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Sunday mornings really were an excellent time to catch up on his reading. His last trip to Seoul had supplied quite the bounty of books, though he was trying to savor them. Besides, he didn’t much like reading around people in camp. Certainly wasn’t very sociable to see the priest with his nose in a book, was it?
But Sunday mornings! He was always alone on Sunday mornings.
Francis leaned against the pulpit, using the hard edge of his Bible to prop open his paperback. Compelling enough: a hardboiled detective mystery, with a heaping helping of murder, alcohol, and – to Francis’ distaste – graven images. He flipped the page and… oh, now, that was quite clever. He –
A sudden beam of light came into the mess tent as the door swung open.
He tried to be subtle about it, but frankly, the surprise of having someone show up to Sunday sermon hit him like an artillery strike. The paperback went tumbling to the floor. Francis tried to shift it underneath the pulpit with his shoe.
To his advantage, however, his visitor didn’t seem to notice.
“Hawkeye?”
Now, there was a surprise. While he occasionally had a few stragglers into his sermons (Klinger, who needed a first opinion on an outfit, for one), Hawkeye had never made an appearance. Francis didn’t take it too personally. In some ways, he was grateful.
Hawkeye Pierce was a terrible heckler, and Francis really didn’t think he had the stage presence to overcome that.
He fumbled for his notecards tucked away in his Bible. Best to start from the beginning, if Hawkeye wanted a spiritual lesson. “Hawkeye,” he greeted amiably. “Good to see you here. I was nearly at the end –” Francis flicked his eyes upwards. It wasn’t a lie. He was on page 265 of 287. “But I could start from the beginning, if you wanted.”
Hawkeye blinked at him like Francis had just started speaking in Latin.
Now that Francis got a better look at him… well, Hawkeye looked awful. Much worse than his normal. His five o’clock shadow looked much more like eight or nine. Both his red bathrobe and his eyebags billowed off him. When Hawkeye grew particularly ragged, he walked with an exaggerated stagger, like some small child was piloting a body well over six foot.
“Father. Don’t suppose you’re taking confession, are you?”
Actually… he wasn’t. There were few times when he wouldn’t, of course. His hands were a little tied in OR, he preferred not to listen to woes while sitting on the latrine, and it was a bit gauche to interrupt a priest in the middle of his sermon for your own personal confession.
But, who was he fooling, really? Francis looked over Hawkeye’s shoulder. No crowd at the door. “O-Of course,” he gave in, stepping out from around the pulpit. He hadn’t even put on his cassock, who could stand the wool in the heat? “Come, my son, why don’t we –”
“Does it have to be here?” Hawkeye gestured around to the mess tent at large. Francis didn’t miss his trembling hand, his paranoid gaze. “This place is too full of the ghosts of meals’ past for my liking, you don’t know who’s listening.”
“Ah, God, hopefully.” That wasn’t an unfair point. Though deserted, they’d be setting up for lunch soon enough. “Would you prefer your tent, or –”
“No. No, Beej is in there, and, I…” Hawkeye coughed.
Oh, dear. Francis really didn’t want to think about what Hawkeye could have done that would not only keep him from confiding in his best friend (truly, it was rare to see one without the other in grabbing distance), but drive him to confession for the first time.
Hawkeye had done quite a bit during Francis’ time in Korea. Enough to be court-martialed a dozen times over, for one thing. As for the more angelic court?
He didn’t have anything to worry about there. Whenever news of any misdoings reached his ears, he prayed for forgiveness on their behalf anyway. They were good men at heart. Most of them, anyway. He was not entirely convinced of Winchester.
Of course… there were certain things that Francis didn’t think he could swing with the man upstairs, and Hawkeye looked like he had been eaten alive by guilt.
“Not a problem,” Francis said with a smile, trying to avoid the sinking of his own heart.
A few minutes later, and Hawkeye was ignoring the cup of coffee Francis had given him. Francis was also ignoring his own cup of coffee. The coffee here really was only palatable before your tastebuds had woken up, but he thought it was a nice gesture regardless.
Hawkeye really was in a bad way. Francis had offered him a chair, but Hawkeye had sat down on his bed. Almost at once, his body pitched forward, elbows on his knees. His face met his hands.
It wasn’t absolution that worried Francis most, now.
His friend was upset.
He brought his chair close to his bed. Hawkeye didn’t flinch.
