Richard Hooker - MASH - A Novel About Three Army Doctors

When leisure came his way, Ugly’s first duty was to repair his intratracheal tubes. These are tubes placed in a patient’s windpipe through the mouth and attached to a machine, controlled by the anesthesiologist, which delivers oxygen and anesthetic agents in the concentrations desired. Inside the windpipe the tubes are held in place by small balloons which are inflated after their introduction.

The balloons on Ugly’s intratracheal tubes, like all balloons, kept blowing out. The supply of new tubes was limited or nonexistent, for reasons never quite clear, so it was up to Captain Black to keep them in constant repair. There was only one source of new balloons.

Every week or ten days the PX received a shipment of the various things PX’s receive shipments of. This always caused a line to form, and the line always included most of the nurses. At the head of the line, however, would be Ugly John Black. As the PX opened for business, Ugly John would step up and announce in a loud, clear, purposeful voice: “I’ll take sixty rubber contraceptive devices. I hope to hell they’re better than the last batch. They all leaked.” Then he’d turn around and look austerely at the interested throng, few of who knew what he did with sixty such items a week.

When not working or blending intratracheal tubes and contraceptives into efficient units, Ugly was known to have a drink or two. In these situations, he usually wound up in The Swamp and vented his spleen upon the entire medical profes­sion of the British Empire.

“Those lousy bastards!” he would yell. “There isn’t a god­damned one of them would shake hands with his grandmother. He’d rather knock her on her ass with half a grain of morphine and then drown her with a cup of tea.”

Such a man was bound to be held in high esteem by the Swampmen and was considered a warm and welcome friend. Actually, the incident involving Hawkeye and Ugly John was a minor one—at least, as it concerned them—but it was the first sign of things to come.

In The Swamp, every problem case ever done at the 4077th was discussed, dissected and analyzed from every possible angle and in every conceivable detail. The Deluge had left much for discussion, and two nights after its end the Swamp-men were thus engaged when the door opened and a corpsman stuck his head in.

“Hey, Hawkeye,” he said, “they want you in the OR.”

“I’m not on duty. Tell them to go fry their asses.”

“The Colonel says to get your ass over there.”

“OK.”

Over in the OR, two of the night shift had the typical difficult war surgical problem with major wounds of chest, abdomen and extremities. The abdominal wounds alone made it a bad risk, and there was little margin for error. They needed help and advice. Hawkeye scrubbed up and was briefed by Ugly John.

“So how much blood,” Hawkeye wanted to know, “did they give him before they started operating?”

“One pint,” said Ugly.

“For Chrissake, John, why in hell do you let these cowboys start a case like this on one pint?”

“Well,” Ugly started to say, “they …”

“Look, goddamit,” Hawkeye went on. “You know as well as I do he should have had another hour and at least three pints before they brought him in here. What the hell’s the matter with you, anyway?”

“I can’t do everything around here,” Ugly said. “I’m just the goddamned anesthesiologist.”

“That doesn’t stop you from thinking, does it?”

“The surgeons said he was ready,” Ugly said. “These guys have been doing OK, so I haven’t been arguing with them …”

“Then don’t argue with me,” Hawkeye said.

“So you’re right,” Ugly said, “but I’ll tell you this. You’re getting pretty hard to live with, Pierce.”

“And that kid on the table may be pretty hard for someone to live without,” Hawkeye said.

Then he got into the case and took it over. He concluded it as quickly as possible. He used every trick he’d learned in ten months of war surgery, and then he called in Dago Red to put in a fix.

“Please, Red,” he said, “bring him in.”

Too much is too much. Despite all efforts and fixes, the boy died an hour after surgery.

Father Mulcahy led Captain Pierce to Father Mulcahy’s tent, gave him a cigarette and a canteen half full of Scotch and water. Lying on Red’s sack, Hawkeye dragged on the butt, swallowed the drink and said, “Red, my curve’s hanging, and I lost the hop on my fast ball.”

“Speak English, Hawk. Maybe I can help you.”

“Listen to Losing Preacher Mulcahy,” Hawkeye said. “You’d like to get me snapping the mackerel, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, come off it, Hawk,” Dago Red said. “You know me too well to say something like that.”

“Yes, I do, Red. I’m sorry. I seem to be a little overex­tended these days, but I’ll get over it. I can be a little nutty now and then, but I ain’t a nut.”

“I know you’re not,” Dago Red said, “but you people in The Swamp have got to get over the idea that you can save everyone who comes into this hospital. Man. is mortal. The wounded can stand only so much, and the surgeon can do only so much.”

“Red, that lousy can’t-win-’em-all philosophy is no good. In The Swamp the idea is that if they arrive here alive, they can leave alive if everything is done just right. Obviously this can’t always be, but as an idea it’s better than fair, so spare me all the rationalizations.”

“Hit the sack, Hawk,” Father Mulcahy said. “You still need sleep.”

Hawkeye hit the sack, but the sleep he found was troubled and restless. At nine o’clock the next morning he entered the life and abdomen of Captain William Logan.

Captain William Logan, the still fairly youthful manager of a large supermarket, had joined the Mississippi National Guard soon after his release from five years of service in World War II. When the Mississippi National Guard was summoned to Korea, Captain Logan had left the supermar­ket, his wife, his new set of Ben Hogan matched clubs and his three kids to go with them.

Captain Logan, Major Lee, who was an undertaker, and Colonel Slocum, who owned the Cadillac distributorship, were all from the same town. They belonged to the same Masonic Lodge and the same country club. Colonel Slocum, Major Lee and Captain Logan were very disturbed the morning the gooks lobbed one in on Captain Logan’s 105mm howitzer battery, and Captain Logan’s abdomen got in the way of a couple of shell fragments.

When Hawkeye Pierce operated on Captain Logan he had had enough sleep, and too much of everything else. He removed a foot of destroyed small bowel and re-anastomosed it, that is, reunited the ends of the remaining intestine. When done, he thought that the anastomosis might be too tight but he elected to leave it. That was a mistake, but only one of two.

For the next eight days Captain Logan did poorly. Each day he was worse. Hawkeye watched him, worried and worked, and every time he turned around he encountered Colonel Slocum and Major Lee who wanted to know how things were going.

“Not too well,” Hawkeye kept telling them.

“Why not?” they asked.

On the eighth day, they asked three times why things weren’t going too well.

“Because, goddamn it, I did a lousy anastomosis,” Hawkeye informed them.

On the ninth day, Hawkeye took Captain Logan, now desperately ill, back to the OR. He fixed the inadequate anastomosis, discovered at the same time that he had missed a hole in his rectum, did a colostomy, and five days later Captain Logan, much improved and out of danger, was evacuated. This was Saturday, and on Saturday night people from everywhere came to the tent which served as an Officers’ Club for the 4077th.

Hawkeye Pierce, having learned a valuable lesson, having retrieved Captain Logan from the brink but still disgusted with himself, entered. Standing at the bar with a bottle of fine Scotch whiskey were Colonel Slocum and Major Lee, who beckoned to him.