BJ woke, gasping, in an icy sweat, from a dream in which a masked, laughing figure was pointing a gun at Peg and Erin while he lay on the ground, unable to move. Father Mulcahey and Kellye were standing over his bed, and he shook his head, trying to escape the fragments of the dream clinging to his mind. He looked quickly at the bed where the man who shot him lay, and sighed in relief when he saw him lying, asleep, still strapped to the bed.
"Are you all right, BJ?" said Father Mulcahey as Kellye sat down next to him and laid her hand on his forehead.
"I'm fine," said BJ, "It's fine, Kellye, you don't need to-" he tried to wave her off, but she stayed where she was.
"I'm just making sure you don't have a fever. Here," she said, putting a thermometer in his mouth.
He sighed through his nose in annoyance as Father Mulcahey took a seat on his other side. Kellye left to go over to another patient, who was moaning slightly in his sleep.
"Are you sure you're all right, BJ?" asked Father Mulcahey.
BJ nodded, a little sullenly (though how he was supposed to look other than sullen with a thermometer in his mouth was beyond him). He was being unreasonable, he knew, but he already felt trapped in his bed and the thermometer under his tongue added to his discomfort.
It was dark outside - no light came in through the windows of Post-Op. Most of the other beds were full from yesterday's session. He heard the crunch of boots outside as the man on guard duty marched past. Charles was sitting at the desk, glancing over sheets of paperwork. BJ looked up at the clock - it was almost three-thirty in the morning. He glanced at Father Mulcahey, who was staring into the middle distance, looking pale.
At last, Kellye came back to take the thermometer. She held it up to the light, then wrote something down on the chart hanging at the end of the bed.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Ninety-seven point nine. No fever." She smiled at him and moved on.
BJ turned his head to look at Father Mulcahey again. "What brings you here, Father?"
Father Mulcahey blinked, coming out of his reverie. "Oh, I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd see if I could be of use to anyone."
"Well, since you're here," said BJ, "can you hand me my chart?"
Father Mulcahey glanced at Charles, who was still absorbed in his work, and took BJ's chart from its hook.
"Here you are," he said, handing it to BJ. BJ scanned it.
"Blood pressure slightly elevated," he muttered. "One unit of whole blood, one of plasma."
"Everything look normal?" Father Mulcahey asked.
"As normal as could be expected," said BJ. "Could you put this back for me?"
Father Mulcahey returned the chart to the hook.
"How about you, Father? You look a little peaky."
"Making diagnoses while lying in a hospital bed?"
"I need to occupy my time somehow. I'm serious, though - do you feel sick?"
"No, nothing like that. I've just had terrible nightmares whenever I close my eyes."
"You're not the only one. I wish I could go back to the Swamp, I don't like being here with- I mean, I don't like sleeping here. But if I did, Hawkeye would worry about me and then he wouldn't sleep, and then we'd have two useless surgeons." He caught Father Mulcahey's gaze straying down to the wound in BJ's belly, and the frown line appearing between his eyebrows.
"Father, you're not still blaming yourself for this, are you?" BJ asked him, gesturing to his wound.
Father Mulcahey leaned forward, resting his forehead in his hand. "I...I keep going over it in my mind - whether there was anything else I could have done. Maybe if I came from a different direction, or was paying closer attention, or-" he stopped abruptly, looking away.
"Hey," said BJ, laying his hand on Father Mulcahey's shoulder. "Listen, I wouldn't still be here, if it wasn't for you. A point blank shot to the head? There's no way I'd have come through that. You saved my life. I'll be walking around in a few weeks because of you."
Father Mulcahey turned back to BJ. "I've never seen someone shot before. I see the aftereffects all the time, of course, but I've never seen it happen, much less to a friend." He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes with a shaking hand. "I'm sorry, BJ, I shouldn't be burdening you with all this in your condition."
"I don't mind. Helps me get my mind off whatever the hell I was doing, standing there staring stupidly at the gun pointed at my face." He shook his head. "There was plenty of time to duck, or knock his arm away, but I just froze. I don't know what happened. And if I'd died, Peg would-" An image of Peg getting the telegram that he'd been killed bloomed before his eyes, her expression clouding from confusion to grief, and a choked sob burst from his throat. He covered his eyes as a torrent of emotion overtook him - anger, fear, relief, sadness came pouring out in a flood. It hurt his wound to cry this way, but the sheer unfairness of the pain only made him sob harder. Father Mulcahey took his hand and held it in both of his, murmuring reassurances.
Finally, BJ's sobs subsided, and he wiped his face with the hand Father Mulcahey wasn't holding.
"Thanks, Father," he said.
"Of course, BJ," Father Mulcahey replied, giving BJ's hand a final squeeze and releasing him.
"Father...I'd take that blessing now, if you wouldn't mind."
Father Mulcahey gave a small smile.
"Of course." He laid his hand on BJ's head.
"In nomine Patri et Filii et Spiritu Sancti…"