Words of Wisdom

With a ding, the elevator doors opened and B.J. stepped out onto the 5th floor. Visiting hours were over, the hospital was quiet (or as quiet as a hospital can get), everyone was settling in for the night. He passed the nurses' station and nodded at Janet, Mary, and one other nurse whose name he didn't know. They acknowledged him with nods in return.

He headed to room 514, knocked on the partially open door just to announce himself, then went right on in. Mr. Driesbach was asleep, but that was no surprise. The poor man was drugged to the hilt here in his final days, and slept more than he was conscious. B.J. moved the visitor's chair over to the side of the bed and sat down, taking a good long look at the man, who was undoubtedly little more than a shell of what he'd once been.

Cancer was such a horrible way to die, B.J. thought. Painful and draining and drawn out. The drugs at least kept Driesbach from being in agony, but there was still too much pain, B.J. knew. Still too much discomfort. Still too much time to think about approaching death.

B.J. glanced up at the machines monitoring the man's vitals. He was hanging in, and B.J. had to wonder what on earth made him keep going. Sheer stubbornness, most likely. This was one tough old bird, apparently a real hellraiser in his younger days, the kind of guy so full of life and energy that he reminded B.J. of Hawkeye. Except for now, of course, as the illness slowly ate away at him. But he'd listened to enough of the man's reminiscences to know exactly what kind of character he'd been, once upon a time, before the cancer had set in and started stealing life from him.

"She was the love of my life," Mr. Driesbach suddenly said, his voice thin and shaky, and it startled B.J. He hadn't realized the man had woken up. His eyes hadn't opened. He cleared his throat and his voice had a little more volume as he added, "But I told you that already, didn't I?"

B.J. pulled his chair a little closer to the bed. "Yes, sir," he said softly, taking hold of Driesbach's hand. "You did."

Now the man's eyes finally opened, and they focused on B.J. He smiled. "First time I saw her, she took my breath away. She was so beautiful."

"At the high-school dance," B.J. noted, to show he'd been paying attention during their previous conversations.

"That's right. Saw her across the room, like some scene out of a sappy movie. Looked over and there she was, and I thought, wow! What a stunner. I was with another girl, you know… and I don't even remember her name now. But I was no cad… no sir. I didn't dump my date to go pursue Sarah. Of course, I didn't know her name was Sarah… not yet, not at that point. But I asked around. And eventually, a few days later, I knew her name and that she wasn't seeing anybody, and that's all I needed to know." He coughed, blinked slowly, as if he were about to drift off to sleep again. "Got up the nerve to ask her out, and she said…"

B.J. smiled broadly. He'd heard the story before. A few times. "She said no."

"She sure did," Mr. Driesbach said, a ghost of a smile on his own face. "I was crushed, knocked right the hell on my ass, but you know what? I didn't stay there long. I just kept on asking her out, over and over, until finally she said yes. I saw her every day and asked her every day, and she got so exasperated, she just said yes. She knew I wasn't going to quit."

B.J. laughed. He could just imagine this man's relentless pursuit and the poor girl reaching the end of her rope, saying yes just to shut him the hell up.

"Once we went out, we clicked. It was magical… that's the only way I can put it. You ever meet anyone like that? You start getting to know them and it's like you knew them your entire life, that's how instantaneous the connection is."

"Oh yes," B.J. said with a nod.

Driesbach launched into another short coughing jag, and B.J. asked him if he wanted a drink of water. He said yeah, that would be nice, and B.J. picked up the cup that was on the nearby table and inserted the straw into the old man's mouth. He drank a bit, then waved it away.

"She was the love of my life," he repeated. "Sarah. We dated all through high school and then we got married. We were both only 18 when we tied the knot. But why wait? We knew we were meant for each other."

B.J. nodded. "Married for 56 years," he said gently, the facts and figures committed to memory. "Three children, seven grandchildren. It certainly does sound magical, sir."

"Still be married if she hadn't been killed in that accident two years back," Driesbach said bitterly. Car accident, it'd been. She'd most likely fallen asleep at the wheel, driving back from visiting her youngest daughter, but it's also possible she'd had a heart attack. In any case, it'd been a one-car accident, Driesbach had told him. Went right into a tree. Killed his wife, and incidentally broke his own heart into a million tiny pieces.

"Yes, sir," B.J. said. "But you had 56 glorious years with the love of your life. That's more than a lot of people get."

Driesbach reached out then, putting his hand on B.J.'s arm, giving it a brief, weak shake. "That's the point I'm trying to make," he said, his eyes as alert as B.J. had seen them for some time. "We all only get one life, kid. Make all the right choices. Sure, you'll sometimes make mistakes, we all do. But once you realize that you've messed up, you need to right the wrong. No regrets. Don't get to this point, where I'm at—wasting away in a hospital bed, tubes running in and out of me—don't get to this point and have regrets. I sure as hell don't."

It was a long speech for him and he had to take a few minutes to catch his breath. B.J. wasn't sure what to say, so he didn't say anything. He only waited the man out, watching his face and the clarity in his eyes.

