The pain woke her up out of a dead sleep. Several hours before, Eleanor had finished a grueling shift in the OR, the casualties seemingly never-ending. She had dragged her overly exhausted body to her tent, flopping down unceremoniously onto her bed and fell into a dreamless sleep. Now, her stomach hurt more than she ever thought was possible. Her entire body was shaking, and she fought the urge to scream as her eyes snapped open. There were three other people sleeping soundly in the tent - Nancy had worked the same shift as her that night, and Lucy and Jane had a shift that started the next morning at eight. Not wanting to wake them, Eleanor sat up and rolled out of bed, not even bothering to slip on her shoes.
A wave of dizziness hit her as she sat up, head falling to her chest. Despite her best efforts, she let out a small groan, bracing herself on the edge of the bed. She felt Nancy, her bunkmate, stir above her, but she didn't think she woke her friend up. Getting to her feet, she ignored the dizziness and nausea as she clambered out of the tent, the door slamming loudly behind her. She felt drunk, the nausea and dizziness getting worse as she staggered through the dimly lit camp. She thought she passed a few people, just the stray enlisted man stumbling back from Rosie's and probably Klinger on guard duty, but she hadn't been paying close attention and frankly she didn't care if anyone saw her. Going behind the delousing tent, she retched and gagged, that afternoon's lunch of Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes, if you could even call it that, coming back up and onto the ground.
By the time she made it to the OR, she was dripping with sweat. Kellye was manning the desk at Pre-Op and ran over when she saw her friend doubled over.
"What happened?!" She asked, her voice laced with concern.
"Don't know," she managed to get out. "'M dizzy, my stomach is killing me…"
"I'll get Hawkeye," she told Ellie. She called over another nurse to help her get onto a bed. Once she laid down again the dizziness and nausea went away somewhat, but the pain in her stomach was getting worse and worse with each minute that went by. Several moments later, Hawkeye burst through the door, looking around frantically. A look of concern crossed over his face when he saw his girl curled up on a bed in the fetal position, her face twisted in discomfort and moaning.
"What's wrong, what happened?" He crouched down beside the bed.
"I woke up… my stomach was killing me. I tried to get up… I almost fell over I was so dizzy."
"Sure you didn't eat the sad excuse for food they serve in the Mess Tent?" He quipped. She narrowed her eyes. "Right side or left side?" He pulled her shirt up and began to gently palpate her abdomen. She weakly pointed to the upper right side. He touched it gingerly and she yelped in pain. "Sorry."
"What do you think?" She croaked as he continued to examine her.
"Could be a blockage, an abscess, even hepatitis or gallstones," he checked her pulse and blood pressure.
"It's getting worse," she told him. Leaning over the side of the bed, she proceeded to vomit again. Hawkeye sprang into action, grabbing a bedpan from Brenda, one of the nurses on duty, and held it under her chin. Once she stopped, he wiped her mouth with a tissue and helped her lay back down. She was as white as the sheets on the bed. Another nurse came over with a thermometer and an IV and some vials to take her temperature and blood.
"101.3," the nurse wrote down on her clipboard. "It's likely she has an infection, Captain Pierce."
"Get her in for an x-ray, now!" He looked down at her, trying to hide the fact that he was worried, but she could tell just from the look in his eyes that he was scared. "Everything's going to be okay, I promise."
Brenda rushed over with a wheelchair and she and Hawkeye helped her off the bed and into the chair. Her head lolled back and forth a little as the nurse wheeled her out of Pre-Op and into the x-ray room.
Half an hour later, after the blood work revealed that she did in fact have an infection and the x-rays confirmed that she had gallstones, Eleanor was being wheeled into the OR. Hawkeye was following next to her, holding her hand. His was warmer and clammier than hers, and he wasn't even the one who was sick. Colonel Potter was picking shrapnel out of a soldier's leg, and Charles had his hands in a kid's stomach, trying to remove an infected part of his intestine. BJ had just finished repairing an aortic aneurysm that was a result of a gunshot wound; he was still wearing his bloody scrubs, looking worse for wear.
"Bigelow, get her on the table." He went into doctor mode.
Stepping over to the large sink near the entrance of the operating room, Hawkeye scrubbed up.
"Hawkeye," Ellie squeaked out as he let go of her hand, worry etched on her face. She looked and sounded like a scared child. It made him feel incredibly guilty, even though he knew it was ridiculous because it was in no way his fault. Suddenly, he found that his heart was racing and his hands were shaking slightly as he washed them. He couldn't remember the last time he had gotten nervous before a surgery, probably during his residency. Bigelow put the gas mask over Eleanor's mouth and nose, and as she took deep breaths in and out, she began to slip out of consciousness.
"I'm right here, sweetheart," he told her as her eyes closed. "I'm not going anywhere." He turned to Nurse Bigelow. "S-Scapel." She handed him the instrument and just as he was about to make the first incision, he paused.
"Captain Pierce?" He was still standing there, frozen, after several moments. "Hawkeye?"
"Get someone else in there!" Potter shouted.
"I can do it," Hawkeye insisted. The sweat under his surgical cap said otherwise.
"Horse hockey!" He looked up from the pile of shrapnel next to him. "Hunnicutt, take over for him!"
BJ stepped back into the OR wearing fresh scrubs. He quickly scrubbed up and strode over to where his best friend was standing.
"Dammit, doesn't anyone listen?" Hawkeye exclaimed. "I said I could handle it."
"You're whiter than a ghost, Hawkeye," BJ said. "You're shaking like a leaf. You're practically a basket case; you can't do surgery in this state." Hawkeye stared at him for a moment, and then his eyes softened.
"You're right," he sighed, putting the scalpel down. He walked into the changing room and found Colonel Potter sitting on one of the benches.
"Go sit in Post-Op, son," he told him. "They're already getting a bed set up for her." He threw his surgical cap and scrubs into the "used" bin in disgust. "It's one thing to perform surgery on some random soldier, but to perform surgery on someone you love, now that's a whole other story."
Slowly, she felt her eyes open. From what she could tell, she was in Post-Op, and someone was sitting in the chair next to her bed, whistling the song "Anything Goes". Blinking a few times, her vision became less and less blurry, and she quickly realized that that person was Hawkeye.
"Hi," she said in a whisper, her throat still dry from the anesthesia.
"Ellie," he breathed, turning towards her. "You gave us quite the scare, darling."
"Us?" BJ popped his head in, moving the privacy curtain. "Just you, you mean." Hawkeye glared at him. "He was pacing so much, he almost made a rut in the floor out there! He kept coming back and checking on you every five minutes!"
She smiled at him, taking his hand in hers.
"Congratulations," he handed her a jar containing what looked like small, white rocks. "Four gallstones."
She took it from him and studied them. "This is what was making me feel like that? I've never been in that much pain in my life!"
He nodded. "Little buggers wreaked a lot of havoc. You're on antibiotics for the next few days, so no stealing any drinks from the still, missy. I'll come back to check on you after dinner." He closed the curtain behind him, leaving the two of them alone again.
"I was worried sick about you," he said. "Watching you laying there, moaning in pain, and there was nothing I could do about it."
"I'm okay, Hawkeye," she assured him. "Nothing I can't handle." She tried to shift into a more comfortable position and felt a dull ache where her incision was. Lifting up her gown slightly, she looked at her stitches for the first time. Smirking at him, she said, "Wanna kiss it and make it better?"
"There's an idea," he stroked his chin, grinning back at her.