I looked at the soldier on the adjacent stretcher. The one the bubbling-chest kid had pointed to. The boy was barely a man, maybe eighteen if you counted his freckles. His abdomen was a chaotic mess of torn fabric and exposed anatomy that I had no business seeing outside of an anatomy textbook. His pulse was thready, his skin the color of old parchment.
“Doc… take him first,” the chest-wound kid whispered, his grip on my wrist finally failing.
Frank Burns came marching over, his pristine boots squelching in the mud, looking like a man who had just found a typo in the Ten Commandments. “Pierce! I am ordering you to triage Major Thompson! We cannot leave an officer of the United States Army languishing in the dirt while you dither over enlistees!”
“Frank,” I said, my voice eerily calm despite the roaring rotors overhead. “If you don’t shut your mouth, I’m going to triage your vocal cords with a rusty scalpel.”
Margaret Houlihan materialized from the swirling dust, her blonde hair tucked tightly under her cap, holding a clipboard like a shield. “Captain Pierce, Major Burns is technically correct regarding protocol—”
“Protocol doesn’t stop bleeding, Major,” I interrupted, staring down at the two kids. This is the psychological toll they never teach you in medical school. They teach you how to tie sutures, how to clamp an artery, how to prescribe penicillin. They never teach you what it feels like to hold the power of life and death in a dirty piece of red chalk.
If I take the abdominal wound, he might die on the table anyway, taking up three hours of surgical time. Three hours in which the chest-wound kid will drown in his own blood. If I take the chest wound, he lives. But the abdominal boy dies here, in the cold, staring at the Korean sky.
When did I become God? I didn’t ask for the promotion. I don’t have the beard, the thunderbolts, or the omniscience. All I have is a hangover and a stethoscope.
“Radar!” I bellowed over the noise.
Corporal Walter “Radar” O’Reilly appeared instantly at my elbow, a clipboard pressed to his chest, looking like a frightened owl in a combat helmet. “Yes, sir!”
“Get this kid with the chest wound to O.R. table one. Have them prep him for a thoracotomy. And get Major Thompson to table three so Dr. Burns can polish his brass.”
“What about him, sir?” Radar pointed a trembling pen at the boy with the abdominal wound.
I felt a cold stone drop into the pit of my stomach. My hand hovered over the boy. I looked at his face. He was unconscious now. Peaceful, in a horrifying way. I took the black chalk—the expectant tag, the death sentence—and hesitated.
“Give him fifty milligrams of morphine,” I whispered. “Put him in the corner tent. Keep him warm.”
Margaret’s expression softened for a fraction of a second. Even the regular army couldn’t completely armor her heart against the reality of triage. “I’ll make sure he’s comfortable, Hawkeye,” she said quietly.
“Right. Let’s go make some sausage,” I muttered, turning my back on the boy I had just condemned, and sprinting toward the scrub room.
The Operating Room was a sauna of smells: ether, iodine, sweat, and copper. It was organized chaos. Scrubbing in, I plunged my hands into the icy water, trying to scrub away the dirt, the germs, and the guilt. It never works. The guilt stains deeper than the blood.
Colonel Sherman Potter was already at the sink, lathering his arms with the calm, methodical rhythm of a man who had seen too many wars. “Rough night at the door, Pierce?” he asked, his gravelly voice a small anchor in the storm.
“Just handing out tickets to the lottery, Colonel,” I replied, holding up my dripping hands. “I think I just sent a kid to heaven because I didn’t have enough time to play miracles.”
“You did the triage, Hawkeye. You did the math,” Potter said firmly, looking me dead in the eye. “It’s a garbage equation. But it saves the most lives. You can’t carry every soul in this camp on your back. Your spine will snap.”
“My spine is fine, Colonel. It’s my conscience that’s developing a hernia.”
We backed through the swinging doors into the O.R. The harsh overhead lights illuminated the horrific reality of our profession. I stepped up to Table One. The chest-wound kid was under anesthesia, his chest painted orange with iodine.
“Alright, people, let’s open him up,” I announced, grabbing a scalpel. For the next two hours, I wasn’t Hawkeye Pierce, drafted civilian and reluctant deity. I was just a mechanic fixing a broken engine. Clamp, tie, suction, cut. The rhythm of the O.R. took over. Frank was at the next table, complaining loudly about the inadequate lighting while repairing the Major’s shoulder.
“You know, Margaret,” Frank whined loudly, “If the army provided us with proper 500-watt bulbs, I could do a much neater stitch.”
“If the army provided you with a brain, Frank, you’d be a danger to yourself,” I mumbled behind my mask, my eyes fixed on the pulsating lung in front of me.
We were winning. The chest-wound kid was stabilizing. The bleeding was controlled. The heavy burden of triage felt, for a fleeting moment, justified. I had saved him.
But war doesn’t let you win for long.
Just as I was tying the final suture, the doors to the O.R. banged open. It was Radar. He wasn’t wearing his mask, and his face was completely drained of color. He looked like he had just seen a ghost.
“Hawkeye…” Radar stammered, ignoring all protocol, stepping right into the sterile field holding a small, bloody, metal object in his hand. A dog tag.
“Radar, get out of the sterile area! Are you insane?” Frank barked.
Radar ignored him. He walked straight up to my table, tears welling in his eyes. “Sir… the boy you put in the corner tent. The one who just passed away…”
“I know, Radar. I know. I made the call,” I said, my voice tight. I didn’t want to hear it. I couldn’t afford to hear it right now.
“No, sir,” Radar’s voice cracked. He held out the dog tag. “You need to see the name on this tag. He… he had a letter in his pocket. It’s addressed to you.”
[ Next Chapter ⏩ ]
