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

Part one, Part two, and Part three are here.

Lumpy porridge: wooden pancakes: muddy coffee: powdered, salty eggs. Hawkeye prodded the porridge thoughtfully with his spoon and wondered out loud if it was wallpaper paste or if wallpaper paste would taste better.

BJ was ploughing methodically through his eggs. “Please don’t tell me what you think it tastes like.”

Hawkeye glanced sideways at BJ. He was playing with some idea about white slime, and then he saw Father Mulcahy come in the door of the mess tent. He stood up, abandoning his tray of food to the fates. “Wait a minute, I see my Saturday night date,” he said to BJ, and headed over to the table where five of the nurses were sitting together. He sat down next to O’Hara, the only one of the five of them he hadn’t yet propositioned, and gave her his widest smile.

Father Mulcahy was standing in line. He was being served eggs. Pancakes. Porridge. He had stopped to help himself to a cup of coffee. He added milk. He saw BJ sitting at the mess table by himself. BJ saw him. He crossed the mess tent, smiling, benevolent, and sat down across the table from BJ.

Hawkeye finished making his play for O’Hara. O’Hara was giggling, and not in a cooperative way: the other nurses were hiding smiles behind their hands. Hawkeye shrugged. “Well, you’re missing out on a fantastic Saturday night,” he said agreeably. “Call me any time.”

Father Mulcahy had chosen toast, not pancakes. Hawkeye sat down across the table from him, and said to BJ “I think I hooked her.”

“She turned you down,” BJ said, amused.

“I don’t think of it as being turned down,” Hawkeye said. “She’ll come round to my way of thinking eventually.”

BJ laughed. “Maybe if you wait a year.”

Mulcahy was looking down at his breakfast as if trying to think of a blessing for it.

“If we’re still here in a year, she’s got worse problems that where to find a date on Saturday night. Father, can you settle a question I’ve been wondering about?”

Mulcahy looked up, looking startled, and Hawkeye went on without giving Mulcahy a beat to respond in: “Is the toast any better than the pancakes?”

There was a pause, and Mulcahy laughed: a measured, artificial ha ha ha, a polite recognition that a joke had been made. He hadn’t laughed like that at Hawkeye’s teasing since the first few nionths at the 4077th. “The toast isn’t very good, I’m afraid.”

“I think the pancakes are worse.” Hawkeye lifted a forkful of pancake to his nose and sniffed. “Slices of wallpaper paste fried in rancid fat and dried over a bonfire of rotten wood for five, no, six days, am I right?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” BJ said, with impatient disgust. “Bad enough we have to eat this without listening to you describe it, too.”

Hawkeye sniffed at the pancake again. “Rotten pine wood, am I right?”

“That’s it,” BJ said, and stood up, collecting his tray. He had all but finished his breakfast, in fact, all but one remaining pancake and a last mouthful of coffee. “Father, if he keeps talking about the food, can’t you excommunicate him? Or gag him.”

Mulcahy laughed again, that same artificial laugh, and nodded at BJ. He didn’t say anything.

There would be other people coming in who would sit down and join them. Or Mulcahy might make his escape on some excuse of last rites or sudden diarrhea.

“Everything okay, Father?” Hawkeye asked.

Mulcahy was looking down at his breakfast again. “Everything’s fine.” He didn’t so much as glance up from buttering his toast.

It had been ten days since Father Mulcahy came back – from the dead, Hawkeye sometimes caught himself thinking, though in fact he had spent the month in which Mulcahy seemed to have vanished denying angrily to everyone that there was any chance at all Mulcahy might be dead. Ten days. No one else seemed to have noticed there was anything wrong. It had taken Hawkeye a week to be sure there was something wrong.

No. It had taken five minutes. It had taken him a week to believe it.

“Coming to the poker game tonight?” Hawkeye asked.

Now Mulcahy looked up. His face had a withdrawn look. “I remember. I’d like to.”

“You didn’t come last week.”

