Chapter 11 – Keep dreaming

"Urgh," was Hawkeye's first word, when he stepped out of the scrub room late that afternoon; he squinted against the bright sunset and raised his arm above his head in a noisy yawn that nearly dislocated his jaw.

"That's just typical," BJ murmured behind him. "Such a beautiful day and we totally miss it."

"Don't worry. You can still enjoy the Korean summer tomorrow – and the day after that, and the day after that. Maybe even the whole next summer, if you're lucky."

BJ sighed and moved his tired corpus after his friend towards the mess tent. He would rather have gone straight to bed and slept for four or five days, but his stomach felt like a big, empty noting; the only nutrition they had gotten since yesterday, had been ham sandwiches and powdered juice.

Agnes had beat them to the food line and when Hawkeye saw her, he visibly hoisted his long-limbed frame up and slid in behind her, purring:

"Hey, what's cockin' good lookin'?"

"Glob, apparently," Agnes responded in a dead-pan tone, frowning slightly by the sight of the lumped sauce that Igor dropped on her tray. "And that."

They all three stared at what they suppose was meat, but bore an uncanny resemblance to dark leather.

"That looks like something that fell of a mummy," BJ said with genuine revulsion in his voice. "Igor, for how many years did the cook fry it?"

"Listen, I have nothing to do with the cooking, a'right?" the lanky Private responded with growing annoyance. "It's more than enough that I have to serve it. Are you Captains having it or not?"

"Well, I'm in an experimental mood today," Hawkeye said with halfhearted joviality and held out his tray. "Fill me up, Igor."

"How about you, Captain?" Igor said, hovering a piece of meat near Agnes' tray. She retreated politely.

"Eh, no thanks. I just remembered, Thursday is my vegetarian-day."

She filled her glass with water and put it down to grab a knife and fork – only to find it had disappeared when she wanted to pick it up again. She looked around; Hawkeye grinned at her. It took her battered brain a couple of seconds to comprehend that he was holding her glass in his hand, way out of her reach.

"Hawkeye, give me my water back," she growled, much too tired to deal with his childish conduct.

"You need to pay the ransom first," he told her, tapping a finger to his smirking lips.

"What – a punch in the maw?"

"Yes, with your lips on it."

Agnes sighed. "Seriously? This trick is so old, it's got whiskers on it."

"Well, if it works, so… Hey!" he blurted, when someone taller snatched the glass out of his hand; Hawkeye turned around and was greeted by Winchester's scowl.

"Charles, you are no fun," Hawkeye sulked.

"You are revolting, Pierce," the Bostonian said unemotionally and handed the glass back to Agnes. Hawkeye noticed how his tone got obviously softer, when he addressed her instead: "Here you go, Captain."

"Thank you, Major," Agnes responded graciously, trading Hawkeye's indignant expression with a complacent smirk, before she followed Charles to a vacant table.

Hawkeye picked up his tray with a huff. Those two were getting a bit too close for his liking.

oOo

She walks up the familiar staircase, the wooden handrail smooth under her palm and the squeaking steps hollow from hundreds and hundreds of feet that have marched up and down in decades. The stair leads her past his old place and she feels an airy pang of sorrow when she remembers that there is another family living there now.

Finally she reaches her own apartment. The door is unlocked. A little puzzled, but mostly worried, she sneaks inside.

He is standing right there in the tiny kitchen. Her heart leaps. He turns around when he hears her and smiles and her heart gives another painful jump.

"Hey, Ness. How was work?"

"What are you doing here?"

He laughs. "I live here."

"No, I mean…"

She tries to walk closer, but even though she feels herself moving, she doesn't get any closer to him. She is about to cry. Why can't she get to him? Why can't she hold him – feel him?

Then someone knocks on the door behind her.

"Captain?"

He smiles at her.

"I believe you are needed, doctor Ness," he said softly.

The knocking continues; it echoes in the hallway – in her body. She's pulled away from him by an invisible force, before she realizes what is happening… before she can stop it…

"Captain Clearwater?

Agnes opened her eyes and was momentarily blinded by the blissful morning sun that came in through her window. She had been so tired last afternoon when she went to bed that she had forgotten to close the curtains.

