Later that night, in-between sipping the Swamp's famous still swine from a martini glass (the gin, made in different variations) and sucking the alcohol from an olive, I laughed like I had never laughed before. It was like Hawkeye was perfect at what he did and catered to my sense of sarcasm and wit. He knew when to make me giggle and what stories to tell me, especially with a person (like me) who is awkward in social situations until comfortable. He was, in an interesting way (believe it or not), almost the perfect gentleman, someone a little older than I am who could talk on the same level as me and make me feel relaxed. Other than Dean, nobody could do that to me and get away with it.

It was long after midnight when Hawkeye told his last story to me as I sat in a chair across from him, something about his father living in Crabapple Cove, Maine and vacationing in Vermont. He had many of those stories strung all together for me, seeing as how the two lived together for so long together, and much more. Others included childhood memories, the family's cabin in Vermont, school days and being a milk monitor, which was an important position in the old Depression days in Maine. He even had a serious moment when telling me about his mother and younger sister (both passed on), writing to his father to send them his love on occasion, usually when the mood took him. He even received a sweater his sister knitted when she was very young, an item she made for when he was an adult.

Afterward, it was quiet for a while between the two of us. I could hear the crickets singing outside and Hawkeye sipping noisily from his martini glass slowly, as if it were the last glass of alcohol he would ever have. I sipped again myself, almost drowning in the ecstasy known only to me as gin, something I haven't had in some months now. It was my weakness like Henry always pointed out, but I loved it nonetheless. It was smooth, tart and strong.

Then, after what seemed like an eternity of silence, Hawkeye sat up straighter. "Jeanie, you haven't really said anything about yourself this evening."

"Do you really need to know about me?" I asked, emptying my fourth glass of "swill", as Frank Burns called it earlier that night.

"Animals," the major also mentioned before he left for the delousing station, most likely to be with Margaret Houlihan.

"I never really noticed you before," Hawkeye admitted honestly, earnestly enough too, as I managed to keep myself in the present and not in the past. "And this whole time, you've been laughing at everything I've said or looked sympathetic. You're a good listener, but are you a good talker?"

"Do you want me to be serious and truthful?" I took the olive from the bottom of the glass and sucked on it once more, tasting the bitterness surrounding it. "It's a long story."

Damn, this stuff is good. I should make some in my quarters.

"Sometimes, I prefer it. Long stories are always nice."

"Mine isn't, Hawkeye. My 'long story' isn't the greatest and it's very sad. And there are a lot of ups and downs, mostly downs that never want to get back up again."

"Now, don't get me on the downs too." Hawkeye looked somber, but I knew otherwise. "I've been so down that I can't get back up again. I'm so down that even a hand up can't get me running."

With a straight face, Hawkeye got up from his seat (his cot) and took my glass, refilling it for me at the still by Trapper's sleeping spot. Then, after seeing my unspoken thanks, he added, "You seem like a down-to-earth, solemn person. You're too shy around other people and seem to want to open up to someone, if they would listen to you. You have a close relationship with Henry obviously, but he's too busy to notice much of anything these days, especially you. You don't like to speak up either."

I looked around the Swamp frantically (Trapper and Frank Burns were not around) and wished that nobody else but Hawkeye hear this, seeing as how things get around quickly in a camp like the 4077th. My worries about being overheard were confounded though when Hawkeye informed me, as he down with his drink again, that both of his bedmates were out for the night and nobody was likely to listen in on us, since nobody bothers him unless it was an emergency or if some nurse wanted something from him (I almost snickered at the last comment). According to him, Frank was with Margaret (probably arousing his wife's suspicions and confirming mine) and Trapper was in the Supply Room with one of the other nurses (sucking face and confirming his wife's wild conspiracy theories). We were safe for now.

I sighed. "There isn't much about me," I started slowly and with hesitation. "I'm a younger twin, my brother Dean is the oldest. My parents divorced when I was young, I think when I was five, and my mother remarried later on to a man she had an extra-marital affair with and took me and Dean on a wild moving frenzy until we were ten. Both of them …well, all three of the so-called parental unit…are alcoholics, in their own way. My stepfather is an ass. So, my brother was my only companion really and…"

I trailed, but then continued, picking up where I left off. I had a good sob story going on before long, but I was sure that Hawkeye didn't mind. I mean, he listened to my whole story and encouraged me on a lot every time I stopped, telling me that it was ok to move on, to tell me everything I could. I knew that he was listening to me by his body language when I looked back at him: practically staring at me at eye level, not being distracted by some other trinket or person, whatever. This, most of all, encouraged me to go on. I knew that he would be a true friend.

