Fandom: M*A*S*H.
Author: Epigone.
Pairing: Insinuations of Hawkeye/BJ, and Sidney unrequited.
Rating: PG.
Warnings: Mild profanity.
Archivists: Ask first.
Summary: Numerous things come out during a nighttime conference.
Date Written: April-May 2003.
Author's Notes: Dedicated to Ra, who unwittingly inspired me to rework this piece when she requested Hawkeye/Sidney fic.
Feedback: Can be sent to kmaru1701 [AT] hotmail [DOT] com, and is much appreciated.
Confidentiality
It was a pleasantly chilly day, but Sidney Freedman, leaning out into a gray wind as he bumped along the road, was not enjoying himself at all. It had begun to occur to him, at long last, that this war was not ending anytime soon. He'd seen enough patients wrung dry by it all, and now he was marking signs of deterioration in himself. He felt clogged as he drove through the lengthening brown shadows, as though somehow his emotional filtering system had broken down.
He knew that even doctors were human. He would have a firsthand look at that where he was going now.
The peaked tents of the 4077th reared up before him, and he steered the jeep into a space in the motor pool. The camp was strangely quiet, and he killed the engine and paused, one arm slung over the windshield. The muted sounds of clinking instruments and murmurous voices gradually drifted up to him from the building across the compound. He took his bags to the Swamp, set them by the door, and made his way toward the center of activity.
In the scrub room, he washed and gowned up. As always, he experienced a little flush of adrenaline as he plunged his arms under into the cold, driving water and changed, with unobserved grace, into sterile scrubs. It was the memories of med school: the cool, sinuous movement of his hands under skin, the way the sinews coiled perfectly, revealed in the glare of the lamps. Psychiatry was the place to be, as far as he was concerned, but there was still something so dramatically tangible about surgery.
"Afternoon, all," he said as he emerged into the strange illumination of the O.R. As a courtesy, he found the C.O. and went to stand at his elbow. "Colonel Potter." It still required some thought not to automatically call him "Henry."
"Sidney, nice to see you." Potter nearly stumbled over his name as well. It was decidedly awkward - they'd been playing poker together for almost four months, but he still wasn't quite comfortable with being on a first-name basis. "We're a little shorthanded tonight; you want to get in on this?"
Sidney shrugged amiably.
"If I can't have poker, I'll take life-saving."
"Good. Go give Hawkeye some help, would you?"
Sidney shot a quick glance at Major Burns, who was working furiously in a corner, grappling with a perforated intestine. If anyone needed help, it was Frank.
But when he arrived to assist at Hawkeye's table, Sidney noticed the surgeon's noticeably slowed reflexes. Little things: a moment's delay in taking the instrument from his nurse, a dropped suture, a messy cutting job. Father Mulcahy, standing off to the side, gave Sidney a look of understated, confidential concern. Above the blank expanse of his mask, Hawkeye's eyes were unreadable.
"Hi, Hawkeye," Sidney said, rubbing his gloves together. "Mind if I cut in?"
Hawkeye, one hand deep in the patient's bowels, passed him a scalpel.
"Now, Sidney, before you take out your repressed anger on this kid, let me tell you when and where to do that cutting."
"Sure," said Sidney neutrally, cocking his head and waiting. Hawkeye wasn't normally this overtly jealous about patients.
"All right," grunted Hawkeye after a moment. "We're resecting the bowel� here." He drew the skin aside and looked almost challengingly at Sidney. "Go ahead."
Sidney tucked his chin and put his scalpel to work. Halfway through, he felt pressure under his hands, and when he moved them aside, a strong spurt of blood arched up at him, splattering his scrubs.
"You just hit a bleeder," said Hawkeye quickly. "Not an emergency." He reached in, took Sidney's scalpel, and replaced it with a clamp. "Hold down for a minute; it should stop." As he spoke, he was already slicing through the last curve of the bowel, and now he brought out the damaged section. Sidney, after checking that the bleeding had ceased, held the two separate parts of the bowel while Hawkeye stitched them together. The heat of the O.R. lights and Hawkeye's concentrated breath was oppressive, but Sidney's fingers moved skillfully, obliviously, through the slickness of the patient, around Hawkeye's warm hands. He shivered slightly, an odd looseness coming into his body.
