He's lost for a time. Not unconscious, per se, but lost nonetheless. A million and a half particles spread across a million and a half miles, scattered and irrelevant. Stretched as much as a man can be stretched, before dying. Reaching that moment when he can go no further and time stops. Lost, lost, lost. That is, until the connective tissue holding it all together, the strands of his awareness, stretched and fraying, begin to retract. They snap back into place like a rubber band around his wrist, shocking him back to the present with all the subtleness of an atomic bomb.

He coughs into the white dirt beneath him. Dust invades his nose, finds its way down his windpipe and sets his chest on fire. Lights that same pyre at his neck and side. He presses a hand to each while he tries to recall what's been done to him, panting into the sun-bleached earth all the while.

Pain. Crash. Save him.

BJ risks cracking his eyes open, but only one cooperates, and even opening that one is a mistake. Pain so terrible he has to shut the eye again assaults him and he puts his hands to the sides of his head with a pitiful groan. Its like twin daggers being stabbed into the grey matter of his brain. It's a migrating pain, too. Starts at the top of his head, moves to the spaces behind his eyes, and then finally settles at the back of his skull where it skulks there in the dark like a coiled snake waiting to strike. When he risks opening the good eye again after several moments of careful breathing, he finds he can tolerate the pain enough to keep it open this time.

BJ rolls slowly onto his back and the world rolls with him. Dizziness and nausea wash over him as the vertigo strikes fast and hard. He empties his stomach out into dirt, powerless against the pain that consumes him and grays out his vision. He can't even recoil from the foulness. It hurts too much.

What the hell happened to me?

BJ can't remember. His memories are nothing more than a jumbled mess of sensation and emotion battering around in his skull. Fear, worry, dread, loss... There are people out there depending on him. He can feel it. There are places he's supposed to be. Important places, only he can't remember where they are. And it hurts so damn much when he tries. Connections spark and then sputter out over and over, aggravating that coiled snake at the base of his skull. He's pretty sure there's a word for this, if he could just remember it.

Oh yeah...

Concussion.

BJ risks a quick glance around at his surroundings. He's back on his side with his head in his hands but his vision appears to be working alright. All around him an impenetrable white fog has descended. It obscures everything but the sky above him. That he can see perfectly. The bluish bruise of dusk, the cold, cold stars popping out like a smattering of silver across the evening sky. Every so often he can see shapes in the fog, hear what he thinks are voices, but none of it makes any sense to him. He has no words for what he sees, no names. All he seems to know is that it isn't a good sign that the hands he pulls away from his face are covered in blood.

Blood. Helicopter. Explosion. Wounded.

Ok, so he's wounded. He's hit his head somehow. And that's not water on his hands. Its warm, and not ocean warm. Not the warm of Richardson's Bay on an August afternoon. It's stagnant, like a pool left over in the jungle after it rains. The kind of water the animals won't even drink…. BJ shakes his head, concerned by the way his thoughts keep wandering. He needs to focus. He needs to remember what in the hell happened.

Explosions. They were shelling. But they weren't supposed to be. This is a hospital for goodness sake. Something exploded. He was protecting someone...

BJ once again tries to push himself up from the ground, ignoring the droplets of blood that fall from the end of his nose and splatter against the ground like macabre little raindrops. If there were puddles beneath him, he imagines they would ripple. His brain hallucinates them for a moment or two before his shaky arms collapse beneath him and he's back in a heap on the ground. So much for the charge.

Every so often BJ imagines he can hear screaming coming from the fog. Little by little as his awareness returns he can sense people around him. They're like ghosts in the mist. Ghouls, really, with blood on their faces and haunted eyes. So many haunted eyes in this war. So many men and women floating in and out of his life, out of his OR, with blank faces, all thanks to the front… or good Ether.

"Dr. Hunnicutt, are you alright?"