I was vague at first, but then detailed everything when appropriate. I told how Clarence, my own stepfather (who had been chasing me around since he knew me) raped me and impregnated me. Then, I explained how I started a miscarriage (or early labor, however people look at it) at Henry's front door late one night about four or five months prematurely, losing a baby boy I could have loved, despite my own lack of maternal feelings. I continued into how my mother's activities in church blinded her to her husband's infidelities and what else was really going on, like him trying to control me and Dean, finally sending my brother away in a fit of jealousy. Then, there was how my own father would argue with my mother and stepfather, making us twins choose sides and then beating us when we did not chose his side, me so more than Dean.

I had tears rolling down my face by then, explaining how both Dean and I escaped. I went to nursing school for the military because it seemed like a viable option and he went off to just join the military after his academy years (just like Clarence threatened to do to him), just like our father, and fought the Nazis in Europe. We were both barely eighteen years old and needed to stay away from a world we could not afford to remain in.

Then, I went into the soft subject of Lorraine and Henry before Hawkeye could ask me. Lorraine was our neighbor in Bloomington, when we finally settled down and stopped moving away from my father. She always watched me and Dean, but as I explained to Hawkeye, she and Henry were also trying to become our guardians because they knew how dysfunctional our lives were. When that failed, she and Henry would take turns keeping an eye out for us, trying to help us, even offering and schooling when we didn't ask. Lorraine home-schooled me for a while because half the time I was sick, stressed out and always wondering when my life would end (sometimes, trying to end it myself a few times). However, very slowly, her ministrations, along with Henry's, helped me to cope and to leave them without a second thought, hardly without a goodbye and some gratitude. It was hard, but I knew that I had to do it or cling to them forever.

Obviously, Dean and I found our own footing by ourselves (Dean more so than I did), which Henry is still angry about in a way. Many secrets had to be kept afterward to keep him at bay, to maintain him away and to keep the hard feelings at bay, many of them I wish I could tell someone about. I could not help myself, but I even told Hawkeye things I never told Henry, like when I was West Germany, how I spied on the Soviets under a different name. I was ordered to and never liked it, but it was a job I took to get far away from my life in Bloomington, since it dogged me wherever I went in the States.

"West Germany…it's a lovely country, but the food is lousy sometimes and the Soviets have the best cigarettes," I mentioned with a smile. "They're still recovering from the war, last I knew. It's not quite a walk in the park, but it was worth living there and seeing the aftermath of the last war as it happened."

I didn't tell Hawkeye much else, of course forgetting conveniently the most important force of all when I was in Europe: my lover, my falcon, the one I could never mention the name to anyone. I wasn't ready to just discuss it yet and Hawkeye saw that in my eyes. He left that alone, understanding that even old flames, especially those that had passed on and have died, could not be easily talked about.

And then, there were my duties as a nurse, little old me shipped to Korea. By then, I calmed down, explaining how I came to the 4077th, sneaking into Bloomington for my final goodbyes, and how lonely and humiliated I felt with everything and everybody around me, even going as far to explain that my excitement over new assignments was not even there after a while. After the initial look around died down, Korea became just another assignment for me, another country that I was seeing being bombed to pieces.

"I even wrote to Henry about it, telling him that we should all be together in this and include those majors," I added afterward. "Radar didn't bother to give it to him after he found it on his desk. Instead, our two-foot tall company clerk tried to hide it because of the personal tone it had, some of it pretty hideous to some people's eyes. The majors then found it when he tried to be sneaky, read it and complained about it instead of punishing me for 'wasting supplies'. Henry was yelling at me in his office about it. And that was when you came in."

I never really told my life story to anyone before save for Dean, who was there with me most of the way anyway. I was afraid to, too reserved of everybody and what they would think of me if I did. However, when I looked to Hawkeye, half-expecting him to scoff at me and walk away (even though I knew he was listening), I saw his face: incredulous, full of surprise and disbelief at what had happened. He didn't even drink the swill that he went up to get. Indeed, his hand stood in midair, his glass almost tipping over and spilling. At the last moment though, he noticed it and took a gulp of it quickly, as if to forget what I said because it seemed like too much to comprehend and too much to bear on his shoulders almost.

