A huge thanks to everyone who followed/favorited/reviewed! Seriously, you all rock, and I am honored to have had so much positive feedback from such lovely people! Here's the second chapter of the story. Enjoy, and please let me know what you think!
Disclaimer: Anything thing you recognize from M*A*S*H or any other source is the property of its rightful owner. I lay no claim on the characters, settings, plotlines, etc. found in M*A*S*H, although I am honored to have to opportunity to work with them throughout this fanfiction (emphasis on the "fan" part). All I own is my OCs and whatever original plotwork is related to them and their stories.
Sam Wilson felt a grin grow on her face when she saw the letter on top of the pile of mail in the mailbox. Samantha Wilson, written on the front of the envelope in the now-familiar chicken-scratch handwriting of the kind-hearted corporal she had been writing to since October. She pulled the mail out of the box, fumbling through the envelopes to see if there were any others with her name on them. Her movements were made somewhat less graceful than usual by the thick mittens protecting her hands from the bitter January air.
A loud honk behind her made her jump and spin around. Her boyfriend, Johnny, was leaning out of the window of his truck, one hand on the steering wheel and the other arm draped casually over the frame of the window. "Got anything good, babe?"
She smiled and waved the stack of envelopes in the air. "Another letter from that Korean corporal I've been writing to."
His face pulled into a sneer. "Regaling you with more tales of his desk job in a comfy MASH unit?" He scoffed. "If the man had any guts at all, he would be up on the front lines with all the rest of the soldiers, killing commies and making points for democracy."
Sam rolled her eyes and sauntered back to his truck. "Don't talk about him like that, he's a friend of mine." Her smile morphed into a smirk. "You know, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were jealous."
"Who? Me? Jealous? How could you ever suggest such a thing?" He smiled, playing along before pulling her into a kiss. He savored her taste for a few moments, before reaching out with his free hand and tickling his fingers along her ribs.
She pulled away from him, slapping his hand away and giggling. "Stop it, you know how I hate it when you do that." She leaned in and kissed him again, before pulling away and running back up the driveway. She turned around for a moment, waving to him as he honked the horn again and drove away. She watched until his truck was out of sight, then sighed happily and gracefully spun around and trotted up to the front door of her house.
On Tuesdays she was usually the only one home. Her brother had basketball practice, her father was working, and her mother volunteered at a local clinic, leaving Sam all by herself for the few hours in between the end of her day at high school and the beginning of her twice-weekly teaching shift at the local ballet studio. This particular Tuesday was no different, and she found herself alone in the house after struggling her way through unlocking the door without removing her mittens. Placing the mail on the table in the entryway, she pulled off her hat and checked her appearance in the mirror on the wall. Bit of hat hair, but nothing too bad. At least my makeup's still good.
She dropped her backpack on the ground and pulled off her mittens, scarf, and coat, hanging them up in the closet across the hall from the mirror. The hat she placed on the set of hooks hung on the inside of the closet door. Once she had finished storing her extra layers, she retrieved both her backpack and the mail, and carried both to her bedroom on the second floor of the house.
Upon reaching her room, she again dropped her backpack unceremoniously on the floor. She flopped herself onto her bed and began to sort through the mail a second time, this time unhindered by the bulkiness of her mittens. She set aside Radar's letter to read later, and looked through the rest of the mail. Bill, bill, junk, bill, medical journal, junk, bill . . . hey, here's one with Sam's name on it! Indeed, the front of the envelope was labeled with her brother's name, Samuel K. Wilson. And the return address was . . .
Sam felt something inside her belly drop. She supposed it must have somehow ended up in her throat – it was the only way to explain the curious lump that had suddenly formed there. It hurt, and the violent pounding of her heart certainly wasn't helping. The return address was the address of their local draft board. Dear God, no. Not Sam.
Ignoring the rest of the mail, as well as any of the possible legal ramifications of her actions, she tore open the envelope and began reading: Dear Mr. Wilson . . .
No, dear God, dear God, no, not Sam, not Sam, no, oh, my God, please no, not Sam, not him, no . . .
