Mirror M*A*S*H: Through the Mirror, Part Two
This is by way of being a sequel to MirrorM*A*S*H.

Part one is here.

Part Two

Hawkeye was wrists-deep in a man’s guts when he saw the door push open and Father Mulcahy came in: masked, white-clad, missing his usual purple ribbom, but unmistakable. It was a sight both miraculous and deeply comforting: Hawkeye was grinning under the mask. He was operating on feel, not sight, removing the last tiny pieces of shrapnel lodged deep inside.

”Doctor,” Baker said. She hadn’t seen Mulcahy yet: all she could tell, like a good OR nurse, was that her surgeon was distracted.

“Suction,” Hawkeye said, in rejoinder. Blood was slippery stuff. He located the last steel fragment, bending close for his nose to catch any whiff of penetrated intestines, and removed it. “Got you.” He hadn’t thought what to say: he was too full of sheer joy.

BJ must have looked up a moment after Hawkeye did. His whoop filled the OR. “Father Mulcahy! Hey, everyone, Father Mulcahy’s back!”

Baker’s head whipped round, a break she’d never have made ordinarily: Hawkeye saw under her mask her lips part in a delighted smile. She got no rebuke from Margaret Houlihan: Margaret was standing at Winchester’s table, and she too had looked away towards the door.

“Nurse,” Winchester said acidly, “if I could have your full attention?”

“I’m sorry,” Margaret said. She still sounded distracted, but she must have turned back to the table.

“Good to see you, Padre,” the Colonel said.

“Father, so help me, if I weren’t sterile I’d give you the biggest hug in creation,” BJ said. He was working on a chest injury that Hawkeye had meant to ask him if he needed help with, but he seemed to be handling it fine.

“Can we save the party till we have no more wounded to deal with?”

“Pay no attention to Charles, Father,” BJ said. “He’s just too repressed to tell you how happy he is to see you.”

The familiar sound of a Charles Emerson Winchester drawing breath to rebuke the peasants – too refined to be called a snort – came across three tables. But when Winchester spoke, he sounded quite human. “I am delighted to see you, Father. These ruffians have planned a party for you, which I’m sure will fall to their usual standards of entertainment, but even though my hands are full at this moment – ” he sounded distracted “ – I assure you, it’s a pleasure to have you back. Your presence has been deeply missed.”

“Oh, I don’t think – ” Mulcahy sounded uncomfortable.

“I never thought I’d say this, Father, but Charles speaks for us all,” BJ said.

Hawkeye glanced up from the torso he was working on. Mulcahy was standing rigidly still, by the door: he was nearest Winchester’s table, but not close to any of them.

“I’m done,” Hawkeye said, stripping his gloves off. “Next!”

Klinger was wheeling in another body on the trolley. Mulcahy stepped sideways, a neat movement in the crowded OR, getting out of his way and not getting into anyone else’s. Klinger glanced sideways at him and didn’t stop, but his voice was louder than BJ’s. “Father Mulcahy! How did you manage to get in without me seeing you?”

“You were all very busy,” Mulcahy said. “I just – I put my baggage in the – in the chaplain’s tent and came over.”

“If you get tired, Padre, don’t stand on ceremony,” the Colonel said. “It’s your first day back.”

“Oh no, I want to help,” Mulcahy said.

“Come over here and give me a little cross action, Father,” Hawkeye said. He was opening up the new body on his table: shrapnel in gut and chest, the man was alive by dint of some good work at the aid station.

“I don’t have my vestments,” Mulcahy said. He sounded almost defensive.

“Your purple stole?” Klinger was halfway to the door. “I know exactly where it is!”

It had been lurking – Hawkeye happened to know – in the middle drawer of Klinger’s desk, for about four weeks. Four weeks three days, probably. Since the first time a chaplain showed up to take services who wasn’t Father Mulcahy.

Klinger was back almost before he’d gone: he shoved a double handful of purple and white silk at Mulcahy and headed out the door towards the lab. Hawkeye’s hands were deep in the man’s body and he could feel that this man was sliding, inexorably, down away from the living: the flesh seemed colder than it should be, the heart’s pulse labouring. He knew, quite rationally, that it made no difference to patient or surgeon if a bespectacled man with purple silk draped over his shoulders said words in Latin over an almost-corpse: but reason never had anything to do with how he felt when he knew to his fingertips that one of his patients was dying.

He’d never asked Trapper, when Trapper was here, if he remembered that line of Doctor Somerville’s. God saves their lives. We take the credit. “Hey, Father, hold this,” Hawkeye said. It was Baker’s job – but this patient was bleeding hard. Mulcahy could handle the suction. “Another pint of A-negative, Baker.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Good to have you back, Father,” Hawkeye said. His head, bent over the patient, was close to Mulcahy’s. “I tried to get into Tokyo to see you, but I couldn’t get away.”

“Yes,” Mulcahy said. “The Colonel told me.” He sounded tense.

“You’re doing fine,” Hawkeye told him, seeing the solid, sure hands holding the instrument out of the corner of his eye. Mulcahy’s hands never shook. “I’d hardly know you’d been away.”

“I would,” Mulcahy said, so quietly Hawkeye wasn’t sure if Mulcahy had meant to say it out loud. He began to speak in Latin, Domine Deus, and then in English, “Dear Lord, help this man...”