A pale, white figure emerges from the mist, and for a moment, BJ is terrified. His addled brain insists its a ghost, something unnatural sent from hell to drag him down and put out his light forever. But he challenges the thought, shakes his head a bit, though it hurts, and tries to make his eyes see, truly see. The young man approaching him is not a spectre from his nightmares, but a soldier, and one covered from bow to stern in the same white dust BJ is covered in. A soldier who apparently knows his name.

Before BJ can even blink, the young man is crouched beside him. There are white hands roaming over his body and then helping him to sit up. White arms that support him as they take it slow, allowing BJ to adjust to the new position without throwing up again, stopping when he winces and cries out with a hand pressed to his side. Blood that was once running down the side of his face changes directions and begins the slow steady plunge downward toward his neckline. When it's all over, there are two soldiers standing in front of him with nervous looking faces. But after a moment of careful blinking, they coalesce into one and BJ is reminded how very much he hates concussions.

"Sir, can you hear me? Do you know what day it is?" BJ opens his mouth to answer, but the soldier chooses that exact same moment to shine a pen light into his eyes and then BJ isn't thinking about much of anything after that. He's pretty sure he throws up again, clinging to the soldier's arm, noticing a band there that identifies him as a medic. BJ has a similar band stored in his foot locker back at the Swamp. The one he only brings out on special occasions, when he's needed in the field, when he needs something to set him apart from the rest of the soldiers. A blinking beacon in the dark: I am a medic. I'm here to help.

"My head…" he groans, reaching up his hands once more to press them to either side of his face. The world goes dim like before, the sounds of the world fall away until it's just him in the muffled quiet. They got him good. Robbed him of his senses and of himself. He may not remember much, but he knows he doesn't have time for this. There are places he needs to be… people he needs to help…

"My patient," he says suddenly as a new memory resurfaces. "Where's the kid?"

"All of the wounded are being taken back to the hospital, Dr. Hunnicutt. We need to get you down there, too."

"I'm alright," he grumbles, pushing away the white hands that come at him, trying in vain, yet again, to get up from the ground on his own. But like before, it doesn't work. Vertigo and now the medic work against him, pushing him back down. He's about to start yelling when something cold and wet starts running down the side of his face.

"What in the hell?" he sputters, but then realizes what the medic is trying to do. He stills, letting the cool, heavenly moisture run down his face and work at the crud in his eye. The medic uses some kind of rough cloth to wipe something away, and then all of a sudden, BJ can see through both eyes again. The lid opens when he asks it to and he nearly cries out in relief. The medic hands over the cloth and the canteen he was using, and BJ uses both to clean off his face even more. Blood and grime go with it. When he hands back the cloth, it's filthy and near black with gore.

"You've got a pretty nasty cut on your neck, Sir. May I?" The medic holds up antiseptic and a few bandages and BJ nods his agreement. The water has woken him up, cleared a bit of the fog from his brain. Turning his head to the side, he tries not to wince each time rough fingertips prod his open wounds.

"Are you hurt anywhere else, Sir?"

BJ shakes his head automatically. He has more pressing things to worry about. "What happened?" he asks.

The medic seems to be very focused on his work but does answer. "We got hit by the enemy, Sir. Best as I can guess from what people have been telling me, they were actually trying to bring down a fighter jet. I think we were just in the way. Someone said the plane ended up in the minefield."

"The minefield?" BJ repeats, trying to fit this new information into the framework of what little he remembers. It doesn't fill the holes, but it does give some context to the flashes of memory he's recalling. His head pounds in retaliation for looking, blurring his vision for a brief moment, but he can't help himself.

He was up on the hill waiting for wounded. He found them and he was happy, but not really. The kid was in rough shape. He was mad about that. Or was he? There was an explosion. More than one, actually. He was thrown down and then back. It hurt. Something hit him he...

"Sir? Dr. Hunnicutt?" BJ opens eyes he never realized he closed and blinks into the two faces of his medic, who now has him by the shoulders and is shaking him ever so slightly. "Dr. Hunnicutt!"

"What?" The fingers gripping his shoulders are long. Good for poking around the insides of patients. BJ has long fingers, too. His mother had hoped he'd be a piano prodigy, but it wasn't meant to be. He'd found other uses for those hands, though. Like meatball surgery and patching up young men in a war he no longer believes in...