Her mind seemed to be stuck on one track of though. She could not lose her brother. If he went over to Korea, there was no guarantee that he would be brought back. Radar had told her what good medical teams they had over there, but how many times had he written to her about someone who didn't make it, didn't even make the trip to the MASH unit? She and Sam had been together their entire lives, heck, they'd even shared the same womb. Out of everyone in the world, Sam was the one person she could always count on. Sure, they'd had their differences, but he was always there, he had always been there. And if he was drafted, if he'd really been drafted . . . well, then he wouldn't be there anymore. Sam wouldn't be there. He would be gone.
Dear God, Sam gone, no. No, no way. No way in hell. She put the letter down on her bed next to Radar's, wiping at her eyes, ashamed of the tears trailing down her cheeks. Pull yourself together princess, there's a time for crying and this isn't it. Once she was satisfied that her face was dry, she grabbed up the rest of the mail and ran downstairs to put it on the kitchen table. She immediately darted back up to her room, and froze in the doorway when she saw the two letters lying on her bed. One happy, one sad. Both looked innocent, but both were so different in their nature. She felt a sob building up in her throat, and forced herself to swallow it instead of letting it out like she so desperately wanted to.
Letting out a shaky breath instead, she made her way back to her bed. She left Radar's letter on the bed – she would read it later, once she had calmed down some – and grabbed up the draft letter again, carrying it with her over to her desk. She read through it again, trying to wrap her head around the possibility of her brother really being drafted. Good God, he was still in high school, he was going to be a doctor, they couldn't do that to him! But what could she do? It wasn't like she could go instead . . .
The thing in her belly dropped to her throat again, but this time it felt like her heart had stopped altogether. Like she had told Radar, she and her brother were very similar in appearance. He was only an inch or two taller than she was, and they both had the same straight red hair and rich brown eyes. Their builds weren't too different either – Samuel was naturally lanky, and Samantha's years of dancing, field hockey, and keeping up with her brother had given her a better than average level of muscle tone and definition. Logically, there was very little reason why she couldn't at least attempt to pull it off.
Except that she could get in a heap of trouble if someone found out. And even worse, then Sam herself would end up in Korea. She would have to wait another year to finish high school, at the very least. And that was if she was lucky – it could very well be that she never made it home at all. Would it be worth it? Couldn't Samuel just dodge the draft somehow, maybe take a little trip to Canada for the duration? Would it be worth her life, all her plans for the future, in order to make sure her brother was safe?
When the rest of her family made it home that night, she didn't mention the draft notice that was lying in her closet in an old shoebox filled with letters and pictures from her days at summer camp. No one went in there, her parents because they didn't care and her brother because he had already been through the whole thing at least a hundred times. She was perhaps more quiet than usual, her laugh more strained, but she was able to brush it off as stress from her dance class – after all, Shirley Thomson and Lily Evers had gotten into a ridiculous fight over hair ribbons that had taken Sam a good ten minutes to resolve.
She kept an eye on her brother the whole time. He was smiling and laughing all the way through dinner, just like he usually did. Was he worth her saving him from the war? Yes, definitely. Was she brave enough to do it? Well, that was the question.
Samuel had always had a fear of loud noises. It wasn't nearly as bad once they got older, but when they were younger, he had always been petrified whenever a thunderstorm had rolled in. Samantha had never been afraid of noises, and it had always been up to her to comfort her brother on dark and stormy nights. Even once they were in high school, there were still some nights when he would come running to her room after the skies started rumbling, and she would spend the night trying to console him as he trembled next to her under the blanket fort they had been setting up on stormy nights since they were children. How could she ask him to go and face the thunder that Radar had written to her about so many times, the kind of thunder that actually could hurt him, just like he had always feared?
As she was lying awake in her bed that night, she realized that she could not ask that of him. It didn't matter what happened to her, she could not ask him to go to Korea while she stayed safe at home. It had always been her job to be brave when he could not, and it always would be. It didn't matter if she was brave enough to be a soldier; the only thing that mattered was that her brother wasn't, and she couldn't live with herself if he was forced to fight anyways.
Besides, she though, looking over to the still-unopened letter lying on her nightstand, I've already got a friend over there.