Disclaimer:  The Characters in this story belong to M*A*S*H and it’s companies.  The story is mine, and I don’t want anyone posting it on their sites without telling me or without saying I wrote it etc.

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Chai Ho

It was mid-morning in the OR.  Doctors and nurses worked steadily through the line of patients waiting for their war wounds to be repaired.  A light hum of chatter buzzed through the room, and was interrupted by an announcement by the PA system.

“Attention, all personnel.  Two notices.  Firstly, a third case of the Chai Ho virus has been found.  Be on the lookout for symptoms such as vomiting, fever, and fatigue.  It will either be Chai Ho, or the after-effects of a great night out.  Secondly, for those of us with suicidal tendencies, lunch begins in half an hour.  That’s all for now.”

Doctor Captain Benjamin Pierce, better known as Hawkeye, tutted as he threw another fragment into the tray.  “Hasn’t anyone heard of a cure?”

“Cool it, Pierce,” Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake, the CO of the 4077^th, warned him.  “You and I both know it’s not that simple.”

“I know it, but I don’t know why.”

“It isn’t exactly the most famous disease in the world.  Suction here.”  He continued as nurse Anderson cleared away the blood.  “Finding a cure, and then getting it here, takes time.”

“Do we have time?” Hawkeye asked.  “There are some pretty high fevers, you know.”

As Henry nodded, Captain Trapper John McIntyre listened to the conversation.  “I’m not ill,” he thought to himself.  “I’m just tired.  That’s it.  There have been a lot of wounded kids in here, I’m tired.”  He took the last piece of metal out of the last patient before going to the Mess Tent for a well-earned cup of coffee.

Hawkeye dragged his legs through the doors of the Mess Tent, and made a beeline to the lunch queue.  He found his tray piled high with some kind of brown meat and sauce.  Corporal Walter O’Reilly, Radar to his friends, was behind him in the queue, and had not waited to find a table before taking a bite out of it.

They sat at a table where Trapper was slumped, cup of coffee cold and stale.  Hawkeye poked him with his fork.  “Not eating?”

“I’m not hungry,” Trapper replied with a yawn.  This didn’t surprise either Hawkeye of Radar too much.  No one really dared eat much when they were tired, in case they fell asleep and never woke up again.  What did surprise Hawkeye was the very fact that Trapper was tired.  He had no recollection of him being out with a nurse for the past few night.  He decided to pursue the matter.

“Who’s the lucky nurse?” He asked.

“Nurse?” Trapper enquired, confused.

“Why else could you be so tired?”  Hawkeye tried to push the fears out of his head, but it kept nagging at him the more he chased the matter.

“I guess I just am.  Why?  You think I got this Chai Ho thing?”

Hawkeye sighed.  “Frankly, yes.”

“Hey!” Major Frank Burns snapped.  He had been sitting very close to Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan when Hawkeye spoke.  “Who said my name?  Someone said my name!”

“That’s funny,” Hawkeye drawled.  “I don’t remember a conversation about drips, Neanderthals or doctors who are asking for their first Korean War malpractice suit, do you guys?”

“You… you… hmph!”  Frank stormed out, followed by Hot Lips, who shot the three a look that could turn you to stone before she went.  The Mess Tent erupted into laugher.

All except Trapper, Hawkeye noticed.  His head was back in the support of his arms on the table.  “Something’s up,” he observed.

Hawkeye got back to the Swamp, and decided to put pen to paper.

“Dear Dad,” he wrote.

“How are you?  Hopefully Chai Ho free.  That’s the latest craze around here; more and more people are getting the disease.  As of three minutes ago, the count was four.  I have a bad feeling that Trapper might be number five.  Either that, or he should be prescribed a fortnight of sleep.”

At that moment, Radar rapped on the door.  “Colonel Blake is about to give his monthly lecture.  I know only enlisted men are meant to go, but I know you guys find it funny.”

“That we do, Radar.  Wake up Sleeping Beauty over there and we’ll be ready to go.”  After gesturing to Trapper in his deep sleep, Hawkeye briefly returned to his letter.

“That’s all I have time to say right now, Dad.  Henry, our fearless leader, is about to talk to us in the format of the monthly lecture.  You won’t miss much.

Love, Hawkeye.”

He put down his notebook to see Trapper finding it very difficult to get up.  “I’m okay, really.  I’m just not a morning person,” he assured the others.

