Title: 50 Starts -- Numbers 41-50
Pairing: None - General Series
Prompt: #99 - Writer's Choice - General MASH
Rating: Teen (Sergeant)
Word Count: 551
See Part 1 for disclaimers.
41. Smile
Their jokes are ridiculously juvenile. An exercise in immaturity. Stupidity in its purest form. There are times, however, when he can't stop the corners of his mouth from curling upward. He tries to ignore them -- sometimes he can't. He has no excuse. What can he say? Even an uptight, high-brow Bostonian occasionally needs to be a child.
And it's in these moments that Charles lets go and jokes right along with them.
42. Note
"Hawk, there's so much to say but so little time to say it. I'm sorry I couldn't wait for you to come back before I left. I'll miss you more than you'll ever know."
Why were those three simple sentences so impossible to write -- for either of them?
43. Home
Hot showers. Apple pie. Soft beds. Clean clothes. Family. Friends. A '52 Chevy. Mowing the lawn on a hot summer day.
Freedom.
44. Blood
Red. Wet. Coppery. It spills out from their wounds and pools around our exhausted feet. We take needles and thread and do our best to sew them up. To save them. Most days, we succeed. Sometimes we don't. The only definite here is that the crimson rivers will continue to flow no matter how much we pray for them to stop.
45. Self
Radar is confused. He's not sure who he is anymore. Naïve Iowa farm boy or hardened war veteran. They all want him to be the boy he was before he'd left home. But after all he's seen, how is that possible? He knows it's not. Radar just wishes that everyone else understood.
46. Hate
Frank doesn't get it. He can't imagine what he's ever done to any of them. A Major in the U.S. Army, he demands respect, though he rarely gets it; metes out discipline with a firm hand when it's needed, though no one ever listens to him. That is his job -- one he does very well. But he just can't figure out why everyone hates him so much.
47. Run
When BJ kisses him, Charles runs afterward. Not because he's angry or disgusted, but because he's so afraid. Terrified that if their lips touch again, that he'll fall so hard and so fast for the other surgeon, that he'll never be able to get back up again.
48. Free
The bullets stop flying. The mortars no longer fall. The patients are checked then sent to the hospitals. The tents are taken down. Bags packed. Goodbyes said. Then it's over and we all go home.
49. Face
They will haunt me until the day I die. Every soldier, every civilian, every child that passes before me. Each one that is placed on my table, requiring the blade of my scalpel, the skill of my hands; depending on me for their survival. I can't see them now, there are too many. They blur together in one long line of blood. But each night I know their faces will be in my dreams.
50. Smell
Sulfur. Antiseptic. Blood. Sweat. Alcohol. Tears.
All of these things smell the same to them now. They have become the scents of war. Of fear. Of evil. And they will forever serve as a reminder of the years they've lost.