Change
Chapter 3
"Nurse Baker, clamp, please," Hawkeye asked the woman across the patient from him.
She slammed it into his open palm and he regarded her curiously over his surgical mask.
"Thank you," he replied curtly and confusedly.
Her attitude remained the same throughout the surgery. As well as the next three. In between patients, some of the nurses were running into him while carrying supplies, hitting him with gurneys and in one case, she stepped on his foot.
After about a dozen times he began to believe that none of this was coincidence.
By the end of the day, he lay on his cot and stared at the tent ceiling.
BJ walked in and looked at his friend.
"You okay?" BJ asked as he came in to change his clothes.
Hawkeye sighed audibly.
"Could this have anything to do with the nurses being mean to you during surgery?" BJ asked. "When a girl teases you, it usually means she likes you."
Hawkeye gave him a glaring side-eye.
"I'm fairly certain that what was happening in the OR today was not teasing. I could handle teasing. I asked out a dozen nurses for the movie tonight and eleven of them said they were washing their hair."
"What did the twelfth one say?" BJ asked.
She stomped on my food and stalked off.
"I'd take that as a no."
"That's what I figured, too. I think I'm lucky that I got out of that OR in one piece today or attempting to do an exploratory on me," Hawkeye told BJ.
"If it makes you feel better, you can be my date for the movie," BJ smiled.
"That's kind of you, Beej. I think I might stay in tonight, though. In case one of the nurses decides to take advantage of the dark and stab me."
Frank walked into the tent a moment later. "Well, well, if it isn't the slap-champ of the 4077."
"Excuse me?" Hawkeye said, his eyes almost turning red with rage.
"The rumor is you took a nasty hit to that face of yours last night. Apparently she can hit pretty well for a lady."
"You should watch out. You'll be next on her hit list, Frank," Hawkeye said.
"So, it's true? You got hit by a woman?" Frank laughed in an aha kind of way. "Doesn't feel so good, does it?"
Hawkeye was not happy. But he suddenly knew why all of the nurses had rejected him throughout the day.
"She's told all of them and turned all of them against me!" Hawkeye shouted as he stood up from his cot.
"Elizabeth doesn't really strike me…"
"Ha-ha," Hawkeye laughed in a sarcastic way.
BJ continued, "I don't think she ran off and told people."
"What makes you so sure?" he asked.
"I'm not. But I spent a fair bit of time with her and I don't think she's that kind of person," BJ told him.
"And you didn't?"
"Is that a question or a statement?" BJ asked. "Because, of course, I didn't tell anyone. Why would I tell anyone?"
"Who did you hear it from?" Hawkeye was suddenly in Frank's face.
Frank shook his head defiantly from side to side. "I will never tell."
"Major Houlihan," Both BJ and Hawkeye said together.
Frank pouted immediately. "How'd you know?"
"It's written all over your face," Hawkeye replied as he held up a mirror to Frank's face.
"That's Margaret's color, isn't it?" BJ asked about the lipstick that was in a few places on Frank's face and neck.
Frank turned away from the other men quickly. He was embarrassed. He couldn't believe that Margaret had let him go out like that, but he had been in a hurry to leave her tent a few minutes ago.
Hawkeye, with BJ on his heels, left the tent and Frank behind. They moved to Margaret Houlihan's tent and he knocked on the door.
"Frank, go away. I'm tired," Margaret's voice called.
Hawkeye chose not to say anything, he simply pulled the door open. He and BJ ducked to enter.
"Hi honey, I'm home," Hawkeye said. "And he followed me home from school today; can I keep him?" he pointed to BJ.
Margaret Houlihan's blonde head whipped around and she immediately snarled. "Don't' you even have the common decency to announce yourself before barging into a woman's private quarters?"
Hawkeye very nearly mad a caustic comment, but chose to censor himself and let it slip away.
"I'm just here to find out where you heard about my getting a love tap from our Major Lawrence?" he told her.
Margaret's smile was an evil one. "I wish I'd have been there. Did it hurt? Does it still hurt?" she asked, clearly hoping it still did .
"Geez, Margaret, I had no idea you were just a sadist," BJ replied.
"And what exactly are you doing here?"
"Bodyguard," he laughed while Margaret joined him.
"Ha-ha," Hawkeye deadpanned. "Keep laughing at my expense. At least tell me who told you. Where did you heard it? Did Elizabeth tell you?"
Margaret shook her head. "My nurses told me. And then they informed me that you were getting the deep freeze from them. It'll be a cold day in hell before Hawkeye Pierce touches another one of my nurses."
"What?" Hawkeye asked.
"They're on strike when it comes to you, Pierce. None of those ladies is going to go near you," Margaret said with a grin of satisfaction. "I can't say that I'm disappointed that I won't turn a corner to find you canoodling with one of them. I don't know what they see in you anyway…"
"Well, this has been a wonderful experience, Margaret, but we should be going," BJ said as he decided that their time was done there.
"I don't think your loose end is Major Lawrence, Pierce. I tried to ask her about it today; to get the real story, but she said that she didn't feel right talking about it and asked me to not talk about it."
"I hope you didn't swear some kind of blood oath on it," Hawkeye said. "Because I know you told Frank already."
BJ ushered Hawkeye out of the tent and into the night.
"I…" Hawkeye started.
Radar came running. "We have incoming wounded," he said. A second later the helicopters were heard.
"Time to go," BJ said in reply.
Ten minutes later all of the doctors and nurses were scrubbing up.
