Thank you guys for sticking around and leaving those wonderful reviews. They are a great motivation :)
Sadly, I'm going back to school, so I probably won't have a lot of time on my hand for writing the upcoming months, but I'll try.
Chapter 9 – Be it ever so crumbled, there's no place like home
"Well, look on the bright side," Hawkeye said, while finishing the last of the stitches in Father Mulcahy's arm, "now you have a great story to tell in the O-Club tonight."
"To be honest, this is one of those stories I would rather have been without," Mulcahy responded wearily and glanced down at the wound and the I.V. drop in his arm. His hands and most of his face were swollen from wasp stings.
They had scared the camp half to death by showing up, bloody and bulging and with the enemy wounded in the back seat. BJ and Potter was tending to him in Post-Op as they spoke. The boy had been stung so many times his face looked like a skin colored balloon filled with water.
Agnes had a feeling she looked nearly as terrible. Charles had charmingly informed her how much she resembled a boxer with mumps before cleaning her up.
"You should consider yourself truly lucky," he told them, in a peskily knowing tone, "you could have encountered a bee's nest and we would still be scraping stingers out of your swollen cheeks."
"Yeah, I sure feel like one lucky potato," Agnes muttered and winched, when Charles dapped her hand with antiseptic soap water. "Ouch!"
Charles smirked. "Brace yourself, Wonder Woman. I'm almost done."
He raised her chin with a surprisingly gentle grip around her jaws, so he could apply antihistamine cream to the stings on her face.
"Did he actually shoot the nest himself?" Hawkeye said, sounding amused.
"Uh-hu."
The salt-and-pepper-haired surgeon chuckled. "Are you sure it wasn't Frank Burns in disguise? It sounds like the kind of moronic stunt he could have pulled."
"Was Major Burns really that terrible?" Agnes asked, desperate for a change of subject. After the shock had worn off, she could feel the guilt starting to sneak up on her. If that soldier had been a little less humane, she would probably had gotten them both shot instead of the wasp's nest.
"I prefer Major Elitist to him any day that sort of tells you how repulsive he was."
Charles ignored his comment with stoic dignity and finished his work. He picked up one of the metal trays and held it up to Agnes as a mirror.
"There. How's that?"
Agnes grimaced at her puffed, now red-and-white dotted face.
"Oh, God – I look like…"
"A plump Dalmatian with measles?" Charles suggested with a head tilt.
Hawkeye snorted with laughter and Agnes swiped the tray away.
"I'm so glad my misfortune can amuse you two jobbernowls," she sniffed, sliding of the operating table. Charles handed her shirt with a softening smile and she plucked it from his outstretched hand with an eyeroll.
"Please, doctors," Mulcahy said gently. "Be nice to Captain Clearwater. She probably saved my life."
His words made Agnes squirm with guilt.
I lost my head that's all I did…
"You are absolutely right, Father," Charles said. "Please forgive us, Captain. We have so little to laugh at in this hell hole."
Agnes scoffed, buttoning her shirt.
"Well, the next time you lack entertainment, I'll be in Post-Op," she informed them.
She found Colonel Potter at the desk, next to the Korean soldier who appeared to be sleeping.
"He's got a butt full of antihistamine and morphine," Potter responded to her unspoken question. "So he'll be out for a while. The MP's will be here shortly to keep an eye on him, while he recovers."
Agnes nodded. Potter studied her thoughtful expression.
"How are you feeling, Captain?"
"Fine," she lied. It had started to fall her quite easy, without even thinking about it. "Just tired. It's been an eventful day."
"It sure has," Potter rumbled. "Could you keep an eye on him for a second while I get the papers for his transfer?"
"Sure."
The Colonel patted her on the shoulder and left. Agnes took his empty seat and watched the saline solution drip steadily from the I.V. bag into his veins. The boy had been highly dehydrated when they brought him in; Potter was sure he hadn't had a proper meal in days.
