Chapter 2: Racing To Help

"Oh my God!" Hawkeye screamed from where he stood in the doorway. He was making sure that everyone was off the compound, had heard the sniper fire and seen the young chaplain go down.

"Pierce! What happened? Where the hell do you think you're going?" Major Charles Emerson Winchester snapped as he stepped forward and grabbed his counterpart by the wrist in order to stop him from rushing back into the danger zone.

"Let go of me, Charles! I need to get to the compound! Mulcahy's down! He was hit by sniper fire!"

"Oh, Lord! You can't get him inside by yourself. I'll come with you. You need my help."

"Right, let's go. We don't have time for discussion." Hawkeye said as he dashed out into the compound with Charles right on his heels.

As soon as the two surgeons reached him, they immediately knew that Mulcahy was in serious trouble from the amount of blood that he was lying in. Hawkeye and Charles picked Mulcahy up very carefully and rushed him inside to safety and laid him on a gurney.

"What in the world happened here?" Potter asked as he rushed from the other side of the room where he had been working.

"Father Mulcahy was hit, Colonel. It looks pretty bad. I'll go in and see how bad the damage is once we put him under."

"Go ahead, Pierce. We'll handle the rest of the wounded."

"That's right. Hunnicutt and I will divide your patients between us. You concentrate on Father Mulcahy." Charles agreed.

"Okay, let's get him into OR and get him prepped. I'm gonna go scrub." Hawkeye said as he dashed from the room on trembling knees.

"How's he doing, Hawk?" BJ asked, glancing up from the bowel re-section that he was working on.

"It's gonna be a rough go, Beej. The bullet hit him in the back, next to his right shoulder blade and it lodged in his collarbone. It wasn't easy removing it. What concerns me is the fact that he lost so much blood before Charles and I got to him. The actual damage doesn't look as bad as what I originally thought. I'll be ready to start closing here in a few minutes." Hawkeye said, not looking up from what he was doing.

"Doctor, his pressure's dropping." The nurse said hurriedly, fear shining in her dark eyes.

"I must have missed a bleeder in there somewhere. Pump that blood in fast! I need some suction here! I can't see!" Hawkeye shouted orders to those around him as he felt his blood run cold, keenly aware of several pairs of eyes on him. "Come on, Father. Stay with me here. Okay, there it is. I see it. Give me a clamp. I've got it. How's he doing?"

"Pressure's stabilized, Doctor."

"I like a man who has friends in high places." BJ joked, trying to relieve the tension as the nurse assisting Hawkeye reached up and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"An admirable job, Pierce. Good work." Charles commented.

"Well, let's hope so. I'm closing now." Hawkeye breathed, trying to still his trembling hands.

An hour later, the surgeons had finished tending to all of the wounded soldiers that had been brought in and they had retreated to the changing room to get out of the blood soaked surgical scrubs that they were wearing. Hawkeye peeled off his scrub top but instead of tossing it into the bin, he stood holding the bloody shirt in his trembling hands, a haunted, far off look in his eyes.

"Hawk? Are you okay?" BJ asked, concerned, approaching Hawkeye and resting a hand on his shoulder.

"I think so, Beej. I don't know for sure, though." Hawkeye said, not resisting when his friend took the crumpled top from him and tossed it in the bin behind him.

"Pierce, why don't you go back to the Swamp and get some rest. You've had a stressful session and you look exhausted." Colonel Potter suggested quietly.

"I'm fine. I'm gonna go over to post op and check on Father Mulcahy. I think I'll sit with him for awhile. Just to make sure he's okay."

Knowing the look in their counterpart's eyes yielded no room for argument, the other three in the room simply stood aside and watched as Hawkeye turned and left the room, heading through the post op doors.

As he walked into post op and crossed the room to Father Mulcahy's bed, Hawkeye felt his blood run cold again. When he approached, the nurse making rounds looked up and acknowledged him with a small smile.

"How's he doing?" Hawkeye asked.

"He's stable now, Doctor."

Taking the chart that the nurse handed to him, he studied the various stats on the page before handing it back to her. "Okay. Let's start him on IV antibiotics to cut down the risk of any infection due to the internal trauma. Also, I want you to keep a close watch on him and monitor his vital signs every 2 hours."

"Yes, Doctor." The young nurse acknowledged as she went to continue on with her rounds.

As soon as the duty nurse had gone, Hawkeye sat quietly by Mulcahy's bedside, reflecting silently on the events of the OR session. It unnerved him to think that they nearly lost the man who was literally the soul of the unit. It had been entirely too close. He was angry at the snipers who had infiltrated their camp and shot an unarmed man who was trying to help get a wounded man to safety and he was frustrated at himself for missing the bleeder that resulted in things taking a scary turn. Hawkeye leaned his head against the wall behind him, closing his eyes to attempt to corral his scattered thoughts, and it was in this moment that his physical exhaustion decided to rear its head. Before he was even aware of it, Hawkeye had dropped off into a fitful sleep at the young chaplain's bedside.

Three hours later, BJ walked slowly into post op for his shift feeling like he had a huge weight on his shoulders. He noticed Hawkeye was asleep next to Father Mulcahy's bed but pushed the sight out of his thoughts for a moment as he made rounds with the nurse that he was relieving to get a status report on all of the patients in the ward.

After he finished his first rounds, BJ walked softly over to where Hawkeye was resting and sat down on the empty bed next to him. He knew that the weary surgeon needed to get some sleep but didn't think he'd rest very well sitting in a chair with his head against a hard wall.

"Hawk." BJ whispered. When he got no response, he reached out and placed a gentle hand on his friend's shoulder. "Hawkeye."

"Huh? What?" Hawkeye muttered sleepily as he woke with a start and looked around the room. "BJ?"

"Yeah. I just came in to start my shift and noticed you here."

"Oh. I guess I was more exhausted than I thought. I must have dozed off."

"So, how's he doing?"

"Well, his vitals are stable and that's a good sign. I started him on an antibiotic IV to stem off any possibility of infection from the internal trauma. I'll feel a little better when he wakes up, though."

"I think we all will."

"What time is it anyway?" Hawkeye asked.

"It's midnight. You've been sitting here for over four hours." BJ said, watching as Hawkeye rubbed a hand over his face in an effort to keep himself from falling asleep again. "Listen, we're not using this next bed here so why don't you lie down for a bit. That way you can get some rest and still be nearby. It's a better idea than sleeping in a chair. If anything changes, I promise I'll wake you."

It was a testament to how tired Hawkeye really was when he didn't even attempt to pose an argument. Instead he allowed BJ to pull him to his feet and sat wearily on the bed his friend had just been sitting on. Yawning, he pulled his legs up, stretched out and sank back into a sound sleep before his head even hit the pillow.

BJ paused for a moment in the stillness of the silent post op ward. Realizing how close the tight knit medical unit came to sustaining a devastating blow, he closed his eyes for a moment and said a silent prayer that Father Mulcahy would recover from his ordeal and that Hawkeye would be able to overcome and get past the horror that he had witnessed.