"Dr. Hunnicutt!" The long fingers dig into his shoulders harder. He tries to shake them off, but they remain steadfast. It occurs to him that there's no need to struggle and he stills. The kid is just trying to do his job.

"What?" He asks again, and for what he suspects will not be the last time.

"I asked if you lost consciousness, sir." The young medic looks beyond concerned at this point. Like he's half a second away from throwing BJ over his shoulder and running him back to camp himself.

"I- I don't think so," he answers truthfully, though his medic looks far from convinced. "Look, I got my bell rung pretty good, but I never blacked out." He wants to add that he's fine, but he's recovered enough by now to know it would be a lie. He's not dying, but there's no denying there's something wrong with his head.

"You have a wound on your head and one on your neck," his medic explains as he begins packing his things back up into his field kit. Things BJ can't even remember him pulling out. It's disorienting to realize his reality is so fragmented. It makes him dizzy just thinking about it.

"I don't see any debris in either, but you need to get back to the hospital to get them both cleaned out and stitched up."

BJ presses a hand to the side of his face and fingers the soft ridges of the gauze. It's so strange to be on the other side of this. To be the one accepting aid, rather than giving it. It feels wrong all of a sudden. Wrong and uncomfortable. He should be out on the hill helping people. Not sitting here in the dirt.

"They can treat your concussion down there, too," the medic continues, oblivious to BJs internal struggle. "Other than a bump on the head and a few bruises, I don't think there's anything else going on, but you need a proper exam." BJ startles a little when those hands return to his shoulders. He struggles to meet the eyes of his medic as nausea assails him. "Do you think you can get back to camp on your own, or should I fetch you a stretcher?"

The idea of being taken down off the landing pad on a stretcher makes BJ cringe. He thinks he would rather die than endure that kind of humiliation, so he goes with option one. "I think I can manage on my own."

The medic has finished with his pack and is rising from the ground. He extends one of those white arms down to BJ who takes it. He does his best to keep his eyes open as he's pulled up, but it does nothing to stop the dizziness. His legs give out beneath him. His center of gravity is lost. He can no longer find true north. The Korean's have taken it from him, always taking, blasted it away with their endless bombs.

BJ ends up back on his ass in the dirt, cursing his weak, human brain as his medic fusses over him. He digs knuckles into his eyes trying to ease the pain there. It's like someone is attempting to carve his eyeballs out of their sockets with serving spoons. And not your normal, every day spoons. But the big silver ones your mother only brings out on special occasions. Why is this happening. What did he ever do to deserve such pain.

BJ chokes on a sob as his medic disappears into the fog. He's not gone long, and when he returns, he has another soldier with him.

"Dr. Hunnicutt, this is Jeremy. He's going to help you get back to camp."

Jeremy is wearing a pristine green uniform and is so muscular, he looks like he might be able to bench two times BJ's weight at the gym. "We don't have enough men to carry you down on a stretcher and I have more wounded to treat. Jeremy will take care of you."

His medic is swallowed up by the meandering fog before BJ can even say anything. No goodbye, no see you later, no word of thanks on BJ's part. At least, none that he can remember. But isn't that how it always is in this war? Meetings and partings. Nameless faces. Ships passing. With his concussion, he wonders if he'll remember the medic at all.

It takes a great deal of effort, but BJ does eventually makes it up from the ground. Jeremy does most of the work and BJ has to hang off the side of him to make it stick, but he's on his own two feet now, and that is a victory in and of itself. A victory that makes him want to smile, once the nausea has passed. They get so few of those here.

Jeremy is patient with him and waits for BJ to give the all clear before dragging him off into the fog. A fog he's quickly coming to realize is nothing but smoke. A thick, meandering wall of it that swallows them whole and bleaches out the world around them.

