The stream of blood was a glaring red siren in the harsh light of the O.R. The copper wire was unspooling, the heavy spring of the salad tongs winning the war of physics against Zale’s spark-plug repair job.

“Pierce, grab it!” Potter barked, his hands already diving back into the cavity to apply manual pressure.

“I’m trying! It’s covered in grease and blood!” I wrestled with the handles, managing to squeeze them shut again, stopping the flow. But my hands were cramping. I was a surgeon, not a vise grip. “The wire is useless. It won’t hold the tension. I need something elastic, something that fights back!”

“Elastic?” Margaret’s eyes darted around the room. She looked at the sterile trays, the bandages, and then down at her own hands. Without a word, she ripped off her right surgical glove.

“Major, what are you doing? You’re breaking the sterile field!” Frank gasped, clutching his own chest as if he were having a phantom heart attack.

“Shut up, Frank!” Margaret snapped. She grabbed a pair of heavy scissors and rapidly cut a thick, one-inch band horizontally across the wrist of her discarded rubber glove. She had just created a heavy-duty, surgical-grade rubber band.

She soaked it in the basin of alcohol for two seconds, shook it off, and stepped up to my side. “Hold it steady, Hawkeye.”

With nimble, precise movements, Margaret stretched the thick rubber band over the top handles of the tongs, wrapping it around three times in a figure-eight pattern. The thick latex gripped the slippery metal, constricting the handles together with immense, elastic pressure.

“Okay, let go slowly,” she commanded.

I eased my grip. The spring of the tongs tried to push outward, but Margaret’s makeshift latex tourniquet squeezed back just as hard. The tongs locked into place. They didn’t budge a millimeter. The artery remained perfectly, beautifully clamped.

“Major Houlihan,” I breathed, staring at the ridiculous contraption holding a man’s life together, “remind me to kiss you when we aren’t standing in a pool of viscera.”

“Just fix the artery, Captain,” she said smoothly, though a hint of a proud smile tugged at the corner of her eyes. She calmly walked over to the scrub sink to wash her hands and get a fresh pair of gloves.

The rest of the surgery was a delicate ballet of silk and vascular grafts. Working around the bulky salad tongs was like trying to knit a sweater while wearing boxing gloves, but twenty minutes later, the tear was sutured. I nodded to Potter.

“Moment of truth. Taking the tongs off.”

I grabbed a scalpel, carefully sliced through Margaret’s latex band, and let the tongs spring open. I lifted them out of the wound and dropped them into a metal basin with a heavy, satisfying CLANG.

We stared at the graft. The femoral artery pulsed with the strong, rhythmic beat of life. No leaks. No spray. The blood flow to the lower leg was restored.

“His pressure is stabilizing, sir,” Radar called out from the anesthesia station, wiping sweat from his forehead.

Potter let out a long, ragged exhale. “Sew him up, Pierce. You did good. Both of you.”

“I merely assisted in a severe violation of medical ethics,” Frank grumbled from table one, where he was finally finishing up a routine shrapnel removal. “I’ll be noting this in my report to General Hammond. ‘Improper use of culinary equipment in a surgical environment.'”

“You do that, Frank,” I said, beginning the closing sutures. “Be sure to mention that the culinary equipment has a lower mortality rate than your last three appendectomies.”

Four hours later, the choppers stopped coming. The O.R. was finally quiet, smelling heavily of bleach and exhaustion.

I pushed through the flaps of ‘The Swamp’, my tent, my sanctuary. Every muscle in my back felt like it had been tenderized by a meat mallet. Potter was already there, sitting in my canvas chair, staring at our homemade gin still.

“Pour me one, Hawkeye,” Potter rasped. “Make it strong enough to strip paint.”

I walked over to the still, grabbed two glass laboratory beakers, and filled them to the brim with the clear, volatile liquid we lovingly called martinis. I handed one to Potter and collapsed onto my cot.

In the center of the room, sitting on an overturned crate, was the hero of the day. The stainless steel salad tong, modified by a mechanic, sterilized in a pan, and secured by a piece of a nurse’s glove.

Potter stared at it, taking a slow sip of his gin. He winced as it went down. “You know, Pierce, I’ve been in this Army a long time. World War I, World War II… I’ve seen men fix a tank tread with a belt buckle. I’ve seen a guy use a trench mirror to signal an airstrike. But I have never, in all my years, seen a man perform vascular surgery with something meant to serve a Waldorf salad.”

“Necessity is the mother of invention, Colonel,” I replied, raising my beaker to the tongs. “And the United States Army is the absentee father.”

“You think the kid will make it?”

“Miller? Yeah. The pulse in his foot was strong before we shipped him to Post-Op. He gets a ticket to Tokyo, maybe even a one-way trip back to Iowa. He’ll have a hell of a scar, and he’ll probably have a deep, subconscious fear of buffets for the rest of his life, but he’ll live.”

Potter chuckled, a dry, tired sound. “I ought to have you court-martialed for reckless endangerment.”

“I’d welcome it. I hear the stockades in Leavenworth have a fantastic supply of regulation hemostats.”

Potter raised his beaker. “To the Uijeongbu Vise.”

“To the finest piece of medical equipment a quartermaster’s screw-up ever bought.”

We clinked our glasses. Outside, the distant, muffled thud of artillery rolled over the hills. The war was still going on, churning out more broken bodies, more desperate situations. We couldn’t fix the world. We couldn’t stop the madness.

But today, we beat the Reaper with a pair of salad tongs. And in this muddy, blood-soaked corner of hell, that was a victory worth drinking to.