Captain Banks, the O.D., arrived and asked, “What’s this all about?”
“It’s all about this baby,” Hawkeye informed him. “We want to X-ray him and we want to do it right now, and we do not wish to be engaged in useless conversation by officious military types, of which you look like one to me.”
“But, we can’t …”
Hawkeye sat Captain Banks on fee edge of a desk and handed him the phone.
“Be nice, Captain. Call the X-ray technician. If you give us any kind of a bad time, me and Trapper John are going to clean your clock. We are frustrated lovers and quite dangerous.”
Captain Banks called. While awaiting the technician, Trapper and Me Lay placed a small catheter in the baby’s esophagus. A few minutes later, radio-opaque oil was injected through the catheter. It revealed the abnormal opening between the esophagus and the trachea but no significant narrowing of the esophagus. This meant that anything the baby ate could go into his lungs but that, happily, once the opening was closed, the esophagus would be able to accommodate the passage of food. It required careful preparation, proper anesthesia, early and competent surgery and good luck.
“Me Lay, let’s you and me get a needle into a vein,” Trapper said, and then, turning to Captain Banks, he said, “You there, in the shiny shoes, tell the lab to do a blood count and cross-match a pint. We won’t need that much, but it’s a term they’ll understand. Then tell the OR to get set up for a thoracotomy. We’re going to operate in about two hours. Hawkeye, you stick close to Alice, or whatever his name is, and see that he performs efficiently.”
The Officer of the Day had no choice but to perform efficiently. The nurses were routed out, not at all pleased at the prospect of operating a second time with the pros from Dover. There was, in fact, outright grumbling which Hawkeye Pierce brought to a rapid conclusion.
“Ladies,” he said, “we are sorry to get you out at this time of night. However, we stumbled upon this deal, and we can’t walk away from it, no matter whose rules are broken. This baby will die if we don’t fix him, so let’s all be nice and just think about the baby.”
Fortunately, nurses succumb to this kind of pitch. They gave up any show of resistance, particularly after they saw the baby, but Hawkeye caught Captain Banks calling Colonel Merrill.
“Now, Captain,” he chided him, “I may give you a few lumps, but first I must call the Finest Kind Pediatric Hospital and Whorehouse.”
So doing, he talked to Colonel Cornwall, explained their situation and made a few suggestions. Fifteen minutes later, as Colonel R. P. Merrill stormed into the hospital, he was met by four British officers who loaded him unceremoniously into their Land Rover and returned to the FKPH&W.
After Captain Banks had been stripped naked, and locked in a broom closet by the two Swampmen, the operation was finally started. Me Lay’s anesthesia was excellent, the nurses cooperated completely, and Trapper and Hawkeye indulged in none of the by-play that had marked their first local appearance. After an hour and a half of careful work, Trapper had closed the fistula. They shed their gowns and discussed the postoperative care.
“I think we better leave him here,” said Trapper. “You can’t take care of anything like this in that whorehouse hospital of yours, can you, Me Lay?”
“Not too well, but I don’t see how we can keep him here. Merrill will be all over us in the morning.”
“Leave the kid here,” Hawkeye said. “We’ll be in and out and can look after both him and the boy we did this morning. I know how to keep Merrill off our backs.”
At 3:00 a.m., back at the FKPH&W, they had a drink with the British officers who told them that Colonel Merrill was upstairs asleep, having been coaxed into having a drink and a sedative.
“But what about when he wakes up?” asked Me Lay.
“Send a naked broad into his room and take some pictures,” suggested Hawkeye.
“Oh, I say!” Colonel Cornwall said.
A few minutes later, Colonel Merrill began to stir and awaken as the girl joined him in bed. Witnesses to the scene filled the doorway while Trapper John leisurely shot a roll of film.
“I told you so! I told you so!” chanted Hawkeye. “He’s a dirty old man. A disgrace to the uniform.”
“The blighter should bloody well be cashiered from the service,” asserted Colonel Cornwall indignantly.
“I’d say that depends on his behavior from now on,” said Trapper John, pocketing the film.
The Swampmen were to tee off in the Kokura Open at ten o’clock the next morning. One of Me Lay’s assistants was instructed to obtain proper clothing, since they did not wish to wear Papa-San suits forever.
Awakening at 8:00 a.m., weary but determined to be ready for the tournament, they drank coffee, ate steak and eggs served in bed by the ladies of the house, and donned sky blue slacks and golf shirts.
On the way to the course, they visited their two patients. The baby was far from out of the woods, but the Congressman’s son was doing well. Before leaving, they entered the colonel’s office.
“Where’s that dirty old man?” Hawkeye asked the secretary.
