It's only been a couple of days, but everything is different. And everything is just the same. I'm sorry, my head is still spinning. There was a bug out, the whole camp up and away. Except I stayed. With Pierce. There was a patient that couldn't be moved, and we stayed with him. O'Reilly was there too; I think he just wanted to be close to his idol. Pierce, that is, in case you wondered.
And we had a moment, me and Pierce. Again. Sometimes, when it's just him, when he isn't hyper or drunk or throwing a tantrum or just being a child in general, he has this side to him that is… not terrible. Sincere. It helped, having him there, it really did. When he was done being a jerk, of course.
It's all back to normal now, he is drinking with Hunnicutt, and I'm gonna finish packing for Tokyo.
But still. It was a moment.
Something touched her foot, and she woke from her slumber with a gasp.
The room was so dark that for a second she wasn't even sure her eyes were open, but then she could make out a shape, a more solid piece of darkness.
A person.
A person looming over her.
A cold hand squeezed her heart.
She tried to move, get away from the shape made of darkness, but only managed to back herself further up against the wall.
The Chinese. While she had slept like an idiot, they had come. Lord knew how many, maybe the room was full of them. Stupid. So stupid to fall asleep. Pierce. And O'Reilly, what had happened to them? The dark shape bent down over her.
"No. No, get away from me!"
She could hardly get the words out; her throat was closed up, like another ice-cold hand was squeezing every bit of breath and sound out of her. She wanted to scream, yell for help, but who would come? They couldn't touch her; she would rather die than let them lay their hands on her.
"Margaret, it's okay, it's me."
Pierce? Was that his voice?
"It's just me, your favorite Captain, not the enemy out to rape and plunder. I mean, I can be, if you wanna role-play."
She could practically hear him waggle his eyebrows in the dark, and it made her furious. Rage and panic coursed through her body like a frenzied wave, her heart felt both too big and too small as it pounded fiercely in her chest. She kicked out, tried to hit his shin, but only managed to grace it with her boot.
"Hey, I'm sorry." He crouched down next to her. "That was a stupid thing to say."
She sank back against the wall, her heart still beating so vildly she could feel it reverberating in her every cell. Damn him.
"It's okay. You're okay."
He sat down next to her and leaned against the wall too.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. I was just going to sit down, and I underestimated the length of your legs. Which I will never do again. Everything is fine, it's quiet outside, and our patient is resting comfortably."
Margaret pressed her hands against her face and tried to calm her breathing.
"And you, Major, have nothing to fear," he continued, "because you have Benjamin Franklin Pierce here to protect you. I mean, I am no Frank Burns, but still pretty brave. Did you know that in high school I was voted 'Most likely to go to Korea to protect the virtue of the Head Nurse?' Strangely specific, I thought back then, but also very ominous in hindsight."
She scoffed and shot him an angry look; one he would hopefully at least feel through the darkness. Sure, Pierce protecting her. All he ever did was harass her, always doing his best to make her feel as uncomfortable as possible. Let his moronic mouth run, even now, when they actually were in real danger.
"And it doesn't stop there", he continued. "Right outside these doors, we have Radar O'Reilly, Korea's most vicious watchdog. If any enemy is foolish enough to set even the tiniest of toes in this barren camp of ours, our little Radar will sink his tiny teeth into their calves and not let go until he hears bones crunch."
She exhaled. Her heart had slowed down a little now, and only faint traces of fear remained, making her fingertips prickle.
"That's badgers," she said.
"That's badgers what?"
"Badgers bite til they hear bones crunch, not dogs."
"Ah, that's true! You know, we had a family of badgers living under the porch once. A mother and her babies. They were so cute, but the mom was angry as hell, hissed, and tried to bite your ankles whenever you walked in or out. So, we used the back door that whole summer. Mom used to put out plates of fruit for them, and we'd watch from the kitchen. And one time, she gave them peanut butter, they were so excited, it was the cutest thing."
He laughed a little to himself.
"Well, look at us, Houlihan."
He patted her leg in a gesture that felt only friendly, which was very surprising.
"Sitting here, sharing out badger-knowledge. Who would have thought?"
She scoffed again, something about him just inspired scoffs, and tried to relax. Her shoulders were still so tense, it went all the way up over her neck and scalp. She reached into her hair and pulled out the pins that kept her bun in place, shook her head, and let her hair fall down around her shoulders.
"Oh, wow". He sounded surprised.
"What?"
"It's just… wow. Your hair smells like summer. It was like getting a whiff of a summer afternoon, like we were sitting on the porch and the lilac bush in the corner was blooming. It was nice."
His voice sounded different now, lower, and sincere. She bit back on a comment of not to smell her.
"Like we were sitting on that badger-infested porch?" she said instead, turning her head towards him.
"Yeah, that's the one. God, I wish we were sitting there right now. It goes all the way around the house and from the back, you have this great view of the ocean. Sometimes the fog comes rolling in, and it's like being embraced by this big, white blanket of silence. Like you're alone in the world, but that's okay because you're enfolded in a soft, friendly hug. You'll hear the foghorns from the fishing boats, sometimes, but it might as well be the calls of some ancient sea creature, you know? It's the best."
He sounded dreamy, and a little distant, like his voice was coming through the mist too. She wasn't used to hearing him sound like that. I wish 'we' were sitting there, he had said, not 'I', and that moved her for reasons she couldn't explain. Well, not really moved, and it was only a tiny, tiny bit, but it was… nice. Not that she would ever want to sit on a porch with Pierce, of course not, but still.
