Under the Influence

(Author's Note: Minor spoilers follow for various episodes in seasons 4 through 11.)

"Dr. Hunnicutt!" the nurse is yelling as she wheels the gurney into the emergency room. "Doctor!"

B.J. can barely hear her over the boy's screams. The youngster's thrashing about and there's a lot of blood coming from somewhere—B.J. rips open the boy's shirt and sees the blood's coming from a ghastly injury in his side. Some long metal rod has somehow impaled him there. The boy won't stop screaming and the nurse is looking a little panicked, and B.J. steels himself, takes a deep breath, and asks himself one simple question:

What would Hawkeye do?

He knows the answer as well as he knows his own name. He begins to bark out orders to the nurse ("Put him under now! Call for another assistant! We need more hands in here!"), then he takes a quick inventory of the instrument tray to make sure he has everything he needs, and then he calmly gets down to work.

The boy, of course, lives. He can't remember how he'd gotten impaled with that rod, which is probably for the best. It'd been a nasty wound, lots of blood loss, but B.J.'s quick actions saved the day. The boy's mother insists that she's going to bring B.J. homemade pies every Thanksgiving and Christmas for the rest of his life.

Northern California, 1954, and a post-Korea B.J. is happy and successful as a surgeon at a prestigious San Francisco hospital. Life is pretty good all around. Peg doesn't have to work anymore; she stays at home with Erin. They're trying to have another baby, and of course B.J. hopes it'll be a boy. He likes the name Joseph, but he hasn't said anything to Peg about names yet, because he's afraid it'll jinx them and then she won't get pregnant.

If anyone asked him, he would say he feels blessed to be doing so well. It hasn't even been a year that he's been home from Korea, but he's successfully put the horror behind him. Others haven't been so lucky, he knows.

He sees a psychiatrist every other week, but it's not because he's troubled or depressed. Sidney Freedman recommended it, telling him that just talking about his war experiences to somebody other than a family member would be a good idea. It didn't imply weakness or any kind of psychological problem; it was just a healthy thing to do. And so B.J. had thought he'd at least try it, what would be the harm? He's been going to see Dr. Bernard twice a month for seven months now, and he doesn't see any reason to stop. It's helpful, he's found, to just talk, as Sidney had said.

Despite all the appointments he's had with Dr. Bernard, he has never told the therapist about the time he abandoned an injured soldier, leaving him to almost-certain death, when he cut the rope that would've pulled the young man up to the helicopter he was riding in… and to safety. It was the darkest moment of the entire war for B.J. Well, that and Hawkeye's breakdown.

No, he finds that he mostly talks to Dr. Bernard about Hawkeye. How they pulled pranks, how they worked so well together, how they leaned on each other. He's told him how they put their heads together to come up with a way to manage that mysterious illness hemorrhagic fever. How they traded in a coveted bathtub to get Radar some ice cream after his tonsillectomy. How they teamed up to thwart Frank when he was cruelly betting their campmates on baseball games he'd already listened to.

"Hawkeye was my brother and my advisor and my protector," he told Dr. Bernard at one point. "Even now, when I'm in a bind or anxious or scared, I ask myself, 'What would Hawkeye do?' And it calms me… gives me focus… a plan of action."

Dr. Bernard removed his glasses, gave B.J. a long look, and said, "I think that you may think too highly of this man. Does 'worship' sound like an appropriate description for the way you regard him?"

The observation had thrown B.J., rendering him momentarily mute, as Dr. Bernard jotted some notes down on his pad.

Don't judge me, B.J. thought as he watched the mad scribbling. Don't judge us. We clawed our way through a war together. We would've died for each other.

Well, if it was hero worship, then so be it. His best friend was an enormous influence on his life—maybe even the biggest. And what of it? If you're going to idolize somebody, you could do a whole hell of a lot worse than Benjamin Franklin Pierce.

B.J. goes into his study and locks the door behind him, though it's a subconscious decision. On some level he knows he doesn't want any interruptions. There's something very private about this. He sits down at his desk and opens up the top drawer, pulling out a tan notebook and thumbing through its pages.

In one of his more helpful moments, Dr. Bernard had suggested that B.J. might want to keep a journal in which he jots down thoughts he has about the war, whether it's a sudden emotion he needs to vent or a happy memory that he doesn't want to ever forget or just a reflection about the experience.