“What’s bothering you, Hawkeye?”
“You tell anyone about what people say to you during confession, Father?”
His eyebrows furrowed together. “I – of course not. That’d be a breech of my –”
“I don’t mean having one too many and loosening your jaw at Rosie’s. That’s not your idea of a good time. I mean to Colonel Potter. To a general, any of the higher-ups, to Uncle Sam himself.” Finally, Hawkeye pulled his face out of his hands. His eyes had grown red in the interim, even if no tears fell. “Would you?”
The implication ruffled Francis’ feathers somewhat, though he tried not to let it show. His full position was US Army Chaplain – and god knew those two things could have serious conflicts of interest. “I only report to one higher-up,” he said staunchly. “And he’s not terribly involved at the war table.”
But that wasn’t exactly comforting, he knew.
He chose his words carefully, letting his voice meander like a river.
“If I thought you posed a danger to yourself, or anyone else in the camp, then I might take more… immediate action than prayer. Yes, that might include going to the Colonel, but – Hawkeye, I know you. I would be incredibly surprised if it came to that.”
Very few people were dedicated to the preservation of life in the way that Hawkeye was. He was a pip, a scoundrel, an absolute character… but if there was one person that would never pose a threat to himself or the camp? He thought Radar might even snap before Hawkeye did.
Hawkeye didn’t say anything for a long, long time.
“Hawkeye?” He pressed.
A nervous smile spread across his lips. “Now I’m trying to decide whether I want to tell you at all, Father.”
He didn’t think it was possible to be any more concerned than he was. A soft gasp escaped him; he leaned to wrap his hand around Hawkeye’s forearm. Not in a constricting way, he hoped, but rather…
Good Lord.
“What could possibly have happened?”
If Hawkeye didn’t tell him now, well – well, he couldn’t really do anything besides pray about it. Be a little kinder to Hawkeye and hoped the world would be kinder in return (too tall of an order, in this place). And, of course, worry himself to sleeplessness.
“You remember that Colonel we just sent off? Lacey?”
Ah, yes. Colonel Lacey. The fellow who made a game of war, who never cared about how many lives he lost so long as one more hill was secured. Francis could never break through to men like that. Frankly, he had a fairly low success rate with colonels in general. At some point, men like that thought themselves above God, and it was a bit hard to argue otherwise.
And yet, they’d had a stroke of divine intervention. Colonel Lacey had been struck down with appendicitis. After a sudden operation, he was sent off to Tokyo to recover and the battalion commander replaced with someone a little less thirsty for blood.
All was well that ended well, excepting for the poor souls they were too late for.
Was that really the cause of Hawkeye’s woes? He didn’t want to sound callous, but… it was scarcely the worst sin Francis had come across here. Perhaps it had all grown to be too much for him. Francis gave his forearm a squeeze.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “I was present at the surgery.”
Hawkeye had requested him specifically for it. He’d been… rather confused by that. As flattered as he was by Hawkeye’s faith in his abilities as an attendant, there were actual nurses around. Hawkeye said he was unwilling to wake any of them up, that it was just a simple appendectomy. Francis trusted him on that. Frankly, once a body was cut open, it was all a confusing mess of pinks and reds and yellows to him anyway.
(Excepting one – he was fairly confident he could identify a trachea, now.)
Hawkeye pulled his arm away. He stood, and took one lurching step towards the door. Something about his face had gone rather green, and Francis half-turned to look for a bucket.
“What if I told you that it wasn’t – that he didn’t – that I performed an unnecessary surgery?”
He wasn’t facing him. Francis’ eyebrows furrowed in confusion – none of this was making any sense. “Hawkeye, that can’t be right. Are you – do you think you misdiagnosed him? Because he was in a great deal of pain when he came in.” Hawkeye still stared out the door with his hands on his hips. Francis ventured on. “If it was a mistake, then that’s… those things happen. Certainly you didn’t approach it with any ill intent or…”
His words trailed off into the ether. He didn’t feel like he was anywhere near the right direction.
“No,” Hawkeye said after a moment, addressing the door. “No, if I’m going to do this, then I gotta look you in the eyes, Father.”
And just as suddenly, Hawkeye was back on the bed again, staring directly at him. It was not quite a friendly gaze; despite himself, the hairs on the back of Francis’ neck stood up. Sometimes it was too easy to remind himself that, so much as he trusted and, yes, loved his fellows, they were all under a truly unholy amount of stress.
