Mirror M*A*S*H: Through the Mirror, Part Twelve
This is by way of being a sequel to MirrorM*A*S*H. Please note this is Part Twelve. You will find it impossibly confusing if you didn't notice I already posted part eleven. Perhaps you should go back and read part eleven, hm? I'm sorry for the confusing and irregular rate at which this is being posted, but, hey.

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 are here.

Really, you will find this part very confusing if you haven't read part eleven first.

Part Twelve

There was a chain from one manacle on my wrist to the other, and from one on my ankle to the other, and the two chains were fastened together by a third. They were locked on to me. I found it quite difficult to walk. I couldn’t fight. It was the one thing I wanted to do, so much of the time. Because most of the men I saw – who came into the room where I was kept – didn’t speak English. They weren’t all Korean, but all of them were – for a while I believed that if I could just find the right words, I could – convince someone I ought not to be there. Only no one seemed to understand – they didn’t talk to me. The chains just made it easy for them to – arrange me and – sodomize me. Until Hawkeye came.

Every time someone came in, I seemed to – I can’t explain it: I seemed to stop believing. In anything. I wanted to fight. I didn’t know I could want anything so much. But I couldn’t. And I couldn’t seem to think or pray or even speak.

I had lost my spectacles – or had them taken away: I suppose the latter is more likely, but I don’t altogether remember. I could see people passing outside the room, when the door was left open, but they were blurred. Even when they came into the room, I still couldn’t see them clearly, until they were almost close enough to touch me.

But I knew he was Hawkeye when he stopped in front of the open door. Even before he spoke to me. I thought he had come for me. Not to rescue me. For me.

I always knew he was Hawkeye. Major Winchester and Major Burns, and Captain McIntyre, and even BJ, I kept thinking – it was like being with ghosts. With shadows. They weren’t the men I’d known. But all the time I knew – he was Hawkeye. I didn’t understand what he was doing there, or why he pretended not to know who I was, or why he seemed not to see how strange the other men were, but I knew he was Hawkeye. I was afraid to let go of him in case he disappeared and left me alone there again. He got me out of that room. I wasn’t in chains any more. Or naked. The first thing Hawkeye did, when I was unchained, was give me his jacket. Even Radar wasn’t quite like Radar. But he was Hawkeye. I clung to that. To him.

I didn’t realise the call for ‘cutters’ meant anything different there than it does here. Or what would happen to the incoming wounded. But the drivers were different.

They came into the Swamp. I could have fought them. I wasn’t chained up. They took for granted that I wouldn’t fight.

I did – what they wanted. I could say it was because they only wanted fellatio, which isn’t painful. But the truth is I was afraid of what would happen if I fought them. There were several of them. They took turns, but they didn’t have to. I did what they wanted. Twice they brought me sandwiches.

When Hawkeye and the others came back from OR, they – when I woke up, it seemed like a bad dream. They took turns, too. I didn’t fight. It was only fellatio. It didn’t hurt.

If it was a bad dream, at least Hawkeye was in it with me. We played poker. He didn’t let Captain McIntyre – He was Trapper there too, and – I liked Trapper. I never thought any real harm of him.

BJ was there as well. He never seems quite here. He’s always – he’s quite grounded, but he’s living somewhere else.

When I first saw BJ there, he – I thought he must be in physical pain. I wondered why the others – why Hawkeye didn’t seem to notice. No one asked him what was wrong. As if they were used to his – He looked terrible. He did things –

Well, he dislocated my arm. He said it was to teach Hawkeye a lesson. Sometimes people who are suffering deal with it by passing the pain on. That seemed to be BJ.

Hawkeye didn’t stop him.

I clung to Hawkeye. I’d been afraid when I was in the room that he meant to – that he was just going to arrange me and –

I thought he’d come for me. I’d begged him to go away. But he’d rescued me.

Then when he told me –

The day before, the drivers had wanted fellatio. The night before, if it wasn’t a bad dream, the – these men like shadows I thought I’d known – they’d – all of them. They smelled like stale blood and they seemed – none of them were quite there. Not even Hawkeye.

Hawkeye told me he wanted to have sex with me. He’d rescued me. I didn’t want to fight him.

I thought – if I could just not think of him as Hawkeye – I could do it. He got me out of the room. I could commit fellatio for him.

But I didn’t think I could bear it if he sodomised me.

It’s funny how we say things like that. “I couldn’t bear it” as if we were bridges that could just fall down and make an end of it.

Hawkeye gave me some food. He and McIntyre went out. Radar came and talked to me. He wanted to know how I could know him. He said he was trying to find records of me, that he thought BJ would let me be sent home if he – were certain I was American.

