5) The Summer of '82, as observed by the Medical Community of San Francisco
Dr. BJ Hunnicutt was a well-respected presence around San Francisco General Hospital. His fingers no longer as deft and able as they were thirty years ago, he now took the simpler surgeries and mentored the newer surgeons on their quest for healing. Offered the head of surgery post several times, and several times he turned it down with a smile and nonsensical excuse like his new-found paragliding and knitting group. The board, the surgeons and the nursing staff greatly admired and respected him, so when several cases of sarcoma, pneumonia and bronchitis began killing what had been healthy young men and women, they called him in for an assessment. BJ fully admitted he had never seen anything like it. Problem was, no one else had either. There was great fear going on about how it could be contracted, if it only affected homosexual men and if so, how were previously healthy blood transfusion patients of both sexes getting sick as well? Was it the new-found AIDS disease? He asked, and received, a few months to study the problem, compare cases studies and blood samples and figure out what was going on.
"I will need the money for an assistant," he stated to the board, who happily granted an extra amounts of funding and themselves an unintentional future headache. The board had no idea Hurricane Hawkeye was about to hit, and BJ's plan was to take effect. The Pierces, still reeling from Karen's untimely death, needed some time away from the sad memories, and BJ knew just the place for them; specifically, someplace where he and Peg could keep a close eye on them. A few days later, Hawkeye, Carmen and Dani came to stay for the summer at the spacious house in Stinson Beach. Each day, the good doctors Pierce and Hunnicutt traveled to the hospital in search of answers for the patients, and hopefully, find something to ease the pain of the loss of the bright girl. Each day, they trudged home, disheartened by what they saw. Granted, they had made some progress on both fronts.
The nurses marveled at the funny doctor Pierce, who insisted everyone call him Hawkeye. Having been briefed about the loss of his only child, they admired his warm and occasionally antic bedside manner, for, despite his internal grief, he never let it show in front of the patients or the staff. He met the patients in a top hat and tails, scuba gear and sometimes joined the two, with much hilarity. BJ reassured the staff that he was always like that, and for them to lookout for a Groucho Marx disguise. Most of the nursing staff had experienced a form of the all-consuming grief the good doctor Pierce was experiencing, but from what BJ silently remembered from Peg's miscarriage so long ago, sometimes one needed to fake a smile to make it. Peg reported that Carmen was slowly emerging from her shell as well. Dani at this point was another matter, but the three of them would hit every child-friendly tourist trap in the city trying to bring a smile to her face. BJ regularly gave her piggy-back rides when they visited the hospital, much to her delight and his back's dismay.
The nurses also marveled at the banter and inventiveness of the two doctors. Protective barriers? Haz-mat suits? BJ and Hawkeye stuffed theirs and sent them rolling down the halls. They held drum circles and waltzed nurses down hallways. They treated their patients as humans, not lab rats stuck with an unknown and incurable disease. The patients were still dying, but at least morale had improved. However, this was not enough for the two of them.
"We figured out fevers and treatments and bears oh my in Korea, Beej, we can do this!" Hawkeye exclaimed as he paced around their little laboratory space, veering around medical students and residents who had also taken up their cause, a couple of weeks into the visit. "What haven't we tried? We put these beautiful heads of hair to work and nada!" He looked at his partner, who buried his head in his hands and groaned. "Oh, no, no, no! I refuse on grounds of humanity! Of perfectly coiffed heads of hair! We have stripped those poor patients of their dignity, stripped them of their health and even stripped them of their clothes! I refuse to strip them of their desperately needed oxygen as well!"
"Hawk, you know as well as I do, we need him." BJ reminded him. It was Hawkeye's turn to throw his face in his hands. "The two of us have made very little progress, with all the help we have here, and I hate to say it, but we need the help of that pompous proud prince from Massachusetts," BJ concluded.
Hawkeye groaned, and his 'no no no' echoed down the hallway, but all for naught. All of their patients were still dying. Most of these cases could be classified as a disease of the immune system but they hadn't figured out the cause. Granted, their former Swamp mate was too persnickety and too polished for most of their patients, even his some of his own, but they needed that big brain. So that was how Charles Emerson Winchester found his way to the west coast in the summer of 1982.
He greeted his fellow swamp mates at the hospital with a hearty handshake. "Gentlemen," he boomed, "Let us solve this problem once and for all. This dreadful west coast wasting disease has already traveled to Boston, as you west coast doctors are so untrained about how to stop it."
"Good to see you, too, Charles," BJ said with a wry grin, shaking his hand in return.
"I do hope the plane was able to take off with your big head in it," snickered Hawkeye. "Or did you power a hot air balloon to get here?" He gave a snort and threw his arms around a squirming Charles. All the while, the hospital staff circled cautiously around the three verbally dueling doctors.
"You wish, Pierce. Get off of me!" Charles straightened his jacket. "Despite the two of you, I would be delighted to meet your Peg, Hunnicutt, as well as renew my acquaintance with your feisty and delightful wife, Pierce. Hunnicutt, you may not know, but my bride hails from the great state of Texas, as well."
