It's slow going at first. Margaret eases in under his arm and leads them out of the scrub room but BJ's feet are uncooperative. They're heavy and cumbersome and it takes monumental effort just to keep putting one in front of the other.
He keeps his eyes fixated on the floor as they go. People are watching. He can feel their gazes on him as he limps by, this evening's entertainment, courtesy of their friends on the other side of the 38th Parallel. Exhausted and defeated, he is also trying very hard not to lean against Margaret all that much because he still feels unworthy of her aid. He can't take the looks in the nurse's eyes right now; the judgment, the pity. The weight of Potter's disappointment and Margaret's apparent silent treatment are burdens enough for him to bear at the moment.
The steel of the x-ray table is cold against his back when they eventually reach the room where the films are taken. Massive equipment hums around him and on any other day, he might have found some peace in the white noise. But not today. Today the slight vibrations run along BJ's body and grate against already exposed nerves as he tries his best to sit still. Every inch of him pulsates with pain, but he endures it in silence as a tech, dressed head to toe in heavy shielding, comes back into the room to reposition things every so often. The elderly man promises it'll all be over soon, but BJ hardly hears him over the roaring in his ears.
When it's all over, Margaret's face swims into blurry focus above him. She's uncharacteristically quiet as she helps him to sit up and slide off the table, expressionless even when he can't help but choke on a moan when things are shifted and pulled. She doesn't even dress down the x-ray tech when he explains how long it will take to process the films, even though both of them are well aware of how long the process takes. She remains as uncommunicative as one of his patients in the OR as she steers them, not towards post-op like BJ is expecting, but away towards a door leading outside. It takes his still concussed brain several seconds to realize what she's doing.
He notes that Margaret has a bag of supplies tucked up under her free arm, the direction they're headed. The path is as familiar to him as the smell of his daughter's hair after a bath. She's going to treat him in the Swamp, and away from the prying eyes of his colleagues and the post-op patients. If BJ were the type, he would have pulled the blond-haired nurse in closer and kissed the top of her head.
"I'm not doing this for you," she mutters, seemingly reading his thoughts as they make their way slowly across the boot packed earth. BJ can't help but smile. It seems Margaret has finally decided to abandon her quest to give him the silent treatment. And it's perfect timing, too, because BJ's pretty sure he's not going to be able to maintain his side of their standoff much longer either. His knees are beginning to wobble and his muscles strain as he struggles to remain upright.
"Enough already, Hunnicutt," Margaret rebukes, just as BJ sags heavily against the side of her. The added weight doesn't seem to bother the nurse in the slightest as she adjusts slightly and continues marching them towards the Swamp.
All around them, the camp buzzes with activity. They don't pass anyone on their way to the Swamp, but BJ can sense people awake and restless behind their tent flaps. In the distance, behind the mountains, lightning can be seen flickering across the sky in flashes of white and gray. Heavy clouds, low in the nighttime sky and pregnant with rain, are eating up the stars as they race in from the East and there's a kind of static charge in the air. The kind he can feel in the back of his teeth. He hopes this is an actual storm rolling in and not just heat lightning. Korea has been teasing them with the promise of rain for ages, and they need this. The entire camp needs a reprieve from the weather, a break from the obsessive heat that has been baking them for months. To BJ, it's like being trapped in a pressure cooker, headed for some cataclysmic explosion that will shake the world so hard he's not sure he'll ever be able to put the shattered pieces back together. The lid was closed over his head the day Hawkeye left for the front and the pressure has steadily been increasing ever since, and the events of the day have made it so much worse. They're headed for something. He's not sure what that is, but he can feel it in his gut. It gnaws at his insides, demands to be named, but he won't do it. Not yet. Not until someone is standing there before him, telling him, without a doubt, that Hawkeye is dead. Until that time, he will accept nothing less than a full recovery. That storm in the distance can bring only relief. Right ?
When they finally reach the Swamp, BJ tries to leave all that uncertainty and fear on the doorstep and is relieved when it doesn't follow him through. It doesn't go away, just sits there on the threshold like an obedient dog, next to Charles' boots, expecting to be let back in at some point. BJ does his best to ignore it as Margaret helps him down onto his cot and wrinkles her nose. Whether it's at the noises he's making or the state of his living quarters, he can't be sure. Margaret is all business now and he watches her from the corner of his eye as he wraps his arms around his middle again and tries to breathe through the pain.
A nurse stops by the door and drops off more supplies until the cot beside him is laden with them. Margaret procures a stool from the hidden depths of the tent and sits down on it directly in front of him. BJ is so tall that she has to position herself between his legs. Under normal circumstances, this might be awkward, but BJ is just too tired to care anymore. He is exhaustion personified. Fatigue that has sprouted two legs and a head and gone stumbling about the camp calling itself BJ Hunnicutt.
Silence descends again as Margaret tries to decide where to begin. She reaches out a hand but then stops with it hovering mid-air. Thunder rumbles in the distance, far enough away that they barely hear it but violent enough that it shakes the ground beneath their feet. Margaret is hesitating, like she's unsure if their rather professional relationship up until this point warrants what she's about to do, will survive the level of intimacy this exam of hers will require, because they're never going to be the same again after this.
