Back home and settled into his work routine, Hawkeye sat in his office one evening after Jim and Sheila had left and dug out his address book. Before he could talk himself out of it, he dialed the number.
"Hey, Sidney, how the hell are ya? It's Hawkeye Pierce."
There was a delighted laugh on the other end of the line. "Hawkeye! It's great to hear your voice. I think the better question is how the hell are you?"
In the first year following the war, Hawkeye and Sidney had kept up their sessions over the phone. Hawkeye was still in recovery from the breakdown that he'd suffered in the war's final days, and he didn't like the idea of looking for a local psychiatrist, not to mention the fact that he doubted he'd find the same comfort level with someone new. Sidney was open to having sessions over the phone, and they went well, even though it was sometimes difficult because Hawkeye couldn't see Sidney and vice-versa.
Eventually the therapy tapered off, then stopped altogether. Hawkeye was never going to forget about the horrific incident on the bus that night, but he was no longer consumed by guilt. The pain had lessened over time.
"I'm doing OK, Sid," he said now, "but I do have something I'd like to talk to you about. Do you think we can set up an appointment?"
"I'm free now, if that's OK with you, Hawk. You caught me at a good time. Shoot, if you'll pardon the expression."
That threw Hawkeye a little; he hadn't planned how he was going to broach the subject. He took a long moment to think, and then finally he opened his mouth, and out came: "Sidney, by the time a man is 38, he ought to know his sexual orientation, right?"
At first Sidney chuckled, but then he must've realized this was serious business. "What are you saying? Are you saying you think you're homosexual?"
Hawkeye, filled with nervous energy, began to fiddle with the phone cord, then a pen. "I'm having feelings, Sidney. Intense and confusing feelings…" He let that trail off, because Sidney was very acquainted with the object of Hawkeye's affections, so he didn't want to disclose B.J.'s name.
Sidney was apparently nonplussed, because there was silence for a very long time. This was the tough part about therapy with Sidney Freedman over the phone. He did have these naturally long pauses in his everyday conversations with patients; he absorbed everything that a person said and mulled it over at length. But waiting him out without being able to see him… that drove Hawkeye crazy. In a manner of speaking.
Eventually Sidney replied, "Hawkeye, you have always struck me as a person with an extra-strength capacity for love. You feel so much. The other thing you are and always have been is honest with yourself. So the fact that you're even asking the question seems to suggest you already know the answer. Don't deny your feelings just because you don't think they make sense."
"But it's awfully late in my life to suddenly find myself attracted to a… to a man."
"There's a whole school of thought that everyone is innately bisexual—but I'm probably telling you something you already know. That's right out of Psych 101."
"So… you think this could actually be something? I mean, it's not just a temporary reaction to something else…?"
"I don't know the details, Hawkeye, so I can't say. If you want to tell me the details, we can try to figure it out together."
Hawkeye didn't really want to tell him everything, no. This was hard to talk about, even with the best psychiatrist he'd ever had the privilege of knowing.
Sidney picked up on the hesitation. "But if you don't, then I think you should ask yourself what you asked me. Are the feelings real, or are they the result of something else that's going on? You're very good at knowing yourself, Hawkeye. It's one of your best qualities."
They talked for another few minutes, but since Hawkeye didn't want to go into specifics, the session sputtered to an end. They talked a little about Sherman Potter, and how he was managing to carry on after the death of his wife, and a few of their other friends from the war. They said their goodbyes with promises to visit each other before too much more time passed.
On his walk home from work, Hawkeye did as Sidney had suggested: he asked himself, Are my feelings for B.J. real, or is this just some weird phase I'm going through?
He got his answer that night, when the phone rang in the middle of The Donna Reed Show. At the sound of B.J.'s voice on the other end, his stomach did a little somersault, his heart fluttered, and his face broke out into a grin.
No doubt about it, he was in love.