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Hawkeye feels fatigue in every bone in his body, but he’s too keyed up to sleep. Nothing was going right until all of a sudden everything was. Corporal Shaw was going to be alright. Charles was no longer skeptical of the woman that, as it turned out, he hadn’t married.
BJ is passed out on his cot, and Hawkeye’s glad he’s able to rest. He doesn’t let himself think about the fact that he’s probably dreaming of Peg and Erin. His feelings for his best friend have no place in the swamp, no place in Korea, and no place in their lives.
Hawkeye stares at the ceiling, trying to ignore the way the cot makes his back hurt. He and BJ are alone in the dilapidated tent. Charles is showing Donna the sights, such as they are, and Hawkeye thought he heard her say something about being around all day to help out with patients if she’s needed.
Hawkeye’s spent all of five minutes with Donna, but he likes her. She balances out Charles, brings out the lightheartedness in him that Hawkeye knows is there, somewhere, but isn’t always great at searching for himself.
It’s almost a shame he didn’t actually marry the girl.
Hawkeye pauses as the thought takes root in his mind and blossoms into an idea that leaves him grinning. He sits up quickly. BJ is still fast asleep, and Hawkeye can’t wake him up, but he’s got to share his idea with someone or he might burst.
He stands up, moving quietly toward the door of the swamp until he reaches the makeshift dirt road. Then he walks over to Margaret’s tent with a spring in his step. If his internal clock is anything to go by, she should have gotten back from her shift in post-op not long ago.
He’s grinning by the time he knocks on her door. He raps against the rough wood twice, and she answers it before he can get a third in.
She studies his face, her expression skeptical but not angry like it would have been in their earliest days in Korea.
“What?” she asks.
“Margaret,” he puts his arms on her shoulders as he steps inside. It probably has something to do with the lack of sleep, but he feels giddy. “Margaret, Margaret. I’ve had the best idea.”
She raises an eyebrow. The colorful throw pillows on her cot and photos on her walls serve as a backdrop to her bemused expression. He knows the story behind almost every trinket in her tent—she's told him, which probably would have surprised them both back when they first met.
“You’ve finally decided to respect this uniform?”
“You’re dreaming a bit too big there, Mrs. MacArthur. No, we should throw Charles and Donna a party.”
Hawkeye has learned to identify when the wheels are turning in Margaret’s mind, the way her eyes almost look bluer, like they’re swimming in possibility, and how she’ll smile just the slightest bit.
“If Corporal Shaw is up to it, we could celebrate his being well, too.”
“That’s the spirit, Margaret. We’ll toast to Shaw’s health and Charles and Donna’s unwedding.”
“This won’t at all be undignified.”
“It will lead to previously unheard levels of debauchery.”
Margaret frowns, a gentle but well-defined motion.
“Pierce.”
“Don’t worry, Margaret. It will be fine. And fun. We could all use some fun around here.”
There's a crack in her armor then, small but definite, and something in her face changes.
“It has been a lot lately, hasn’t it?”
Hawkeye isn’t sure how long they’ve been here anymore, can’t keep track of how many wounded they’ve helped and how many dead they’ve buried. Everything drags on slowly sometimes, but it feels like yesterday that Margaret wouldn’t have shown an inch of the vulnerability she is as she bites down on her lip. Impossibility, or maybe inevitably, they’ve become friends.
“It has,” he points at her. “But you know how we’ll get through it?”
He sits down on her cot, and she follows suit. He feels the springs and wonders how any of them ever get any sleep on these things.
“By telling HQ they were wrong about how to treat hemorrhagic fever?”
“With a little laughter, Margaret.”
“I still think it’ll be undignified, but I suppose I’ll go along with it. For Corporal Shaw’s sake.”
“Exactly, for Shaw. I think you’ll be unsettled about how much you like it.”
Hawkeye wiggles his eyebrows at her. Margaret hits his shoulder, but it doesn’t hurt.
He claps his hands together.
“I’ve never planned a wedding before.”
“Don’t look to me for expertise.”
She picks up her pillow with the stitched yellow sun and wraps her arms around it. He knows it was a gift from her friend Helen Whitfield—she made it herself and gave it to Margaret last time they met up on R&R.
“Margaret, please bask in me saying this—you know more than me.”
She points at him, pillow still in her lap.
“Just because I’m a woman, buster, doesn’t mean I’ve spent years thinking about weddings.”
He pictures Margaret, smaller but equally fierce, imagining her perfect West Point brass. He can see a version of her longing for a beautiful white dress, and he can see another version of her yearning for a suit that fits like a dream.
“But you did have a wedding,” he says, pulling himself back to the present.
Margaret frowns.
“In which my husband wore a full body cast, thanks to somebody.”
“He looked distinct.”
She snorts in a way that he loves, in a way that he never imagined her doing when they first met. He almost feels like he's a kid talking with Tommy and Dickie again, waiting for a class party to begin.
“He did not,” Margaret counters.
“Why Darlene, I like it when you're sassy.”
He wonders if this is what it would have been like with his sister, if she'd lived—the quips back and forth, moments of wanting to kill one another but at the end of the day, knowing they had one another’s backs.
“Anyway, Pierce,” Margaret looks down, not responding to his comment. “When I’m not trying to squeeze my entire marriage through a telephone my husband is probably off philandering with other women.”
“Margaret, you're forgetting a key detail. It’s an unwedding. You don’t have to have the perfect marriage to help put it together.”
Hawkeye attempts to keep his voice light. Other than Col. Potter, he thinks the only one who has anything close to a perfect marriage is BJ. It's like he and Peg have something out of a dream that even the draft board can't destroy.
Margaret tilts her head a bit.
“Do you think anyone has a perfect marriage?”
Her voice is soft, and he can tell it's a genuine question.
He wants to match her vulnerability, but blue eyes met blue eyes met with nothing in between but his own trepidation. He’s not he's not ready to talk about BJ, so he settles for something in the middle.
“I like to think my parents came close, but I do have a tendency to idealize anything with my mother in it.”
She stares down at her hands and then meets his gaze again.
“Mine just wrote to tell me they're getting divorced.”
“Margaret, I'm sorry.”
She sighs, squeezing the pillow tighter.
“It's no wonder I'm struggling in my own marriage. I didn't exactly have great examples of it growing up.”
“You and Donald aren't them, you know.”
“I don't know if we're any better,” Margaret takes a deep breath, staring straight ahead. “And sometimes I don't know if I fit into the boxes Donald wants me to be in.”
Hawkeye understands where she's coming from. Sometimes he feels like he's standing on the outside of BJ and Peg's white picket fence looking in, admiring the house and freshly painted flowers and wishing he were part of it.
But he doubts he’d ever fit in.
Peg has probably decorated the house with meaningful keepsakes, just like Margaret has done with her tent.
He never thinks about the fact that Peg and Margaret share a name. Peg, whose marriage he aches to be part of, and Margaret, who's trying to fit into a marriage that's like a shoe several sizes too small.
“I like that you don't fit into boxes,” he smiles as he says it.
He likes that this strict, rule following regular army nurse is more similar to him than he ever expected her to be.
Margaret raises an eyebrow.
“Your taste has always been questionable, Pierce.”
“Unquestionably good, I think you mean.”
“Sure,” she scoffs, but her expression is light.
He takes her hand and squeezes it.
“You know who does have a perfect marriage?”
Margaret doesn't say anything but looks at him expectantly.
“Hank and Darlene.”
She laughs, setting the pillow back on the cot.
“Come on,” Hawkeye stands up. “Let’s go get Charles unmarried.”