Inspired by MASH, Season 4, Episode 4, entitled 'The Late Captain Pierce.' This is Dr. Daniel Pierce's side of the story. Liberty has been taken with the character. The dialogue at the end has been lifted almost entirely wholesale from said episode. Needless to say, none of it is mine. Unfortunately.

"Dr. Pierce?"

Oh, dear God, no.

The uniformed man nervously proffered the telegram. "I'm sorry, Dr. Pierce. We were very proud of your son. We honor him for his sacrifice."

He stared at the extended hand. No. No, it can't. It isn't. Willing it to disappear, to not be real.

His arm shook as he reached out, fingers trembling as he unfolded the paper. …REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR SON, B.F. PIERCE, WAS KILLED IN ACTION ON…

He couldn't read any further. Hawkeye? Benjamin? Dead?

"I'm truly, very sorry, sir," said the young serviceman, as he turned away, down the front porch steps and back into the official government car.

Daniel stared after him. That should be Hawkeye. That should be my son. Home, safe, a nine-to-five job, where he could come home every night. Where I could see him every day. Where he would be safe. Safe. Oh, my son…

As if in a dream, he turned, entered the house. Went to the cupboard. Reached up, top shelf.

He'd been sober for eleven years now. Never touched a drop. Kept the bottle of Scotch in plain sight, so he would always know what he had beaten.

Now, he turned it over in his hands.

What's the point? He'd only ever stopped drinking for his son's sake. Now that that son was gone…

The alcohol burned, going down his throat.

What to do? What did anyone do, when this happened? He didn't have the experience, to know how to handle this. When his wife had died… Hawkeye had only been ten when she'd passed. Only ten…

He tipped back another slug. Numbness. He craved numbness.

The living room. He sank down into his chair, running his hands over the smooth leather. How many times had he gone to sit down, only to find his young son curled up, sleeping, his nose pressed between the cushions like the puppy he'd always begged for?

The fireplace. When he was six, Hawkeye had become convinced that he could trap Santa with a net. He'd made an unholy mess, soot everywhere. His mother had been furious, but Daniel had laughed and laughed, proud of his son's ingenuity. Twelve years later, he'd made his father even prouder. There. He'd stood right there, beside the window, when he'd opened his acceptance letter to Androscoggin College, the first step on his road to following his father into medical practice.

If he wasn't a doctor, would he even be in this unholy war? Would he be practically sitting on the front line, drawing fire, slowly killing himself with too much caring, too much clowning, too much booze? He'd warned his son to not depend on alcohol to soothe his soul. 'Spirits can't cure the spirit,' he'd warned. 'I know it's tempting, son, but don't let it catch you, don't let it kill you.'

He shook the bottle. Hadn't this thing been full? Couldn't be. It was half-gone already. He couldn't have drunk half and not noticed. He wasn't that kind of man anymore.

And how had his son been killed, anyway? The telegram hadn't said. Or maybe it had. He wasn't going to read it. He'd read all he needed to read. His son was dead.

He looked at the telephone. Did the mental math. Too late, to call now. It was the middle of the night in Korea.

Who would he call, anyway? Who could tell him what he needed to hear? What were they going to say? That it was all just some big misunderstanding? That it was some other Pierce, Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Captain, US 19905607, who was lying on a slab somewhere, waiting for autopsy and shipment home in a pine box?

His hand strayed to the side table. Letters. He'd kept all of his son's letters home. His boy was far more faithful about writing home than he had been, when he'd taken his turn at war. Sorry, Mom, Dad, he sent heavenward. Take care of my son up there, will you?

That thought broke him. "Hawkeye!" he cried, weeping aloud. "Hawkeye! Damn it! Damn it, dammit, dammit!" He slammed his hand down on the table, bruising his palm, a fresh round of sobs tearing at his throat. The sound of his lamentation shredded the air, but when it was over, there was nothing. Emptiness. Not even echoes to drive away the silence.

His trembling hand reached for the bottle. It lay where it had fallen, the carpet around it slowly soaking up the amber spirits that dripped lazily from its mouth, a slowly spreading stain on the faded flower pattern of the rug that his wife had chosen and that he had never replaced.

He rescued one of his son's letters, before the spilled liquid could reach it.

"Dear Dad…"

Army life. It was exciting. It was dull. It was all kinds of crazy, and Hawkeye was always at the center of it. He'd been the eye of the tornado ever since he'd been a child; why would Korea be any different?

"Since Trapper left, I've taken up with B.J. Hunnicutt. He's a great surgeon, and a great friend. I'd trust him with my life any day of the week. Just yesterday…"

Hunnicutt. B.J. If anyone knew how his son had died, it would be his best friend.

Not even looking at the clock, not caring what time it was here, there, or anywhere else, he dialed. "Get me Korea," he demanded of the operator. "Get me Korea right now."

The snarl of a surgeon is a great motivator. He was patched through to the 4077th within half an hour. Seconds, compared to the usual wait.

And then a long wait as the company clerk went to roust B.J. out of bed.

The wait was bad. Anger. Anger was good. Anger was cleansing. "Captain Hunnicutt," he'd demanded. "I will speak with no one but Captain Hunnicutt. Get him on the phone right now. Right now!" Why hadn't he called him first thing? Why hadn't his son's best friend bothered to call his son's father the minute he'd heard about his son's death? If he'd really known Hawkeye, really cared about him, he'd know how close father and son were. How much Daniel loved his boy. He'd have called him right away. A best friend would do that. So why hadn't he? Didn't he care about Hawkeye at all?

