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Around 0100, the door to The Swamp creaked shut, for what Pierce assumed would be the last time. Nurse Eddie had spun enough yarns to knit a sweater, while the whole unit was out in the cold, listening on high alert, waiting for her to leave.
Pierce was perched on his cot, legs folded beneath him, arms bent up to attend to his swollen eye. He had to squint through the darkness with the other, just to see McIntyre appearing in the threshold.
“Hey, Trapper…” he said, worn out.
McIntyre extended his hand at the greeting, gently shooing Pierce’s interlocked fingers out of the way so he could apply a warm compress to his eye. Well, a cloth napkin from the mess hall, steeped in hot water from the percolator before it was stained with the next day’s coffee.
“Thanks,” Pierce went on. “How did you know?”
McIntyre shrugged back at him, in an entirely unconvincing way.
“The whole camp could hear you, Hawkeye. Radar had to hold me back a few times.”
“Why?”
“I thought you were hurt.”
“I was hurt.”
Eager not to seem too eager, McIntyre sat down on his own cot, and committed to giving his friend a once-over from that distance. He could never recall Pierce kneeling like that, and it was easy to see his weight was all shifted to one side, favoring the leg McIntyre had to assume was injured.
“What happened?” McIntyre asked, remaining pointedly where he was.
“Oh, you know… you heard the whole thing. We talked for a while, had a few drinks, skimmed the latest Desk Reference .”
“Is that where you got the idea to use a sock as a bandage?” McIntyre leaned in nearer to Pierce’s injured side.
“I happen to be wearing it as intended.”
In demonstration, Pierce unfolded his knees and stretched his feet out to the end of the bed. McIntyre stood up immediately, so he could hover around and fill the room with palpable concern.
“I’m fine,” Pierce said, preemptively.
“Right, they design socks to be red at the bottom these days. Just one per pair, too, isn’t that interesting…?” He tossed his hands, in defeat. “Come on, Hawkeye. What’s sitting on it gonna do?”
“...I was applying pressure.”
“Let me take a look.”
“You know how doctors are. We’re the worst patients,” Pierce said, making a halfhearted attempt to smile.
McIntyre patted his arm, accepting the apology, and brightening Pierce’s grin in the process. Then, careful to touch the dry edge of the sock, McIntyre removed it and tossed it aside. His deeply-ingrained focus on keeping his hands clean was tested, as the sock had smeared the blood around, making it impossible for him to study the cuts without cleaning the area, first. He held out his hand, which Pierce immediately understood as a cue to drop the wettened cloth. McIntyre stooped down and used it to blot around the wounds.
“Four… no, five distinct lacerations,” he said, although uncovering the last one made Pierce wince. “There’s still glass in this one, dummy.”
“I’m sure the gin sterilized it.”
“I forgot we were in the Civil War.”
“Brother against brother,” Pierce said weakly. McIntyre was gauging the severity of the impaction by wiggling the glass shard like a loose tooth between his fingers, but he was not satisfied by Pierce’s reaction. “I might’ve taken a few steps on it. Sorry Trapper… I had to at least offer to walk her home, after she kept trying to help me.”
“This one needs sutures,” he determined. “I’ll be right back, stay where you are.”
Pierce did as he was told, muttering lamentations about the turn this evening had taken. He thought he managed to have a pleasant enough time with Edwina, but McIntyre was warping his perception. She had sworn not to talk about it to anyone, just to let the camp invent whatever stories they would inevitably invent, but then McIntyre had to go and ruin the illusion with an emergency raid of Post-Op. Pierce decided to ask his father to send his gladstone bag, in his next letter, so he could keep some supplies around The Swamp and return a tiny bit of privacy to his practice. Still, it was difficult to be upset with McIntyre for caring. It was backwards.
When McIntyre returned with a suture kit tucked discreetly into his jacket, it seemed as if he had been following along with Pierce’s line of thought the entire time – as if it was a relay race, and his turn to pick up the baton:
“I don’t want you to be in pain, that’s all,” McIntyre said, gently. He set out his supplies on the seat of one of their folding chairs. “It’s up to you if you want to be humiliated, or send your fellowship papers back to Massachusetts General Hospital, but I won’t let you suffer. You do enough of that already. It’s everything I have just to stop you for a minute.”