At last they were done, and the corpsman moved the boy away into the post-op ward. Hawkeye, pulling off his soiled gloves with ragged jerks, flashed a grin at Sidney while they waited for the next patient.
"He got you good, Sidney." Sidney peeled off his own gloves and gave him an uncomprehending look. "That kid." Hawkeye touched his chin demonstratively.
Sidney touched his own chin and found it wet with blood. He smiled back, shamefacedly.
"It's been a while since I last did this."
"You're only used to dirtying your mind with other people's problems," said Hawkeye, and again there was that new note in his voice, an intense, oblique bitterness. "Not your hands."
Sidney looked at him thoughtfully and didn't respond. The rest of the operating session passed hazily, the patients running together as smoothly as the blood on their hands, and Sidney became accustomed to working in close proximity with another person. He wondered how BJ had adjusted to that, and then he set the thought aside for later, neatly, deftly. Life, for six hours, was blissfully simple: not the convoluted pink intricacies of the human mind, but the gross negligence of artillery on flesh. And, every now and then, Hawkeye misjudging a movement and brushing against the bare skin of his arm, heavy and unaware.
* * * * * * * * *
Afterward, as they stripped off their scrubs, Hawkeye resting one hand familiarly on Sidney's shoulder for balance, Sidney asked the question he hadn't brought up in the O.R.: "Where's BJ, then?"
Hawkeye, finishing, draped himself bonelessly over the nearest bench and looked up from under his dark, awry hair.
"Two-day pass to Tokyo," he said, smiling privately. Then, abruptly, the smile disappeared, and he leaned forward. "You should've been here yesterday. He was being a little�." He waved a hand vaguely at his head.
"I'm glad to see that you have such a grasp of our psychiatric lingo," replied Sidney dryly, but he couldn't quite control his curiosity. "BJ was acting oddly?"
Hawkeye nodded.
"Well?" prompted Sidney, after a moment.
"Well, what? He had a rough time the first week - everybody does; me, I tried to eat my fist in my sleep every night, among other things - and then he worked it out. These last two weeks, though, he's been on edge again."
"That happens sometimes," said Sidney, with more reassurance in his tone than he had expected. This wasn't an official session, but then, with Hawkeye, it rarely was. "Relapse, in a way. Potter knows what he's doing - a few days of rest, and BJ'll be fine."
"Oh, I know that," said Hawkeye distantly. "Sure."
They left the building together and walked in silence to the Swamp. Sidney ached all over; he wasn't used to the surprising amount of physical exertion involved in surgery, and he was ready for sleep. He entered first, and Hawkeye paused behind him, leaning on the doorjamb. Sidney let him stand there as he sat on BJ's bunk and proceeded to unpack his bags. There was no use pressing for anything. Hawkeye would speak when he needed to.
"He, uh - " Hawkeye shifted, a faint rustle that Sidney strained to hear. "I mean, I should have�." He made a short, sharp noise of frustration in the back of his throat. "Sidney, you're supposed to help me here."
"I just treat minds. I don't read them."
"Aha, touch�." Hawkeye moved toward Sidney, recklessly. "It's just that maybe I should've tried to keep him here."
"Why?" asked Sidney conversationally.
"Should he really be going up to some hotel full of strangers in Tokyo? Don't you people always emphasize the value of treating people at the front? Wouldn't - " He broke off again and, presently, began to pace. Sidney watched the long, linear movement of his legs from one side of the tent to the other, taut and frantic. God forbid you ever stop moving, thought Sidney. "Wouldn't it make more sense to help him here?"
"There's not much to do," said Sidney. "This is fairly natural. He needs some time to detoxify. Not to mention the fact that I wouldn't be available for any extended treatment right now, even if it were necessary. I've got as full a caseload as you surgeons."
