“Time to make the incision,” Hawkeye whispered, the rusty tent peg catching the faint glint of the moonlight seeping through the Swamp’s window screen.
“MURDER! ASSASSINATION! MUTINY!” Frank Burns’ voice hit an octave previously thought unattainable by human vocal cords. He thrashed wildly, his spindly legs kicking against his military-issue sleeping bag. “Help! The Bolsheviks have brainwashed Pierce!”
The flaps of the Swamp flew open with a violent snap. Colonel Sherman T. Potter charged in, wearing a cavalry-yellow bathrobe over his long johns, his favorite riding boots, and a look of thunderous irritation. Right on his heels was Corporal Radar O’Reilly, clutching a flashlight in one hand and a tattered teddy bear in the other.
“What in the name of sweet galloping ghost of San Juan Hill is going on in here?!” Potter roared. “Frank, if you don’t shut your pie hole, I’m going to have you transferred to an infantry unit where the only thing you can annoy is the enemy!”
“He’s trying to kill me, Colonel!” Frank sobbed, pointing a trembling, manicured finger at Hawkeye. “He’s lost his mind! I always knew he was a communist sympathizer, but now he’s an active sleeper agent!”
Potter squinted through the gloom. Hawkeye hadn’t even flinched at the noise. He was still standing over Frank’s bed, the tent peg poised in the air.
“Pierce?” Potter stepped closer, his anger immediately evaporating, replaced by a cold, clinical dread. “Put the peg down, son.”
“Sponge,” Hawkeye said flatly. He wiped an imaginary bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. “He’s a kid. Look at his dog tags. He’s nineteen. We can’t lose a nineteen-year-old. Push ten CCs of adrenaline.”
Radar aimed the flashlight at Hawkeye’s face. The beam illuminated Hawkeye’s bloodshot eyes. They were completely unfocused. The pupils were dilated, staring into a surgical theater that existed only in the exhausted, traumatized corridors of his mind.
“Holy cow,” Radar whispered, lowering the teddy bear. “He’s fast asleep, Colonel. I saw my Uncle Ed do this once back in Iowa. He got up in the middle of the night and tried to milk the tractor.”
“He’s not milking a tractor, Corporal, he’s trying to perform a bowel resection on Major Burns with a tent peg,” Potter noted grimly. He slowly approached Hawkeye, raising his hands in a placating gesture.
In the MAS*H 4077th, exhaustion was a chronic disease. They had just come off a 72-hour marathon in the OR. Three days of endless meatball surgery, patching together kids who had been blown apart for a few yards of muddy real estate. The sheer volume of blood and trauma had finally short-circuited their best surgeon’s brain.
“Major Houlihan!” Hawkeye suddenly barked, his voice cracking with desperate authority. “I said I need suction! Where is the suction?!”
“Right here, Pierce,” Potter said softly, gently stepping in front of Frank. With a swift, practiced motion, Potter reached out and smoothly plucked the tent peg from Hawkeye’s grip. He replaced it with a plastic spoon from a nearby mess tray. “Here’s your scalpel. Now, let’s just close him up, alright? The boy’s going to be fine. You saved him.”
Hawkeye blinked slowly. He looked down at the plastic spoon, his breathing ragged. For a terrifying moment, the illusion held. He performed a few intricate, imaginary stitches in the air above Frank’s knees.
“Tie it off,” Hawkeye mumbled, his shoulders slumping. The frantic energy drained from him in an instant. The ghost of the operating room vanished, leaving only a profoundly broken man in a freezing tent in Uijeongbu. Hawkeye swayed on his feet, his eyes fluttering shut.
Potter caught him before he hit the dirt floor. “I got you, son. Radar, grab his legs.”
Together, the older man and the young corporal hauled Hawkeye’s dead weight back to his own cot, pulling the heavy wool blankets up to his chin. Hawkeye was snoring before his head hit the pillow.
Frank, still backed into the corner of his bed, puffed out his chest. “I demand a court-martial, Colonel! The man is a lethal menace! He attempted to vivisect a superior officer!”
“Stow it, Frank,” Potter sighed, rubbing his temples. “The only thing he was trying to vivisect was his own conscience. The man is suffering from acute exhaustion and a sleepwalking episode. If I court-martialed every doctor in this camp who lost their marbles from overwork, I’d have to operate on the wounded with a rusty spoon myself.”
Potter turned to Radar. “Keep an eye on him, son. If he tries to get up again, come get me.”
“Yes, sir,” Radar whispered, taking a seat on an overturned crate next to Hawkeye’s bed.
The rest of the night passed in tense silence. The morning sun eventually broke through the Korean fog, casting a sickly yellow light over the camp. Hawkeye woke up with a pounding headache and absolutely no memory of the night before. He cracked a joke about the powdered eggs at breakfast, flirted with a nurse in the mess tent, and went about his day.
Frank, however, was terrified. He spent the entire day walking around the camp wearing his steel helmet and carrying a loaded .45 caliber sidearm, much to the amusement of the enlisted men and the profound irritation of Major Margaret Houlihan.
But the nightmare wasn’t over.
That night, at exactly 0300 hours, Hawkeye Pierce stood up again. But this time, he didn’t stay in the Swamp. This time, he walked out the door, past the latrines, and straight toward the edge of the camp.
And he was heading directly for the perimeter minefield.
[ Next Chapter ⏩ ]