“I do my best work when I’m in pain.”
Across the length of the bed, their gazes met, somber and hopelessly sorry - Pierce for what he had done, and McIntyre for what he was about to do. It was a fair enough assessment, but the pain was never Pierce’s own fault. The silence was tense; neither of them liked it.
“Then we can skip the topical,” McIntyre said, just to say anything.
“No, no. I’ll be sensible for a change. On your recommendation, Doctor.”
“I’m not used to being the voice of reason,” McIntyre turned aside, deciding what to do to optimize his makeshift treatment area.
He grabbed the base of Pierce’s bedframe - which made Pierce howl with laughter - dragging him to rest directly beneath the overhead lamp. Then his standard fabric mask, so he would not breathe into the wound, a pair of fresh gloves, and… an old head-mirror, which he applied at an odd angle to catch the light.
“Where did you find that ?”
“ENT,” McIntyre brushed the question off. “Tell me more about your date.”
Pierce wanted to scoff, but it came across more as an out-of-breath laugh. He did not realize how tired he was until McIntyre had forced him to lie flat on his back, nor had he realized how much his foot was throbbing until McIntyre tended to it. Voice of reason, indeed.
“We mostly talked,” Pierce repeated, losing some conviction - swapping it for vulnerability. “She has this… not problem - thing … where she’s afraid of being abandoned, so she subconsciously makes it difficult for anyone to get close to her, in the first place. That way no one will ever leave. Then we… cuddled, for a while, and then - would you believe it? - she left.”
He could feel the topical agent setting in, numbing his perception just in time for McIntyre to pry the shard of glass from the hole it had made. Curiously, Pierce felt the tweezers grappling against either side of the torn skin more than he felt the glass itself, and he filed this away only as a fond reassurance to give his own patients, in the future.
“Hm,” McIntyre sighed. “I figured you could’ve gone one night without talking about yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sounds an awful lot like that thing you have. That game you play.”
Next, McIntyre lathered a soft brush with mild soap, and then worked it over the wounds to clean them. The pressure, increasing and then subsiding, was enough to hitch Pierce’s breath, leaving the rest of the argument unspoken. It was not worth making, ayway.
“I mean,” McIntyre carried on, now content to fill the silence, “I have to hold you down because you won’t take the glass out of your own foot, to make sure you don’t get a stupid, completely avoidable infection.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” Pierce was quick to redirect, and even shook his head sadly to set the scene, “Eddie has an allergy to latex. It’s very serious; it’s printed right on her tags.”
“Must be hard on her.”
Pierce could feel the wiry sutures binding his skin back together again, and caught a glimpse of McIntyre over the needle, with a mischievous look on his face. The refracted light from the mirror was disorienting.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Pierce said, blinking heavily. “We just talked. It was nice .”
“I meant as a nurse. All those special-order gloves.”
“Never mind.”
McIntyre chuckled to himself, which Pierce was often powerless against echoing. Only he had to have a better reason, when prompted by the subtle, inquisitive shift in McIntyre’s eyes.
“You look ridiculous,” Pierce offered.
“Call me old-fashioned, but I like these things. I can keep a light on you no matter how much you squirm.”
“I have not been squirming.”
“You didn’t want me saying ‘ticklish,’ did you?”
“Is that why you’re using a 7-0?” Pierce shot back. “To get a few extra stitches in there? Well, I’ll be going to another physician’s office to have them removed; my own.”
“Purely cosmetic reasons. I don’t want to carve up that delicate skin of yours with a 3-0. Those scars don’t fade.”
“I already know I’m going to regret saying this, but you’re the only person I’ve ever heard express concern for the appearance of my feet. Are you done yet , Betsy Ross?”
“Do you need to be sedated,” McIntyre said flatly, teasingly. “You deserve my best work, that’s all. I’d give the same care and attention to any spot on your body, visible in mixed company or not.”