They walk for what feels like hours, neither of them speaking as they pass other people in the murk. People who are fine and people walking around as though dazed. Whole people and some of them not so whole, but all of them with those same hollow eyes. The emptiness of eyes that have seen the horrors of war. The scraped out husks of people who have lived to see the war brought to their doorstep first hand. The lost. The foolish, like him, who let themselves believe they were safe here, and yet had just watched half their camp explode. BJ wants to help all of them, but there's the small matter of his concussion. He can't walk straight, let alone practice medicine, even as little pieces of him die every time they pass someone in need of his help. He makes a pact with himself then. So far they haven't run into anyone who looks like they're dying. But if they do, he'll make Jeremy stop. It's a good oath and one he has to hold to a lot sooner than he expects.

They haven't seen anyone for a bit when the screaming starts. At first BJ thinks it's just a trick of his mind, but then the wind picks up and the smoke parts and it's like a scene from the front lines playing out before his eyes. An ambulance has been knocked over, bits of hot metal smoking from a hole in its ruined side. The large red cross that had once adorned it has been obliterated and people are scrambling around it. The screaming is coming from beneath as the gathered people try desperately to roll the ambulance back over onto its wheels. With the slope of the depression in the ground its leaning against, it just might be possible.

"We have to help," BJ says to his soldier when Jeremy's steps falter. The young man looks conflicted, but it's like he was built for this. He could probably go over there and give the ambulance one good push and set it right again. There's no contest here.

"I'll be fine. See?" BJ insists as Jeremy continues to waffle. He straightens and pushes away. Vertigo threatens to topple him, but he somehow manages to stay up on his own two feet.

He shoves the soldier forward. "Go."

He does. He leaves BJ standing there and takes off for the ambulance at a sprint, the screams of the man trapped beneath the bus echoing around them. BJ watches him go with a hand on his side. Breathing hurts, probably more than it should, but he doesn't have time to worry about that right now. He's got to get himself ready for when they pull the trapped guy out in case he's needed. He breathes as deeply as he can, wondering where in the world he was going to get the stamina to pull this off.

"Hunnicutt!" BJ snaps his head up at the sound of his own name, grimacing as wounds pull and his head pounds. Radar O'Reilly emerges from the crowd around the ambulance, a huge grin breaking out across his dust and blood covered face. The smile is so infectious, BJ can't help but mirror it with one of his own as the diminutive Corporal starts sprinting towards him. For a moment, BJ is reminded of those National Geographic photos. The ones of children playing in war zones. It strikes him then how very young Radar is. He belongs in this war just about as much as BJ does.

The two men clasp arms as soon as they're close enough to touch.

"Oh geeze. I thought you were dead!" Radar grips his arms hard, like he needs proof BJ is really there. That he's not just some apparition created by the smoke. BJ grips back just as tightly, but his motives are different. He needs proof that his friend is okay.

"Radar," he asks thickly, "are you alright?"

The Corporal looks down at his uniform, the front of which is splattered with blood. "Oh," he says as though surprised to see it in such a state. His eyes go wide as he looks back up at BJ. "That's not mine." There's probably more to that story, but BJ has no time.

"Did I hear right? Did a plane crash?" BJ asks, secretly giving Radar a good once over with his eyes as the Corporal launches into his story. Radar looks okay. He really is okay.

"Yeah! Can you believe it?" They don't let go of each other's arms. BJ's not sure he'd be able to stay standing if they did.

"It ran right into the helicopters and then crashed into the minefield. I've never seen anything like it before in my life! I think every single bomb in that field went off at once."

BJ feels sick again. How could they? This place is off limits. Sacred ground. You're not supposed to attack the hospitals, no matter who they belong to.

He swallows down the sourness gathering at the back of his throat. "Is everyone else okay?"

BJ regrets the question as soon as it leaves his mouth, because by "everyone" he means his friends. Those are the people he needs to hear about, even though the guilt nearly eats him alive. Radar seems to understand what he's really asking.

"You were the only doc up here," Radar answers without judgement. "Well, except for Captain Pierce."

