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It wasn’t unusual for Margaret to be the last person to leave the scrub room, but it was strange to do it in silence. Their skeleton staff, which featured the camp clerk, cook, chaplain and a handful of orderlies who’d managed to avoid the flu, were doing what they could to wrangle the mess in OR so it could be ready for the next surprise drop. She wasn’t one to complain, especially against the army, but with no reinforcements coming she was worried they might soon have to operate without gas, or promote Corporal O’Reilly to anesthesiologist.
Pierce had trudged out of OR as she was finishing up on a patient and disappeared. As she dropped her gown into the empty bin she mused that he must’ve been walking back to his tent like a zombie, still in his surgical garb.
Her feet brought her to post-op, currently doubling as their flu recovery ward. It was also quieter than usual, but unlike the scrub room, there was a full house and it reeked so strongly of antiseptic that Margaret, an experienced nurse, almost gagged when she entered. At the beginning of the outbreak Pierce and McIntyre had loudly protested housing the infected and the vulnerable to infection under one roof. They were right of course, Margaret knew that, but it was standard procedure in case of overcrowding, which Colonel Blake had enforced by asking meekly, “What else can we do?” Then McIntyre fell victim to the viral menace himself, and Pierce was so busy picking up his slack his protests turned into pleas that they at least double their sanitation efforts.
She arrived at the foot of Frank’s bed and for a moment thought the strong odor was getting to her, causing her vision to blur, and the cots to seem to shift towards one another.
Looking again, she saw that the small stool she’d placed next to Frank’s bedside earlier had been removed, and indeed the cots had been pushed closer together. She inspected the remaining ten inches of space between Frank’s cot and the one next to it, where Nurse Rodriguez had been lying for the past two days.
It was a tight fit, but she did her best to squeeze far enough through the narrow space to reach Frank. The discomfort alone was enough reason for her to abandon him for the time being. Maybe spend however long they had until the next OR session napping in her tent, or taking a quick shower. But that felt a little too much like admitting defeat, and she’d come this far with Frank and this dire situation… she could bear a little more discomfort.
Frank slept peacefully as she dabbed his brow, blissfully unaware of the trouble she was going to. Even when he’d been conscious earlier, Frank couldn’t appreciate her fussing over him. She’d hoped that when she leaned in close, he might sense her warmth or at least catch a whiff of the perfume she wore on the regular that made him drool. To be fair to him, his sinuses were compromised and he had no capacity to be flushed or feverish with anything other than influenza. She tried to remind herself of that as the metal rails of Frank and Rodriguez’s cots dug into her legs on both sides as she leaned over her boyfriend’s sleeping figure to dab away some of the shine from his face with great care.
She cared for this man as much as any woman ought to have cared for her husband, but figuratively she was as far away from Louise Burns as the 4077th was in the literal sense. Frank’s wife hadn’t even taken time away from work when his first bout of gout flared up a year after they married. He’d told her so himself one time, evoking a familiar mix of affection and despair in her that she dispatched as soon as possible by familiar means.
Oh Margaret… you’re nothing like her. He would tell her afterwards, every time without fail. Somehow their encounters were incomplete without this reassurance – that she was warm, loving, and not his wife. Nonetheless, there she was, dabbing the skin around Frank’s clammy neck with the most wife-like care and warmth she could offer.
As she cared for him, she started to grow accustomed to the ambience of the room, her nose and ears becoming less and less aware of the odor and the silence. She heard labored breathing, a few miserable groans, the rustling of sheets as people squirmed restlessly against them, and then something more distinct. A low but clear whisper of a comforting quality among the unintelligible murmurs of the ailing.
She looked up from her patient and saw Dr. Pierce balancing as precariously as she was over another cot, though at his height, it looked to her like a much more difficult feat. He had one hand on the wall, trying to use it for stability, as he reached down to swipe at the forehead of an unconscious Dr. McIntyre.
He caught some of McIntyre’s hair, dark and limp with sweat, with the balled-up edge of a handkerchief. He straightened up, sighing and then cursing under his breath. The hand he had against the wall went to his lower back and began to apply pressure there instead. Seeing this she suddenly felt a series of accumulated aches and pains pulse throughout her own body, in her back, neck and feet. She stood upright again herself and tried to stretch in spite of her compromised mobility between the cots – just in time for Pierce to meet her gaze as he twisted around trying to do the same thing.