"We could barbecue some steaks", he said, "or we could have lobster. With real butter that oozes everywhere and makes your hands all slippery. Oh, and strawberry shortcake for dessert, I love strawberry shortcake."
They sat in silence for a while, the night outside silent too. Margaret strained her ears to detect anything, the tiniest little sign of someone approaching, but there was nothing. It was like listening into a void, and it felt mostly eerie.
"So, Houlihan," he said, "your turn. If we weren't sitting here on this lovely night, cold, scared, and hungry, where would you be?"
She sighed.
"Pierce…"
"Come on, Major, humor me. I told you mine, now you tell me yours. Just remember to keep it clean, no smut. If it's some romantic getaway with Frank, our poor patient may slip into a coma so deep it will last til next millennium."
Margaret stared into the darkness. If Pierce only knew how uninterested she was in anything romantic involving Frank Burns at the moment, he would probably keel over and die of surprise. Good thing she wasn't about to tell him.
After that horrible afternoon in The Swamp, Frank had begged and crawled and begged some more to get her forgiveness. She had tried to stay strong, she really had, and had managed pretty well too, for the first couple of days, a cold shoulder was all he got. But then, no matter how hard she tried, the coldness started to seep away. Being alone was too hard, and she had started to melt, like an idiot. Not completely, she was still so mad at him, but the ice had begun to thaw a little. Not even the sight of her suitcase had helped, the one packed for Tokyo. And now, the suitcase was thrown onto a jeep, along with the rest of her belongings. Driven away with the rest of camp and everyone in it, Frank included. Dear Lord, she hoped she would still be able to go, why did this bug out have to come and ruin everything?
"Maaaargareeeet," Pierce singsonged and nudged her with his elbow. "Come on, tell me something. Tell me… tell me about your favorite cake, at least."
She held her breath for a second, silently debating with herself if telling Pierce anything even remotely personal could come back and bite her, somehow. Cakes seemed safe, but this was Pierce, after all, so nothing was truly safe. But then again, they were sitting on the front, in two minutes they could be dead or captured, so what the hell.
"Fine." She elbowed him back, more of a hit than a nudge, and he yelped. Wimp. "Pineapple upside-down cake."
"Wow, tell me more about this cake."
"Well, my mother used to make it when I was a kid, and I loved it. It was delicious and had these rings of pineapple with cherries in the middle. It tasted great and it looked pretty, almost too pretty to eat."
Her mother had looked pretty too, in the striped dress she used to wear around the house, hair up, cheeks rosy as she danced to 'Que sera, sera' coming from the radio. Margaret could even remember the recipe, it was a page torn from a lady's magazine, and it had laid on the counter next to her as she got to lick the bowl. The batter had been light, fluffy, and golden, it had tasted like summer vacations and trips to the beach. When the cake came out of the oven, and her mother flipped it over and took the baking pan away, it looked like something out of a fairy tale. Like it should be cooling on the windowsill of a gingerbread house.
"Pineapple upside-down cake," Pierce said slowly, as if he was tasting the words. "That sounds great. I bet your mother will make that for you when you get home."
Margaret said nothing. No, the chances of her mother baking for her daughter's return were slim to none. Maybe a toast in pineapple liqueur. That her mother used to bake the cake was a bit of an exaggeration, really. Margaret only had this one memory of her mother in the kitchen, swaying to the music on the radio as she stirred the batter, the sun shining in through the window.
As time passed, her mother's endeavors in the kitchen became sparse, and soon she spent most of her days in the bedroom with the curtains closed, always in her robe, no more dresses or dancing to music in the sunshine, just swaying to the melody of alcohol running through her system.
But Pierce did not need to know that.
"Maybe," she said, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. She didn't want to think about her happy, lighthearted mother dancing around the kitchen, and she most certainly didn't want to think about the tired, bitter person her mother had become. Why had Pierce made her think about it, didn't she have enough to worry about? Thankfully, there was something else she could focus on.
"I'm gonna sit with the patient for a while. You get some sleep, Captain."
She got up off the floor and brushed her pants off.
"Oh, okay." He sounded a bit surprised. "I guess I'll close my eyes for a little bit, just yell if you need me."
Before she sat down by the bed, she walked over to the door and looked outside. She couldn't make out O'Reilly's shape in the jeep, but she was sure he was there. The sky in the east started to show the first signs of dawn, there was a thin line of yellow light over the mountains.
It was so still out there, so incredibly quiet. Eerie. When everyone was around there was always movement, always noise, steps, voices, jeeps, the humming from the generator. Margaret had often wished for silence, but now when she had it, it scared her. Or what really scared her was the thought that in any second it could be broken by something, someone, coming their way.
There was just the skeleton of a camp out there that offered no protection at all. She longed for it to be filled with people again. Loud, annoying, beautiful, familiar people.
Her stomach growled as she sat down next to the patient. What she would give for some pineapple upside-down cake. Or what had Pierce talked about, lobster, and strawberry shortcake. Yes, that would be wonderful too. Great, now she was not only scared and tired, she was also starving, thanks to Pierce. She also needed to pee, but she could hardly blame him for that. She ignored her bladder, there was no way she would step out into the skeleton of a camp and drop her pants. No sir, no way.
She looked down at the patient's unmoving form. He would make it. They would get him on that chopper in the morning and drive like devils to join the others.
"It's gonna be okay," she whispered, trying to calm not only the patient.
She leaned back, and as the sliver of light in the east grew bigger and bigger, she sat on the chair next to the young man who was gonna make it, swaying gently to 'Que sera, sera', coming directly from a radio on a kitchen counter back in another lifetime.