What had been his plans with the jeep, she wondered. To bring it back to his unit? Or to drive as far away from the war as possible – maybe just home to his family?
Lost in her own trail of thoughts, Agnes didn't hear Charles come in, before he spoke out behind he "He looks like an angel now, doesn't he?" he remarked.
"He's just a kid," Agnes said, addressed herself more than Charles. "He would never have shot us."
"No, it was awfully kind of him just graze the priest warningly in the shoulder," Charles responded sarcastically.
Agnes didn't respond. Charles followed her thoughtful gaze to the soldier's face. For a woman who had returned to the camp in one piece, she seemed more troubled that he cared for.
"Agnes…" he began.
Agnes turned to him.
"Is Hawkeye done with Father Mulcahy?" she asked, cutting him of mid-sentence.
"I suppose so, yes. Captain Pierce told him to go lie down for an hour or so. I suspect he's in his tent."
"I need to talk to him." Agnes made a gesture towards the sleeping soldier. "Could you…?"
She was gone, before Charles even had a chance to decline.
oOo
Agnes knocked very lightly on Father Mulcahys door; she didn't want to wake him up, if he was resting, but the priest responded instantly: "Come in."
It was the first time Agnes had ever been in a chaplains quarters. Mulcahy lived humbly, but very comfortable. The only thing that caught her of guard a bit, was a boxing ball in the corner of his tent.
"Do you box?" she blurted.
Mulcahy smiled. "I used to coach boxing in the Catholic Youth Organization. When I came here I found out it's a great way to relieve frustrations."
"You know, I never would have guessed." Agnes moved inside and closed the door firmly behind her. "Father, could I talk to you for a moment?"
"Of course," the priest responded and gestured towards an empty chair before his bed. "Please, sit down."
Agnes did. She rolled down her sleeves and Mulcahy waited patiently.
"I just… I want to say how terribly sorry I am about what happened today."
Mulcahy looked surprised: "Sorry for what?"
"For how I behaved. I literally did everything they tell us not to do when taken hostage: Ignoring orders, starting a discussion with the captor…" She paused uneasily. "Actually encourage them to shot."
"I'm sure you didn't mean that," Mulcahy responded softly.
"No, of course not," Agnes muttered, but that was easy to say now. For a brief second out there she had almost meant it. The hopeless situation had stirred a familiar feeling of despair in her that she couldn't handle anymore. It was the whole reason why she was even here – to get away from that devastating feeling.
"Agnes," Mulcahy said in a firm tone and leaned forward towards her. "Look at it this way: If you hadn't upset him, that dodo would never have hit the nest and we would probably still have been out there – without a jeep."
"Or I could have gotten us both killed," Agnes muttered. She rose from the chair and paced around his tent. "It's just… I felt so useless and I hate that. I have this funny aversion, you see: I don't like it when people are hurt and I'm prevented from helping them."
"Who does?" Mulcahy responded. "Agnes, surely you don't think you are the only one with a bruised guilt in this tent, do you?"
"Father, you did anything you could…"
"I got scared," Mulcahy said evenly. "I should have driven off instantly when he started shooting, but I couldn't."
"You were hurt," Agnes objected.
"Nothing life-threatening," Mulcahy said. "I still had three good tires and a working arm. I could have gotten us out of there, but I froze."
"Anyone would have done the same. I had never been so scared in my life myself."
"Then who says another doctor wouldn't have done what you did?" Mulcahy stated. "You think Hawkeye or BJ would just have let me bleed? You think they would have blindly obeyed what the soldier told them to?"
"Probably not," Agnes muttered after a trice of silence.
"Exactly," Mulcahy said with a small smile. "So maybe we should agree that we both did our best and that's why we here now. Alive and well."