Soon though, Hawkeye regained his composure, shaking off his last drink. "I'm sorry, Jeanie," was all he said, all he could say. "I'm sorry for everything."

I shrugged my shoulders, like it was nothing to be sorry about (it wasn't Hawkeye's fault any of this happened and he shouldn't be apologizing). It did feel like nothing though, like my life had been normal to begin with and not full of heartbreak and loss. It had been the standard to go through all of that and more.

"Hawkeye, it's been a long time since it's happened," I only replied. "It's not anything you can help with. I guess I just needed someone's ear."

But the doctor shook his head, unbelieving still. "If there's anything I can do for you, you know you can come to me."

Hawkeye then took another gulp of swill, showing me his true face, if only for a moment: tired, depressed and desperate. For what he was desperate for, I could not tell. He looked like he too needed help and humor was his only way of coping if he could not get that assistance from someone or something. All of the jokes he said or the pranks he pulled were things to keep him sane from an insane place. I felt sorry for him instead of myself. Just his face put a lot into perspective for me.

What a pity party I've been. How selfish I've been!

Rising and gulping down my fifth glass quickly, I sighed once more. "And you know you can do the same thing," I whispered, knowing that Hawkeye heard me, as he nodded his head to tell me he heard. He would, most likely, do it because knew already that I was a good listener.

Hawkeye finally got up and put his glass down on some sort of nightstand (his footlocker). "Do you want me to walk you back to your tent now?" he then asked, knowing that it was time to go to bed.

Well, Hawkeye also probably didn't need to ask me anyway, but just needed something to get a conversation going because the moment seemed awkward after so much had been said. After all, just telling each other some heavy stories, it seemed right to go to bed and to sleep it off, even if the night was pretty young and the stars had just come out. Worse, he probably knew (without allowing him into my soul), right then and there, that my heart was already so heavy from holding his grief and mine.

Without even answering him and hearing my own wistful sigh once more, and just watching my face all evening, Hawkeye knew that I was slowly falling in love with him and he with me. I didn't know it then (I only knew that I liked Hawkeye very, very much), but it showed on not just my face, but his as well. It took some time for me to notice it though and when I did, I felt kind of stupid, I admit.

However, that fledgling feeling of love could not be shaken off like a coat. No, it had covered us like the rain and it would not allow us to be dry and free of each other again.

I got up, putting my empty martini glass down, and walked over to Hawkeye and took his arm, the two of us entwined together as we went out of the Swamp's door and ambled to the nurses' tent a little ways down, the smell and mess of the Swamp slowly disappearing from my senses. I started to miss it, but then again, I knew that I was going back there soon enough, with more laughs surely. I was sure of it.

However, at the door of my quarters (after a quiet walk, watching the night creatures of the camp on the way there), Hawkeye and I separated from our tangled green-sleeved arms. I was about to open the door quietly (not disturbing the sleeping nurses inside, I would hope) when Hawkeye stepped in front of me and closed it with a loud bang. I was going to protest this and mention how the nurses hate me already and would complain to Major Houlihan if they knew that it was me that was the cause of that noise. And he knew I was irritated and only put a finger to my lips, as if to shush me. He had something to tell me.

I savored his finger on my lips. The soft touch tingled my body, sending shivers down of my spine. I was tempted to bite back gently, to start nibbling on that body of his from the fingers onward, but did not because of that wonderful feeling running up and down my body. Instead, I looked his eyes, searching for something in those large blue blobs of love and care, trying to understand why I was chosen to be his companion for the night, but nothing was there except for a deep, dark pool I can swim in easily. I was trapped. I was going to be forever trapped in Hawkeye Pierce's blue eyes.

Then, without me knowing how or why and with me staring so intently into his eyes, Hawkeye took me into his arms and kissed me so passionately, hotly and with so much feeling that it took my breath away. He did it so quickly that I didn't know that it happened until I felt his soft lips on mine, pressed hard as I returned the favor. And it was so amazing, me not believing what had happened, and it made me feel so full again. I couldn't understand it, but somehow, it made sense to me, this doctor kissing me in front of my quarters' door, even if my former lover laid in death somewhere, thousands of miles away from me.

Suddenly though, Hawkeye left me in suspense, left me in utter breathlessness, taking away all of the sensual feelings I had, as he broke off. He then turned away just as swiftly as he came in.

My God, I could not believe it. And all I could do was watch him walk back to the Swamp, only a minute away from me, disbelieving of the whole night and how it all happened. I could not move. I was transfixed upon this moment of happiness.