“Me and Beej gave him a dose of something for gastritis.”
Oh, God.
“You poisoned the colonel –” No. No, that was much louder than it needed to be. Francis dropped his voice to whisper. “Hawkeye, you poisoned the colonel!?”
“No. No, no, that – it wasn’t poison, it was alcohol. Just, you know. The hard stuff.”
Francis wasn’t so sure if he could see the difference between that. They’d gotten one or two soldiers here with methanol poisoning, after all. You weren't supposed to drink what you put in your Jeep engine.
“Beej wanted to call it gastritis. Would lay him up for a little while, buy those guys a couple of days. But if I got him in for appendicitis, put him down a couple of weeks…” Hawkeye was forcing himself to maintain eye contact. It looked painful. “Then it just might save those kids for good.”
Oh. Oh.
That was why Hawkeye was here.
“And sacrifice every code of medical ethics I swore to to do it.”
Finally, Hawkeye broke eye contact. Some cord severed in him then – his shoulders sagging, his hands folding loosely together, head falling to his chest.
“I, I…” Hawkeye took a shuddering breath. “I don’t know if you’ll get it, Father. Don’t know how much of this even makes sense when you don’t have to make those kind of vows.”
“I… do understand vows,” he said gently. “Believe me. I’m no doctor, but there may be no one else in camp who understands how much those vows can mean to you.”
That actually drew a smile out of him, albeit hard to see. “Yeah. Yeah, maybe so. It’s, it’s not God I’m worried about offending, you know? It’s those vows. It’s… do no harm. You know? Don’t go rooting around where you’re not needed. Don’t play God with bodies – no offense, Father,” Hawkeye said, putting out a hand.
“You patch them up, fix them up, give them a tire change and buff out their dings – but you can’t control what people do. I can tell them to put down the cigar and keep all their wine sacramental, but I can’t control what people do. I can’t get that type of ego. I can’t… rig things like that.”
That, Francis had extreme sympathy for. He wasn’t certain if the world would be better or worse if his words had any actual effect on his congregation, but – it was just so tempting to try and fix things yourself.
“Except that’s what I did. And, and I’m going to get away scot-free. BJ is pissed at me, sure, but he’s not going to say anything. The only evidence is rotting away. Nobody’s going to bat a god-damn eyelash at that, that horror-show of medicine that went on in there.” Again, Hawkeye gestured towards him. “Or, or you. No court martialing for either of us or BJ, in case you were worried.”
… goodness. The thought hadn’t even occurred to him.
Francis didn’t brush up against that sort of thing nearly as often as the others did. But – well. He wasn’t meant to be playing attendant in the OR (though nobody had ever turned down a pair of willing hands), for one thing, and he might be found complicit. Nevermind he had no way of knowing what a healthy appendix looked like. The Army could be cruel that way.
(Forget a promotion. That would be… oh, dear.)
His attention returned back to Hawkeye. That, he could worry about later. Hawkeye’s worries were of a more spiritual matter.
“You ask the Hawkeye from a couple of years ago – well, he’d ask why I had all this gray in my hair.” Hawkeye snorted at his own joke. “I never would have dreamed of doing anything like this. I was never in a situation where I’d have to decide something like this. Nevermind whether it was right, nevermind whether it was wrong, I just…” A soft breath escaped him as he looked away, again towards the door.
“I hate this god damn war, Father. I hate what it makes me consider. I hate how it strips away everything I ever thought was important, everything I ever thought meant something. Suddenly, I’m mutilating a man to save other people. What kind of sense does that make.” He huffed a breath. “Why didn’t I just kill him? Surgical accidents happen all the time, coulda just beat the Sunday crowd.”
Hawkeye didn’t mean it. The venom dripped from his words at the mere suggestion. This was a man disgusted at himself.
Again, Francis reached forward, and this time he put a hand on Hawkeye’s shoulder. Hawkeye didn’t brush it off. He wanted to let Hawkeye keep going, but Hawkeye didn’t have any more to say. Only silence in camp. On a Sunday afternoon, it was about the closest to quiet as they could get.