Hawkeye. It should be Hawkeye I'm about to speak with. It should be Hawkeye that corporal is dragging out of bed. Hawkeye… Hawkeye… Hawkeye…

"Hello?"

A young man's voice. A young man in Korea. A young man who had known his son, who had been his son's best friend. A young man who was, most definitely, not his son.

He would never hear his son's voice again.

He broke. "How?" he sobbed into the phone, hopelessly. "Why? Why my boy? Why my boy? Why? Why!"

"…uh, sir? I'm sorry, but we seem to have lost the connection…" The operator's voice trailed off in the face of the elder Pierce's heaving sobs.

He got absolutely, completely, gut-bustingly drunk that night.

And stayed drunk the next day.

By the next evening, the news had gotten around town that Dr. Pierce had lost his son.

By the day after, a crowd of well-wishers had made their rounds, the women with pot roasts, the men with more booze. A few of Hawkeye's friends had stopped in to express their condolences. Daniel had sent a few of them off with mementos of his son. The golf clubs his son had prized so much… he'd held them for a long, long time before surrendering them to his son's college roommate. He just wanted them out of his house. They reminded him too much of Hawkeye.

Drunk again that evening, and well into the night.

The mother of all hangovers the next morning, soothed with more liquor. He spent the day ignoring the doorbell, curled up on his son's old bed, in his son's old room, holding his son's old teddy bear. He stared at Hawkeye's graduation photo, set on the bedside table. So bright… so happy… so hopeful. Unaware that he would be dead in a foreign war not a decade into the future.

He staggered into the bathroom halfway through the night, throwing up what little was in his belly. Gut wrenching spasms emptied him out, of food, of booze, of tears. He gripped the sink with both hands, staring at the haggard face in the mirror.

When had he started to look so old? So worn? So… so used. Beaten. He stared at the bottle where it rested on the back of the toilet.

Anger gripped him then, and he threw it into the garbage can, his vivid invective accompanied by the tinkle of broken glass and the slow glub glub of spilling liquid. No. He was stronger than that. His son had begged him to stop boozing. He was not going to dishonor his boy's memory by using his death as an excuse to start drinking.

He ransacked the house, gathering up all the bottles and dumping them into one large bag. Then he drove down to the seaside. One by one, he poured all the bottles into the sea. "For you, Hawkeye. Benjamin. My son."

That night, he slept the sleep of the exhausted.

The ringing of the telephone woke him up. He considered just letting it go, ignoring it.

But it might be one of his patients.

He'd ignored them for too many days now. It could be something important. And, whatever else he was, he had always been and would always be, a doctor.

"…hello?" His voice was hoarse with too much crying, tacky from too much booze, and rusty from disuse. But there was time to remedy that later. "Dr. Pierce here."

"…Dad?"

A dream. This had to be a dream.

He clutched the receiver in both hands anyway. "…H-… H-… Hawkeye?" Alive?

The voice on the other end melted in relief. "Dad. Oh, God, Dad, you're okay."

He stared at the phone. "You - you're dead. Hawkeye. You're dead."

"No, Dad, it was a mixup. The army screwed up the paperwork. I'm alive, Dad. Really, I'm alive. I've been going nuts, trying to get through to you for the past couple of days. The MASH unit was cut off. That's why I haven't been able to talk to you, to tell you what was going on. I've been so worried about you." His son. It was his son's voice, absolutely.

"Oh, Hawkeye!" He broke down completely, clutching the phone like it was his last lifeline. "I thought you were dead! They told me you were dead…"

"Dad, how are you? You sober? You haven't started drinking again, have you?"

"No." No, never again. That bender was one of the worst he'd been on, ever. But Hawkeye didn't need to know about that. Well, maybe… "I tossed everything out last night. Hawkeye…" His voice cracked on his son's name.

The concern in his boy's voice was evident. "Quit crying, Dad, it's okay! Really!"

Okay. Okay, calm down. Practicalities. "That's some mixup. The army's got a lot to answer for. They at least know you're alive?"

"Nah, I'm still dead as far as the army is concerned, but they're working on it."

"Paperwork? Figures." Hah. Rush home news of a death but drag their feet for the living. Isn't that the army way?

His son laughed. "Hey, listen, Dad, can I ask you a favor?"

"Anything."

A slight hesitation that spoke volumes. "You think you can start sending my allowance again? Just for a little while, I'll let you know how much."

Daniel felt a slight grin creep over his face. "Dead men don't get paid, eh? Though I'll bet no zombie ever did such a great job at surgery."

His son laughed, and Daniel sagged back in his chair, relief washing all other emotions away. "God, Hawkeye, it's great to hear your voice again."

Static broke up the line. "It's…hea…oo."

"What?" he called into the phone. No, don't cut us off, he prayed to the patron saint of telephones and wartime correspondences.

Hawkeye's voice came through loud and clear. "It's good to hear your voice, too!"

A pause. Daniel swallowed down the lump in his throat. He was a man; he could fall to pieces in the privacy of his own home, but too much emotion, all at once… no.

His son seemed to understand. "So what else is new?"

They talked for a long time. What in normal times would be considered the inanities of small town life were hashed over, small treasures of normalcy. Daniel talked, Hawkeye talked, and he knew that both men were storing up the sounds of one another's voices, their laughs, the little pauses and inflections that made up their individual verbal signatures. My boy is alive. My son is alive. He's alive, he's alive, he's alive…

Tomorrow would be soon enough to let the neighbors know about the army's mistake. For right now, he just talked with his son, the first time in months.

He's alive…

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