."
"Yeah, the next week," I said, jumping out of my chair and giving my old friend a hug. "Linda Florence. The sweetest nightingale in all of Massachusetts."
"I can't believe you still remember that," she laughed. "It seems so long ago."
"I also remember that you still owe me a kiss," I laughed.
"Put it on my tab," she giggled. "I bet Carlye wouldn't want me kissing her beau while he was so far away."