"I'm dying," Driesbach continued when he could. "I'm dying and I figure I've gotta have some words of wisdom to impart. Otherwise what the hell am I doing? Just taking up space. So these are my words of wisdom. You make sure you fix anything you get wrong. Make it right. Get to the end of your life—that'll be decades from now, a'course—and say, that old coot Driesbach was right. I fixed it so that I have no regrets. Gonna go out satisfied as all hell."

"Yes sir," B.J. murmured. He was a little dumbfounded and couldn't have come up with much more to say if he'd tried.

"Live your life the way that makes you happy, young man." Driesbach took a labored breath and closed his eyes. "You've been a great doctor, and a good friend to a dying man. Listening to me all these nights, after your shift is over. Oh, I know… I asked around. You're not even working right now, and here you sit, with an old, dying man, listening to him ramble. I 'preciate that. But I think…" He struggled to open his eyes, and they gleamed a little as he looked at B.J. "I think you know what I've been talking about."

B.J. nodded mutely, and the man's eyes fluttered shut. Within a few seconds, he was asleep. Just like that. So alert one minute, out like a light the next.

B.J. sat by the bed another 20 minutes, just watching the monitors and the sleeping man, and thinking. Then he got up and pushed the chair back into the corner, and he left Driesbach's room, letting the door slip shut behind him.

He walked past the nurses' station without even looking in their direction, took the elevator down to the lobby, and left the hospital. It was very late and long past time to go home.

But he never got there.

About halfway between the hospital and home was a cemetery where his paternal grandparents were buried. On impulse he stopped there, not entirely sure why. He parked the car and walked to their gravesites, reading their headstones in the dim moonlight with interest, as if he'd never read them before. John and Gloria Hunnicutt. Themselves married for 47 years. He remembered them both fondly, though they'd been gone for quite a long time now.

He wasn't entirely sure what he was doing hanging out at their graves… lingering in a cemetery at this ungodly hour when he should be home with this wife and daughter. He only knew he needed to think. His mind was a little too full of all the things Mr. Driesbach had put there.

Eventually he tired of standing, and he sat down on the grass at the foot of his grandfather's grave. The ground was damp but he was only marginally aware of it.

After nearly an hour, he got up and left the cemetery, then turned his car around and headed right back to the hospital.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Hunnicutt. He died about 40 minutes ago," Janet, one of the 5th floor nurses, told him. "He went peacefully in his sleep. It was merciful, considering…"

He nodded in agreement. "Thanks, Janet. I guess I was… I must've been the last person to talk to him."

"Yes sir, I believe so. Did he seem… oh, I don't know. Ready to go?"

"Yeah, you know… actually, he did."

He reached out and touched her arm, thanking her again, and then he turned and took the elevator down to the 2nd floor. His office was on this floor, and he unlocked it and went inside, snapping on the light. The clock on the wall read 1:15 a.m. He figured Peg must be asleep and not even aware that he hadn't come home yet, because his phone wasn't ringing off the hook. Or perhaps she just assumed he was tending to an emergency.

For a second, he had no earthly reason why he'd come in here. Then Mr. Driesbach's voice came to him, unbidden: "You make sure you fix anything you get wrong."

He took a seat at his desk and looked around for his notepad. There were four framed photos on the desk, two of Peg and Erin, one of him and Hawkeye, one of the entire M*A*S*H gang, posing in the Officers' Club. He stared at each photo in turn, and he smiled broadly when his eyes settled on the one with him and Hawkeye, because he could remember exactly what Hawk had said in the second before the shutter snapped. "Watch that smile, Beej. Not so high on the wattage, you don't want to blind Klinger." Then, to Klinger behind the camera: "Man's got the whitest, brightest teeth I've ever seen. It's not natural."

B.J. laughed now, the memory so vivid he could almost smell Korea's arid air. That was the thing. Every memory of Hawkeye was so etched into his brain, it was as though it'd happened a second ago.

Shaking his head, he pulled his notepad out of a pile of paperwork, located a pen, and sat there staring at the blank paper. What the hell was he doing?

But he'd known what he was doing all along. He just kept refusing to acknowledge it.

He looked at the clock again and added three hours to the current time. A phone call now was out of the question. A letter was definitely the way to go.

But a few minutes later, the piece of paper was still blank and his hand was still poised above it, waiting for instructions on what to write. Impatient with himself, he shoved the notepad aside and put his head down on his desk. Within minutes, he was asleep and dreaming restless dreams.

There was a clang out in the hallway. B.J. awoke with a start and sat up abruptly. He saw a janitor amble past the door with a mop and bucket.

Blinking a few times to clear the cobwebs, B.J. eventually realized where he was. He stretched and groaned. His neck was stiff; hell, his entire body was stiff. Collapsing on his desk was no way to sleep. He looked up at the clock… 4:03 a.m.

He cleared his throat and picked up the phone.