She lay completely still for a second, fighting to keep the empty grief in its place. This really wasn't the time…

"Just a second," she croaked, when Radar knocked for the third time. She tumbled out of bed and grabbed her pants. A glimpse of the clock on her night stand told her it was almost nine o'clock. She had been sleeping for fourteen straight hours. No wonder she felt like she'd been hit over the head with a sledge hammer.

"It's one of your patients," Radar informed her, when she opened the door. "Hawkeye says his drain is too bloody."

"Shit," Agnes blurted before she could contain herself. "Sorry. Where's Hawkeye?"

"He's waiting in Post-Op."

She halfway ran to the ward and found Hawkeye sitting by her patient's side, going over his journal.

"Good morning," he greeted.

"How is he?"

"Don't worry, he's not exactly dying," Hawkeye responded, handing over the clipboard. "His blood pressure is a bit low and there's too much blood in the drain. How did he look inside?"

"Like a target board for machine gun practice." Agnes frowned and checked the soldiers pulse. He was a young blond kid from Illinois and he had come in with the second wave with a nasty looking chest wound. She knew she should have waited and handed him to Charles, but time had worked against them. A most unpleasant thought occurred to her: Had she missed something in there?

"We're giving him another unit of blood," Hawkeye said. "Let's give it an hour, before we do anything drastic."

Agnes agreed, but deep down she knew it wouldn't help. She was still monitoring her patient, when Hawkeye returned from breakfast an hour later. The boys blood pressure had just dropped again to a worrying low level.

"I missed something," Agnes said and looked up at the dark-haired surgeon. "We need to open him up again."

Hawkeye nodded. "I'll get him prepped. In the meantime…" He handed her a tray with slices of bread, a lump of powdered eggs and a glass of orange juice. "Here. You need to eat something."

"I'm not hungry," Agnes objected.

"Starving yourself won't help him. Eat. I don't want to see you in OR, unless that tray is empty, got that?"

Agnes picked up the toast and sighed. "Yes, mother."

"That's my girl," Hawkeye said, patting her on the head, until she whapped his hand away with a feign scowl.

oOo

"Found it," Agnes declared half an hour later. It was a small slit in his transverse colon, behind the stomach, that was leaking blood into his chest cavity. Hawkeye handed her the suture.

"Everyone could have missed that," he said gently.

Agnes shook her head. "As if he hadn't been through enough. I knew I should have asked Charles or one of you guys to help me. I'm no near experienced enough to handle these cases."

"Will you get off your own bag? He's gonna be fine. You made a tiny mistake, but you also fixed it."

Agnes pretended she was too busy stitching to answer.

"He was one of your last patients, right?" Hawkeye proceeded. "How can they expect us to save lives, when we're lying unconscious from sleep deprivation under the operating table?"

"It's no excuse," Agnes said, reaching out for another sponge.

"Maybe not," Hawkeye responded in a surprising lenient tone. "But we've all been there. Don't think you're the only surgeon in this camp who missed a bleeder. Even Winchester, Sublime Surgeon, makes mistakes – and if that isn't a comfort, I don't know what it is."

Agnes felt herself smiling a little.

"Thanks," she said – and meant it. "You know, when you're not unbearably flirtatious loudmouth, you're actually quite all right."

"And you're quite cute if you think I won't go right back to be unbearable after this session," Hawkeye remarked, the familiar look of mischief sparkling in his blue eyes.

"Gullibility is one of my weaknesses," Agnes admitted.

oOo

Agnes spend so much time in the scrub room afterwards, she was surprised to find that Hawkeye was waiting for her outside the curtains. He smiled, but when it took her a while to force a smile back, he cocked his head.

"You okay?"

It hadn't been good for her to be alone in the female changing room. Her thoughts had drifted back to the dream and she had scrubbed her hands so hard, she could feel the skin tingle. She decied to stay with her usual tactic: Lying.

"I'm fine, I'm just…" She was about to say 'tired' as a reflex, but since she had just sleep fourteen hours, it sounded a bit hollow, even to her.

"It was a tough night," she finished. Both of them…

"I know what's gonna cheer you up," Hawkeye said and followed her outside, his lanky frame dangling next to her. "You, me, some candles and a bottle of Swamp-wine in the supply tent."

She chuckled resignedly. "You are one preserving guy, you know that?