The colonel came out, but he didn’t roar.
“Colonel,” said Hawkeye, “we’ve qualified for the Kokura Open so we’re going to the course. We expect your people to watch that baby we operated on last night like he was the Congressman’s grandson, which for all we know he may be. We expect to be notified of any change for the worse, and if we find anything wrong when we come back this afternoon, we’ll burn down the hospital.”
The Colonel believed them.
They arrived at the golf course at nine-thirty, practiced putting and chipping, took a few swings and, with their English confreres there to cheer them on, they pronounced themselves ready to go. They weren’t. The activities of the previous days, and nights, had taken too much out of them, and by the end of the third day, what with having to check repeatedly on the Congressman’s son and the baby, they were hopelessly mired back in the pack.
“I guess that does it,” Trapper said, as they sat in the bar at the club. “We might have a chance if three guys dropped dead and a half dozen others came down with echinococcosis.”
“What’s that?” Colonel Cornwall wanted to know.
“The liver gets so big you can’t get your club head back past it,” Hawkeye said, “so we’ve got no chance.”
“We’re proud of you anyway,” the colonel informed them. “You gave it a good go, you did. I must say, though, I shouldn’t give up surgery for the professional tour if I were you.”
“I guess we figured that out already,” Trapper said, “but what I can’t figure out is what we’re going to do about this baby we’re stuck with.”
“But you chaps have done all you can,” the colonel said.
“No, we haven’t,” Trapper said. “After the big deal we made saving his life, what do we do now? Leave him in a whorehouse?”
“Leave it to me,” Hawkeye said. “I think it’ll be safe now to take the kid back to Dr. Yamamoto’s Finest Kind Pediatric Hospital and Whorehouse.”
They went to the 25th Station Hospital, said good-bye to the Congressman’s son who was well on his way to recovery, and picked up their small patient. Riding the Land Rover back to the FKPH&W, Trapper had a thought.
“We oughta name the little bastard,” he said.
Hawkeye had considered this problem twenty-four hours earlier. He had even laid a little groundwork.
“I have named him,” he said.
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure how much I can con Me Lay Marston into,” Hawkeye said, “but the name is Ezekiel Bradbury Marston, VI.”
“Oh, I say,” Colonel Cornwall said.
“Obviously you are either nuts or you know something,” Trapper John said eventually. “Which is it?”
“I know something. I know that Me Lay and the Broad from Eagle Head have one daughter and that’s all the kids they’re ever going to have. I’ll save you the next question. Remember I was away for a while last night? I went to one of those overseas telephone places and called the Broad from Eagle Head, whom I’ve known longer than Me Lay has. To make a long story short, she agrees that a name like Ezekiel Bradbury Marston must not die!”
“Hawkeye, you are amazing,” admired the Colonel.
“For once, I gotta agree,” agreed Trapper.
At the FKPH&W, they placed Ezekiel Bradbury Marston, VI, in a laundry basket, left instructions for his care and returned to the bar where they found the unsuspecting parent, Me Lay Marston.
“What are we going to do with this kid, Me Lay?” asked Trapper.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, Jesus, Me Lay, you’re not much of a whorehouse administrator if you don’t have some ideas on the subject.”
“Good-looking kid,” said Hawkeye. “What’s his mother like?”
“A nice intelligent girl. She asked me this morning what we’d do with the baby. I’ve been looking into a few possibilities, but I’ll tell you right now there aren’t any good ones.”
“Too bad. The little chap’s half American,” said Colonel Cornwall. “Any way to get him to the States?”
“Only one way,” said Me Lay.
“What’s that?”
“Get somebody to adopt him.”
Hawkeye said, “Me Lay, why don’t you adopt him?”
Me Lay looked miserable. He lit a cigarette and sipped his drink.
“That idea’s been popping into my head ever since we operated on him,” he said, finally, “but how can I do it? Am I supposed to call up my wife and say I’m sending home a half-breed bastard from a Japanese whorehouse?”
“You don’t have to,” Trapper told him. “Hawkeye called your wife last night. The deal’s set. All you have to do is arrange the details.”
Hesitating only a moment, Me Lay got up, went to the hospital area, picked up the baby and brought him to the bar.
“What’s his name, Me Lay?” asked Trapper.
“Gentlemen, meet my son, Ezekiel Bradbury Marston, VI, of Spruce Harbor, Maine.”
Late that night a flyboy who’d been in Seoul earlier in the day brought word of increasing action on Old Baldy. The next morning the pros from Dover, having withdrawn from the tournament, but still clad in sky blue slacks and golf shirts, boarded a plane for Seoul.