I really am enjoying the tension that were between Hawkeye and Charles in the first couple of episodes of season 6 - it's such a blast to write about Charles being more snooty than normal :P

Thank you all for your kind respons to this story. I will try to write as often as possible.

Chapter 3 – Operation ruffle

Just ten minutes after the P.A. announcement, the compound was turned into an organized chaos: Ambulances dropping of their injured, moaning, crying and lifeless load and went off again; nurses, corpsmen and the doctors of the 4077th attending every patient and carrying stretchers into Pre-op. The rules were simple: If he can scream, he can wait.

"How good is your battlefield triage training, Captain?" Colonel Potter asked Agnes, when they nearly collided over a young man with a bloody bandage on his head.

"I've tried it a couple of times, sir."

"And besides from the cold facts I've seen in your file, how's your combat surgery?"

"Not bad, if I may say so. I have had nearly two months of field training."

"That's good enough for me." Potter pointed towards a row of patients near the entrance to OR. "You go check on those men over there and you bark out if you find someone who can't wait. Lieutenant Harris will assist you," he said, waving a young, brown-haired nurse over.

"Yes, sir," Agnes said, stepping aside quickly, when two corpsmen came running past her with a litter. "Let's go, Lieutenant."

She had meet Harris before lunch; she was a quiet girl, who didn't make much fuss of herself, but she turned out to be most effective:

"Doctor, I have started a blood transfusion on the chest wound and I've put pressure on this guy's shoulder."

"Good job. Better get another unit ready for the chest wound, 'cause he'll have to wait. This head injury is pretty bad. Who's your neurosurgeon here?"

"I think Hawkeye comes closest – Captain Pierce!"

Hawkeye came running from the other side of the compound, his stethoscope swinging as he strode over a soldier on the ground.

"You rang, my ladies?"

"I heard you are the head-man here," Agnes said, checking the young mans pulse. "I might have a subdural hematoma for you: One pupil dilated and hardly responding."

"I got a belly wound and a shattered hip over here, mon capitan, who need to go in as soon as possible. Wanna switch?"

"Deal."

She got to her feet and Hawkeye, his hands already smeared with blood up to both wrists, took over.

"Nurse, get him prepped and put him under. I'll check de others and go scrub op. Captain, your new patient is the one next Major Houlihan."

"Who?"

Hawkeye pointed across the compound. "Our head nurse. The blond one with the fierce expression."

'Fierce expression' turned out to be pretty accurate. Long before Agnes had reached her, she heard the platin blond major shout out orders in a particularly peremptorily tone to every person around her, while she still had time to stabilize the soldier by her feet.

"Baker – I need 16 milligrams of morphine on the double! Kellye, Harris – go find some more bandages to Hunnicutts patient! KLINGER! Get your Lebanese butt over here NOW or I'll..!"

"Sorry – Major Houlihan?" Agnes interrupted cautiously.

The Major looked up and Agnes was ready to take a precautious step back, but then the blond head nurse's face softened slightly.

"Captain Clearwater?" she said and even smiled. "I'm sorry I haven't been around to introduce myself. I'm Margaret Houlihan, the head nurse."

"Hi – Agnes," Agnes said, exchanging a quick, bloody handshake with the female Major. "I'll have to owe you the rest of the introduction, Major, Captain Pierce said this man needed surgery right away."

"I'll show you to the scrub room," Major Houlihan said, gesturing to Agnes to follow her. "Corpsman! Get this man into OR right away."

oOo

A nurse, who's name Charles couldn't recall for the life of him even though he had tried for at least half a minute, helped him into his gloves and took her place on the other side of the operation table, waiting. BJ, already with his hands deep inside a critical patient, cursed under his breath behind him.

"Problems, Hunnicutt?"

"This kid's running out of liver," BJ responded, slightly tense, behind his mask. "I hope I can save enough. Suction."

"Your patient is ready, doctor," the nurse informed Charles, when his chest patient was under.

"Thank you. Scalpel. And keep the blood coming, please, nurse."

The door swung open and Agnes came into the OR, sideways with her sterile hands in the air. She looked surprisingly unaffected by the sudden dramatic turn her first day had taken.

"How are you holding up, Captain?" Charles asked her, when she slid into surgical gloves.

"Oh, you know," Agnes said, waving her hand casually, "keeping busy. Never been much for a quiet day at the office."

"This isn't your first time doing combat surgery, is it?" BJ asked her, when her patient had been sedated and she went straight to work.

"Far from. I spent a month on board the Jutlandia, then three weeks in Tokyo before I came out here."

"Jutlandia?" Charles repeated. "As in – the Danish hospital ship?"

"The very same."

"So, you have been spending over two month her voluntarily, when you could have been safe back home," Charles noticed and raised a roguish brow at her. "My dear, I'm sorry to break this to you, but you are a bit mad. Retractor."

"Come now, Major – mad? Just because I couldn't let you boys have all the fun to yourself?" Agnes responded, smiling crookedly behind her mask, just as Hawkeye came strolling into the OR.

"All the fun? Are you talking about me?" he quipped, looking over Agnes shoulder to appraise her work.

"Indeed, we are, Pierce," Charles said. "You are equally – clamp – as entertaining as this prolonged, inconvenient war."