"It was weird, Hawk," B.J. said as they sat side by side on the grass. Absently he tossed a stone into the creek. The unmistakable sounds of crickets and cicadas filled the night air, along with the occasional hoot of an owl. A small-town symphony. "Why did he tell me all that? What was it about me that made him… I don't know… feel compelled to deliver that message to me? 'Make sure you fix anything you get wrong.'"

It was two days later and the two of them were sitting in Crabapple Cove's public park after dark. Long after dark. It was nearly midnight, in fact, and there was nobody else around at this hour. B.J. had arrived in Crabapple Cove several hours before, had taken supper with Hawkeye and his father, telling war stories for the elder Pierce's benefit and laughing a lot at some of the crazier memories that sprang to mind. After supper, he and Hawkeye had taken a walk around town, chatting nonstop the whole time, but B.J. found he couldn't launch into the reason for his spur-of-the-moment visit, and Hawkeye wasn't exactly interrogating him about it.

Then, when Hawkeye suggested it was perhaps time to call it a night, B.J. blurted out, "Can we go somewhere and talk?" And instead of the wiseass comeback he expected (maybe something along the lines of "Beej, we've been talking!"), Hawkeye simply grabbed his car keys and drove them to this idyllic little park. Where they had the place to themselves. Where they sat on the grass by a small gurgling creek, underneath a clear, starry sky.

And where B.J. finally told Hawkeye all about Mr. Driesbach, the impetus for his sudden visit. When B.J. had phoned a couple mornings ago, he'd only asked for permission to come out to Maine. He hadn't even hinted at what the reason might be.

Now Hawkeye leaned back on his elbows and looked up at the sky. "I guess he felt like it was a message you needed to hear, Beej." He glanced over at B.J. "So tell me… was it?"

B.J. smiled. That was the thing about his relationship with Hawkeye. Why the hell they used words was a mystery to B.J. The two of them didn't need to speak. They already knew what was going on, long before the words ever came out.

"It's why I'm here, isn't it, Hawk?"

Hawkeye leaned all the way back until he was lying flat on the ground, staring up at the stars. "Yeah. I guess it is."

"Do you… What do you think about what he said?"

"I think," Hawkeye said after a brief pause, "that those were very wise last words."

B.J. had to laugh. Talk about beating around the bush. OK, so they both probably knew very well what was going on, but B.J. sure wouldn't have minded hearing some confirmation. Were they ever going to actually talk about what they were finding ways not to talk about? "Which means…" he prompted.

Hawkeye rolled onto his side and put a hand on B.J.'s thigh. His touch felt like fire. B.J.'s mouth went dry. "It's your call, Beej. You're the one with everything to lose."

"I've already decided, Hawk. I'm here." His smile grew. "And I'm not losing anything. I'm fixing what I got wrong."

It was dark out here, in the park at midnight, but it seemed to B.J. that Hawkeye's eyes were shining.

Less than a half hour later, they sat on the bed in Hawkeye's room, side by side again, fingers fumbling with buttons. Hawkeye got B.J.'s shirt unbuttoned first and slid it slowly off his shoulders and down his arms. B.J.'s nervousness made him slower, but he finally managed to get Hawkeye's shirt off too, and tossed it to the floor, on top of his own.

Hawkeye shifted a little closer, leaning in to plant a soft kiss on B.J.'s shoulder, then another on his neck. B.J. shuddered and closed his eyes. This was intense… beautiful but scary, and emotionally overwhelming. He fought to calm his nerves, taking a deep breath.

"If you're sure," Hawkeye said again. He'd asked once before, just after they'd come into the room and closed the door behind them.

"I'm sure," B.J. insisted.

Hawkeye put a hand on B.J.'s chest, over his heart, and stared at it. "I love you," he whispered. "Do you know how long?"

B.J. murmured, "As long as I've loved you."

Hawkeye's gaze lifted to B.J.'s eyes. He smiled sweetly. "That's probably true."

Their first kiss started out soft and gentle, a tentative tasting, but quickly turned passionate and hungry. B.J. heard himself moan. It was nothing like he'd imagined, when he had allowed himself the fantasy. It was nothing like kissing his wife. It was nothing like anything he'd ever known before.

Hawkeye carefully pushed him backward onto the bed, stretching out on top of him, still kissing him but not just on the mouth. Now he was kissing B.J.'s cheek, jaw, nose, forehead, temple. B.J. laughed softly, feeling ticklish and turned on, unable to process all of the sensations, only knowing that his entire body wanted more, more, more.

As he lay there receiving soft, warm kisses, his fingers tangling in Hawkeye's thick hair, he imagined himself decades from now, reminiscing. "He was the love of my life. But when I met him, I was married, and so I did nothing. I said nothing. That was a mistake—we all make mistakes in life, and that was one of mine. But you know, the nice thing is, once I realized that I messed up, I made sure I fixed it. He was the love of my life, and I got him… I got my life with him."

Hawkeye's mouth found his again, kissing deeply, kissing lovingly, taking his breath away. When they parted, B.J. pulled back a little, eyes locking with Hawkeye's. And he smiled.

All fixed, he thought. No regrets.