“Can’t get enough of me, can you Margaret?” he asked, freezing mid-stretch.
It was a line, but one that seemed to be offered out of opportunity alone. But for the wilting grin on his face, he was dead on his feet and had been for hours since she’d given him the vaccine. The flush of color in his face was more splotchy than diffused, a tell-tale sign of the virus already working his immune system into a frenzy.
Her instincts as a nurse had her squirming free of the cots that flanked her on either side and to approach him. When she arrived she held her breath, anticipating another obscene comment, but instead he winced and released the tension he’d been holding in his back, looking at her with a bleary expression.
“Get out of there, I’ll do it,” she ordered.
“Uh-uh,” said Pierce, squinting at her in exaggerated suspicion. “I know what you do with nice, married men.”
His voice was so thin that she thought an uncharacteristically snappy comment might knock him off his game. It was out of her mouth before she could really think about it fully: “Nothing more than what the two of you have done with half the nurses in this outfit.”
His eyes sparkled. “Margaret…” The light blue, decidedly non-regulation handkerchief he’d been trying to use to dab McIntyre’s forehead with, fluttered to Pierce's chest as he gasped theatrically. “I knew when you stuck me in Henry’s office it couldn’t have been your first time.”
She briefly, but seriously, considered storming off. But then a weak whimper, like that of a small child, rose up between them.
Pierce moved quickly to crouch, but the cot wouldn’t let him and he yelped when the frame knocked against his shins. This was a fatal blow to his balance. Were it not for her quick reflexes, honed from years of learning to spot the signs of a fainting spell and act accordingly to prevent any injuries from a fall, he would’ve caught nothing but air when he reached out to stabilize himself and then crashed down onto his sleeping friend.
Instead he found Margaret’s arm, and his fingers curled around it tightly. There was panic in his eyes as his chest jerked forward and then stopped. “You’re okay,” Margaret said as he panted, trying to catch a breath that, due to the thickening mucus in his lungs, likely couldn’t be caught at all.
Gradually, she felt his grip on her arm loosen, but he didn’t release her. “Since I’m down here.” The handkerchief fluttered again as he reached towards McIntyre. “Do you mind?”
What choice did she have? “Take my hand.”
He looked up at her for just long enough to coordinate the movement of his own hand as it moved down her arm and re-established a more stable grip where she’d instructed. Then, just like always, his patient took priority, but that didn’t stop him from engaging in idle chatter as he worked, with anyone who could listen.
“He was asking for you before. Major Motel over there.”
She decided to let the fact that he’d been eavesdropping on her and Frank slide. “Any nurse could’ve taken care of him.”
“Look around. I’m the only other nurse in the house.” The handkerchief moved up and pressed against McIntyre’s hairline. “He sat up and looked around for you. Started blubbering. I almost had to order an ultrasound, but thankfully he cried himself back to sleep.”
“That’s enough!” she scowled at the back of his head. “Just finish up.”
“I’m just saying, don’t be too mad at him about before.” He sounded genuine, but perhaps he was just distracted. He’d dropped the handkerchief onto the pillow and she watched as he began to pick loose the strands of hair that were plastered to McIntyre’s forehead, so they wouldn’t irritate him in his sleep. Then he used his fingers to comb the unruly strands back into the damp mass of McIntyre’s hair, and she found herself leaning forward, to allow him further range. “People say all kinds of nonsense when they’re like this. Maybe he meant Trapper’s Louise.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she argued quietly.
He shrugged and picked up the handkerchief again, going for McIntyre’s neck. “You never know. She’s quite the woman, Mrs. McIntyre. So I hear. Frank too.”
“He never talks about her.”
“Oh, Trapper's just humble. It was quite the grand romance.”
He finished with his friend’s neck, carefully running the handkerchief beneath McIntyre’s darkened, crew-neck collar before standing up right again. He squeezed her hand and smiled weakly at her again. “Speaking of grand romances. You should kiss me before our co-pilots wake up and demand to know who’s flying the other plane.”
Margaret rolled her eyes and tugged towards her. “Get out of there, now.” When he chuckled she caught the slight wheeze that accompanied it. He was getting worse by the minute. “You need to go to bed yourself.”
