His jovial face dropped and he was no longer the light-hearted Hawkeye that I had known in Boston, he was a man who had known love and had lost it.
"Um, Carlye and I didn't make it past my residency," he said, combing his raven black hair out of his face. "We separated a month or two after you left."
"Oh, Hawkeye," I said, and put my hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him. He shrugged it away and forced a smile onto his face.
"Well, it's too bad you didn't get here a few months ago," he said, quickly changing the subject to one less painful. "The whole gang would have been reunited just like old times."
"What do you mean?"
"You missed Trapper John, Linda. He was here."
My mouth dropped. "Get out!" I said. "Trapper John McIntyre was here in South Korea with you? Oh boy I should have come to this hell-hole sooner. Wouldn't that have been a gas?"
"You three shouldn't be loafing around in post-op," I heard Major Burns yell across the room.
Hawkeye rolled his eyes. "Speaking of gas…" he said, gesturing to Frank. I laughed. "Well, I'm off, but come by my tent later and we'll talk more about old times."
"How will I know which one is your tent?"
"Just follow the glug-glug sound of me drinking my sorrows away," he laughed. He turned to his friend who was still sitting quietly on the desk. "You coming, Beej?"
"Yeah, be there in a minute. I just need to check out my case."
Hawkeye nodded and left.
I shook my head and turned to the man Hawkeye had been talking to.
"I'm sorry. I seem to have forgotten my manners. I'm Linda Florence." I extended my hand and he grasped it firmly.
"BJ Hunnicutt."
"It's nice to meet you," I smiled. "Does BJ stand for anything?"
He laughed, "Not really."
We chuckled together. He slid off the desk and headed towards one of the more badly wounded soldiers. I studied BJ and his walk. He walked as if he was still at home, bright and cheery with an air of invincibility. I could tell that he had only been here a short time, maybe a few months.
Not like Hawkeye.
I saw the way my old friend carried himself. He was worn out, worn down and looked as if he was ready to throw himself on the mercy of the fates. He was still strong, but not like he had been back in Boston. He was a different person and that scared me a little. If Hawkeye was so changed by this place how could I get through it? I found myself wondering how it had changed Trapper.
I sighed and sat back into the chair. Trapper John McIntyre and Hawkeye Pierce were here in the same place and where was I? I was too busy wasting my life with that no-brained, half-wit of a fiancé. Why kid myself, that's why I was really here, to get away from my memories, to get away from him, Mark, the one man I thought I couldn't live without. But boy could he live without me.
BJ came back to me and sighed.
"Private Wallace in bed four is in pretty bad shape. There's still some drainage on his dressings and I don't like the way his fever's acting up."
"I'll tell the next nurse on duty to keep an eye on him," I said. BJ looked up at me, questioning. It was then that I noticed his piercing blue eyes that caught the light and shimmered like icy stars.
"You're getting off soon?"
I pulled my gaze away from his eyes and at the duty roster on the desk.
"Um, yeah. Nurse Bigelow should be here in…"
The Post-op door opened and Nurse Bigelow walked in. I looked at BJ. "…No time at all."
He laughed. He was very generous with his smiles; they never seemed to leave his face. It made me feel safer, more at home rather than so far away from all that was familiar.
"Well, since you and I seem to be off our shift at the same time, why don't we scurry on over to the swamp and meet up with Hawkeye for a drink or two?"
"The swamp?" I asked, taking off my lab coat and letting it rest in the crook of my arm.
"That's the name of our tent," he said and laughed. "You'll get it when you see the place."
"That bad, huh?"
"It's fantastic if you like general pandemonium."
We briefed Nurse Bigelow on all the cases she needed to keep an eye on and threw our lab coats at the rack, both of us missing it by a few feet.
He pushed the door open and we waded into the open air. The stale smell of blood left my nostrils and was replaced by the cool breeze.
"It must be nice to taste fresh air after ten hours of surgery."