"I'll move the movie until tomorrow night all," Colonel Potter told them.
"What movie were we set for any way?" BJ asked.
"Bonzo Goes to Hollywood," Colonel Potter told them.
Next to them, Hawkeye was giving Elizabeth the evil eye. And she was doing her absolute best to ignore him. However, it wasn't working.
"When we're finished here, I'd like a few words with you, Doctor Lawrence," Hawkeye said.
He'd used his non-committal tone. He wasn't joking and he wasn't giving away anything. It was highly suspicious.
Elizabeth knew all of the eyes in the scrub room were on her and waiting for her reaction. Instead of the fireworks everyone expected, she simply nodded.
"Of course, Doctor Pierce."
Hawkeye had been ready to argue. He'd been ready to yell and wheedle until she had relented and agreed to speak with him in private. But he suddenly wound up feeling empty. He noded in return and rinsed his soapy hands off.
…
Nine hours later, they all stepped bleary-eyed into the sun.
The team had worked through the night, yet again, repairing the wounded.
BJ yawned and stretched out his long arms.
"Breakfast, anyone?" he asked while everyone else was watching Elizabeth walking away with Hawkeye.
"I would give anything to be a fly on that wall," Margaret said.
"What's going on?" Colonel Potter asked.
"You mean you haven't heard?" Margaret asked him.
"Heard what?" he barked. "More rumors going around my camp?"
He turned and looked at everyone around him: Klinger, BJ, Radar, Frank Burns and Margaret Houlihan. And none of them wanted to answer his question.
"If one of you doesn't tell me now, you will all be in the stockade. And trust me, it's not as much fun as you've heard. Radar?"
Everyone knew Radar was the weak link when it came to lying. And none of them wanted to go into the stockade.
"It's just Elizabeth being homesick," BJ lied.
All of the eyes darted around.
"Well, even I know that's bull spit," Potter barked. "Someone tell me now. Houlihan?"
"Okay, well, I'm not one to spread rumors…"
The men all laughed and she shot each one of them an evil look in turn.
"Houlihan…"
"Well, I heard that Pierce said another one of his pigheaded things and Elizabeth slapped him. And apparently that's led to all of my nurses having ostracized him."
"And what kind of pigheaded thing did he say this time?" he looked to BJ while he asked.
"I, uh, um…"
"BJ..." Potter said sternly.
"He was voicing his opinion that women, uh, that he thought women were too emotional to be Army surgeons. And she overheard and – and she slapped him."
"It really happened?" Frank laughed. "Oh, man. Pierce is…"
BJ shot Frank a look that silenced him instantly.
"That sure explains why Nurse Kellye almost stuck him with the needle today."
"And why he got his foot run over with a wheelchair," Klinger said. "That hit echoed. She oughta play ball with an arm like that."
"Wait? You saw?" BJ asked.
Klinger busied himself with the ruffles on the skirt of the peach-colored Southern belle get-up he was wearing that particular day.
"Klinger, how many people did you tell about this?" BJ asked.
"Two or three…dozen, at most," Klinger said. "But I didn't realize it would be such a big deal."
"Well, this little thing polarized my camp and I won't have it…" Potter began.
"I'll have Major Lawrence and Captain Pierce report to your office ASAP."
"I want Lawrence and Pierce in my office ASAP," Potter said at the same time as Radar.
…
Elizabeth and Hawkeye were a fair distance away from the camp when they finally began to talk.
"Okay, before you start whatever it is you want to say…"
"I think I should go first," Hawkeye said.
"I just want to say that it is not your fault that I flew off the handle the other night. I've heard people tell me that a woman cannot be a surgeon for the last six years. And as ridiculous as it sounds, the more I heard it, the more I took it as a challenge. But when the famous Doctor Pierce…"
He shook his head. "Famous?"
"Believe me, I've heard of your work," Elizabeth replied.
He shook his head again in disbelief.
"When I heard you saying that about me, that I couldn't do what I wanted to. That I couldn't help these soldiers over here, well, I finally snapped. And proved your point of being too emotional."
Hawkeye was stunned into silence. He closed opened and closed his mouth a few times, with no sound escaping. He blinked, as if it would change what happened, but it didn't. He had prepared himself to come out here and have a war of words. And he got an admission of guilt in its place.
"So, go ahead. Yell at me. Do what you need to do, say what you need to say. I can take it. I'm a big girl."
And it was in that moment that everything shifted between the two of them. He admired her big blue eyes and dark lashes and the way she was biting her bottom lip in anticipation of what he was going to say.
"I, uh…" Hawkeye stuttered. He never stuttered. What was going on?
"Thank you, um, for saying that," he muttered.
"And I am sorry for slapping you. I should not have done that," she said. Elizabeth was looking at him in a way that she hadn't.
In the two weeks she'd been at the 4077, Elizabeth had seen this man in surgery and when not working, he had a martini in one hand and nurse in the other. She was seeing him speechless for the first time. And she could finally see him and only him.
"Captain Pierce and Major Lawrence, report to Colonel Potter immediately," Radar's voice boomed over the PA system.
Their moment was gone in that instant.
"I guess we'd better go," Elizabeth said, finally breaking the gaze and looking away from Hawkeye's eyes.
Hawkeye swallowed hard and nodded. "I think we had better," he agreed. He held out his hand to indicate that Elizabeth should lead the way. She nodded and started walking.
He took a moment to compose himself. What had just happened?
…
Author's Note: And the tension builds! Let me know what you think! Thanks!