“Hold him down!” Hawkeye roared, the cynical humor instantly vanishing, replaced by sheer, primal panic.

As the corporal convulsed, the jagged edges of his torn abdominal muscles clamped down around the grenade. Hawkeye felt the metal shift against his fingertips. The safety spoon—the only thing standing between the three of them and oblivion—creaked ominously.

Margaret threw her entire upper body weight over the boy’s chest, ignoring the blood soaking into her uniform. “Lie still, soldier! Lie still!” she shouted, her voice cutting through the kid’s delirium.

Colonel Potter lunged forward, grabbing the boy’s flailing legs and pinning them to the operating table with old-man strength born of adrenaline. “Anesthesia!” Potter barked. “Give him another cc of sodium pentothal, Major!”

“I can’t let go of the retractor!” Margaret yelled back, her knuckles white as she kept the wound open, preventing the tissue from triggering the explosive.

“I’ll do it,” Potter growled. He kept one arm heavily draped over the boy’s legs, reached awkwardly with his free hand, fumbled for the syringe on the tray, and jammed it into the IV line.

Seconds stretched into eternities. The only sound in the dead-quiet OR was the harsh, ragged breathing of the three officers and the agonizingly slow slowing of the patient’s thrashing. As the pentothal hit his bloodstream, the corporal went limp, sinking back into the merciful abyss of unconsciousness.

Hawkeye let out a breath he felt like he’d been holding since 1950. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. “Okay. Okay. Nobody sneeze. Nobody cough. If you have an itch, suppress it with pure willpower.”

“Status, Pierce?” Potter asked, wiping his brow with the back of his sleeve.

“The grenade rotated about fifteen degrees,” Hawkeye reported, his voice tight. “The spoon is clear of the pelvic bone, but it’s resting against my index finger. I have to pull it straight up. If it tilts, the spoon flies, and we become the cheapest fireworks display in Korea.”

“You can do it, Benjamin,” Margaret said softly. It was perhaps the first time she had used his first name without it sounding like an accusation.

“Thanks, Meg. If we survive this, I promise to never make another joke about Frank’s chin-less profile. For at least a week.”

Hawkeye adjusted his grip. He needed both hands. He slowly slipped his left hand into the bloody cavity, intertwining his fingers around the ribbed metal casing of the explosive. He pressed the palm of his right hand firmly against the safety spoon, keeping it depressed against the grenade’s body.

“Alright. Pulling the retractors wider on my mark,” Hawkeye instructed. “One… Two… Three. Mark.”

Margaret pulled. The wound gaped wider.

Hawkeye lifted. Millimeter by agonizing millimeter. The grenade was slick with blood, making his latex gloves slip. He tightened his grip, praying to whatever deity watched over foolish surgeons in warzones. The metal cleared the intestines. It cleared the shattered ribs.

It was out.

Hawkeye stood there, holding the dripping, unpinned explosive in his hands like it was the Holy Grail. He didn’t dare exhale.

“Got it,” he whispered.

“Praise the Lord,” Potter breathed. “Now, what do we do with it?”

As if on cue, the OR doors swung open slightly. Corporal “Radar” O’Reilly poked his head in, oblivious to the situation, holding a clipboard. “Excuse me, sirs, ma’am, but Major Burns is outside crying in the latrine and I need a signature for the new supply of tongue depressors—”

“RADAR, OUT!” all three officers screamed simultaneously.

Radar blinked, saw the grenade in Hawkeye’s hands, squeaked like a stepped-on mouse, and vanished so fast the swinging doors barely registered his departure.

“There’s a sandbagged blast pit right outside the scrub room doors,” Potter pointed. “Fifty yards out. Hawkeye, you walk it out there. Slow and steady. Throw it in, hit the dirt.”

“Right. A casual stroll with a ticking time bomb. I should have been a podiatrist,” Hawkeye muttered.

He moved toward the door, walking with a stiff, unnatural gait, treating the grenade like a sleeping infant. He nudged the door open with his shoulder. The crisp Korean air hit his face. The camp was eerily deserted; word had spread, and the entire 4077th had taken cover in the ditches.

Hawkeye walked past the scrub sinks, past the supply tent. Fifty yards felt like fifty miles. His thumb was cramping. The muscles in his forearm screamed in protest.

Forty yards. Thirty yards. Twenty yards.

He saw the blast pit—a deep hole surrounded by thick, reinforced sandbags.

“Okay, you little metallic bastard,” Hawkeye whispered to the grenade. “This is where we part ways.”

He reached the edge of the pit. With one swift, smooth motion, he tossed the grenade deep into the hole and threw himself backward, diving into the freezing mud behind the sandbag wall.

One. Two. Three. Four—

KABOOM.

The earth shook violently. A plume of black smoke, dirt, and shredded sandbags erupted into the sky. Dirt rained down on Hawkeye, coating his bloody scrubs in a thick layer of brown grime.

He lay there for a long moment, ears ringing, heart pounding. He checked his arms. Still attached. He wiggled his toes. Still there.

He let out a loud, borderline-hysterical laugh, rolling over onto his back and staring up at the gray sky.

Suddenly, Potter’s voice rang out from the OR door. “Pierce! Are you alive out there?”

“Only physically, Colonel!” Hawkeye yelled back, pushing himself up from the mud.

“Good! Wash your hands! That kid still has a ruptured spleen and a torn bowel, and I’m not doing your paperwork if he dies on my watch!”

Hawkeye smiled, a genuine, weary smile. He dusted off the worst of the mud, marched back into the scrub room, and grabbed a fresh brush.

Just another casual Tuesday at the 4077th.