“You know…” He started gently. Slowly, Francis stood up from his chair. Without removing his hand from Hawkeye’s arm, he moved to sit next to him on his cot. It squeaked underneath their weight. “Do no harm isn’t anywhere in the Bible. You… certainly know that. But it surprised me, when I first sat down and read the Oath. There’s similar sentiments, I suppose, but nothing quite of that magnitude. Particularly in the Old Testament, do no harm would be… rather hypocritical. Considering.”
Bless Hawkeye for smiling at him, even a faint one. Nobody ever laughed at his jokes the way they laughed at Hawkeye’s. “So – in some ways – you surgeons hold yourself to a much higher standard than I’ve got to.”
“I don’t know, Father. I do an awful lot of coveting my neighbor’s wife.”
Best to politely ignore that. “What I’m saying is… whether what you did was right, whether what you did was wrong, is sort of out of my area.”
Really, it was. Francis was no medical man. An appendectomy was a minor surgical procedure, sure, but – he’d learned that over here. Anything less than a dozen pieces of shrapnel could be a minor surgical procedure.
“But… if you want my opinion on the matter, Hawkeye, you are wrong on one point. Your ethical code is the strongest I’ve ever seen. In anyone,” he emphasized when Hawkeye scoffed at him. “All I see in what you did is a man so desperate to keep more boys from dying. It’s the preservation of life, Hawkeye. That’s in you as a doctor.” He squeezed the fuzzy terrycloth. “As a person.”
“Awh, okay,” Hawkeye trilled his lips.
“And that still matters. Even if it’s our only guiding force in this ridiculous war, it’s better than nothing.”
Finally, Hawkeye looked up at him again. This close… well, the poor fellow looked like he needed sleep more than a priest. “This ridiculous war is right,” he agreed wearily. “I just want to go back where I don’t have to make any sort of call like that again.”
He and Dr Freedman could agree on several points, Francis thought. One was that, so many times, the ultimate balm for the grimmest woes was simply an end to a war. What could Francis say, to the soldier who came to him saying he was tired of killing? What help could he give to the private in a new battalion after his last had been wiped out? The fear, the death, the trauma, the blood…
“No,” Hawkeye answered himself, shaking his head. “What I really want is to be able to look at myself again. Hell, for BJ to do the same thing. That’s…” He took a big breath. “Why I’m out here on a Sunday morning, Father. Couldn’t take the silence in the tent anymore, I just.”
“Needed an ear to bend?”
Hawkeye bobbed his head up and down. “Only me and Beej and – well, you too now, Father. I still feel like the entire camp is staring at me. Watching down on me, judging. Makes me want to take my clothes off and scream.”
“You’d be surprised by how often that feeling comes up between religious fellows,” Francis tried with a bit of cheer, but it seemed to have fallen flat. “If… if you want my advice on the matter, Hawkeye, I think you might need to talk to BJ about it. Now that he’s had time to calm down, you might find his opinion is different.”
Oh, Hawkeye didn’t like that solution much.
“Or,” he considered, “Things change so much around here that… within two weeks, you may find he’s forgotten all about it. Misery loves company, after all.” He’d seen men forgive each other over worse, here. Situations more-or-less demanded it.
“So I could go talk to BJ now or never talk to him again. They should pay you by the hour.”
His lips pursed. Gently, he pressed, “I’m no psychiatrist, Hawkeye, and certainly no miracle worker. I can offer spiritual absolution if you want it, but I can’t make all of your doubts about the situation disappear.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I don’t mean to be trite, Father, I just…”
He looked over towards the door, perhaps wondering if he ought to leave. Francis glanced over him again. His clothing was certainly more wrinkled than usual. Didn’t get a wink of sleep that night, he was certain, and if he felt like people were watching over him…
“You could stay here for a while longer, if you wanted. Lay down, rest your head. You look like you haven’t slept since the war started.”
“You’re letting me take a nap in your bed?”
“You wouldn’t be the first.”
(Truthfully, it only happened once before. Not many people would feel comfortable sleeping in someone else’s cot. During his first few weeks here, Corporal O’Reilly had once been so wracked by homesickness, guilt, and uselessness that he’d simply cried himself out on Francis’ bed. Poor boy. He’d woken him up for a few hours and together, they managed to figure out how to get a call through to Ottumwa.)
“Well. Not on duty for another couple of hours. Hopefully I’m not taking you away from anything.”
“Are you kidding? This is more action than I’ve seen in weeks.”