BJ blinks as something nudges at his brain. There's a little clicking noise, like something out of alignment suddenly sliding back into place. A rearrangement of sorts. The world rights itself and suddenly, everything that was missing before is there.

BJ staggers and then goes down hard onto his knees, pulling Radar along with him, the pain from his head and the rocky ground nothing compared to the fissure opening up across his heart. He clutches at his chest.

Hawkeye.

He's forgotten all about Hawkeye.

Dumb, stupid, screw this man's army, I'm going to sweet talk my way through the nurses and out of this war all while distilling gin in my bunk , Hawkeye Pierce. His friend. His rock. His anchor in this batshit crazy place.

BJ distantly registers Radar calling his name, but ignores it completely. He pushes the hurt and the confusion away and replaces it with something focused, something hard. Something he doesn't often let himself bring out and use, even here in Korea.

Before Radar can stop him, BJ is back up on his feet and charging back into the smoke. The smoke re-thickens around him until the world and Radar are lost to it.

And so is BJ.

He forgot about Hawkeye. How could he have been so stupid? The world had rained fire down on his head and he forgot his own best friend in favor of a concussion and a head wound. What kind of a comrade at arms did that make him? He doesn't even know if his patient made it. His first trial by fire in the South Korean countryside, and he's failed miserably.

People pass him in the smoke. They don't look like ghosts anymore, but real humans. Some of them he stops to ask if they've seen Hawkeye. None of them have and it tears that hole in his heart open a little wider each time they say no. Still, he persists. He's laser focused on tracking Hawkeye down and nothing will stop him now. Nothing but…

"No," he mutters to himself as he presses on. He refuses to entertain that idea. Not yet. Not until he's checked every inch of the 4077th.

BJ eventually reaches the crest of the small rise housing the landing pad and gazes out over the fields below. The sun is nearly set and the winds have pushed the smoke of the burning fires off to other parts of the world. Adding further illumination to the carnage laid out before him are the camp flood lights which have begun switching on behind him. He can hear the hum of each one as it comes to life, casting a plaid glow over the destruction. Automatic sentinels performing their duties in spite of the events of the day.

The reports are accurate. Someone has brought down a plane, and it sits smoking in the bombed out remnants of their old minefield. Also scattered amidst the fields below are the twisted and charred remains of three of the four helicopters that had been hovering over the 4077th.

Like before by the ambulance, clumps of people surround some of the crash sites. BJ chooses the closest one and picks his way down the hill carefully. It's slow going, partially because he's still incredibly unsteady on his feet, and partially because the rocky terrain seems hell bent on trying to trip him. He makes it somehow and grabs the shoulders of the first person he comes to, spinning them around as he yells.

"Pierce, has anyone seen Pierce?"

He feels a little manic as the poor nurse's eyes go wide and she looks like she wants to scream. He can only imagine what he must look like and immediately lets go. "I'm sorry. I'm just trying to find Captain Pierce."

"T-They pulled out the survivors out a few minutes ago but I didn't see him. You might try over there." She points a shaky finger over towards the next crash site.

"Thanks," BJ mutters, and makes his staggering way off to the next helicopter. This one he finds empty, its occupants and pilot either extricated or helped off away to camp after help arrived.

The third helicopter pilot was not so lucky and BJ slows as he approaches this scene.

Mere moments ago, things had been moving forward at such a pace he could barely make sense of it all, let alone absorb what was happening and let it affect him. Here, at this crash site, the atmosphere is different and it physically slows him down. The air is thick as time slows to a crawl and smoke billows and metal burns. The people here are quiet as they gently pull the remains of the pilot from the charred cockpit of the helicopter. The sides of the craft are twisted and torn, a metal doppelganger of the body they ease out from melted remnants of the instrument panel.

They lift him carefully from the wreckage and BJ feels the urge to cry as he stands there and watches.

None of them will emerge from this tragedy unscathed. No one will wake up tomorrow and be the same person. Not after this. It's enough to make him want to close his eyes and pray. Even if it would be nothing but lip service. Remnants of a habit from a bygone age when he believed in things like fate and a God who cared about the people of this world. A faith that survived med school, but not South Korea. Never Korea.

