What were you thinking? I asked myself as I walked away from him. Why did you kiss him? I had told myself it was a friendly thing to do to show my gratitude, but as I was leaning in, I had this tremendous urge to change the trajectory and kiss him on the mouth. I didn't, luckily, but my lips still seemed to smolder with the contact of his skin on mine.

I took a few laps around the compound to collect my thoughts until I finally made my way to my tent.

The last thing I expected when I walked away from BJ was to walk into my tent and be bombarded with another surprise. But when I opened the door, Sherry was standing there, looking at the fan on my wall.

"This really is lovely," she said, pointing to the dragon. "Where did you get it?"

"Why do you care?" I asked bitterly. She shrugged and looked back up at the fan. "Colonel Potter gave it to me to help spice the room up," I said after a bit, still wary of her.

She laughed. "See, Nightingale, that's why you don't fit in with us."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"Oh you know," she said meanly. "Colonel Potter gives you a Japanese fan to make your tent pretty and you don't think you're getting special treatment?"

"I'm not getting special treatment, he's my friend."

"Like Hawkeye is your friend, and BJ, and Major Houlihan, and Radar, and Klinger-"

"Yes, Sherry, they're all my friends. They extended a hand where you and your nurse friends slapped it away. I was the new girl, barely able to see straight in this khaki hell and you and your friends made me feel like I was permanently on the outside looking in."

She dropped her gaze. "That's why I came here," she said softly. "I wanted to say that I felt bad for the way I've been treating you."

"Apology accepted," I said coldly. "Now, if you'll excuse me-"

"Come on, Nightingale, listen to me," she pleaded. "I feel bad, but I'm not saying you didn't deserve it. You came into this place with your high and mighty attitude and you made us all feel like you were Cinderella and we were the ugly stepsisters. We were cast aside; our novelty was worn out because there was a new and improved nurse on the prowl. That's how it is around here, Linda. Trust me, I've seen it. The new nurses are the talk of the tent for a while, but when more come, the new ones become the old ones and are thrown to the sidelines."

She came up to me and put a hand on my back. "It'll happen to you too. You'll see. One day there'll be a jeep out there bearing fresh girls and your friends will forget all about you. When that happens, it would be nice to have something to fall back on."

"Sherry," I said through gritted teeth. "I don't know why you're saying these things, but I assure you that my closeness with the people here is not a 'novelty' as you say. I have real friends here that I didn't have to earn through a business transaction. What you're offering me is a group of friends who will only take me when I dump the others. That's not friendship that's an ultimatum, and I won't do it."

She laughed cruelly. "I remember when I was like you. I felt like I was on top of the world. I used to be invited to the swamp on a daily basis to have drinks with my friends. One day, Hawkeye took me to a secluded grove and told me he loved me." I jerked my head towards her. "Oh yeah, he did," Sherry replied, seeing my sudden attention. "He told me how he had never felt the same way about anyone before and he wanted me and only me forever. Well, he had me for a time, anyway. I let him take me and it was blissful. It was like I had found my one true love.

"But after that, he barely spoke to me. Then he didn't speak to me at all. Once he had gotten what he came for, he moved on to the next girl. I was nothing but a notch in his bedpost."

"I don't believe you," I said. "Hawkeye would never do something like that."

She brushed aside me and walked to the door. "Go and ask him. I assure you, Nightingale, if you don't believe he'd do something so rotten, you don't know Hawkeye Pierce as well as you'd think. That's why the nurses won't talk to you. They all have been through it and they see it happening all over again. Come talk to us when you're just a name and a date etched onto Hawkeye's bed."

She flung the door open and let it bang on the frame, sending her message home. I sat on my bed in disbelief. I had chalked up the rumors I had heard about Hawkeye as elaborate stories, but Sherry's version of the tale was harsh and, as much as I hated to admit it, credible.

I knew stewing about it would do me no good, so I decided to go talk to him, to straighten everything out, and to hear him say that it was all a farce. I could only hope...