Hawkeye stopped at the far wall, running a hand along it.
"But just� being here. Not even with formal therapy. Wouldn't that be better?"
"You can only help him so much, Hawkeye," said Sidney levelly. Hawkeye stared at him, painfully erect against the dim green of the wall, his customary slouch gone. "Just remember that."
Hawkeye gave a choked laugh and, in folded angles, sat down on the edge of his own bed.
"It would be pretty presumptuous of me to think otherwise, Sidney. I know I'm no psychiatrist."
"Good." Sidney set his bag aside. "If you like, we can talk about this later, but right now, I'm dog-tired."
"Hey, I'm paying by the hour!" protested Hawkeye laughingly, but he nodded. "Fine. I'm hitting the sack too." He reached up and switched off the lamp, rolling over in the narrow bed. Sidney remained where he was, imagining himself briefly from Hawkeye's perspective, a blue and diffuse shadow cast over BJ's vacant bed. He lay down stiffly, his chest on the pillow, and tried to sleep.
And he did, for a time, but soon he came back to himself, woke to pale moonlight coming in through the gaps in the tent; the still turning and sloshing self-absorbedly; and Hawkeye, inert, limned white in the blackness just across the floor. He propped himself on his elbows, half-awake, and drifted, searching for slumber.
A few moments later, Hawkeye twitched under his blankets, and then again, spasmodically. Sidney's first instinct, lying there wrapped in the faint scent of BJ and the covers he used, was to spring up and speak Hawkeye's name, pull him out of whatever it was that jerked him in his sleep. He suppressed the urge.
When Hawkeye made a soft, frantic noise, it was all Sidney could do to stay where he was. He allowed himself to sit up in the bed and wait, watching. Hawkeye said something in a low voice, and then there was scuffling and the light glaring in Sidney's face.
Hawkeye lay back against his pillow, and Sidney could see the pulse leaping in his throat under the unsteady lamp.
"Hawkeye?"
Hawkeye spared him a glance.
"Sidney," he said, in faint confusion. "Morning."
"It's still night," Sidney informed him gently.
Hawkeye's eyes flickered.
"Ah," he said, and smiled ruefully. "Sometimes it's� hard to tell. But - I'm sorry, Sidney, I usually only wake myself."
"I was already up." It wasn't quite a lie.
"Well, that's all right, then," said Hawkeye abstractedly, as if he wasn't even certain of what they were discussing anymore. "Uh - " He swung his legs abruptly out of the bed and stood, throwing a narrow shadow along the floor. "Do you want a drink?"
"As long as you're already having one."
Hawkeye made his way to the still and filled two glasses, absently allowing a little gin to slosh onto the floor. He presented one glass to Sidney with a half-hearted flourish and repositioned himself on his bunk. They sipped their drinks - or, rather, Sidney sipped and Hawkeye gulped - and then Hawkeye, exhaling, set his glass aside and leaned forward intently, elbows on knees.
"So," said Sidney casually, trying to seem unperturbed by the scrutiny, "how often do you have nightmares nowadays?"
Hawkeye's face was guarded.
"Off and on; it's not really a problem. It doesn't feel the same as what went on when Potter called you in. These are just run-of-the-mill things."
"Do you usually cry out?"
Hawkeye's eyes dropped briefly to the bunk upon which Sidney sat; then he shrugged elaborately and said, "Not under normal circumstances."
Ah. "Do you wake anyone?"
"Frank's off taking stock of a certain person's inventory half the time - you timed your visit well, since that's where he is now - and the other half, he sleeps like a log."
"What about BJ?"
"I told you," said Hawkeye irritably, "I don't generally make noise."
"Why tonight, then?"
"I don't know."
"Hawkeye, if you'd rather not discuss this, I'm perfectly willing to go back to sleep."
"No." Hawkeye downed the rest of his gin. Finished, he began toying with the glass, passing it from one slim hand to the other. "Listen, Sidney, I - goddammit." He nearly dropped the glass. "I don't want a shrink tonight."