BJ isn't ready for this yet. For the cold, burning flames creeping over his skin as he realizes he knows the man they're pulling from the helicopter. Has had drinks with him in the Officer's Club. Played cards with him over cigars in the Swamp. He isn't ready for the crushing pressure of loss.

"Hunnicutt?" a slightly husky female voice says, cutting through his dark thoughts. "Hunnicutt what are you doing here?"

"I was j-just..." he stammers, opening wet eyes to meet the gaze of Margaret Houlihan, "I was just looking for Pierce."

"Pierce?" She repeats before her eyes go wide. "Wasn't he due back today? He wasn't…"

"That's the last of them, Major," a corpsman interrupts them, charging up as the litter carrying the remains of the pilot are loaded up into the back of a jeep. "We're ready to get back to camp."

Margaret looks back at BJ.

"Peirce isn't here. Someone would have told me if he were. Come back to camp with us, Hunnicutt. They need you in the OR and I'm sure someone there will know something..." But BJ isn't hearing it. He can't go back to camp. There's an ache in his chest Margaret could never possibly understand. The Army has burned it out of her. It's an ache he won't be able to bear until…. well, until he knows . Until he finds him . Maybe that's the stupidest, most selfish thing he's ever done, but Korea has given him just one thing during his time here. One thing, one person. And he won't be able to live with himself if he doesn't at least try and find it again. Find him .

In the end, BJ just… walks away. There's only one place left to look, though it feels like a bit of a last resort. He suspects he won't find what he needs there. Maybe its remains, but not Hawkeye alive and well.

"Dr. Hunnicutt, you get back here this instant!" Margaret calls after him, but he doesn't listen. He'll blame it on the head wound if it comes to that. She might out rank him, but he pulled a bullet from her side once and somehow that seems like it trumps everything else at the moment.

BJ is twenty yards from the minefield when another explosion rocks the camp. Like before, he's thrown to the ground as the world turns to fire and ash around him. He curls up into a ball on instinct, shielding his head and neck as he's showered in dirt. Something hot and stinging hits the side of his leg but he doesn't get the chance to worry about it. A half a second later a pair of rough hands are hauling him up from the ground.

"What in the hell are you doing down here? This section isn't secure!" The owner of the hands screams and BJ blanches. This is another familiar face; someone else he knows. Oh goodie. He's an MP and his name is Pete Appleton, and BJ just happens to owe him money.

"Well, howdy," he slurs a little stupidly as his brain sloshes against the sides of his skull thanks to the unexpected trip back up to his feet. He sways a bit but Appleton steadies him. He's upright, but the movement has jostled his side. It's been throbbing steadily for a while now, ever since his little jaunt through the smoke. The world whites out for a minute as his chest seizes up.

"I found 'em," Appleton barks into a walkie-talkie the size of Texas before BJ can recover enough to explain himself. There's silence for a moment and then a horrible screech that sounds a bit like the stray cats who used to fight in the alley outside his office window back home. The dulcet tones of his commanding officer crackle over the airwaves a moment later.

"Pierce," BJ says hoarsely over the noise Potter is making. "Ask him about Pierce."

Raidos. BJ hadn't thought of those. Like so many other things today, he'd forgotten.

Appleton ignores him as he tries to make out what Potter is saying. Breathless and in pain with the world starting to wobble again, BJ gives up and listens too.

"You tell that lil… liv… Hunnicutt… get his boney butt… soon as possible, or as… I will bend him… my knee... tan his hide until he can't sit down for a week!" The last half of the tirade comes in crystal clear, and in stereo, as several other radios across the field broadcast the same message. BJ's ears go crimson in embarrassment. He thinks about making a run for it, but doubts he'd make it very far. His adrenaline stores are running dangerously low, there's a taste of something metallic at the back of his throat now, and he's pretty sure the MP beside him is the only thing keeping him on his feet. He'd take his bed, the Swamp, anything at this moment to help ease the aches, but there's still the matter of Hawkeye. He has got to find Hawkeye.