"Well, what can I say, I have my moments. That is very good work there, Captain – or may I call you Agnetha?"

"It's usually just Agnes."

"Even better," Hawkeye purred. "Listen, Agnes, do you have plans tonight?

"Other than passing out, when I'm done here, you mean?"

"Why don't I show you the O-club, is great this time a year, when the drunk blooms…"

"Captain Pierce," Margaret called out from the other end of the operation room, a slight edgy tone in her voice. "Your patient is nearly ready."

"Coming, coming!" Hawkeye said, reluctantly withdrawing to his own table.

"And frisky comeback in three, two, one…" Charles mumbled.

"Margaret, has anyone ever told you how beautiful you look, when I drive you crazy?"

Agnes let out a snuffle of restrained laughter and didn't even had to look up to know, that the Bostonian surgeon's angelite-colored eyes were right now narrowing because of an outmost complacent smirk in her direction.

oOo

Finally, after seven hours of surgery, Agnes could hand over her last patient to the corpsmen and step out of the closed air in the OR. As she stood and enjoyed the feeling of being able to breath freely without the thick cotton mask, the double doors clattered behind her and Charles and Hawkeye appeared by her side, both blood smeared and tired-looking.

"I have got to say, Captain," Charles said, rubbing his sore neck, "that the job you did rebuilding that boy's knee was quite impressive."

She smiled. "Thank you, Major."

"Just out of curiosity, where did you get your degree?"

"University of Pennsylvania."

"Ah, well – all diamonds must derive from the soil."

Agnes huffed a laughter, not really sure whether to be flattered or insulted on behalf of the institution.

"You know what, Charles," Hawkeye said through a long yawn. "I don't know anyone like you, who can turn a single sentence into both a compliment and a denigration. Did you take a separate subject at Harvard?"

"It's quite understandable that you have never encountered it before, Pierce," Charles responded loftily. "To appreciate the many intelligent possibilities of the English language, one must first have an intellect."

"Gracious me, I have a feeling I have just been derided."

"Well done, Pierce, you have indeed."

"Did you know," Agnes said with feigned pensiveness and stretched her arms above her head, "that hunger and fatigue can make a person say things they don't actually mean? It's a quite common physiological phenomenon that occurs when one's blood sugar is too low."

The two hotspurs pretended not to understand the hint and kept their hard stare at each other. Agnes sighed and left to scrub up, internally wondering how Charles and his holier-than-thou attitude had managed to stay alive for two whole months. If that wasn't a miracle, she wasn't sure what is should be called.

"You're just jealous because your charm isn't working on her, aren't you, Pierce," Charles sneered to Hawkeye's back as they stepped into the men's scrub room.

"If you think that means she into you, you balding beetroot, then you're crazier than I thought."

"I cherish no tender feelings towards her. Besides," Charles said calmly, pulling his blooded gowns off, "she's soon to be married, so it would only spark a needless drama which I have no intentions of being a part off."

"Are you talking about Captain Clearwater?" BJ asked, already out of his white scrubs.

"Yeah, Agnes – wait a minute," Hawkeye said, glaring at Charles with a suspicious frown. "How do you know she's engaged?"

"While you two nightcrawlers were busy sleeping, I became acquainted with Captain Clearwater," Charles responded nonchalantly. "I meet her when she arrived and I had a pleasant talk with her before lunch."

"Well, so what if she's engaged," Hawkeye said, trying to sound careless, but he didn't look so sure of himself anymore. "She has willingly left the guy for two month, that doesn't sound like a happy engagement to me?"

"You don't know anything, Hawk," BJ remarked. "Maybe he's in Tokyo? Or he could be a soldier too? That would explain why she's here."

"You know what?" Hawkeye declared and washed the blood of his hands. "I'll get to the bottom of this. Preferably over a drink in the Officers Club. Or the Swamp. You rats are not going to be home tonight, are you?"

"Hawkeye – she's engaged. Forget her!"

"I can't. Didn't you see her in OR? That girl is really something."

As much as Charles hated to agree with the womanizing surgeon, he was quite right. Agnes was going to be an enjoyable temporary contribution to the medical staff. She was caring, intelligent and not bad to look at either. You couldn't exactly call her beautiful, but she had a very attractive, lopsided smile and eyes that would have made Lord Byron swoon: Big, expressive and neither fully brown nor green. Her hair, cut short, was dark like well-oiled mahogany. And the best part was that she seemed fairly unimpressed by Pierces' shameless flirtation, which clearly drove him mad. This, Charles thought, could turn out to be most entertaining, if he played his cards well.

"Even though I hate to abolish your plans, Pierce," he drawled – and enjoying every moment of it. "I hope you haven't forgotten that you are on duty tonight – in half an hour to be exact."

Hawkeyes face fell.

"Damn, that's right. Uh – Beej, you wouldn't mind trading, would you?"

"Sorry, pal, I have a patient in the village afterwards. It's a sick little girl, I can't just put her off until tomorrow."

"Oh, don't worry, Pierce," Charles said contemptuously. "You can still enjoy as nice evening with Captain Clearwater in Post-Op. Nothing like candlelight dinner to the soft moans of badly injured soldiers."

Snickering, he left the scrub room. Hawkeye threw the soap back in its holder and turned to BJ, frowning.

"Some friend you are," he grumbled.