Richard Hooker - MASH - A Novel About Three Army Doctors

On the way to the course, they visited their two patients. The baby was far from out of the woods, but the Congress­man’s son was doing well. Before leaving, they entered the colonel’s office.

“Where’s that dirty old man?” Hawkeye asked the secre­tary.

The colonel came out, but he didn’t roar.

“Colonel,” said Hawkeye, “we’ve qualified for the Kokura Open so we’re going to the course. We expect your people to watch that baby we operated on last night like he was the Congressman’s grandson, which for all we know he may be. We expect to be notified of any change for the worse, and if we find anything wrong when we come back this afternoon, we’ll burn down the hospital.”

The Colonel believed them.

They arrived at the golf course at nine-thirty, practiced putting and chipping, took a few swings and, with their English confreres there to cheer them on, they pronounced themselves ready to go. They weren’t. The activities of the previous days, and nights, had taken too much out of them, and by the end of the third day, what with having to check repeatedly on the Congressman’s son and the baby, they were hopelessly mired back in the pack.

“I guess that does it,” Trapper said, as they sat in the bar at the club. “We might have a chance if three guys dropped dead and a half dozen others came down with echinococ­cosis.”

“What’s that?” Colonel Cornwall wanted to know.

“The liver gets so big you can’t get your club head back past it,” Hawkeye said, “so we’ve got no chance.”

“We’re proud of you anyway,” the colonel informed them. “You gave it a good go, you did. I must say, though, I shouldn’t give up surgery for the professional tour if I were you.”

“I guess we figured that out already,” Trapper said, “but what I can’t figure out is what we’re going to do about this baby we’re stuck with.”

“But you chaps have done all you can,” the colonel said.

“No, we haven’t,” Trapper said. “After the big deal we made saving his life, what do we do now? Leave him in a whorehouse?”

“Leave it to me,” Hawkeye said. “I think it’ll be safe now to take the kid back to Dr. Yamamoto’s Finest Kind Pediatric Hospital and Whorehouse.”

They went to the 25th Station Hospital, said good-bye to the Congressman’s son who was well on his way to recovery, and picked up their small patient. Riding the Land Rover back to the FKPH&W, Trapper had a thought.

“We oughta name the little bastard,” he said.

Hawkeye had considered this problem twenty-four hours earlier. He had even laid a little groundwork.

“I have named him,” he said.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure how much I can con Me Lay Marston into,” Hawkeye said, “but the name is Ezekiel Bradbury Marston, VI.”

“Oh, I say,” Colonel Cornwall said.

“Obviously you are either nuts or you know something,” Trapper John said eventually. “Which is it?”

“I know something. I know that Me Lay and the Broad from Eagle Head have one daughter and that’s all the kids they’re ever going to have. I’ll save you the next question. Remember I was away for a while last night? I went to one of those overseas telephone places and called the Broad from Eagle Head, whom I’ve known longer than Me Lay has. To make a long story short, she agrees that a name like Ezekiel Bradbury Marston must not die!”

“Hawkeye, you are amazing,” admired the Colonel.

“For once, I gotta agree,” agreed Trapper.

At the FKPH&W, they placed Ezekiel Bradbury Marston, VI, in a laundry basket, left instructions for his care and returned to the bar where they found the unsuspecting parent, Me Lay Marston.

“What are we going to do with this kid, Me Lay?” asked Trapper.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, Jesus, Me Lay, you’re not much of a whorehouse administrator if you don’t have some ideas on the subject.”

“Good-looking kid,” said Hawkeye. “What’s his mother like?”

“A nice intelligent girl. She asked me this morning what we’d do with the baby. I’ve been looking into a few possibili­ties, but I’ll tell you right now there aren’t any good ones.”

“Too bad. The little chap’s half American,” said Colonel Cornwall. “Any way to get him to the States?”

“Only one way,” said Me Lay.

“What’s that?”

“Get somebody to adopt him.”

Hawkeye said, “Me Lay, why don’t you adopt him?”

Me Lay looked miserable. He lit a cigarette and sipped his drink.

“That idea’s been popping into my head ever since we operated on him,” he said, finally, “but how can I do it? Am I supposed to call up my wife and say I’m sending home a half-breed bastard from a Japanese whorehouse?”

“You don’t have to,” Trapper told him. “Hawkeye called your wife last night. The deal’s set. All you have to do is arrange the details.”

Hesitating only a moment, Me Lay got up, went to the hospital area, picked up the baby and brought him to the bar.

“What’s his name, Me Lay?” asked Trapper.

“Gentlemen, meet my son, Ezekiel Bradbury Marston, VI, of Spruce Harbor, Maine.”

Late that night a flyboy who’d been in Seoul earlier in the day brought word of increasing action on Old Baldy. The next morning the pros from Dover, having withdrawn from the tournament, but still clad in sky blue slacks and golf shirts, boarded a plane for Seoul.

In the middle of a hot, humid and bloody afternoon Lt. Col. Henry Blake finished a bowel resection, assessed the grief in the admitting and preop wards and then stepped outside to smoke, pace back and forth and, about once every ten seconds, look hopefully to the south. From the number and nature of the casualties, and with the privileged information from Radar O’Reilly that the situation on Old Baldy would get worse before it got better, he knew that he—that all of them—were in trouble. Between his looks to the south he swore at the Army for taking two of his three best cutters to Kokura and not getting them back in time.

As he ground out his butt, drew a deep breath and made a half-hearted attempt to square his sagging shoulders, he took a last look down the valley and saw it—a cloud of dust. Henry smiled and, for the first time in twenty-four hours, relaxed because he knew that just ahead of just such a dust cloud had to be a jeep driven by Hawkeye Pierce. Seconds later Hawkeye and Trapper, in sky blue slacks and golf shirts, jumped from the jeep.

“Hail, gallant leader!” Hawkeye said, snapping off a salute.

“The organization looks busy,” observed Trapper John to Hawkeye, “so I wonder what its gallant leader is doing, just standing here and dilly-dallying in the sunshine.”

“Beats me,” Hawkeye said.

“You guys get your asses to work!” yelled Henry.

“Yes, sir,” Trapper said, saluting.

“Sure, Henry,” Hawkeye said, “but we’d appreciate it if you’d get our clubs out of the jeep and clean them.”

They ran for the preop ward where the scene informed them that they were in for the busiest day of their lives. What they were yet to learn was that they, and the entire personnel of the 4077th MASH, were in for the busiest two weeks the Double Natural had ever known. For a full two weeks the wounded would come and keep coming, and for a full two weeks every surgeon and every nurse and every corpsman, as the shifts overlapped, would work from twelve to fourteen to sixteen hours a day, every day, and sometimes some of them would work twenty out of the twenty-four.

It could have been chaos, and it almost was. They came in by helicopter and they came in by ambulance—arteries, lungs, bowels, bladders, livers, spleens, kidneys, larynxes, pharynxes, bones, stomachs. Colonel Blake, the surgeons, Ugly John, Painless Waldowski, who, when he wasn’t extrac­ting shattered bone and wiring jaws, was passing gas to back up Ugly John, were in constant hurried communication, trying to maintain some order to the flow. Their objective was to provide each patient with the maximum preparation for and the proper timing of his surgery. This was controlled, of course, by the availability of the operating tables and the surgeons. As each new chopper brought new emergencies, plans and timing constantly had to be changed because some cases had to be moved directly from chopper to admitting ward to OR.