“Fireworks, Pierce? This is hardly the time for your infantile attempts at humor,” Margaret snapped, her blue eyes flashing with standard-issue indignation. She leaned over the surgical drape, fully intending to scold him into next week, but her gaze naturally followed the trajectory of his frozen, blood-slicked fingers.
Nestled comfortably between the young corporal’s shattered pelvis and what was left of his large intestine was a dark, ribbed, olive-drab object.
Margaret’s breath hitched. A sharp, involuntary squeak escaped her throat.
“Is that…” she began, the rigid discipline of a Regular Army head nurse instantly vaporizing.
“A Mk 2 fragmentation grenade,” Hawkeye confirmed, his voice eerily calm, though his heart was currently attempting to beat its way out of his ribcage. “And unless my eyes deceive me, which I pray they do… the pin is missing. It’s being held tight by the patient’s muscle tissue and sheer, unadulterated luck.”
“A grenade?!” Frank Burns’ voice pierced the tense air like a rusty scalpel. He abandoned his patient instantly, his surgical mask slipping down his chin. “In here?! With us?!”
“No, Frank, it’s just a heavily armed avocado,” Hawkeye shot back, not daring to move a single millimeter. “Of course it’s a grenade! Now don’t make any sudden movements, the vibrations could—”
But Frank wasn’t listening. The phrase “unpinned grenade” had bypassed his meager frontal lobe and tapped directly into his primitive survival instincts. “I’m a superior officer! My life is vital to the war effort!” he shrieked, shoving past Nurse Kellye, sending a tray of hemostats crashing to the wooden floor with a deafening metallic CLATTER.
Hawkeye winced, his entire body bracing for the inevitable concussive wave that would turn them all into pink mist.
Nothing happened. The patient groaned softly under the anesthesia. The grenade remained dormant.
“Frank,” Hawkeye said, his voice dropping an octave, radiating pure, concentrated malice. “If you drop one more thing, I will personally shove this grenade down your throat and pull the spoon myself.”
“What in the name of jumping Jupiter is going on over here?” Colonel Sherman T. Potter marched over, his boots heavy on the floorboards. The commotion had disrupted the rhythm of his own surgical station. He took one look at Frank cowering by the door, then looked at Hawkeye and Margaret.
“Colonel,” Margaret said, her voice shaking, though she firmly planted her feet, refusing to run. “There’s an unexploded ordinance inside the patient. Unpinned.”
Potter leaned in, adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses. He let out a low, slow whistle. “Well, don’t that beat all. A booby-trapped G.I. I’ve seen boys swallow rings, bullets, and pride, but this is a first.” He straightened up, his face shifting into stone-cold command mode.
“Alright, listen up!” Potter barked, his voice echoing through the cavernous, canvas-roofed OR. “Everybody out. Now. Stop bleeding, pack your patients, and evacuate the room. Leave the equipment. Move!”
Pandemonium erupted, albeit in an organized, terrified manner. Nurses and orderlies scrambled to wheel out the other surgical tables. Frank was the first out the door, sprinting toward the Swamp with the speed of an Olympic track star. Within sixty seconds, the bustling, crowded operating room was entirely empty, save for three people.
Hawkeye Pierce, whose hands were still inside the blast radius. Colonel Potter, who stood by with the calm demeanor of a man who had survived two previous wars. And Major Margaret Houlihan, who was stubbornly standing opposite Hawkeye, a pair of forceps gripped tightly in her hand.
“Major,” Potter said softly. “I said evacuate.”
“I am the Head Nurse of this unit, Colonel,” Margaret replied, her chin trembling but held high. “I don’t abandon my post. And Captain Pierce needs a surgical assistant to extract that… thing.”
Hawkeye looked up at her, genuinely surprised. Beneath the bluster and the army manuals, there was a reason she was the best nurse he’d ever worked with. “Margaret, for once in your life, disobeying an order is a terrible idea. Go. I’ll get this out.”
“Shut up, Pierce,” she said, her eyes locked on the bloody cavity. “You need someone to hold the retractor to keep the tissue from pressing on the spoon when you pull it out. If that spoon releases, we have about four seconds to learn how to fly.”
“Fine,” Potter sighed heavily. “I’ll call the bomb disposal unit in Seoul. Though by the time they get here, this kid will bleed out from his spleen.”
“We don’t have time for the bomb squad, Colonel,” Hawkeye said, sweat now stinging his eyes. “He’s hemorrhaging. If I don’t get this pineapple out of his gut in the next five minutes, the grenade won’t matter. He’ll die on the table.”
“Alright, Pierce. It’s your show,” Potter said, taking a step back but refusing to leave the room. “Nice and easy. Like defusing a very angry mother-in-law.”
Hawkeye took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of ether and impending doom. “Margaret. On three, you pull the tissue back. I will grab the grenade. We move together. If we mess this up, at least we won’t have to eat the mess tent’s liver and onions tonight.”
“Not funny, Hawkeye,” Margaret whispered.
“I’m terrified, Margaret, let me cope,” he muttered. “Okay. One… Two…”
Suddenly, the young corporal on the table groaned loudly. The anesthesia was wearing off. The boy’s eyes fluttered open, wildly confused, and his body violently convulsed in a violent spasm of pain.
[ Next Chapter ⏩ ]