Appleton eyes BJ critically but must decide to take pity on him. When Potter is done adding a few embellishments to his threat that mostly have to do with horses and sports, Appleton says into the monstrous receiver, "He's looking for Pierce."

There's a pause and more static. "Son, I don't care what you have to do, hog tie him to the back of your jeep for all I care, but you best get that concussed SOB back to this OR pronto, or someone is going to be court-martialed ."

Potter has played the court-martial card and while BJ knows the man would never bring one of their own up on charges if he could avoid it, it's the worst thing anyone can ever say to an MP.

BJ can see the wheels in Appleton's head beginning to turn, feel his hold on BJ tighten, even as all the fight goes out of him and the pain in his chest, the one that belongs partly to Hawkeye and now partly to the internal injury he suspects he might have, throbs viscously.

It's over. His friend is dead. Potter didn't come out and say it, but he might as well have. There was no "come on home son, we've found your friend." No "stand down now BJ, Pierce is down here waiting for you." His commanding officer's silence speaks volumes.

Things start imploding in BJ's chest as the minefield behind him gives up another of its buried secrets like it understands what he's going through. As though it wants to show him it understands. That it, too, never asked to be made part of this war.

What's the point , BJ thinks as he starts to cry. Appleton pulls him down to the ground and shields him from the worst of the blast.

BJ's not sure he wants to get up again when it's over. His body hurts, his soul hurts, that little place where Hawkeye used to reside hurts and cries for its other half. It's a horrible wail of a noise that launches itself into the void, searching for an answering response it knows will never come, but tries to find all the same. He suspects a moment later, that the wail might actually have come from him. His throat feels raw enough.

"Dr. Hunnicutt…"

The pressure surrounding BJ is lifted and he pulls in a lungful of air. He chokes on it, throwing up a congealed mess of dust and blood out onto the stubborn patchy grass that has always grown beside the minefield, his mind still far afield after the blast. BJ has always liked that grass. Nothing much grows in this place, except for that persistent scrub, like a big middle finger to them and the things they'd had the audacity to plant beneath it. Want to bury death machines here? Well then fine, I'll cover them in wildflowers. He's always felt a kinship with things that did that.

"Dr. Hunnicutt, can you hear me? We need your help." The hand on his shoulder is rough, shaking him from his stupor and back into the world. He goes reluctantly and blinks Appleton's blurry face into focus. The MP is crouched beside him. BJ is on his side on the ground, with no memory of how he got there.

"Dr. Hunnicutt, please! One of my guys got hit. Can you help him?"

BJ opens his mouth to answer, but stops short when he suddenly spots someone standing in the field just behind Appleton. He can hardly believe his eyes as he stares.

Is it grief? A hallucination? A trick of the light? Did all the adrenaline crashing, soul crushing pain and loss coalesce to trick his concussed brain into thinking that Hawkeye is there?

BJ blinks again and the manifestation of his friend flickers but does not go away. A very alive looking Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce is standing just behind Appleton, waving wildly for BJ to get up off the ground and hurry up already.

Get up and go.

Go help.

Go be the brilliant doctor Hawkeye knows he can be.

BJ's body rallies and he sits up with some help from Appleton. The vision behind the MP begins to blink in and out of existence like a bad TV signal.

"Ok Hawk," he says before it can disappear entirely, unsure if he's spoken the words aloud, or just in his head. "Of course I'll help."

Appleton seems relieved and thankfully does not pick up on the fact that BJ just had that entire conversation with a figment of his own imagination, and helps him to get back up from the ground.

BJ is like one, big walking bruise, the places he knows he's hurt the worst throbbing the hardest. Head, side, ribs and now leg. He steadies himself against Appleton who seems to understand that he's not in the best shape at the moment and offers his support without comment. When they finally start walking across the field, BJ shoots one final glance over his shoulder to the place where he last saw Hawkeye.