Once he’d emerged and was standing next to her at the foot of McIntyre’s cot, she held onto his hand an extra moment longer, making sure he was steady before releasing it at last. “That’s gonna be you for the next 48 hours.”
“You’ll be my nurse, won’t you?” Up close now she could see that beneath the red splotches on his face, his skin was starting to look tacky, and his eyes were puffy and irritated. In spite of how miserable he looked, he still managed another smile. “Not bad for your first red-eye kid. Head home.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she said testily, but felt a pang of pity at how he seemed to sway just from the forcefulness of her tone alone. “This is my final destination.”
He glanced back at McIntyre. “More like an extended layover.” There was a note of affection in his voice, and a little bit of something else.
Her eyes flitted downwards, drawn by the movement of his fingers at his side, playing with the corner of the blue handkerchief. The scent of antiseptic and the eerie silence in the room returned as she watched him watch McIntyre sleep, and she was reminded that the moment could be interrupted without warning.
“There’s a free, clean cot over there. I’ll bring you something else to wear.”
She helped him out of the button-down he wore over his shirt. Sure enough, his back, sides and underarms were soaked with sweat. She led him over to the cot and excused herself, ducking out of post-op quickly and into supply to try to at least grab him a clean shirt to change into before he began his two-day stint as a patient.
She was sure she wasn’t gone long (she was confident she knew the most efficient route from supply to just about anywhere else in the camp) but when she’d returned, Pierce had already abandoned the cot she’d assigned to him and was back over by McIntyre, bracing himself on his arms above him, his body contorted in order to lean down. “Pierce, what-“ She began to scold him, but was silenced when she saw him lower his head even further, pressing a solitary kiss to McIntyre’s forehead.
“Fever’s gone,” he said simply, just loud enough for her to hear.
He was sicker than she thought, Margaret reasoned. She went back over to McIntyre, grabbed Hawkeye by the arm and hauled him away. He went easily, leaning some of his weight against her. She welcomed it, wrapping an arm around his waist and helping him back to his cot.
“No peeking,” he murmured as he sat in the cot and pulled his shirt over his head. The neckline was a little small in spite of the shirt being too loose on him everywhere else. She helped him tug it down over his head and made a mental note to try to scavenge a better-fitting one from somewhere. They were low on fresh linens with no one free to work the laundry tent.
As soon as he lifted his feet into the cot, Margaret gently pushed down on the shoulder closest to her, urging him to lie back. This time he really was too fatigued to crack a joke, but she could tell from the ever-present twinkle in his eye that he was simply dying to.
“Sleep,” she said, and soon-after, his eyes closed, taking their twinkle with them.
She pulled the loose sheet up over his body and surveyed post op. Several bodies were shifting restlessly in their sleep, and she probably could spend the next hour wiping the sheen from their faces before she had to start over again. She wished she could lower the lights in the room, that at least might help everyone sleep better.
She walked down the runway that ran down the center of the room, between the two rows of cots, alone. She spared Frank a glance as she went but stopped McIntyre’s bed. A corner of material stuck out from beneath his hand, robin’s egg blue, with navy trim. She rested her hands on the short, iron railing at the foot of the cot, leaning in until she could confirm it was indeed Pierce’s handkerchief beneath McIntyre’s limp hand. It was damp, and therefore unsanitary. It was the second time. She ought to confiscate it.
McIntyre’s fingers twitched. Her eyes shot up to his face. His were barely open, and for a brief moment, she felt a strong, sudden impulse to alert Pierce. That would’ve been silly of her to do. Even sillier would’ve been Pierce’s insistence that he drag himself out of bed to McIntyre’s side, even if he had to slither along the floor to do it, and in spite of how any protest Margaret staged.
It would’ve been useless anyway. McIntyre was still clearly out of it. His eyes may have been partially open, but they were unfocused. He hadn’t moved, but for the momentary spasm of his finger over the blue handkerchief, which revealed to Margaret a small, embroidered set of initials that might’ve read BFP. She couldn’t be sure. A moment later, she heard him call out. Two syllables. His first in 10 hours.
She watched his eyes close again and decided that it didn’t matter. It wasn’t her he was crying out for, and whoever it was, they weren’t around to hear him. That might’ve been for the best.
fin
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February 2024