"Mrs. Charles Emerson Winchester is a Texan?" Hawkeye laughed at that. "Not a displaced Bostonian? Did she make a wrong turn at Albuquerque? My Carmen claims her maternal family is Mexican; they just happened to live on the wrong side of the Rio Grande when the war broke out."
"Your grandmother accepted someone whose residence didn't include part of Boston Common? Does she even consider anything outside of the original thirteen colonies part of the United States?" BJ teased the proud Bostonian.
"Oh, my wife proudly hails from Dallas, just as I do the marvelous city of Boston," Charles proclaimed. "We are proud citizens of this great nation, unlike you two cretinous louts."
"Cretinous American louts, you mean. By the way, what nation do her oil wells belong to?" BJ asked innocently.
Charles groaned, and the three walked to the lab area BJ and Hawkeye had commandeered for their research.
"Hey, Hawk," BJ said, "Do you realize this was also the first time Peg will met, in person, the incomparable Charles Emerson Winchester?"
"I am in the room, Hunnicutt," Charles protested. "Thanks to your letters, endless musings and pictures, I am sure we already know each other intimately." He gave a smug smile to the man at the desk.
"As long as that is the only way, Charles," BJ stated with a grin. "Any funny business, and Peg would pop you one."
"Oh, how did I survive these thirty years without this ingenious, enterprising banter?" Charles threw his hands in the air. "I may have lost thirty IQ points in the last thirty minutes simply breathing the same air as the two of you."
"But not thirty pounds," Hawkeye said snidely.
"Cretins!" Charles hissed back at them. Peals of laughter interrupted their argument. Peg and Carmen, with Dani in holding hands in between the two of them, entered the suddenly small room, guided by a member of the administrative staff.
"You're right, Hawkeye," Carmen said with a laugh. "There is nothing in the world as auditorally delicious as Charles saying cretins, especially when he directs it at the two of you."
"Carmen! How lovely to see you," Charles jumped up and gave her a kiss on the cheek. "And who is this delightful young woman?" He knelt closer to the ground at eye level with the girl. With a nudge from her grandmother, she spoke.
"I'm Dani Pierce. It's very nice to meet you," she reached out and shook Charles' hand, like a berry trapped in a bear paw.
"Enchanted, Dani. It's very nice to meet you as well," he shook her hand and stood up. "How do you do?" he said to the other woman. "You must be Peg, I have heard so much about you."
"Same here, Charles. It's very nice to finally meet you! We just wanted to stop by and say hello before we headed out. BJ has some things planned for the three of you, I know," Peg said with a grin. "Enjoy your time in San Francisco."
"You have some things planned, Hunnicutt?" Charles wondered as the women left the room.
"I do." BJ came him an enigmatic grin.
"Care to enlighten me?" Charles asked hopefully.
"I do not." The grin got wider.
"Cretin." With that, Charles turned around and buried himself into the work, muttering, "I am a surgeon. I do not know why I am here," loud enough for his former swamp mates to hear. Both ignored him. The room hummed with the activity as nurses brought in charts for revision, and other doctors and interns gave notes. Hawkeye muttered under his breath as BJ scratched away on a writing pad while the hours ticked away.
"Gentlemen, it looks like these are all what the Center for Disease Control is calling AIDS. I don't know what to tell you otherwise," Charles looked up from his reports and focused his eyes on the two doctors playing paper ball basketball.
"We know that," Hawkeye aimed his ball for Charles' head and found the mark. "What causes it? And more importantly, how can we stop it?"
"In surgery I sing! With these notes I snore," Charles responded. "I'm here for a week to help you two nincompoops figure this out. What are we doing tonight, anyway?"
"Just going out. Some simple reminiscing between old friends, Charles, relax," BJ implored him. "Nothing but dinner and a few drinks, and no singing or snoring."
"Well, I can get no farther today, and as the two of you as likely to play for the Celtics as you are to solving this, I suggest we leave," Charles snapped.
"Did Charles Emerson Winchester the Third use a sporting reference?" Hawkeye turned to BJ in amazement. He affected a haughty British accent. "I say, Jeeves, do drive down to the arena and please buy me a basketball franchise. Is the nearest one successful? Oh, wonderful. Celtic green matches the color of the rest of my money."
"Idiot." Charles hissed at him. BJ stepped in between the two.
"Look, let's have a relaxing evening. Hawk, you may have seen Charles on and off over the last few years, but I haven't. I would like to hear about what he has been up to." BJ turned to Charles. "I am glad you are here. These patients need us."
"Thank you, Hunnicutt," Charles said with a touch of humility in his voice. "Gentlemen, shall we?" The three doctors, still grumbling to and about each other, bade everyone in the room a good night and headed out for the evening.
The next morning, the same three doctors strolled into the hospital a bit later than expected, a little worse for wear, moaning and groaning and cursing the bright lights. The bickering didn't stop, but all three seemed to feed off of it. Charles stayed for the rest of the week, visiting patients and observing. Hawkeye finished out the month, still stumped. This time, as so often in Korea, they didn't get their answer.