Baker came back with the blood. After a while – Hawkeye wasn’t even sure when – Mulcahy moved away, but he was still in the room. Hawkeye heard him sometimes, saying something in English or in Latin. He came back to Hawkeye’s table only once, for another patient – Hawkeye’s fourth or fifth of the night, this one with extensive damage to the femoral artery – but he was certainly there until the moment when Hawkeye lifted his head from the last man and said “Next!” and Klinger said cheerfully, “No more in the queue.”

No matter how terrible or how tedious the last patients of a shift were, at least they were the last. They staggered out into the changing-room, yawning and cursing.

“Where’s Father Mulcahy?” BJ asked, pulling his whites off. “I wanted – ” he yawned, showing most of his teeth “ – wanted to give him a hug.”

“I want to throw him a party,” Hawkeye said.

“Wait till I wake up,” BJ said, “Otherwise, I’m in.”

“Hold it, boys,” the Colonel said.

“We’ll wait till you wake up, too,” Hawkeye assured him.

“No party,” the Colonel said. “I said it and I meant it.” He had the Colonel look to his face, that made Hawkeye want to get to his feet, salute or something, and then do whatever it was he’d been ordered not to do. The trouble was, by this time, the Colonel knew it. Hawkeye frowned, struggling into his olive drab. He was tired enough to sleep the clock round, but that was nothing new. The Colonel was eyeing him.

“Pierce, you’re not about to throw him a party just because I’ve ordered you not to?”

“Why not?” Winchester asked.

The Colonel looked round at him. “Winchester, not you as well.”

“It is traditional in this benighted place to throw a party on the slightest excuse,” Winchester said. “Or none that I can recall. Margaret will be through this door in a minute, demanding to know what theme we have thought up.”

“He’s right,” BJ said. He hadn’t opened his eyes. “If you want us not to throw a party for Father Mulcahy, it’s got to be better than because I said so.”

“Look,” the Colonel said. “The fact is – Father Mulcahy knew you would want to give him a party, and he asked me to discourage you from it. If possible, without telling you he said so. Don’t, and don’t tell him I said so. Am I getting through to you, Pierce? Hunnicutt? Winchester?”

“Admirably,” Winchester said. “But you can tell Margaret.”

Hawkeye shrugged when the Colonel’s eye lighted on him. “I heard you,” he said, and then lifted his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. No party.”

The light was still on in the chaplain’s tent. Hawkeye left BJ at the doorway to the Swamp. Winchester was fallen on his cot, reaching for his eye-shades: BJ was staggering towards his cot, looking as if he were about to dive into sleep. Of course Mulcahy might have gone to sleep with the light still on. Hawkeye knocked quietly.

There was a thump inside the tent, sounding like a book landing on the floor. Hawkeye opened the door and went in. Mulcahy was on his feet by his chair. The book he had been reading was face down on the floor. Mulcahy looked panicked – as if Hawkeye wasn’t who he’d expected.

Hawkeye stood still and raised his hands.

“Say something,” Mulcahy said. He sounded as nervous as if he’d been startled out of sleep.

“Something,” Hawkeye said, amused, putting his hands down.

“Say something else!”

“What?” It was Hawkeye’s turn to stare. “Say what? I just came in to see how you are, Father.”

“Oh.” For the first time, Mulcahy seemed to relax. “That was a very kind thought, Hawkeye. I’m fine. Good night.”

“No, you’re not. What happened?”

“I can’t tell you,” Mulcahy said. “Sorry. I – can’t.” He sat down again, reaching for his book, holding it with his finger to mark the place. “Good night. I’m just going to read for a bit and then go to sleep.”

Hawkeye didn’t move. Mulcahy didn’t look down at his book.

“Rough session in OR for you?”

Mulcahy put up his hand to his mouth to conceal a fleeting grin: Hawkeye saw it and found himself taking a long step closer. When Mulcahy grinned like that it was – it always had been – a schoolboy’s look of amusement and guilt at being amused. Never quite a laugh, unless Mulcahy was too drunk to suppress it. Mulcahy grinned like that over jokes about Charles’s hair, or the Colonel’s fondness for his horse, or BJ’s letters home – or Hawkeye’s promiscuous fondness for nurses. But that grin, seen and gone, was a brief, bitter flip of humour that Hawkeye didn’t understand.

“It was a long night. You must be exhausted, Hawkeye. Why don’t you go to sleep? I’ll see you in the morning.” Mulcahy’s voice sounded just as usual: but he was clutching the book against his chest.

“Sure. Listen,” Hawkeye said. “Don’t rush to get up. It’s not Sunday tomorrow. Want me to bring you over a tray of breakfast?” If Mulcahy had been so opposed to the idea of a party, would the mess tent be as bad or worse?

“No,” Mulcahy said sharply. He shook his head after a moment. “It was a very kind – very generous thought, Hawkeye, but... please,” his voice held a tired desperation that shocked Hawkeye, “please, I just want you to let me – let me come into the mess tent... just as usual.”

Hawkeye didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Okay,” he said finally. He took a step backwards, and another, watching Mulcahy intently. He felt for the door, and opened it. “Good night, Father. Sweet dreams.”

“Good night,” Mulcahy said again, before Hawkeye closed the door.



(As of 13th February 2008, this story is up to: Part one, Part two, Part three, Part four, Part five, Part six, part seven, part eight, part nine, part ten, part eleven, part twelve, part thirteen, part fourteen and part fifteen part fourteen part fifteen, part sixteen and part seventeen. But it still isn't finished.)