After 11 hours in surgery, the doctors are all sitting in the mess tent drinking coffee, still wearing their blood-splattered whites. Nobody's really talking… they're a little too dazed from their long shift to engage in the usual banter. Radar joins them at the table, looking into his mug as if he's never seen coffee before and saying, "I shouldn't drink this if I want to get to sleep anytime soon."

The mention of sleep reminds B.J. of his bizarre dream. His brow furrows as the memory comes back to him; he knows it was just a dream, but it makes him feel uneasy nonetheless. He looks around the table at the others and says, "I had this dream about my daughter last night… right before the wounded came. She was a little kid at first, and then bam! Suddenly she was a teenager."

"You don't need to be Sigmund Freud to figure that one out, Beej," Hawkeye says after a spectacular yawn. "It's an anxiety dream. You're afraid you'll miss her entire childhood."

B.J.'s eyes flick to Hawkeye's. "That's exactly what she said to me. That I missed her childhood."

Hawk waves a hand. "It's textbook, I'm tellin' ya."

"So then what did she mean about a shooting, Mr. Know-It-All?"

Hawkeye raises his eyebrows. "A shooting? As in bang bang? I don't know… guns in dreams are usually phallic symbols."

"Great," B.J. says sarcastically.

But Hawkeye seems to be getting into this whole dream interpretation thing. "What did she say, exactly?"

B.J. shuts his eyes, trying to remember. "A lot of people will get hurt if I don't stop the shooting. Something like that."

Potter says, "Just dream nonsense, I'm sure, Hunnicutt. Your mind was probably incorporating the war into your dream. I wouldn't worry about it."

Hawkeye's sitting up a little straighter now, looking intrigued, maybe even concerned. "Wait a minute. This is weird. I had a dream about Trapper last night," he reveals. "And he also had a warning… that somebody was dangerous. He told me 'right three,' whatever the hell that means."

B.J. feels a cold shiver travel down his spine. Yeah, it's weird, all right… to put it mildly. Is there some kind of message invading their dreams?

Charles, who's the last person that B.J. imagined would take this seriously, adds, "Well, actually…"

"Yes, Charles?" B.J. prompts, feeling his pulse pick up.

"I don't often recall my dreams," he confesses, "which is why I'm saying anything at all that might contribute to this lunacy. But I have a very vivid recollection of the man I was playing chess with telling me that I needed to stay on my toes. It was quite unsettling. He said… well, I'm not sure of the exact wording, but he said something was underneath the mattress."

B.J. looks at Hawkeye and then at Potter. Their expressions make it clear: this is beyond spooky. There's something very strange going on, and it seems that it may indicate real danger.

Potter clears his throat, then says, "As it happens, I did have something of an odd dream, myself. We were bugging out, but we didn't know where we were going. And Radar said—"

"I was in your dream, sir?" He sounds quite pleased.

"Yes, you were. And you said something about watching out for the quiet ones."

Radar frowns. "That doesn't sound like me, sir. I don't have anything against quiet people."

Now they're all looking around the table at each other, alert and on edge, wondering what on earth all of this is supposed to mean.

As if on cue, Margaret comes into the mess tent then and starts to head for the coffee urn. Potter stops her, "Margaret? Could you come over here for a second?"

"Certainly, sir." She takes a seat at the table and the smile on her face quickly fades as she looks at the doctors' expressions. "Is something wrong?"

B.J.'s heart is hammering in his chest now. He's convinced all of this means something. Without any preamble, Potter says to Margaret, "Did you have a dream last night? An unusual dream that might have included a warning of some kind?"

"A what?" Margaret looks utterly confused, but only for a second, because apparently a memory comes to her and her expression turns to surprise. "Watch out for the cook," she mumbles, and the men, tense and apprehensive, nearly leap out of their seats toward her.

"What?" Hawkeye and B.J. ask in unison.

She gazes around the table at them all. "I dreamt about Frank," she explains. "He was in my tent, visiting me. And when he was leaving, he said, 'Watch out for the cook.' I don't know what that's supposed to mean."

Hawkeye exchanges a look with B.J. "Our cook?"

"That doesn't make sense… does it?" B.J. asks.

Charles interjects, "Nothing about any of this makes sense."

Turning to Potter, Hawkeye says, "I know it sounds crazy, Colonel, but I really want to go talk to the cook right now."

"Now hold on a minute, Pierce," the Colonel says with his hand held up. "Let's just settle down here and think, before we go off half-cocked. What do we really know?"

"That something pretty spooky is goin' on!" Radar replies, his face a little paler than usual.

"Hold on a second," B.J. says suddenly, his mind reeling as something comes back to him. "Hang on, I think we have… don't we have a patient in post-op named Cooke?" He looks at Potter for confirmation.

And Potter nods his head slowly. "Yeah. You're right, Hunnicutt, we do. Private Cooke, he's been here since Sunday. Chest wound, but he's on the mend."

Hawkeye's on his feet in a flash. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm going to post-op to take a peek under Private Cooke's mattress. Hopefully I'll only end up looking like some crazy man with a dust-bunny fetish, because I'm really worried about what the alternative would be."

"We'll all go, Pierce," Potter says, and as a group, they head out of the mess tent.