BJ, on the other hand, has no defenses left. He's as raw and as open as a wound and he no longer cares who sees the exposed bits of his soul. But he can't make this decision for her. She has to make this next move on her own.
BJ watches as determination shutters whatever internal turmoil was playing out in Margaret's mind and an air of detached indifference fills the room. This is what makes Margaret a terrific nurse. She can turn it off – for a while, at least. She can flip that switch inside and treat him like any other patient. She might toss her cot across the room over it later when she's alone in her own space, but right now BJ could be the North Korean who just shot down her best friend and she would treat him the same. And yet, there's still something there behind the focused squint of her eyes. A lingering gentleness in her touch that seems to say: I know why you did it. I understand now. If I was in your shoes, I might have even done the same thing. But maybe it's just the concussion taking.
Margaret goes for his bandages first and peels the gauze away slowly, using room temperature saline to help soften the parts that stick to his skin. There isn't much light in the Swamp on a good day, but Margaret bends a lamp shade so the injured side of BJ's face is bathed in a soft yellow light. She makes little noises of approval as she checks them for signs of infection. "Whoever treated these in the field did a pretty good job. I don't think you'll need any stitches."
BJ sighs. He can smell her perfume when she leans in close; a light, flowery scent that reminds him of Peg and the garden she used to keep back home. Nothing like the heavy, syrupy fragrances his grandmother used to wear. It makes him a little dizzy as he closes his eyes and imagines its Peggy's hands floating over his face and neck, lingering at his pulse points as they sit beneath the old elm trees behind the house. He smiles a little when he realizes it's Margaret discreetly taking his vitals. He begrudgingly opens his eyes and the delicate colors of Peggy's garden give way to the khaki green of the Swamp. Damn, he could have stayed in those particular memories for hours.
Margaret tugs at the hem of his shirt and BJ leaves the memories behind to focus on unbuttoning the front of his uniform. His fingers are shaking slightly and he can hardly feel the buttons with his numb fingertips, but he somehow manages to get them all and Margaret helps him ease it down off his shoulders and away from his torso. The undershirt he's wearing, which had been pristine and freshly washed when he put it on this morning, is streaked with soot and blood and sweat. Margaret doesn't even bother trying to save it or make him lift his arms to pull it up over his head. She just finds a small pair of surgical scissors amidst her supplies and makes quick work of the flimsy fabric. When she pulls the ruined shirt away from his torso, she does her best to keep her face a mask of indifferent calm. But BJ can see the exact moment her eyes go wide with shock.
BJ looks down and then nearly laughs at the livid purple and blue bruises dotting his skin. How every inch of him that wasn't covered by his uniform is blackened with soot. Just like Hawkeye. In fact, there's hardly a place on his torso that isn't bruised or blackened. The worst of it is lower on his abdomen, just to the left and a little above his navel where the bruising is so bad, it's nearly black. If they hadn't just come from x-ray, BJ is pretty sure Margaret would be demanding that they go back there this instant. She begins to prod the area and BJ cries out.
"Are you hurt anywhere else?" she demands, her deft hands running over every other inch of him as he tries not to pass out from the pain. Outside, the approaching storm whips a deliciously cool wind in through the open flaps of the tent but BJ is sweating so badly it does little more than make him shiver miserably. Margaret throws his robe over his shoulders and he burrows into the soft fabric, chasing after some hidden warmth. It's one of the only comforts afforded to him in this place and, were he able, BJ might have curled up under it and gone to sleep right then and there.
"Answer me, BJ." They're on to first names now. That can't be good.
He swallows down nausea and forces his clenched teeth open. "I don't think so."
He can see the wheels in Margaret's brain churning. The bruising and the concussion and the pain he's in are going to earn him a one way ticket to a night in post-op for observation, there's no question of that now. Arguments of how he can convalesce just as easily here as in post-op rise up and then die in his throat. Potter's earlier threat is one reason he keeps quiet. The fact he'll be able to get regular updates on Hawkeye a lot easier over there is another. BJ won't be able to keep an eye on things if he's confined to quarters.
"So are we walking, or do you want me to get you a wheelchair?" Margaret asks, standing before him with hands on hips. There's no preamble. She knows he knows what needs to be done and no one ever accused Margaret Houlihan of beating around the bush.
It's an easy enough answer. "I'll walk."
The Major procures a pair of scrubs from her pile of supplies and BJ is secretly relieved. He'd been dreading the idea of putting on one of those horrid, pajama-like dressing gowns they normally put their patients in. Scrubs are such a better alternative to parading around post-op in his skivvies.
The scrub top comes first. It occurs to BJ somewhere between the moment she pulls the shirt down over his head and he has to pause to pant through the pain of putting one arm through, that the fact Margaret Houllihan is sitting here in the Swamp, helping him dress, should bother him. This entire thing should be bothering him. BJ can't remember the last time he had to let someone else examine him. Do these things for him that he should be able to do for himself. But exhaustion, it seems, has eroded away his pride. He has nothing left to fight with.