Mulcahy smiled. “I was tired.”

“Sidney’s going to be there.”

Mulcahy nodded. He scraped some butter off his toast.

“Did you talk to anyone about what happened to you?”

“About what?” Mulcahy asked. He began to eat his toast.

Hawkeye wanted to shake him. “About what happened to you when you were a prisoner,” he said, trying to keep his voice even.

Mulcahy put down his toast. He looked across the mess tent, almost as if searching for rescue. “I’m very sorry, but I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“Look, I’m your friend, and I’m a doctor, and you’ve – ”

Hawkeye had a whole speech planned, and he thought it had been a pretty good one. Mulcahy picked up his tray and stood up. “I don’t want to talk about this with you.” It was an abrupt cutoff, said tonelessly, and surprise shut Hawkeye up for the thirty seconds it took Mulcahy to get to the mess tent door. About all Hawkeye had accomplished was to make sure Mulcahy didn’t get any breakfast.

Sidney Freedman was a good psychiatrist. If Mulcahy didn’t want to talk to anyone else, he should talk to him. At least Mulcahy had said not with you, not not at all. Hawkeye ran his fork through the remains of the vile egg on his plate. About the only time Mulcahy didn’t seem to be avoiding Hawkeye was OR. Hawkeye had thought about offering to skip tonight’s poker game if that meant Mulcahy would go, but –

But he hadn’t wanted to make it explicit that Mulcahy was avoiding him. Hawkeye grinned at his half-eaten pancakes. Even though Mulcahy knew it. Hawkeye knew it. He didn’t want Mulcahy to know Hawkeye knew it. He didn’t want anyone to know it. “Such a fantastic person as I am.”

“Talking to yourself, Pierce?” The Colonel sat down opposite him.

“I would say that’s the first sign of insanity, but in your case that would be redundant,” Winchester said, sitting down next to Colonel Potter.

“Isn’t the second sign of insanity finding hairs on the palms of your hands?” Hawkeye asked.

“The quality of your wit is only surpassed by the quality of this food,” Winchester said.

“Everything all right?” Potter didn’t look much concerned, but his eyes were observant.

“Everything’s fine,” Hawkeye said automatically. He grinned again, and picked his tray up. “I’m going to give this breakfast the burial it rightly deserves.”


On a day like this, two months ago, Father Mulcahy would have been sitting outside the chaplain’s tent, soaking up sun and reading Scripture. Hawkeye knocked on the door with his elbow and went in. Mulcahy was standing by his chair, holding his book in both his hands.

“Can I help you?”

“I brought you breakfast.” Hawkeye went over to the table and set the tray down. “I noticed you didn’t eat anything.”

“Oh, I’m not hungry.”

“Charles provided the cheese and crackers, BJ donated the cake, but the orange juice is powdered army issue. And chocolate from my own personal supply.”

“I’m not hungry,” Mulcahy repeated.

“You didn’t eat breakfast.”

“I wasn’t hungry.”

Hawkeye grinned. “No wonder, after you bit into army toast.”

Mulcahy half-smiled. He put the book down. “I thought, from your description, the pancakes were probably worse.”

“Hard to tell.” Hawkeye was smiling back. He tapped the tray. “This may be an unorthodox breakfast, but if you can overlook the heresy, you should eat it.”

“It’s not long now till lunch.”

“Lunch will be just as bad. Eat it, Father – you need the energy.”

Mulcahy turned away abruptly and walked across the room. “It’s a very kind thought,” he said, facing the wall. His voice sounded constrained. He turned back to face Hawkeye, looking directly at him. “But I have to refuse. For one thing, I strongly suspect you didn’t ask for either of their ‘donations’.”

BJ had volunteered the remainder of Peg’s cake when he saw Hawkeye plundering Charles’s latest stash and heard who it was for. Hawkeye opened his mouth to say so, and closed it. In a voice almost as constrained, he said “Look, I put you off eating breakfast.”