"It's like my own little slice of Korean heaven," he said. I laughed and walked on. The loose sand clung to my boots like it was trying to drag me down. I tried to kick it off, but the grime refused to let go. After a few kicks, I gave up.
"How do you deal with the dirt here?" I asked.
No answer. I pivoted and stared at BJ; standing in the middle of the compound, arms hanging limply to his side, eyes slammed tight, and silent as if he were a wax sculpture. "BJ?" I asked.
It took him a moment to respond, and when he did, he spoke very slowly.
"The breeze hitting my face like this seems so familiar. I can just stand here like this, arms spread and close my eyes and imagine I'm back at home." A sad look spread across his face as he opened his eyes. "I do that a lot, you know. Pretend I'm back in the states. Unfortunately, every time I open my eyes, I look around expecting to see my home, my daughter, my wife. But I'm never magically transported there. I open my eyes and I'm still in Korea. I'm still a part of this war." He laughed. "Look at me, depressing you on your very first day."
"I was depressed when I stepped off of my plane at Kimpo Airport, BJ," I said. I put my arm around his shoulders. "Now, tell me where this swamp is so I can be reunited with my dear friend Doctor Benjamin Franklin 'Hawkeye' Pierce." I laughed. "His name always was a handful."
"So is he," he replied. We laughed as he led me towards a drab collection of olive green canvas which I could only assume was their tent. My assumption was confirmed when a glimmer of light hit the door and I saw the words "SWAMP" written in faded red letters on the top. He stepped in front of me and yanked the door out of the way, holding it open while I stepped in.
As I crossed the threshold of the tent, a masculine scent hit me like a wave crashing over my head. I inhaled several times and the smell of man enveloped me. How long had it been since I'd been this close to a man's living arrangements? Two months? Three? The manly musk made my knees weak and I had to steady myself on the doorframe for a moment before walking in all the way.
The room seemed to be separated into two distinct sides. The area to my left was very tidy with military precision in the making of the bed and the placement of the footlocker. It looked like it had been sterilized and dyed olive green.
On the other hand, the right side of the tent was in complete disarray. Civilian clothes were strewn over unmade beds and unfinished letters abandoned during the deluge of wounded were scattered over the floor. On top of a table was an unidentifiable concoction of countless copper wires, rubber tubes, and glass vials of all different shapes. Next to this table was Hawkeye, lounging on his cot, sipping on a clear liquid from a martini glass. He had haphazardly thrown a crimson robe over himself that trailed out behind him like a peacock's tail.
I felt BJ brush my body as he closed the door and stepped inside. The sound of the door banging shut brought Hawkeye out of his trance and he turned to me. I couldn't help but notice the sadness that was hewn into his face, most likely from the time he had spent against his will in Korea. I always knew Hawkeye was anti-war, yet here he was. I would have thought he'd go AWOL rather than participate in war. But this wasn't the first time Hawkeye Pierce had surprised me and it certainly wouldn't be the last.
"Dump, sweet dump," BJ said, breaking the silence. He moved through the mess and towards his cot in the rear of the tent. He threw himself on to his bed and stared up at me. "Feel free to pull up a garbage pile." I smiled back but it was forced. I looked back at Hawkeye. His face was blank, unidentifiable, and I knew from experience that Hawkeye didn't like to show his emotions, especially when he was in distress. It made him feel weak. My being here had upset him, that much was obvious, but why was unclear to me. I gingerly sat in a chair by his bed and looked at his face. He avoided my eyes.
"Hawkeye?" I asked, touching his hand with mine. "You ok?"
He looked up at me and I swear I saw a tear trickle down his cheek before he wiped his face with his hand. I would have pressed the matter, but I knew he would never admit to something like that.
He forced a smile onto his face and took a sip of the liquid in his glass, which I quickly identified as gin, more or less. "Sorry, Linda," he said softly. "It's just…" he trailed off, looking into the distance, carefully picking what to say next. "Seeing you here reminds me of everything I had before I came to this place. A great job, good friends, Carlye."