It clicked into place, then: the shortness in the O.R., the challenging air, the vague resentment all evening. "Hawkeye, I know you won't believe me on this, but the fact that I came in here and acted in a psychiatric capacity once doesn't change anything. I don't see you as a patient; I see you as an equal, another person dropped out here and asked to put young men back together. So you don't need to see me as a doctor."
"You are a doctor," said Hawkeye. "I just don't want you to be my doctor."
"Then don't look at me that way." Hawkeye snorted, but Sidney gazed at him steadily until he averted his eyes.
"All right, fine. Sure." Hawkeye glanced at the glass in his hands, and, for a moment, a spasm of unidentifiable, inturned pain seemed to pass over his face.
"Something wrong?" asked Sidney.
Hawkeye put the glass down again and laughed.
"Eh, tonic elbow. Shooting pains whenever I lift a glass. My self-preservation instinct trying to tell me something?" His voice was calculatedly loud in the small space.
"Self-preservation instinct's a funny thing," said Sidney. "Manifests itself in all sorts of ways."
"Yeah," brusquely.
They sat in the dilute, blooming glow of the lamp, with the air stagnant between them and Hawkeye's hands working with ill-concealed anxiety in his lap. The sun was just beginning to lighten the edge of the horizon, a wide gleam infusing the eastern mountains with color. Sidney watched Hawkeye's pale face in the light and felt an odd pang somewhere within his ribcage.
"You get much sleep around here?" asked Sidney at length.
"In a camp full of nurses?" returned Hawkeye with forced flippancy. Sidney smiled noncommittally and waited. Hawkeye's shoulders dropped and he passed a hand over his eyes. "Uh� no, not really."
"Why not?"
Hawkeye looked away and said in a flat voice, "I don't know."
Sidney, on impulse, reached across the gap between the beds - a narrow space of settled dust, strictly measured - and patted Hawkeye on the knee, saying with a small laugh, "You don't know, or you haven't told yourself yet?"
Hawkeye's reaction was immediate: he turned swiftly, his hand darting out to cover Sidney's in a firm warmth, his eyes dark as obsidian. Sidney held the position until Hawkeye, his gaze solidifying, seemed to recognize him again. The surgeon let his hand fall and discreetly moved out from underneath Sidney's touch.
"I'm sorry," said Hawkeye, swiping at his bangs nervously. He seemed lost, there amongst the rumpled covers, his legs folded underneath him, staring past Sidney with open wistfulness; then he turned and chuckled self-deprecatingly. "Guess I'm still a little shaken up by that dream."
Sidney shrugged, removing his hand from the mattress.
"It's all right."
"Um, listen, Sidney� about that self-preservation instinct." Hawkeye hesitated. "I think that's what BJ needs right now. I mean, he has no idea, really, they just dumped him out here. You know what he said to me, the first week? 'Five weeks of indoctrination.' That's all he had."
"Isn't that standard?" queried Sidney. "Isn't that what you had?"
Hawkeye waved a hand.
"That's not the point. I'm saying, I'm saying, taking into account the circumstances and what he's coming from, God, Sidney, a wife and a baby and a nice little white-picket-fence house, fresh out of residency and no preparation and no warning that he'd have to adjust to this--"
"Take a breath, Hawkeye," interrupted Sidney with amused affection.
"I'm a doctor; I know the importance of respiration," said Hawkeye indignantly, but he took a moment to steady his voice. "I mean, he just� they - they had no right to send him here."
"The Army doesn't have to ask permission."
"Oh, that's a neat circumvention of the issue. I like your style, Sidney: you make a wonderful avoidant." Sidney's flinch went unnoticed. "What I'm saying is, shouldn't someone step in?"
"How do you mean?" asked Sidney tonelessly.
"Well, would it be so wrong to help him - adjust?" Hawkeye lowered his eyes, his hands beginning that independent, restless motion again. "Obviously, the Army has no idea how to go about instilling the self-preservation instinct in these clean-cut young men, oh, no, that would be too much, to come down here and get involved in the dirty, lousy details of war. So all I want is for somebody to help."