That certainly got a laugh out of him. Francis was happy to hear it. He gave Hawkeye’s shoulder one last squeeze and stood to return to his desk. Always the next sermon to write, letters to send out, tallies to figure.
Behind him, he heard Hawkeye make himself comfortable. Still with his boots on, unfortunately. Francis made a mental note to shake the dirt out of the sheets later.
“Thanks for this, Father. You’re a real priest-in-the-rough.”
“Quite literally.” Because if a mobile hospital wasn’t rough, Francis had no idea what was. He took up his pencil. “Try and get some sleep.”
“I’ll do my best. Won’t be hard. How do you get it to smell so good in here?”
“Incense. And, ah, I believe we do have different standards for hygiene. Sleep.”
After some moving around, Hawkeye seemed to settle on his bed. Francis took a peek. Lord. How had Hawkeye managed years with his feet hanging off the bed like that? His hands were shoved underneath his cheek, pillow sitting useless up by the wall, on top of the blankets.
Well, he seemed comfortable enough. He seemed… completely asleep.
Francis hmmed to himself and turned back to his desk.
It was easy to get lost in that way. Dangerous, too. Francis could get so absorbed in his work that he wouldn’t hear anything going on outside. No matter what he did in the tent, whatever help he could provide out of it was more important. That was why he tried to spend as little time as possible inside.
Who knew how much time had passed before the sound of someone knocking down his door nearly toppled him out of his chair. He’d been quite productive, writing a handful of sermons that nobody would attend, and he’d nearly forgotten he was in a war. “One moment!” Francis called out, pushing them to the side.
Well, he thought as he passed his cot, I’m doing better than him. Hawkeye hadn’t even stirred.
He opened the door to reveal one alarmed BJ Hunnicutt.
“Father, have you seen Hawk? We just got a busful of wounded in and I can’t find him anywhere.” BJ had both hands braced on the frame. “I’m worried about him, last night, we had a –”
He looked over Francis’ shoulder, to the inside of his tent. To Hawkeye’s unconscious form.
“H-He came in,” Francis said, keeping his voice quiet. Not like they wouldn’t have to wake up Hawkeye in a second regardless, but best he not wake up to them talking about him. “He wanted to talk, and he looked so tired, I – I told him he could lay down here for a little while. I must have lost track of time, I’m sorry.”
He thought BJ might have stopped listening to him halfway through. Still, something was ticking inside of his brain, and a final realization finally made his face fall.
“Aw, Jesus,” he whispered under his breath. “I didn’t mean to – I didn’t want him to…”
“He told me everything.”
“Of course he did. It’s… It’s a damn mess, Father. Pardon the language.”
Pardon the language, indeed. Francis tried not to roll his eyes as BJ took a step in. “Don’t be too rough on him, BJ. Please? He’s beaten himself up enough over it.”
“I got no plans to, Father. I’m not… I don’t know. It’s just another terrible present Korea dropped in our laps, that’s all it is. I mostly just want to stop thinking about it,” he admitted. Francis could certainly understand that. “But I do need his fingers in the OR right now.”
Francis stood aside as BJ roughly woke up his friend. He thought they could have done it more gently than that, because the way Hawkeye’s went momentarily spread-eagle and yelped in fright seemed nearly painful. “What?” He bleated out. “What, what, what is it?”
“Got a perforated bowel and a liver shot to hell.”
“Tell the chef he’s outdone himself.” At another shove to the shoulder, Hawkeye hissed and threw his legs off the side of the bed. “Fine, I’m going, I’m going.”
After a nod of the head to him, BJ was out the door of his tent. Lord, he could still hear the bus idling out there. Darn it. Perhaps he ought to prop his door open when he came in during the day, they could’ve needed him out here –
His thoughts were halted when a great tall fence post of a man swung his arm around his shoulders, bringing him into a short but tight embrace. It really loosened that tight vertebrae. And…
Well, it wasn’t something he’d thought about much, before. Not like he was embraced frequently before the war, but he also didn’t see boys torn apart on a daily basis before the war. Suffice to say that he appreciated it all the more now.
“Thanks for the pep talk, Father,” he said. “And thanks for the cot. Never thought I’d get to add ‘sleep in a priest’s bed’ next to my accomplishments.”
He really oughtn’t, but he laughed anyway. Hawkeye really could be a card. “Anytime, my son,” he encouraged, right behind him as they left the tent. “Glad to be of some use on Sunday mornings.”