Hawkeye decided not to tell him that it was actually half past seven in the evening.  He watched his friend groggily leave the Swamp, and turned to Radar.

“One for the road?”  Hawkeye grabbed the two nearest glasses, filled them, and handed one to Radar.

He laughed heartily as he watched the young man down a third of the glass in a few mere seconds, and as he eyes seemed to steam up his glasses.  “Guess that’s where the jeep fuel went,” he commented as he stumbled towards the door, with Hawkeye still laughing behind him.

Henry observed the scene as the last of the attendees filed in.  Klinger sat, filing his nails, in a red and white summer dress with matching headscarf.  Frank looked dopey, as usual.  Radar was attentive, ready and willing for the lecture to proceed.  Hawkeye was frowning, obviously something on his mind.  Trapper looked about ready for about three years of sleep.

“All right, okay, settle down now,” he hushed the crowd.  When the pairs of eyes turned to him, patiently awaiting the lesson, he regretted getting them to be quiet.

“Now, well, tonight’s lecture is, well it’s, the lecture, the, erm, subject, yes the subject, it, erm, it follows on from the previous lecture,” Henry finished his babble.

“Bravo, what an introduction,” Hawkeye got the audience to clap for Henry.

“Yes, well,” Henry continued to babble his way through his speech.  Hawkeye was about to throw a comment at the CO when he heard a gasp from beside him.  He turned to see Trapper as white as a sheet, and looking very far from healthy.  “He left healthy a long time ago,” Hawkeye muttered.  He acted on instinct, and led his friend from the Mess hall.

“Hey, where are you going?” Henry asked.  Has his talk been that bad?

“Trapper has just been demoted from doctor to very ill patient,” Hawkeye informed him as they left the tent.

For a moment, Henry was confused and dumbstruck.  He shook his head to clear his thought, and giving his lecture book to Radar, he headed out of the tent after the two captains.

Radar, sensing his predicament, took the sly approach.  “Major Burns,” he began, turning to the officer.  “I am a mere enlisted man.  I as such do not have the authority to do this when a Major such as yourself in present.  It is your duty, for Uncle Sam, sir,” Radar added the reference to Frank’s beloved country.

Frank was about to order Radar to lecture, and would have done so had it not been for the other personnel encouraging him.  He chuckled, and made his way to the platform.  Only then did he look at the lecture book and realise what he had to do.

Outside, Henry could hear the gasps and retching noises of someone throwing up.  He hurried over to where Hawkeye knelt beside Trapper, who was getting a second look at what little food he had eaten during the past few days.

Radar was not far behind his commander.  “Go and check that there is a bed free,” Henry ordered.  The words had hardly left his mouth as Radar quickly left the scene.  Trapper had stopped being sick, but was now in an unconscious state.

“This is not good,” Henry stated.  He felt Trapper’s forehead, and gasped at the heat he felt.

“No, Henry, this is not good.  We left ‘good’ about three or four days ago.  We past ‘bad’ recently, and we have now arrived at ‘very bad.’  Next stop is ‘serious problems.’  Keep your arms and legs inside the cart, because this is a bumpy ride.”

Two days after being admitted, Trapper was still not recovering.  He had been moved to the Post-Op ward so he could be started on an IV.  Hawkeye, when not on Post-Op duty, could be rarely found anywhere but by Trapper’s bedside.  Hawkeye felt guilty for not acting sooner, and wanted to do anything possible to ensure his friend got better.

Whilst replaying the days, hours, minutes and seconds before Trapper had been sick in his mind, something, hidden in his mind, caught his attention.  He did not know what, but Hawkeye had missed something important.  He drifted into a deep sleep in his cot, for the first time since Trapper had been admitted, and his mind tried to untangle what was subconsciously being told to him in his mind.

Radar crept into the Swamp.  Crickets were fading as the sun rose into the sky, and the bustle of the camp began.  Frank was on Post-Op duty, and had been complaining about doing extra shifts since Trapper had been taken ill.  Frank did not dare let Hawkeye hear his complaints though, because he had caused enough strife already with the business of the pregnant Korean.

“Hawk?” Radar shuffled over to Hawkeye’s sleeping form and tried to wake him.  After a grunt from the sleeping doctor, he tried again.  “Hawkeye?  Wake up, Hawk.”  Radar shook him slightly, and soon Hawkeye began to stir.