Sidney raised an eyebrow.
"All right, but it's not my place as a psychiatrist--"
"I know that. But what would you say if I just helped ground him a little? Because otherwise, he's going to eat himself up alive over everything, he's going to, I don't know, lose something. What would you say? If I let him get drunk, let him lose a fortune in poker, let him torment Frank, let him� forget this for a while?"
"I think," said Sidney carefully, folding his hands, "that you both need some grounding right now."
Hawkeye swallowed shakily. He seemed to go limp, unable to hold himself upright for a moment.
"He needs to come back," he said softly.
"I know. I'll talk to Potter about it, advise him to recall BJ tomorrow."
"That sounds good." Hawkeye's eyes were suddenly unfocused. He looked exhausted.
"Well, much as I've enjoyed our little nightcap, I think I'm going back to bed," said Sidney. "You probably should, too." He lay down where he was, turning his head away so that his cheek rested against the coolness of the sheets. He heard a deep sigh, a creaking from the other bed, and finally the light flicked out and Hawkeye settled himself as well. His breathing evened out in minutes.
Sidney rested without sleep for a long time. Once, he thought he felt the throaty rumble of shells over the hills, but it was just his heart, thudding like a metronome through the grayness of near-dawn. He fell asleep as the sun slid bloodily over the farthest ridges. It lit the dust where it showed up phosphorescent along the floor, where it curved in minute trails from the legs of Sidney's -- BJ's -- cot, night by night dragged to the left, toward Hawkeye, with only the private still for witness.
Sidney slept, and he never said a word.
* * * * * * * * *
At noon the next day, there was the predictable rush of casualties, but Hawkeye moved through triage with swift steps, a rare, genuine smile touching his lips. Potter had reached BJ that morning, and the young doctor would be home at any time.
Sidney's baggage was ready, set in an ordered stack by the Swamp door, but he stayed to help in one last surgery session. He passed through the scrub room quickly, rubbing his hands raw in the sink, struggling roughly into his scrubs. When he entered the O.R., there was still a vacant spot by Hawkeye's table.
"Am I overstaying my welcome?" he asked, offering his gloved hands to Hawkeye.
"You? Never. Can always use some good fingers. I don't know why you waste yours on paperwork," replied Hawkeye absently, hunting for shrapnel in a soldier's belly.
"Take them, they're yours," said Sidney, laughing.
"Okay," said Hawkeye rather abruptly, grasping Sidney's hands in his own and guiding them into the body. "Hold this bowel back." Sidney, biting his lip under the surgical mask, obliged.
Hawkeye worked in assured silence, but when he leaned back to allow the nurse to wipe the sweat from his forehead, he looked sideways and said, sheepishly, "Hey, Sidney, thanks. For listening. I was just tired."
"Mmm," grunted Sidney. "It was no trouble."
They bent over the soldier again, Hawkeye's fingers slipping easily through every crevice. Sidney held quite still, feeling the loose slide of unfamiliar skin above and below him, until Hawkeye, with a lopsided grin, offered him the honor of stitching up the boy.
As he threaded the needle, Sidney heard the weighty thump of chopper blades stirring the air outside. He didn't have to glance up to know that Hawkeye's face was upturned, his eyes wide and reflecting, through the dingy O.R. window, the lean figure of a man who clambered out of the helicopter and stopped, looking through the window from the other side. Sidney didn't have to glance up to see that slight movement of Hawkeye's body, like dust stirring in the secret corners of the Swamp. He had only to feel the way Hawkeye's hand fumbled momentarily and then tensed beside his own.
"It was no trouble at all," he repeated. And, as if it had just occurred to him: "Just doing my job." He neatly put in the final suture, closing up the space just beneath the man's ribs, under Hawkeye's trembling hands. He reconcealed the red, hot, private landscape that they had exposed to the light, and he wished it were that easy.
~Fin~
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