The field is empty, of course. Just like he knew it would be. But he had to check. He may always check now.

When BJ finally gets his hands on a patient, it's like the real work begins. And this is work he knows. Work he's good at, that's familiar. His hands move so deftly, he barely has to give them much thought. This is the kind of work that transcends pain and exhaustion and delirium. Work he can do in his sleep - and has done in his sleep a time or two - and has earned him his place here at the 4077 th . He was too good for them to waste in some Seoul hospital. And low enough on the totem pole to be expendable. He hates the army most of the time for doing this to him, but sometimes he's glad they sent him here, where he can do the most good. Where he's needed and can save the most lives.

BJ can tell ten minutes into this, before jeep headlights turn on to help illuminate his little impromptu triage center, that the soldier in front of him is going to live. He's stopped an arterial bleed with a clever bit of magic using the contents of a field kit, thanking the saints all the way that this happened within yards of a MASH unit and in a part of the world where Army jeeps are kept fully stocked and checked maniacally by a quartermaster who might run illegal cock fights in the empty lot behind the motor pool, but who took his job very, very seriously

The kid he's just saved is removed and thrown into the back of a jeep and sped off towards camp on his orders. Another body on a litter is placed in front of him and it takes him thirty whole seconds of assessment before he realizes Appleton is shaking his shoulder and calling out his name.

He pauses and looks up.

The sun is long gone. The stars are out in force now, blinking back at him in that big dark celestial bowl above South Korea.

"Dr. Hunnicutt, is this your man?"

BJ is not sure how he expected his reunion with Hawkeye to go, but it's certainly not like this. It's not for Appleton to literally have to point down at Hawkeye's body for BJ to even realize he's just just started triage on his best friend. He didn't even notice.

Damn him. And damn his poor, concussed brain.

"Hawkeye..." BJ chokes on the name as his hands begin to shake.

It's Hawkeye. The one thing he's been searching for since all this began. The one person he's willing to ignore direct orders for. His best friend. The one person in the entire universe who can take this war and make a joke of it, make it bearable for those around him. BJ has found his other half, and he nearly didn't recognize him.

With those trembling hands, BJ goes for Hawkeye's pulse first while a million and a half questions clatter around in his brain. Where did they find him? How did they find him? Where has he been all this time? They break against his skull until he realizes he's giving them a rhythm that is perfectly timed to the errant heartbeat pushing against his fingertips. A heartbeat that is both too fast and too faint.

BJ's assessment picks up speed after that.

Hawkeye is unconscious, unmoving, and completely covered from head to toe in black soot. It makes it impossible for BJ to ascertain where residue ends and injury begins. If Hawkeye has burns, they can deal with that. Skin is something that can scab over and heal. Irreversible damage to internal organs, that might be another story. BJ has to check, has to triage. He has no idea how long Hawkeye was out there in this state, and these next few minutes are critical.

BJ runs his hands over every inch of Hawk's salt and pepper scalp, pausing with his palms on either side of his friend's face so he can study him, prove to his brain once and for all that this really is Hawkeye lying before him. He finds a huge knot at the back of his skull, sluggishly pumping blood, but not so much blood that he's worried. He sets his hand on Hawkeye's chest (shallow respirations), palpitates his abdomen (rigid and unyielding). It doesn't take much to tear Hawkeye's already torn t-shirt open further. What he reveals there scares the shit out of him.

"I need to get him into an OR," BJ shouts up at Appleton as his hands automatically pack gauze into holes that shouldn't be there. "Now."

There's a flurry of activity. On Appleton's command, his men load Hawkeye into the back of a jeep. BJ launches himself into the passenger seat and before he can even thank Appleton or say goodbye to the man, the jeep is bouncing off across the craggy terrain and leaving the plane crash and the soldiers surrounding it, behind. BJ turns in his seat and lifts a hand. He only probably just imagines that Appleton returns the gesture, but he likes the idea that he did, and so he holds on tight to it. So many things have slipped through his fingers today. Perhaps the universe will forgive him if he keeps this one small thing.