I knew it wasn’t a nightmare. Talking to him, I knew it wasn’t. He was – not quite Radar, but still – not as much of a stranger as some of the others.

When Hawkeye came back – I knew with my head you weren’t Hawkeye. But it felt as if you were.

I knew you weren’t Hawkeye. I knew you and McIntyre meant to sodomise me. I couldn’t bear to fight you – even knowing you weren’t Hawkeye. I could not hit out at someone who looked like him and sounded like him. And someone who had, God pardon me, touched me to comfort me and tried to be kind –

I knew if I asked – if I offered fellatio, you would probably have accepted that instead of sodomy. I knew it would be easier for me. But I was moving beyond thought or speech or even prayer. I couldn’t.

I wish I could say I don’t remember what you and McIntyre did to me.

I know suicide’s a sin – an offense against God. But you had me arranged for sodomy, and I wasn’t fettered. Even if you didn’t then, I knew you could.

I couldn’t fight you – you are Hawkeye, even if you’re not. I couldn’t even want to fight you. I couldn’t seem to find the right words to explain – I can’t now. But when I was alone I could think and try to pray.

It seemed to me that I couldn’t offend God by trying to die as a Christian, and it had become clear to me that if BJ were forced to take official notice of a Christian priest, he might find it easiest to have me killed. This didn’t seem quite like suicide – just a good enough chance of death.

Radar tried to tell me – that this camp wasn’t a surgical unit. It wasn’t really medical at all. It was placed wherever the resistance had been most extreme. The incoming wounded were resisters. It didn’t quite sink in at the time.

I promise you, Hawkeye, when we walked into BJ’s office, that morning, I only thought of being killed: I hadn’t thought he might order you to torture me to death. When he threatened that –

I understood what Radar had been trying to tell me. What kind of place it was. An anteroom to hell.

BJ looked to me like a man suffering the pains of hell. I did nothing to alleviate his pain. If anything, I exacerbated it. I didn’t know his wife and daughter were dead when I used Erin’s name – knowing his attention meant my death. But God forgive me, I think I might have used that torment even if I had known. I wanted to die. I thought if I made him angry enough he might kill me. I knew no better lever to move him but his daughter.

I understood that you were trying to save my life. But for what?

Despair is a mortal sin. I came to understand that, afterwards – but not then. I was mired in despair. I couldn’t see any way out of this life I detested – except to die.

You could do anything you liked to me. Anything at all. You would sodomise me, or let Trapper do it, or sell me to Major Winchester for him to –

I’ve never liked Winchester. He seemed very much like himself.

I’d heard Hawkeye shout at his patients in the OR – in our OR – to live. Your anger and his seemed to be the same. I never felt so close to home as when you were shouting at me to live. I never felt so far away when you forced me to eat, to make me livelier for sale.

But when you promised you would kill me, I was so completely grateful.

I knew I’d hurt BJ. I hadn’t expected him to fetter me. He didn’t arrange me – he just – he hurt me, but he wanted to know about Erin and Peg, and I expected that. I hoped once he was done he would go and you could kill me.

I don’t remember what I told him. I remember – but it couldn’t have been real – that BJ himself was there, I mean the one I knew, the one who hadn’t been hurt. He was asking me questions, as if I’d seen Peg and Erin more recently than he had, and he’d wanted news of them.

I knew you were there. You didn’t stop him. I didn’t expect you to stop him. I couldn’t expect you to fight BJ. Any more than I could fight you.

I didn’t know what he would do to you. But when he started – when he began to hurt you –

God forgive me. I can’t forgive myself.

I thought when BJ first cut you that if I let him torture you – If I let him think I had been persuaded by his cutting you – I meant to kill BJ. I knew how I could do it.

I wanted to go home. More than I wanted heaven or I feared hell.

The others I met there – who I know here – they each have their shadow side, and I’ve seen it. I’ve seen mine. But you, Hawkeye – I can’t tell you two apart. I’m afraid of Hawkeye. It’s not even his shadow I’m afraid of. That I could bear knowing. I know Hawkeye – both of you – better than I should.

I know you find it very hard to deal with what you were made to do. I can’t help you. I wish I could. You deserve the kindness that, even in the anteroom to hell, you were willing to give to me.

I can’t forgive myself. I can’t forgive you. I have promised to do penance and to amend my life. I’m going away, just as you are, and we’ll never see each other again, but I’ll pray for you for the rest of my life. I needed you to know my sins. I needed to tell you that you have my prayers and my thoughts.

Thank you both for listening to me so patiently. May God grant you pardon and peace, Hawkeye.

to Part 13