M*A*S*H 4077th: Nurse Pierce

Chapter 10

It was early in the morning. The sun was still beneath the horizon, showing signs of coming out to torture the tenants of the 4077 with its blistering heat.

Arrow hadn't been able to get to sleep. She hadn't been sleeping for the past few weeks. With the letter she'd started writing to the late Colonel Blake in her hand, she'd waited until everyone else had drifted off to a land she thought she'd never see again before slipping as silently as she could out the tent door. She pushed herself as close to the tent walls as she could without touching them as she eased her way to the darkest side of the tents.

She remained in the dark until she was now at the far edge of the chopper pad. Being alone for a moment. That was all she wanted. She wasn't going to try anything life threatening. She just wanted to be where no one else was, have a few minutes where she wasn't looking over her shoulder to see who Hawkeye or BJ had assigned to tell them if anything changed or if she was following doctor's orders.

What she didn't see was Radar panicking because the whiney klutz of a doctor better known as Major Burns, who had been given a period of R&R after the wedding of a certain nurse, was late.

"I'm worried about Arrow," she played Hawkeye's conversation with BJ and Colonel Potter over and over again in her head. They didn't know she was awake and listening to or watching them as they passed her tent when this talk occurred. "Last week, she told me about something that happened to her before she moved to Maine."

"It's only been a week and it looks like she hasn't slept in a month," BJ added.

"Well, Boys. I know what I'd do, but you're her doctors," Potter said.

"Think we should call Sydney?" BJ asked.

Arrow could see the look of relief on Hawkeye's face. It was as if he was glad he wasn't the only one to think of that, but at the same time relieved he wasn't the first one to bring it up.

"I'll place the call. See if we can get him up here some time tomorrow," Potter said.

The day after Arrow had eavesdropped, she found herself sitting across from a kind face. She'd seen him around and was even in The Swamp during the poker games. She liked to watch everyone fall for a bluff, whether it was Sydney's, Hawkeye's, or BJ's.

"Hello, Doctor. Are you here to see Hawkeye?" she asked already knowing the answer. She just wanted to throw Sydney off track. "He's been waking up in the night, screaming."

"I'll get to Hawkeye at some point while I'm here," Sydney said. "Maybe even tonight after the poker game. Right now, I'm more interested in you."

"What's so interesting about me?" Arrow feigned ignorance.

"The way you came to camp, to start," Sydney answered. "You might as well have been the Unknown Soldier. I-Core had you listed as missing in action until Colonel Potter gave word that you remembered who you were."

"Who I am," Arrow clarified. "Present tense, Sydney. I'm not the innocent little kid I like to remember. I remembered who I am, not who I was. Who I used to be was an innocent kid, my actions weren't innocent, okay. I'll admit that. The orphanage and half-way house kept a pretty detailed record on me just in case they ever had another kid come through who just like me. The police would return me to the half-way house within a week of my running away."

"What was the half-way house?"

"The half-way house that I was in is state funded. They'd stick the kids in there if we weren't adopted by the time we turned thirteen. If we were lucky, we'd be placed in foster homes. Some of us were even better off if we were placed in good foster homes. I never experienced a bad home."

"Then what makes you so sure you're not as innocent as you'd like to remember?"

"As I said before, I would run away. I told Hawkeye that it was because I wanted to see if I could make it on my own on the outside."

"What were you really doing?"

"I was running away. Aside from the foster homes, I never had a family, a real family. Moving between foster homes and the half-way house just made it seem more permanent that I was never going to have a real family. So, I'd run."

"Hawkeye told me of a conversation the two of you had. He said you made a very clear distinction between the words physical and mental. What were you talking about?"

"You sure you wanna know?"

"Talking to someone might help you sleep at night. It might even help you tear down that wall you've been building up inside and allow you to trust someone. I hear only two doctors can give you your medicine, and that you refuse to take it from anyone else."

"I see Hawkeye's been busy. What else did he tell you?"

"Nothing. He just gave me some symptoms and thought it wouldn't hurt if we had a chat."

"Okay, but unless I tell you he already knows what I'm about to say, I want it kept between us... and maybe Colonel Potter since he's God at camp."

"I am a doctor, Arrow."

"Yes, but you're also a doctor who is required to let the patient's superior officer know if the patient is mentally stable enough to continue their work here or needs to be sent home or to the hospital for observation..." Arrow continued after a moment's hesitation when she realized Sydney wasn't going to tell anyone what she said, only his medical opinion. "The last time I ever ran away from the half-way house was one I won't forget, but I'd like to. I want to live my life as if that night never happened, but I know I can't get that back. I say I'm not the innocent kid I used to be because my innocence was taken from me when I was sixteen Not that kind of innocence. I was beaten to a pulp all because somebody had something against orphans. Three months before my birthday and before I was told my father was found. I told him that happened a year before I moved. I went from hopping, bustling San Fransisco to a small, quiet town in New England, expecting to meet my father at the airport or the house I was moving into. But I was met by my grandfather instead. I felt like I wasn't wanted until he told me my father had been drafted around the time I found out about him. But even then, the feeling of being unwanted was still there because I never heard from him, and I was too afraid to send him anything. I don't know if Hawkeye knows this, but I started running away again. I felt like I had a real family this time, I just didn't feel like I was good enough because everything in that little town seemed so perfect. And I never saw what everyone else had in my future, especially after that night."

The memory of talking with Sydney all those days ago continued to play through Arrow's mind until she bumped into Radar who had gone from watching the horizon, to pacing the chopper pad.