“Well,” Ugly started to say, “they …”
“Look, goddamit,” Hawkeye went on. “You know as well as I do he should have had another hour and at least three pints before they brought him in here. What the hell’s the matter with you, anyway?”
“I can’t do everything around here,” Ugly said. “I’m just the goddamned anesthesiologist.”
“That doesn’t stop you from thinking, does it?”
“The surgeons said he was ready,” Ugly said. “These guys have been doing OK, so I haven’t been arguing with them …”
“Then don’t argue with me,” Hawkeye said.
“So you’re right,” Ugly said, “but I’ll tell you this. You’re getting pretty hard to live with, Pierce.”
“And that kid on the table may be pretty hard for someone to live without,” Hawkeye said.
Then he got into the case and took it over. He concluded it as quickly as possible. He used every trick he’d learned in ten months of war surgery, and then he called in Dago Red to put in a fix.
“Please, Red,” he said, “bring him in.”
Too much is too much. Despite all efforts and fixes, the boy died an hour after surgery.
Father Mulcahy led Captain Pierce to Father Mulcahy’s tent, gave him a cigarette and a canteen half full of Scotch and water. Lying on Red’s sack, Hawkeye dragged on the butt, swallowed the drink and said, “Red, my curve’s hanging, and I lost the hop on my fast ball.”
“Speak English, Hawk. Maybe I can help you.”
“Listen to Losing Preacher Mulcahy,” Hawkeye said. “You’d like to get me snapping the mackerel, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, come off it, Hawk,” Dago Red said. “You know me too well to say something like that.”
“Yes, I do, Red. I’m sorry. I seem to be a little overextended these days, but I’ll get over it. I can be a little nutty now and then, but I ain’t a nut.”
“I know you’re not,” Dago Red said, “but you people in The Swamp have got to get over the idea that you can save everyone who comes into this hospital. Man. is mortal. The wounded can stand only so much, and the surgeon can do only so much.”
“Red, that lousy can’t-win-’em-all philosophy is no good. In The Swamp the idea is that if they arrive here alive, they can leave alive if everything is done just right. Obviously this can’t always be, but as an idea it’s better than fair, so spare me all the rationalizations.”
“Hit the sack, Hawk,” Father Mulcahy said. “You still need sleep.”
Hawkeye hit the sack, but the sleep he found was troubled and restless. At nine o’clock the next morning he entered the life and abdomen of Captain William Logan.
Captain William Logan, the still fairly youthful manager of a large supermarket, had joined the Mississippi National Guard soon after his release from five years of service in World War II. When the Mississippi National Guard was summoned to Korea, Captain Logan had left the supermarket, his wife, his new set of Ben Hogan matched clubs and his three kids to go with them.
Captain Logan, Major Lee, who was an undertaker, and Colonel Slocum, who owned the Cadillac distributorship, were all from the same town. They belonged to the same Masonic Lodge and the same country club. Colonel Slocum, Major Lee and Captain Logan were very disturbed the morning the gooks lobbed one in on Captain Logan’s 105mm howitzer battery, and Captain Logan’s abdomen got in the way of a couple of shell fragments.
When Hawkeye Pierce operated on Captain Logan he had had enough sleep, and too much of everything else. He removed a foot of destroyed small bowel and re-anastomosed it, that is, reunited the ends of the remaining intestine. When done, he thought that the anastomosis might be too tight but he elected to leave it. That was a mistake, but only one of two.
For the next eight days Captain Logan did poorly. Each day he was worse. Hawkeye watched him, worried and worked, and every time he turned around he encountered Colonel Slocum and Major Lee who wanted to know how things were going.
“Not too well,” Hawkeye kept telling them.
“Why not?” they asked.
On the eighth day, they asked three times why things weren’t going too well.
“Because, goddamn it, I did a lousy anastomosis,” Hawkeye informed them.
On the ninth day, Hawkeye took Captain Logan, now desperately ill, back to the OR. He fixed the inadequate anastomosis, discovered at the same time that he had missed a hole in his rectum, did a colostomy, and five days later Captain Logan, much improved and out of danger, was evacuated. This was Saturday, and on Saturday night people from everywhere came to the tent which served as an Officers’ Club for the 4077th.
Hawkeye Pierce, having learned a valuable lesson, having retrieved Captain Logan from the brink but still disgusted with himself, entered. Standing at the bar with a bottle of fine Scotch whiskey were Colonel Slocum and Major Lee, who beckoned to him.
Hawkeye’s spirits plummeted even lower. His head hung. “The bastards are going to beat me up,” he thought, “and they got a right to.” He walked to the bar and joined them.
“Captain Pierce,” Colonel Slocum said, handing him a drink, “there’s something we want to tell y’all.”
“I figured as much.”
“We want to tell y’all that it makes us men up on the line feel mighty good to know that there are doctors like you around to take care of us if we get hurt.”
Hawkeye was dumbfounded. He took a big pull on the Scotch and said, “For Christ sake, Colonel, don’t you realize that I blew this one? I almost killed your buddy with bad surgery. I got him out of trouble, but he never shoulda been in it!”
“We been watchin’ you, Pierce,” Colonel Slocum said, with Major Lee at his side nodding assent. “Y’all worried about that man like he was your own brother, and he’s OK now. That’s all we need to know. We don’t even care if you’re a Yankee. Have another drink, Hawkeye!”
“Jeezus!” Hawkeye said. He put his glass down on the bar, turned his back on Colonel Slocum and Major Lee, and walked away from them and out the door.
It was three days later that Trapper John and the Duke caught the kid named Angelo Riccio, out of East Boston.
Private Riccio didn’t look too bad. He was alert. His pulse was a little rapid. His blood pressure was strong enough at one hundred over eighty. He had a variety of shell fragment wounds, only one of which seemed important.
Duke Forrest, coming in to work the night shift and drifting down the line of wounded, had been unimpressed by Angelo until he saw the X-ray. Angelo’s heart looked too big. Examining the wounds again, Duke decided that one of the shell fragments could have hit the heart, causing hemorrhage into the pericardium, which surrounds and contains it.
Duke found Trapper John in the mess hall, watching a movie he had already seen twice in the States. Trapper came. He looked at the X-ray, and he and Duke sat down next to Angelo.
“How do you think the Sox’ll make out this year?” Trapper asked the kid.
“Without the big guy they got nothin’,” said Angelo, “and the big guy’s over here somewhere.”
“That’s right,” Trapper said. “Does that make you feel good, knowing that even a guy like that is over here?”
“Are you kiddin’, Doc?” Angelo said. “I wouldn’t wish this kind of thing on a dog. I’d feel much better if he was back over there bustin’ up a few ball games for us.”
“Well, he will be again,” Trapper said, “and you’ll be there to see him.”
“Where you from, Doc?” Angelo asked.
“Winchester.”
“You know my cousin, Tony Riccio? He’s about your age.”
“Sure I know him, Angelo. He caught for Winchester High.”
“Yeah,” Angelo said. “The Sox were interested in him, and then he threw out his arm.”
Old Home Week ended.
“Angelo, we’re going to operate on you,” said Trapper.
“OK,” Angelo said, “so operate on me. You’re the Doc.”