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

Chapter 9: Souvenirs

Souvenirs. That's all Arrow was hearing about from the nurses to the chopper pilots who paid the local kids to go into the mine fields and collect war scraps they'd sell to the soldiers or other locals, to everyone in camp.  There was talk of patients wanting to keep pieces of shrapnel or the bullets that were removed from their bodies as souvenirs.

Why would anyone want to keep reminders of this "police action"? Arrow thought. Then something came to mind. I wonder if I have any of the shrapnel that was found in me.

Arrow walked from the middle of camp to post-Op where she found Hawkeye doing his rounds.

"Ah, there you are," he said when he looked up from a patient's chart. "I was just on my way out to look for you to give you your checkup."

So much for that not being discussed in front of the other patients she thought.

Hawkeye returned the chart to its rightful place before he went over to the desk and asked the nurse who was there for Arrow's chart. They had been keeping it locked in a safe ever since she'd hidden it.

"Well, your chart says you're doing much better," Hawkeye said as the door to Radar's office closed behind them. Arrow took a seat on the bed, and Hawkeye pulled the chair over. "But now, it says you're refusing your medication instead of your rests, which you have been taking."

"When do I refuse to take my meds?"

"When I'm not the one making you take them," Hawkeye declared. He placed his fingers over her temples and began the massage. "How are your eyes, today?"

Arrow growled in frustration. "Oh, my god. I'm sick of that question, Dad... Every day it's the same question word-for-word, not even a variation of it."

"I just spent seventy-two hours in surgery and another eight in post-Op with patients who want to keep things that could have killed them as souvenirs. My brain doesn't exactly want to think of other ways to say things," he said.

"Sorry. I didn't think it had been that long. I feel fine, there's really not much to report as far as any changes goes... Dad, I know how you feel about the whole souvenir thing, but I was wondering if..."

"Stop right there." He brought his hands away from her eyes and looked right at her. He went about trying to convince Arrow that she didn't want to have any war-type souvenirs.

"I don't want it for myself," she said, stopping Hawkeye who was now pacing the office.

"What do you mean you don't want it for yourself?"

"It might be a mistake, I don't know. But I wanted a piece that I could send to Colonel Blake's family. You said I was his last patient and I thought they'd like something from his final days over here, you know. Something to help remind them of what he did while he was over here. Something for the son he never got to meet," Arrow answered.

Her response stumped Hawkeye. It wasn't one he had a prepared argument for. It softened his now hard eyes. He'd thought she was going to ask for a souvenir for herself like almost everyone else. Since there really wasn't anything he could do about stopping her, he was glad she wasn't buying one that had put a child on his table.

"You're, uh... you're probably right. It might be a mistake. You can write the letter, and stick a piece of shrapnel in the envelope, Arrow. But I wouldn't send it," he said. The comment discouraged Arrow. She was hoping he'd say it was a good idea and to go through with it. "I only say that because you might not get the memories you wanted from it. Instead of a reminder of the work he did and the lives he saved, it just might be a painful reminder to his family that he's not there."

"You're right. I, uh... didn't think about that. I suppose I of all people should be sensitive to it."

"What do you mean by that? If this is about my not being there while you were growing up-"

"No, no. It's nothing like that. Although, you might think that it is. This happened a few weeks before I moved to Maine." She looked away from him as if ashamed. "I, uh... I hid the PTSD from it pretty well in the army psych eval... at least, I think I did. I'm here, and they wouldn't have sent me here, let alone accepted me if I didn't pass. But I've got the physical and mental scars to remind me of the worst thing I've ever experienced."

"Henry never said anything about scars other than the ones he gave you during the operation."

"Well... you wouldn't... see those scars. They were..." she took a deep, shaky breath, "they had faded some... I'd rather not talk about this anymore. I'm just not going to bother sending a reminder of the worst day of the Blake's lives."

"Who else knows about this?"

"Grandpa, my social worker in San Fransisco, the arresting officers, the doctors and nurses who examined me the night it happened, lawyers, the guy who committed the assault, myself... and now you. That's at least twenty people right there. My social worker gave him copies of the medical files since he was my legal guardian. If you think it took me a long time to warm up to everyone here, it took me even longer to warm up to everyone I met in Maine after that. I'm still warming up to them and I was there for over a year.

"Before that night, I'd regularly run away from the halfway house only to be brought back. I'd run away just to see if I could make it on the outside on my own." She could see the question forming in Hawkeye's head about why she was in a halfway house. "The halfway house is a city funded home for orphans who weren't adopted before their thirteenth birthday. Teens are harder to adopt than young kids and babies. We're more likely to be placed in foster homes. I'd been to ten. Each stint was shorter and shorter. There was nothing wrong with the families I was placed in. They treated me pretty well. I think it was because I'd do some pretty bizarre things, get the families' kids involved, or get brought back to the house with a police escort."

The meaning of those words, they were mental, spoke volumes to Hawkeye. Had Arrow only said mental he would have thought she meant mental. But she'd intentionally made a distinction between the two. He could understand that growing up in an orphanage Arrow probably didn't get a lot of privacy with possibly having to share a room, so he thought she was always trying to get away for that reason. But now, he knew she was distancing herself from everyone, and understood why it took the several months it'd taken for her to like the people in the camp.

Hawkeye pulled his daughter up from Radar's bed and into a hug that was so tight, Arrow felt like he was never going to let her go, or out of his sight, even long enough to work in OR.

"I think it's time you started working in OR as my anesthetist."

"This isn't because of what I just told you, is it?"

"No. Well, not entirely... I'm your dad and I barely know anything about you other than what I've learned from your medical chart here, medical records from the recruiting office, first-hand experience and the letter you wrote then read to me when I was blinded by that heater. I barely know anything about your civilian life. That, and I want to see what Grandpa was talking about firsthand with you diagnosing his patients."

Arrow chuckled.

Hawkeye finally let go of Arrow after what felt like a whole day but was really only about ten minutes. The sun was up when she had inadvertently told Hawkeye a piece of her past, a past she didn't want to remember. Now it had long since disappeared below the horizon and Radar was wanting to go to bed.

Hawkeye let her go after walking her to the nurses' tent. Arrow went inside.

As the light of the moon came through the tent's window closest to her, Arrow pulled out a notebook, and started writing,

Dear Henry,
You don't know me, and it's unfortunate that I'll never get to meet the man who saved my life...