Agnes returned his smile faintly. "Sounds about right."
oOo
Charles wasn't quite sure what it was about Agnes that made his thoughts linger, but he had a enerving feeling that something wasn't quite right her. She seemed a bit distracted at dinner; even Hawkeye couldn't make her release more than a halfhearted smile. Of course, she could still be marked by the frigtful events earlier that day, but now he thought about it, she had been like that since the night in the O-Club: A little quiet at times, a bit withdrawn.
While he was dumping what was left of his dinner into the trash cans outside the mess tent, Charles decide to pay her a visit. Purely by medical reasons, of course. He was a doctor after all and she was behaving strangely. He picked up another can of antihistamine cream and the record he had just received from his sister, before he went to her tent.
"Medicine delivery," he drawled, knocking on wooden door.
"Oh, do come in!"
She looked relieved, when he handed her to crème.
"Thank you. I was just about to go myself. The itching is driving me insane!"
"Good thing I've brought something else to cheer you up then, my unfortunate little pincushion," Charles said, exposing the record from behind his back.
Agnes read the title and her hands flew to her mouth.
"Pierre Monteux conducting The Boston Symphony Orchestra!" she exclaimed breathless with excitement. "Oh, my word! It's impossible to come across these days. How did you get it?"
Her undisguised enthusiasm made Charles smile.
"Where there is a Winchester, there's a way," he confided in her.
"Haven't you heard it yet?" Agnes said, when he handed it to her and she realized the seal was unbroken.
"I merely received it this morning. I had planned to listen to it after lunch, but then you, the padre and your endearing friend showed up and extirpated my plans."
Agnes smiled teasingly. "Would tea make you forgive me?"
"It might."
While the tea brewed, Charles placed the record on her phonograph player and turned it on.
"A special request?" he asked.
Agnes answered without hesitation: "Waltz of the Snowflakes."
They listened in silence to the soft, impish tones and the unworldly chorus, Agnes with the slightest trace of smile on her lips the entire time. When the piece ended, she declared evenly:
"I want to marry his music."
"Yes, he is indeed quite extraordinary," Charles agreed in a quiet voice. He moved the needle and started the record from the periphery. They drank their tea to the famous tones of March of the Toy Soldiers.
Suddenly, with a distracted look in her eyes, Agnes said: "Theo hates it."
Charles looked at her. "Your fiancé?"
She nodded, not taking her eyes of the spinning record. "He loves jazz though, but that's not really my cup of tea. You can imagine the discussion, when we wanted to go dancing."
"You don't go anymore?" Charles asked, noticing the past time.
She merely shook her head and no further explanation came. When the first page finished, she asked: "How about your family? Are they all music lovers?"
Charles nodded his head in confirmation. "I was literally brought up in the theater. My mother is a concert pianist and my sister is a very skillful, though quite shy, clarinet player."
"I didn't know you had a sister," Agnes said softly; she had for some reason taken him for being an only child. "A younger one?"
"Seven years younger."
"I have a little sister too. Elizabeth. Two years younger than me." She reached for a frame on her night stand and showed it to Charles. It was a picture of a fair-haired woman, a tall man and a baby in a Christening gown. "That's her husband, Robert, and their daughter, Emily."
"The two of you looks nothing alike," Charles concluded.
Agnes chuckled. "She looks like our mother. I resemble my dad, I'm afraid."
"Well, I suppose that makes your father a striking man indeed."
She returned his significant smile with an impish smirk.
"That almost sounded like something Hawkeye could have come up with," she said, brushing him aside, but Charles noticed the becoming blush in her cheeks, before she could hide it behind her tea cup.
"Don't judge me," he entreated. "I do spend a horrible amount of time with the buffoon. At some point, it was due that his hackneyed remarks would spoil me."
A sudden loud crackle from the P.A. system made both of them lower their cups.
"Attention!" said the voice, cutting mercifully through Waltz of The Flowers. "Incoming wounded. Don't worry, guys. We've got plenty, so you don't have to worry about a dull night."
Charles sighed and scrambled to his feet.
"This war does have a talent for destroying every fine moment in this camp," he growled.