“What is it, Radar?” Hawkeye asked, his voice losing its cynical edge. He didn’t look up from the corporal’s shattered spleen, but his hands stopped moving. The entire OR seemed to hold its collective breath. Even Frank Burns, usually oblivious to the atmospheric pressure of the room, paused his clumsy suturing.
Radar O’Reilly, the clairvoyant company clerk who usually knew what you were going to say before you thought it, looked entirely lost. He stepped into the sterile field without a mask, a cardinal sin that Margaret Houlihan didn’t even attempt to reprimand him for. She just stared, her blue eyes wide above her surgical mask.
Radar looked down at the yellow telegram paper. It was shaking violently in his hands. He took a ragged breath, the sound echoing unnaturally loud over the hiss of the suction machines and the rhythmic pumping of the ventilators.
“I have a message,” Radar said. His voice was completely hollow, stripped of its usual midwestern innocence. It sounded like an old man’s voice.
Hawkeye finally looked up. He met Radar’s eyes, and in that split second, the master of words, the jester of the 4077th, felt a cold, jagged rock settle in the pit of his stomach. He knew. He didn’t know the specifics, but he knew the war had just played its ultimate, sickest joke.
“Lieutenant Colonel… Henry Blake’s plane…” Radar paused, his throat working convulsively. He forced the words out, each one a physical blow. “…was shot down… over the Sea of Japan. It spun in.”
A heavy, suffocating silence descended over the room. It was as if the oxygen had been instantly sucked out of the tent.
“There were no survivors,” Radar finished.
Clatter.
A stainless steel retractor slipped from Margaret’s gloved hand and hit the concrete floor. The metallic ring was deafening, the only punctuation to Radar’s sentence. Margaret didn’t move to pick it up. She just stared straight ahead, tears instantly welling up and spilling over her mask, darkening the green fabric.
Hawkeye stared at Radar. His mind, usually a rapid-fire engine of sarcasm and medical knowledge, completely stalled. Henry. Bumbling, fishing-lure-hat-wearing, unfaithful-but-loving, utterly out-of-his-depth Henry Blake. He was supposed to be safe. He had his ticket out. He had beaten the odds. He was going back to Lorraine and his backyard barbecue.
“That’s… that’s a mistake,” Frank Burns stammered, his voice nasal and panicked. “The military doesn’t make mistakes like that. He had his papers. He was a commanding officer. The enemy wouldn’t dare…”
“Shut up, Frank,” B.J. Hunnicutt said from the next table over. It wasn’t an angry command; it was an exhausted plea. B.J. looked like he had been physically struck.
Hawkeye looked down at his hands. They were covered in the blood of a nineteen-year-old farm boy from Iowa who might not make it through the night. And Henry was at the bottom of the Sea of Japan. The sheer, unadulterated absurdity of it washed over him. They were standing here, up to their elbows in gore, desperately trying to stitch together the pieces of a war that had just casually reached out and swatted away their friend like a mildly annoying fly.
“Right,” Hawkeye said. The word sounded foreign in his own ears. He looked back down at the open incision. The bleeding hadn’t stopped. The war hadn’t stopped. The North Koreans didn’t care about Henry Blake. The U.S. Army didn’t really care either; he was just another statistic now, a KIA to be filed away in a cabinet in Washington.
“Clamp,” Hawkeye barked, his voice cracking.
The nurse beside him, openly weeping, handed him the instrument.
For the next two hours, nobody spoke. The 4077th Operating Room, usually a cacophony of dark humor, jazz whistling, and shouted orders, operated in absolute, terrifying silence. They worked like automatons, their hands moving with practiced precision while their minds shattered into a thousand pieces. They saved three lives, lost one, and sent two more to post-op to wait and see.
When the final patient was wheeled out, Hawkeye stripped off his bloody gloves. They hit the trash bin with a wet, heavy thud. He didn’t wash his hands. He just untied his gown, let it fall to the floor, and pushed through the swinging doors into the freezing Korean night.
The air was biting, smelling of diesel fumes and mud. Hawkeye walked past the post-op ward, past the mess tent, until he reached the signpost. Toledo. Boston. Seoul. Burbank. He leaned against the wooden post, pulling a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his fatigues. He lit one with trembling hands, the flare of the match illuminating his hollow, exhausted face. He looked up at the starless sky.
There was no punchline. There was no clever quip that could dismantle this. For the first time since he had arrived in this godforsaken country, Hawkeye Pierce had absolutely nothing to say.
The distant, rhythmic thwup-thwup-thwup of an incoming chopper broke the silence. More meat for the grinder.
Hawkeye took a drag of his cigarette, the cherry glowing fiercely in the dark. He turned his head as a figure emerged from the shadows of the compound, walking slowly toward him.
[ Next Chapter ⏩ ]