“Radar, get your face out of my face before I decide to deface your face.  I might rearrange it, too,” Hawkeye added.  Radar took a step back, but still persisted.

“Hawkeye, I have something to tell me that you really want to know.”  This made Hawkeye more alert.

“I can go home?  The next chopper I hear is my ticket outta here?”

“No, Hawk.  You said that when you get to go home, I can wake you up with a bucket of ice-cold water, and you won’t mind.”

“Did I say that?”  Hawkeye asked in slight surprise.  Radar nodded.  “Oh well,” he continued.  “What did you want to tell me?  I’m just about awake now, so you may as well tell me.”

“Trapper is awake,” Radar said flatly.

After a moment of digesting this information, Hawkeye jumped out of his cot, grabbed his robe and boots, and ran out of the Swamp yelling, “Why didn’t you say so?”

Radar, who suddenly felt a wave of tiredness wash over him, curled up in the warm cot and mumbled, “I thought I just did.”

Hawkeye burst through the doors of the ward and made his way to Trapper’s bed.  He was at first dismayed to see his eyes closed, before, “I’m awake.  News travels first.”  His eyes remained closed, and did not see the smile that crept across Hawkeye’s face.

“Great to have you back,” Hawkeye told him warmly.  “How do you feel?”

“Like I’m ill.  Out of all the doctors in this outfit, I managed to get ill.”  He opened his eyes slightly, squinting at the light.

“Now I know which nurses you’ve had your eyes, or rather lips, on recently.”

“I’m sure that’s not the only way to catch this virus,” Trapper protested.  “Think about it, three nurses and one other guy got it before me.”  Hawkeye’s eyes widened at where Trapper was going with his conversation.  “I mean, you could get it from eating with the same cutlery, or…”

“… Drinking out of the same glass,” Hawkeye finished.  He stood up to leave.  “Sorry to cut it short, Trap, but there is a possible patient out there somewhere.”  Hawkeye left abruptly, and Trapper felt hurt.

“Do not worry,” a voice told him.  Trapper turned to the voice, and saw it had left the mouth of the pregnant Korean woman in the next bed.  “Your friend has not deserted you.”

“Sure looked that way to me,” Trapper grumbled.

“He is too proud to tell you,” the woman continued, “that he has sat at your bedside for the past three days.  He even slept there sometimes.”

“He did?” 

The woman nodded.  “He is a good friend.”

Meanwhile, Henry was going nuts not knowing where his faithful clerk was.  “He was only gone five minutes,” he muttered to himself.

At that moment, Hawkeye burst into the office.

“Have you seen Radar?” They both asked at the same time.

“He went to get you, McIntyre’s awake,” Henry informed him.

“I know that Trapper is awake,” Hawkeye replied, putting the emphasis on his friend’s name, “but…”

“Sorry, sir,” Radar apologised as he ambled through the door.

“Henry…”

“Dismissed, Pierce.  For probably the first time since I’ve been here, I really need to do some work.”

Hawkeye gave up, but decided to wait in Radar’s office for him.

Once Hawkeye left, Henry began.  “Radar, you said I had some papers to sign?”

Wordlessly, Radar placed them on the desk.

Another first that day was the Henry read what he was signing.  “Subscription to Captain Marvel comics?  For Pete’s sake, Radar, why on earth am I signing this?  Radar!”  Henry heard a soft thud, and looked down the side of the desk to see his clerk on the floor.

Hawkeye was back in the room as soon as he heard the corporal faint.  “This is what I wanted to tell you, Henry,” Hawkeye told him.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He has had a visit from the virus fairy.”

Henry went to the door and yelled into the compound.  “Hey, Klinger!  Get a stretcher in here, now!”  The man left as fast as his heeled shoes would allow him.

Back inside, Henry knelt next to Radar, where Hawkeye was attending to him.

“How is he?” He asked tentatively.

“His pulse is racing, his fever is high, I’d say his ill,” Hawkeye concluded.

“Stretcher, sirs,” Klinger called.  He looked as Radar was placed on it.  “Is he okay?”

“He has got the virus,” Henry explained.  Radar was taken away, and there were silent prayers in the room that the cure would arrive.

“… So I heard Henry yell, and I’m in there faster than Jesse Owens to see Radar out of the floor.”