"Is it working?"

"Not for a second. But I admire your endurance, so I'll be fair. If you can answer a simple question about me, I'll go out with you."

"All right – shoot!"

"What color are my eyes?"

"What color are your– That's it?" He sounded surprised.

"That's it," she confirmed.

Hawkeye came to a halt, pondering, and tried to cheat by leaning forward, but Agnes turned her head, squeezing her eyes shut.

"They are… Uh–" He hesitated, clearly not having the slightest of ideas. "The color of… outmost beauty?"

Agnes opened her eyes – brownish and green, Hawkeye realized – to glare at him. Really? He ransacked his brain to come up with a witty answer, hopefully one clever enough to save him.

"How do expect me to remember one color, when I'm completely dazzled by the whole you."

Agnes snorted. "Nice try."

oOo

Hawkeye heaved the deepest of sighs when he returned to the Swamp. Charles ignored him, not even moving his eyes from the book he was reading, but BJ poured him a look, while cleaning his shaver.

"Somethings bothering you or did your lungs just collapse?"

"I just can't get that girl to go out with me," Hawkeye groused and slumped into the folding chair beside his bunk.

BJ removed the last of the shaving cream and peeked at him. "Agnes?"

"Uh-hu. I was actually this close…" He illustrated about the quarter of an inch between his thumb and forefinger, "to having her persuaded in going out with me, but then she asked what color eyes she had and I couldn't answer that."

"Aren't they…" BJ hesitated, knitting his eyes brows together, "…brown or something?"

"Hazel," Charles responded matter-of-factly, apparently without stopping his reading. Hawkeye gaped at him. He then looked at BJ with a brow raised in puzzlement and then back at Charles again.

"That was surprisingly specific, Chuckie."

Charles turned a page, untouched by Hawkeye's deliberately casual tone. "To you, maybe. For a brighter creature, it's a simple matter of observation skills."

BJ's moustache curled upward in a cunning smile.

"To a brighter creature, it would sound like someone had indeed been observing Captain Clearwater quite intense lately," he said innocently.

"Don't be absurd," Charles said calmly.

"What else have you observed about her, Charles," Hawkeye persisted. "Her favorite perfume? The color of her nightdress?"

BJ chortled. Charles closed his book with a small sigh and turned towards them.

"Pierce, I know the idea is beyond outrageous to you, but it is in fact possible for a man and a woman to form a meaningful, unsexual relationship as mere friends and that is precisely how I regard Captain Clearwater. She's an interesting, intelligent woman and I appreciate her company – as a friend."

"Sure," Hawkeye said innocently. "A friend – who also happens to be a girl."

BJ started humming: "Charles and Agnes are sitting in a tree – K-I-S-S-I-N-G…"

"You know – if the two of you would grow up, it would make my stay are considerably more pleasant." Charles made a dramatic pause and smiled. "But I suppose that is equally as likely as Pierce getting a date with Captain Clearwater."

BJ burst into his characteristic booming laugh, when Hawkeye rolled his eyes.

"You're funny. But I bet you couldn't get a date with her either."

"I have no intention of trying that," Charles dispelled him, "since I do not woo women who are already spoken for. Unlike someone in this tent, I do possess the simplest of manners."

"Manners, smanners," Hawkeye said, waving his hand dismissively in the air. "How far do you think that'll get you? If you haven't got charm that's like putting lipstick on a cow, believing it's gonna turn out pretty."

Charles frowned of revulsion. "Pierce, your homespun analogies are as tawdry as the 'charm' of yours, you're so proud off."

"Oh, what do you know about what's going on down here in the real world, your blue-blooded sardine," Hawkeye jeered. "BJ agrees with me, right, Beej?"

"Don't get me involved in this," BJ said, rinsing his shaver. "Besides, didn't I tell you to leave her alone?"

"Mmm, nope, that must have been Charles, you were talking to."

"Oh, let the child, Hunnicutt," Charles said with a scornful smirk, before returning to his book. "He obviously enjoys making a fool out of himself and he's running out of time: Captain Clearwater is moving on the day after tomorrow."

Hawkeye's eyes widened. "What! It hasn't been a week already?"

"Time flies when you're having fun," BJ noticed acerbically and drifted back to his bunk.