BJ rushes through getting his next arm through and then suddenly, all that's left are his pants. BJ bites into his lip hard enough to draw blood as he leans back and unhooks his belt. The top button takes a moment of fumbling, but that soon, too, is free. Margaret supports him as best she can, offering her own brand of cold comfort by rubbing small circles into his back with her hand when the pain flares again and horrible noises are torn from his throat. BJ clings to her like a lifeline, and she lets him. In fact, she wraps her arms around his shoulders when he starts to shake and talks him through the sudden spasms.
"That's it, Hunnicutt," she soothes. "Just breathe through it. In and out."
BJ closes his eyes, puts his hand on the arm Margaret has wrapped around him and fights against the strong wave of emotion this small moment with her conjures. He chokes on it a little as his eyes fill, but he won't let the tears fall. This isn't about him. None of it is. It's about Hawkeye. That friend of his that is still fighting for his life over in the OR. The one he nearly forgot about sitting here wallowing in his own self-pity and pain. There's still work to be done. He'll let himself come apart only when he knows for sure that this nightmare is over.
"Why did you go looking for him?" Margaret asks out of the blue, startling BJ from his thoughts. Her voice is peculiar.
"I had to," he replies after a moment of thought, knowing it to be God's honest truth. He would do it again, too. In a heartbeat.
Realization hits BJ with a sudden and unexpected clarity. As horrible and selfish as people might see it, he would search for Hawkeye all over again if it came down to it.
Margaret is shaking her head as she releases her grip on his. "How do you two keep doing that?"
"Do what?"
Margaret sits down beside him on the cot, their arms almost touching. "Shut out the rest of the world. Forget about rank and duty and just... break the rules for each other like that."
Margaret is turned just far enough away from him that BJ can't see her face. Can't figure out what kind of answer she's looking for here. This is probably the most personal conversation he's ever had with Margaret Houllihan and he suspects it's about a lot more than BJ's proclivity for ignoring direct orders.
"I think," he says after a moment, "it helps to not care so much."
She huffs. "I'm not like you two."
"I know."
"I have to care."
"I know that, Margaret."
"They'll take all this away from me if I don't." Her words paint a picture inside his head as BJ sits there at a loss for words. The long and arduous years of her Army career are spread out before him, a scarred and scorched map surrounded by a huddled group of entitled men who would love nothing more than to see her fail. Scrutinizing every inch of it, ashes falling from the ends of their cigars and singeing the corners. He can only imagine how terrible it's been, or how hard it must be for her to watch himself and Hawk flout the rules at every turn without so much as a reprimand. He suddenly feels very small and completely unworthy of even being in the same room as her.
When BJ is ready to attempt the whole getting dressed thing again, Margaret resumes her duties, all traces of the strange conversation they just had gone from her face. She helps him to rise a little ways up off the cot so they can shimmy the waistband of his pants down over his narrow hips. She attacks his boots next and has just started tugging at a pant leg when BJ cries out at a sudden and unexpected pain.
He doesn't mean for it to be so loud, but it is. He startles Margaret as he digs his teeth into his knuckles to keep from doing it again when she lets go of his leg and it swings downwards. He must black out or something because all of a sudden Margaret is right there in his face, taking his head in her hands and calling out his name. He fists his hands in the blanket beneath him, trying to ride out the agony slowly creeping up his leg. Impossibly sharp blades move along his skin, drawing blood as they go. Chils, prickly and cold, race up the back of his neck and settle at the base of his spine. He lists to one side unexpectedly, but Margaret's hand is there to stop him from toppling over.
"When did this happen?" she demands and BJ risks a glance downwards. The entire side of his right leg is covered in burnt flesh and deep wounds. They're bleeding freely, staining the already dark fabric of his pant leg. The boot Margaret removed a few moments ago is on its side on the floor and blood is dripping from the laces. He hadn't even noticed. How could he not have noticed.
"Hunnicutt!" Margaret snaps, like it isn't the first time she's had to call out his name. He blinks. "Tell me where it hurts."
"E-every-everywhere."
His teeth have begun to chatter. He can hear them rattling as the chills come on again, full force. He's shaking, the whole cot shuddering beneath him as Margaret makes him lie down and calls out for help.
Thunder chooses that exact moment to crash above their heads, swallowing her cries as the heavens rip apart and great sheets of rain begin to pelt the roof of the tent.
It's here. The gathering storm has finally arrived and the deluge is enough to wash away any barricades BJ might have left.
His eyes roll up into the back of his head. He can feel himself being pulled under the great wave that comes to crash down over his head, only he's too far gone to give a shit. It's better here anyway, under the water. Things don't hurt as much. It doesn't take quite so much effort just to be. So he lets it drag him down into the dark, for as any man whose been at the 4077th for long will tell you, the gifts of oblivion are often so much more enjoyable than the cold truths of this godforsaken war.
He thinks of Peg's garden as the darkness comes to claim him.