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New chapter is up!

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Chapter 99

"Beej! What's going on between you two?" I asked him suspiciously soon as the door closed behind Frank.

"Nothing, Hawk."

"Beej! Listen. I have to tell you something. Potter called me last night. He wants me to make truce with Frank and make him drop charges."

"Charges?" BJ looked at me in some obvious trepidation.

"Yeah. He filed charges against me. Regarding Johnson's death. And as soon as ... Well, I have a hearing in Seoul next week and I-Corps might send someone to investigate the whole...incidence while I'm gone." I informed BJ without any emotion.

"That ..." I stopped BJ before he could call Frank every name he had in his dictionary.

"Beej! I need to know what you told him. He looked more and more like the weasel that he is. I have to know the trouble I'll be in with Potter."

"I'll take care of that, Hawk." BJ looked worried now.

"You think sucking up to Frank is going to help?" I asked him after a short pause.

"I think Potter is crazy. And if you believe this, so are you." BJ didn't like the idea either.

"I told him the same thing." I informed BJ.

"I told Frank I'll ask Cate O'Hara myself what she said and what happened between you two that drove her to blaming you for Johnson's death."

"Oh! And...?"

"Frank kind of flipped at that. Told me to stay away from her. It was none of my business. He was panicked."

"I had a feeling he coerced her into lying."

"I'm not sure it was coercion."

"Maybe I talk to her? I cannot let somebody try to ruin my career, my life like that."

"I don't really know, Hawk. I think she left the Camp for a good reason."

"What do you know about her that I don't?" I asked BJ as I felt he was hiding something.

"Nothing. I don't know anything." BJ waved his hand to emphasize. I decided to believe him.

"It's scary." I commented.

"The hearing? Or these two conspiring against you?"

"Both are related. But hearing is much worse." I was vocalizing my fears in front of him but then I stopped. He didn't need to worry about me on top of everything else that was going on in his personal life. And besides, not so long ago, he seemed ready to punch the daylights out of me if given enough provocation. Nobody knew what he would do to me when he found out what I had done. It was a matter of time alone especially if Peg's letters were any sign of her inclination towards keeping BJ updated on all things big and small.

"Hawk! Everything's going to be fine. They know better than the King of Malpractice. They need you and they know that too." BJ spoke in his matter of fact no-nonsense manner.

I just wondered in my heart if that was correct.

Quite contrary to what my mind told me...

Even my mind was conflicted. While I knew that Army needed me, I also knew that they had plenty where I came from and so did the Army.

"Beej! I need you to know something." First things first, I decided. BJ needed to find out before Peg told him of my intervention.

"What is it, Hawk?"

"You might hear from Peg soon."

"I know." And I almost believed that he already knew and didn't erupt earlier because of the logic behind my actions. Good thing I didn't believe that fantasy too strongly.

"You know?" I asked almost tentatively.

"Yeah. I wrote her a few days ago and its about time she wrote back. You don't have to assure me that she'll write back. I know her!" BJ said that with such love and pride, I kicked myself in my mind for butting in to begin with.

"Yeah. I know. I just thought the way you were before going to Seoul..."

"I called her from there." That grin and that fact sure explained a lot.

Next time, just mind your own goddamned business.

Oh well!

"Good. So now you won't be a bear anymore." I didn't check myself before letting that nugget out. If I ever wished for the sound of incoming choppers, it was now.

BJ's expressions changed from obvious smug glee to positively dour.

"Listen, Beej! I didn't mean it that way."m I backtracked but it was already too late.

"I know!" Was the brief response and I decided to just stay quiet. They could give me department chair where they taught how to ruin people's moods. Or to bury one's foot deep inside one's mouth. I could do wonders!

"I am going to grab a bite. Want to come?" BJ asked me in a neutral tone. I looked up and his expression was neutral as well.

"No. You go ahead." I wasn't feeling hungry. Well, I hadn't felt hungry ever since I had come to Korea and especially after my bout with hepatitis and now, I was even less hungry than before. Mess food had a way of making my satiety center work very hard to keep me from eating. And the same could be said about that deeply lodged foot in the back of my throat.

"What are you going to do then?" I just stared at him as I didn't understand his query.

"Sleep?"

"No. About returning to work? Wasn't that the quid pro quo?"

"No. And I'm a better surgeon hungry then with mess food inside me."

"Alright. See you then. Sure you don't want anything." BJ was still speaking in his neutral tone. I wondered if he had let go of what I had said that fast. Peg must have soothed his ruffled feathers pretty good.

"As sure as I have always been!" I said that with a forced grin.

BJ just looked at me and then left for the mess tent. I lied back down on my cot, thinking about my most recent conversation with BJ.

Choppers! Incoming wounded.

And thus began yet another day in Korea.

Even if I tended to forget the war at times, seemed war didn't want to forget me. Frank was doing the triage and so first I and then BJ did the re-triage to make sure Frank's attempts to thwart what could be described as an effort to keep these kids alive long enough to get operated didn't reach fruition.

First kid I got had a small hole in his side and Frank had him marked as priority two. I had seen him in the triage and so he got the first seat on my table.

As expected, his insides were an unholy mess with his gut having multiple large silver dollar size holes as well as one large one in his mesentery. And of course, a large pool of blood in his abdomen soon as I opened it welcomed my senses and I thanked myself for skipping the breakfast earlier.

The bullet had done more damage to him than I had hoped for, going straight up to his diaphragm and making a through and through hole in his liver and on its way, nicking the portal vein. There was a small graze to the pancreas as well. Everything that came in the way of that little piece of metal was injured by it till it left the body on the opposite side.

Not the kind of injuries I had seen frequently enough in one person after one gunshot wound. If there was one thing I was sure of, it was that, everytime such a patient came, whole of my surgical might and skill was tested till it was ready to break.

I had seen enough blood and gore to last me a lifetime!

Maybe I COULD get used to having Crabapple Cove say 'Aah' after all.

After being in that kid's belly for half a lifetime lasting about two and a half hours, there was enough of him out in the tray to make him miss it.

"How did we do?" Asked Margaret who had been assisting me.

"I think half his gut is out and I have left enough silk in him to tickle him no matter where he sleeps and how he sleeps."

"Pierce! I won't have this dirty talk here." Frank snarled at me from the next table and I looked at him in surprise.

"Good!" Was the clever reply I came up with. Shaking my head, I asked for the next patient and the next set of gloves and gowns.

Business was brisk that day.

I got my first break around 3pm when Klinger brought some orange juice. At least he claimed it was juice. It looked less like it and tasted even less so. In dire need of water, I drank that ambiguous fluid and went back to the grindstone.

There was silence in the OR that day.

I hated it.

There just wasn't anything to say.