If B.J. took a step back and actually looked at the journal objectively, he'd realize it isn't a recording of his war experiences so much as it is a billet-doux to Hawkeye Pierce.

The flutter of pages… Hawk was disrespectful of the Army, but he had immense respect for Col. Potter. It was the mechanism that earned his contempt, not the people.

The flutter of pages… We created a goddamn surgical clamp. Can you believe it? When we didn't have the tool we needed, we just went ahead and invented it. We worked much better as a team than I have ever worked by myself.

The flutter of pages… He lost his eyesight after a heater exploded, and it terrified me… but he was so calm and philosophical about it. He kept talking about how different the world seemed without his sight, like he was almost grateful it'd happened. It was remarkable. How many people would pull something positive out of such a terrible experience?

The flutter of pages… Oh, the joke. I don't ever want to forget that joke. "That's all you do, bird imitations?" It still makes me laugh…

The flutter of pages… Something Sidney said once… such a great description. Anger turned sideways is Hawkeye.

Ah, but that's the shorthand version. B.J. looks up from his journal, recalling a more in-depth analysis from a conversation he had with Sidney late one night, only a few weeks after B.J. had arrived in Korea.

The two of them were walking together, heading in the direction of the O Club. A poker game was about to get underway, and since there were no casualties expected to interrupt the fun, it would probably drag on well into the wee hours of the morning. The best kind of poker game.

It wasn't often that B.J. was alone with the psychiatrist, and on impulse, he asked something that he'd long wanted to ask… a question that had occurred to him almost from Day One. "Hey Sid, can I ask you something?"

"Certainly."

"How do you think Hawkeye does it?"

"Does… what?"

B.J. searched for the words to elaborate on his question. "How does he manage to deal with this whole thing? Being here and doing the job he does? Considering the kind of man he is, and the belief system he has, I'm a little surprised he has adapted so well. You have to have a theory."

Sidney took a moment to give it some thought and then he said, simply, "Anger."

Which was not at all what B.J. was expecting. "Anger?"

Sidney nodded as they came to the O Club. They didn't go in, but stopped and faced one another just outside the door. "He has all this anger simmering right underneath the surface. It's bubbling down there, but he doesn't let it come out. Or at least, not most of the time. It's really quite extraordinary. Instead of letting out his rage, he takes it and channels it into his work. He uses it in the best way possible. Every operation is a fight against the war and death and everything he abhors about this place and the situation he's in." Sidney paused, then added, "I think a lot of young soldiers are alive right now because their surgeon was not only extremely talented, but pissed off to high hell."

"Ready whenever you are, Dr. Hunnicutt," the nurse says.

Standing over the operating table, B.J. first glances her way, then looks down at the unconscious boy.

Three weeks before, he'd met David Clarke for the first time… 10 years old, polite young man, with a smile that was nothing less than beatific. His symptoms hadn't seemed particularly alarming (stomach pain, loss of appetite), but after running a battery of tests, B.J. was faced with the horrific diagnosis: cancer.

Now here he is, about to cut into David and attempt to rid him of his tumor, but there's certainly no guarantee this is going to work. In fact, the odds are actually against him. B.J. doesn't know if he's ever performed such a risky operation in his life, and he's scared to death.

The nurse looks at him across the table. "Shall we begin, Doctor?"

Get yourself together, man, he tells himself, and takes a deep breath. He shuts his eyes and thinks about Hawkeye, and he recalls that conversation with Sidney. He remembers how Hawkeye used his anger, making him more focused and more committed… somehow making it fuel his talent.

He thinks, No 10-year-old child should have to die. And certainly not this boy… not this sweet, smart, effervescent kid with all kinds of potential. That's not going to happen on my watch.

He can feel his heartbeat picking up, can feel his face getting warm, can feel the anger starting to spread through his veins. Oh no, nobody's dying today… not in this OR. No way in hell.

B.J. takes one more deep breath and then opens his eyes, studying the boy on the table. I'm saving him, he thinks with absolute conviction.

It's what Hawkeye would do.

He holds his hand out and says, "Scalpel." The nurse snaps the scalpel into the palm of his hand, and he leans over young David Clarke, and he begins to cut.