"Hawkeye," I whispered, taking his hand. "You're making me dabble into psychiatry here and I don't know if I can handle it." We both laughed, but dryly and without much feeling. "Are you really that broken up about seeing me here?"
He squeezed my hand. "I love your being here, I really do. It's refreshing to see someone so new and especially someone who I knew so far back. But, I wish you could see me like I was in Boston, not like this. I mean, look at me."
"I am looking at you, Hawkeye. And do you know what I see? I see an amazing doctor. I know the meatball surgery you have to do here isn't preferable but I saw you in there today and you were saving lives like you always wanted to do. You're saving people, Hawk. And the best part for the rest of us is your ego has deflated significantly. Of course, that's not saying much…" I chuckled.
I motioned to BJ, sitting up on his cot in silence. "I can already tell that you two have an amazing friendship and now that I'm here, you have someone else on your side." I took his hand in mine, trying carefully to say the right thing when it came to such a difficult subject. "And Carlye, she could never understand how important your work was to you and she hated that you were so gifted. You need someone who will support your gift, not try to compete with it."
He took a deep breath and sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. His grip on my hand tightened and he opened his eyes and looked into mine. "You know, you would have made an excellent psychiatrist. Why didn't you explore that?"
"You talked me out of it," I said. We both laughed and his face brightened again. This was the Hawkeye I knew and loved: the comic with a song in his heart and a practical joke on his mind.
"Well, give me a moment to freshen up, to cleanse the toxins out of my body so I can add in more powerful ones in higher doses, and get some fresh air all at the same time."
"You always were multitalented," I said, and laughed, letting go of his hand as he stood up. I followed him with my eyes as he exited and continued to watch until he left my sight. As soon as he did, I sighed and sank into the chair. "Boy does compassion take a lot out of a person," I kidded. BJ laughed.
"Have you always been this good with people?" he asked from across the tent. I turned to him and shrugged.
"I came from a huge family. Lots of problems, lots of drama, and then there was everyone else." He laughed and stood up, heading over to the table with the strange apparatus on it.
"I've only known him a few months, but I've never seen so many mixed feelings in him as I have in the past few hours."
"Hawkeye is a complex person. He seems so buoyant, so full of life on the outside, but on the inside he's in constant turmoil. Turmoil with other people, with his environment, and especially with himself."
"It sounds like you two were pretty close," he said, taking a rubber tube from the belly of the device and pouring liquid into a martini glass. "Were you involved at all back in Boston?"
I laughed. "He was very in love with Carlye when I left. She was everything to him." I dropped my head and stared at the floor. "I still can't believe they're not together. It makes you question why a person's heart would lead them so far into devotion only to be ripped out by a rusty scalpel."
BJ sat back down on his bed, taking a quick sip of his drink and grimacing at the taste of it. "I saw what she did to him. She came through here not too long ago."
I quickly looked up at him, studying his face to find any trace of a joke, but there was none.
"Carlye Breslin was here? In this unit? With Hawkeye here?" BJ nodded.
I looked through the tent into the dusty compound. "Poor guy. That must have killed him."
"What really drove the knife into his heart is that she's married now."
I laughed bitterly. "That's not too surprising. She never was the independent type. She's always needed someone to lean on, to be with. If only she had known that it wasn't going to be Hawkeye before I left Boston."
BJ looked at me, puzzled. "You had a thing for him?"
"A thing? No." I ran my hand along Hawkeye's bed, tucking the sheets under the thin mattress as I spoke. "I thought that Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce was the embodiment of perfection. He's brilliant, he's funny, he has an amazing talent for reading people, a compassion I've never seen equaled, and a good heart." I stood up and moved away from Hawkeye's space, stepping over his clothes and his belongings. "Unfortunately there wasn't enough room in that heart for me."