“Why do you say that?”

Hawkeye’s voice abandoned constraint. He could hear himself shake. “I knew you wouldn’t sit down with BJ if I was there. I should have guessed after all that time you’ve spent avoiding me you’d walk away rather than eat breakfast with me. I won’t come to tonight’s poker game if you’ll be there. You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to, but you have to talk to someone, and you know Sidney’s the best – now will you eat this?”

He saw Mulcahy look at him, as if doubting him.

“At least eat the chocolate. That’s mine.”

After a long pause – Mulcahy’s eyes were fixed on his face – Mulcahy came back across the room towards him. He picked up the chocolate bar from the tray, slit open the paper wrapping, and after the briefest hesitation, broke off two squares of chocolate, and popped them into his mouth. He swallowed, hard, and swallowed again. “Thank you,” he said, and sat down, very abruptly, leaning his forehead on his hand.

“Father?”

“I’m all right,” Mulcahy said. He looked up, briefly, with a grin that was wrenched out of line. “No. I can’t expect you to believe that. I can’t talk to you about this, Hawkeye. It is something... I brought back with me, from when I was... away. I will – in a few weeks, it will be better.” He spoke hesitantly, but he was looking at Hawkeye the whole time. “But just now... for the time being... please leave me alone.”

“For a few weeks?” Hawkeye had been about to agree, but he looked at Mulcahy and shook his head. “You’re not all right. Look – let me give you a physical.”
“No,” Mulcahy said abruptly.

“Fine. BJ then. Or Charles.”

“No.” Mulcahy stood up, resting his hands on the table. “I am – I was treated and tested and prodded and poked when I came back, and I won’t have you do it.” He was actually shouting. “I won’t.”

“What, any of us?” Hawkeye was beyond anger, into astonishment. “I could make it an order.”

Mulcahy laughed. Not a polite acknowledgement of a joke: Mulcahy’s real laughter was almost silent, and shook him as if he were sobbing. He choked himself to a halt after a few moments, and turned away from Hawkeye. “Oh, go away. And take – take that with you.”

“Will you talk to Sidney Freedman?”

Mulcahy didn’t say anything, or turn around.

“Talk to Sidney,” Hawkeye said. He picked up the tray, and left.


The Colonel listened to Hawkeye with a dry kind of expression. “Pierce, can’t you learn to leave well enough alone?”

“I’d like to give him a physical. He needs to talk to Sidney.”

“Nix on the physical.” Colonel Potter shook his head. “There’s things going on here you don’t know about, Pierce, and I can’t see any reason you should. If I decide, in my medical opinion, that the padre needs a physical, I’ll give him one myself. I’ve had thirty more years experience than you have, and you can let me decide about that. Is that clear, Doctor?”

Hawkeye shrugged.

“Clear?” the Colonel repeated.

“Clear,” Hawkeye conceded.

“As for talking to Sidney...” the Colonel shrugged. “Not a bad idea, if the padre wants to do it. I’ll have a word with him. As for you, Pierce... leave Father Mulcahy alone, and that’s an order. A direct order. The padre’s gone through a lot, he’s dealing with it in his own way, and you’ll do more harm than good by poking your nose in. Understood?”

It was clear, and Hawkeye understood: but just the same: Mulcahy wasn’t okay. Maybe it didn’t have a physical cause, but a physical examination couldn’t hurt. There had to be a way round Mulcahy’s stubborn refusal to admit there was anything wrong with him, and if the Colonel had been inclined to cooperate, he could have made Father Mulcahy present for a physical.

After a minute, the Colonel got up from behind his desk, walked around it, and put his hand on Hawkeye’s shoulder. “I understand you’re concerned about Father Mulcahy,” he said. “So am I. But leave him be for the time being. Believe me, it’s for the best. Let me hear you say you’ve understood that.”

Hawkeye was not about to promise anything. But he wasn’t going to get anywhere for now. “Understood,” he said.

to Part Five