“...Do you regret saying that ?”
“ Stay still, Hawk . Let me get closer, I’m almost finished.”
“You don’t hear what you’re saying, do you?” Pierce mumbled to himself, earning no reaction. “A bona fide professional. I love that in a man.”
In fact, McIntyre did not say anything else until after he had snipped away the excess line, and dug out proper bandaging from the implements he brought. With the wounds all loosely wrapped, McIntyre fetched a clean pair of socks from his own pack, and put them on for Pierce.
“There,” McIntyre said, simply. “Now, I think you could use some rest. I’ll get a look at that dressing first thing in the morning.”
“I can manage my own follow up appointments, don’t worry about me,” Pierce said, but then McIntyre gave him a sad look.
“There you go, again. You don’t even realize you’re doing it.”
McIntyre had to fill in the blanks with a physical demonstration, so he chose to dislodge Pierce’s rumpled blanket from the end of his bed, and unroll it until it came to rest at the base of his chin instead. Pierce watched him do this and did not intervene.
“I don’t mind worrying about you,” McIntyre explained. “I care about you .”
As he stood, he pulled the cord on the overhead lamp, switching it off. The bulb went on with its fizzling sound for a few minutes, and the warmth of it continued radiating over Pierce’s cot. He turned on his side, not wanting to ruin the moment, not wanting to make a game out of something genuine. But it was hard for him to reconcile feelings and physicality, no matter which combination they came in. McIntyre knew this, and tried never to bring it up. He shed his gloves, then his mask, then his headband, dropping them all on the floor to sort out later.
“I’ll take your shift at Post-Op tomorrow,” McIntyre insisted more than offered. “And I’ll change that dressing first thing in the morning. I’ll bring in a bedpan - I don’t want you putting any weight on that foot until it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Don’t say things like that. With our luck, they’ll be announcing casualties any second.”
McIntyre expected to hear the PA crackling, but the camp remained quiet. He looked down at Pierce, more emotionally than physically exhausted, and maintained that the break was warranted.
Somehow, when he worked his way under the same thin blanket on the same uncomfortable cot, beneath the ghosting, purple impression of the light beneath their eyelids, tightly shut, it made sense It meant ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ and it was an assurance made by both of them.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Pierce feigned the scandal in his voice.
McIntyre knew his friend had to retain at least one layer of humor between himself and whichever oversaturated emotion he was on the cusp of experiencing. With the turns their lives had taken, it was not a bad defense mechanism, and McIntyre did whatever he could to help.
“Beating you,” he said.
“At what?” Pierce was skeptical.
“Your own game. What if there’s someone out there who couldn’t bear to say goodbye to you? Someone who wants to see you happy and healthy, and doesn’t mind helping you out along the way, however they can.”
“I said something like that to Eddie,” Pierce said, playfully elbowing McIntyre in the middle.
“Oh yeah? Maybe she’s the one.”
Pierce laughed in his usual self-depricating way, only stopping because McIntyre had moved his hand to cup his shoulder.
“Try not to make a habit of hurting yourself, though, just to keep me around,” McIntyre said, hoping Pierce had fallen asleep.
“That’s not how the game works,” Pierce insisted, voice gone drowsy. “I’d have to make myself miserable to keep you away .”
“Not gonna happen.”
His hand moved from its protective place on Pierce’s shoulder to drape over his chest, which felt far more intimate. Pierce could hardly allow it to remain there, so he picked it up in his own and brought it to his lips to kiss.
“In case you were wondering,” Pierce added, almost whispering, “I don’t have a latex allergy.”
McIntyre sighed, warm breath parting the hair on the back of Pierce’s head, tickling the skin underneath.
“Yeah, I know. I’ve spent a few hundred hours in the operating room with you.”
“And yet only a few minutes in bed with me. Which is the more profound tragedy?”
“ Hawkeye, be sensible.”
At last, the lightbulb ceased buzzing, and McIntyre pulled the blanket up over their heads before offering a compromise:
“What about tomorrow night?”