Mess Tent 06:30
Number of cups of coffee ingested: 5
Number of cups of coffee ingested after specifically told not to by new current physician: 5
Total number of nurses pissed off about it: 1
Its busy in the mess hall. There's a gaggle of service men from the army corps of engineers, sent in to restore the roads, having some sort of unsanctioned soiree around a beat up old transistor radio BJ remembers seeing around the camp a time or two. They've commandeered a few of the scrub nurses as well, and all of them are currently trying to pick up one of the Seoul stations. Only the old radio works about as well as everything else in this camp, and they aren't having much luck. That fact, however, doesn't seem to put a damper on their moods. They crank the dial back and forth, again and again, cheering any time something that even remotely resembles music screeches out over the airwaves. They're having fun and it's pissing the hell out of BJ.
He sits off on his own at the end of one of the mess tables, as far away from the group as he can get. The contents of the 5 or so cups of coffee he's just drunk sit gurgling in his guts as he works on his 6th. It tastes just as terrible as the previous five. Even more so now that it's gone stone cold.
He didn't mean for that to happen. It's just… for the past ten minutes, BJ has not been able to do anything but stare down into it.
The loose bits of Hawkeye's chart that he's been studying lie abandoned near his elbows. He's trying very hard not to go off on the noisy group palavering away on the other side of the room from him, and his white-knuckled grip on the cup seems to be the only thing stopping him. They're grown adults sitting around a radio and laughing like children while the very people they've been sent in to help are lying one tent over, dying.
BJ has been in this war long enough to know that most people need silly moments like these to survive this place, but Christ Almighty, does it have to be today? Does it have to be here, of all places? And do they have to be so goddamn loud?
Someone finds Seoul City Sue and the crowd goes wild. She quickly dissolves into static, however, and their fervent cheers turn into over exaggerated groans. The search resumes and the aggravating cycle resets itself. It's like an ice pick to BJ's brain. A constant whittling that is slowly chipping away any resolve he might have just to leave them be. BJ could pack his things up and leave, agonize over Hawkeye in the privacy of his own tent, but this is his Mess. This is his MASH and he will be damned if a couple of ignorant kids are going to run him out of it. (Apparently he's reached the irritable phase of his concussion.)
And so on and on it goes. The laughter and the cheers. The constant chatter and the blazen flirting. Hawkeye would have gotten a kick out of it. They probably would have gone over there and joined in. But BJ just wants to make it stop as the high pitched wine of static puts his teeth on edge and finally pushes him over the edge.
"For the love of God, would you turn that damn thing off ?" he bellows, spinning around on his bench, careful of his injured leg, to face the astonished soldiers.
"There are people in the building next door dying and you idiots are in here throwing a goddamn party! Show some respect for christ's sake and TURN IT OFF!"
The words roll off his tongue like bits of flame and he doesn't know who he surprises more, the group of young people or his CO who chooses that exact moment to walk into the mess and hear the entire thing. Potter doesn't even need to say anything, he just levels BJ with a look of pure disappointment and all that fire goes out. Someone has the good sense to switch off the radio.
"Take it someplace else, eh boys?" Potter suggests, as BJ swipes at his stinging eyes and turns back around to his cup of sludge.
"We were only having a bit of fun," someone quietly explains to Potter as the group slowly disperses. "We didn't mean any harm."
"I know you didn't, son," Potter replies. "No one's in trouble, but party's over all the same."
BJ listens with his back turned as the soldiers and nurses shuffle out. For the second time in as many days, Potter comes to sit beside him on a bench, only this time, everything is different. Hawkeye is alive and out of surgery. BJ doesn't hurt as much as he used to and can speak in coherent sentences again… except someone seems to have turned on the water works, and he has no idea how to make it stop. He's not blubbering or anything, but it feels like any small thing might make him. Embarrassment, exhaustion, pain, anxiety, fear… they all tighten around him until fresh tears are rolling down his face every time he blinks. He turns his head away so Potter can't see, even though he knows his superior officer can tell exactly what's going on. Still, it feels like the right thing to do.
Hide the evidence. They're men, after all. Aren't they? Never supposed to show fear? Never supposed to be weak? Turn your head and hide your eyes and just pretend it isn't happening.
Potter lets him pretend for a full three minutes before he's passing BJ a handkerchief discretely across the table, even though they're alone. He takes it with a small, watery smile.
"Thought I told you to go back to the Swamp and get some shut eye," Potter says after a few moments of silence punctuated by BJ's intermittent sniffing.
"Couldn't sleep. It was too quiet in there." The irony of that statement is not lost on BJ and probably not on Potter, either.
"And did this little side trip to the Mess help you with that?"
"No," BJ admits.
"I thought as much. Go back to the Swamp, Hunnicutt. You have a concussion and Pierce isn't going anywhere until morning. The roads will be cleared for ambulances by dawn, or so they tell me. As soon as they are, he's on the first bus out of here."
"They couldn't find us a helicopter?" BJ asks.
"Apparently not. We just lost four of our best birds. There isn't a helicopter left in Korea that can get him there faster than an ambulance. We'll have to make due."
BJ nods and they lapse into silence again. He plays with the edge of his coffee cup, running a fingertip over a small chip in the rim. The skin catches a bit as he admits, "they were just being so loud."
Potter sighs heavily. "I know."
"I didn't mean to yell, it's just… they're throwing a party in here while he's… while he's..."
While he's lying in post-op, fighting for his life , and I can't do anything to help him, but BJ can't say the last part out loud. They could still lose him. Everything is so precariously perched, and BJ refuses to be the one to tip the scales in the wrong direction by saying something he shouldn't. Hope isn't for war zones.
He stares at his cup of stonecold sludge as his eyes burn with renewed tears. These are angry ones. It's like one big cosmic joke, and the only one who would appreciate it or have a decent punchline is currently in a coma in post-op.
"We're going to get him the help he needs," Potter rallies. "Charles and I worked on him for a long time and there's no reason he shouldn't make a full recovery...
"...he just needs more care than we can give him here," BJ finishes, buying into it - perhaps fool-heartedly.
"He's going to live, Hunnicutt. He just needs time."
It's not like them to lie to themselves like this. As doctors, they know the odds. Even as he sits here quietly in the Mess with Potter, the war quiet outside for once, BJ's mind is coming up with all manner of ways in which Hawkeye could die. Keeps reminding him what catastrophic consequences injuries like Hawkeye's can have. Even if they do get him back there's no promise that he'll be the same, or that he'll be able to keep practicing medicine. An even less likely chance he returns to the 4077th.
But for tonight, under the meager light of the mess tent and with endless cups of stale coffee altering his perspective, he's willing to ignore it all and allow himself to hope.
Hawkeye knew how to hope. Could be oh so optimistic, sometimes. Or, at least when the war wasn't knocking on their door and constantly shoving wounded down their throats like it was worried they were going to starve or something. It was never easy to be optimistic during those times. Not even for him.
Potter lays a hand on his shoulder and gives it a reassuring squeeze. "I'm serious about the sleep, Hunnicutt. Doctor's orders. Get some rest."
BJ nods, not even bothering to offer the Colonel his hankie back. It's his now. Evidence of this time and this place, of the moment when he cried. Not because someone died, but because they still might. Irrational tears because there is so much work left to do and that road to recovery is just about as bombed out and pockmarked as the roads in and out of their camp. It's nothing Potter wants or needs back. It's BJ's to do with as he will. He pockets the handkerchief and grabs his crutches to leave.