It was the next day, and Trapper had awoken to see the familiar face of the corporal next to him.  At first, he thought he was delirious, but Hawkeye had explained the story to him.

“So that’s how he ended up here.  I thought he may have been lost or something.  By the way, speaking of sleep, when did you last get any?”

“I’m fine, Trap.  It’s you who needs the bed rest.”

“I am no use being ill here.  All I can do is sleep and talk occasionally, until they get that cure.  You can actually do stuff.”

“Henry says that the cure is on its way.”

“Get some sleep, okay?  I’m too tired to argue anymore.”  Trapper slowly closed his eyes as Hawkeye got up to leave.

“Hey, Clare,” Hawkeye called to the nurse on duty.  “Working here by yourself?”

“For now, it’s just me.”

“I can change that.  Drop by mine at eight.”  He turned as he was leaving, and saw a grin on Trapper’s face.

Hawkeye got back to the Swamp, and was on his second glass of supposed jeep fuel when Frank ambled in.

“Post-Op duty in an hour, again,” he added with emphasis.  “All I’ve been doing is extra shifts since…”  He stopped, realising that he was heading into a very deep hole.

“Since when, Frank?” Hawkeye asked, knowing the answer anyway.

“Well, since, you know,” Frank was dancing around his words.

“Oh, I know alright, Frank.  Since Trapper got ill.”

“Well, yes.”

“So it’s his fault that you’re doing extra work?” Hawkeye snapped.

“If you ask me, he spent one too many nights with one too many nurses, one with the virus.  Asking for trouble.”

Hawkeye gritted his teeth.  “One, no one asked you.  Two, that’s not the only way to get it.  Three, I am sure that you would do the same thing if you were found remotely good-looking by any of the nurses.”

“I resent that!  And anyway, he’s a married man!”  Frank regretted the moment the words left his mouth.

“That doesn’t stop you and Hot-Lips,” Hawkeye called back.

Frank was about to verbally retaliate when Henry stormed in.  “What’s all the racket about!  We’re a hospital, for Pete’s sake!”

“How could we forget,” Hawkeye mumbled.

“Hawkeye, you’ll be pleased to know that a truck with the cure for Chai Ho will be here within the hour.”  Hawkeye was pleased, and also rather relieved.  He had begun to worry about his friends, especially Trapper.  Although he had awoken, his temperature was still very high.

“And Frank, I’ve had it up to here with you.  I’ve had General Clayton on the phone, wanting to know why we have had a Korean patient in our hospital for over a week.  I suppose you forgot to mention that she was pregnant when you reported this?  Pregnant as in gonna give birth any time soon?”

“What?” Hawkeye had gone from relief to outrage in mere seconds.  “Frank, you have got no right to be human, let alone be a doctor!  Give birth means need doctor.”

“Sir, if we start catering for the needs of every pregnant Korean, they’d be no beds left for our own wounded.”

“Who said anything about catering, Frank?  We’re not throwing them a party, we’re giving the woman a bed and food until the kid’s ready to come out,” Henry explain to him.

“That’s more than enough,” Frank spat.

Meanwhile, as the argument continued, Trapper lay dozing in the ward.  Being tired was still getting the better of him.

He, and the rest of the ward, became alert when they heard a gasp and a thud. 

“Clare?”  Trapper sat up in bed, looking for the nurse.

Radar, who had been asleep since being admitted, opened his eyes.  “Why is that nurse on the floor?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

Trapper crept out of bed, and put his hand to her forehead.  “She’s burning up!”

As the words left his mouth, another gasp could be heard.  Trapper turned around to see the Korean woman in the bed next to his.  She called out, “Please help me!  My baby!”  The woman had just gone into a quick labour.

“Terrific,” Trapper muttered.  “Radar!”

“No way,” Radar replied.

“Hold her hand.  Comfort her.  Tell her to take deep breaths.”

“But I’m ill!  I can’t see straight!”

“Put your glasses on if you have to.  Just do it!”  Trapper turned to the other patients.  “All right.  Anyone who can, go to the end of the room, where you’ll find sheets and towels.  Throw them this way.  Then, grab a pillow or something and make the nurse on the floor comfortable.”

Three men left their beds.  Sheets, towels, and even a pair of surgical gloves were produced.  Nurse Clare was lifted into the bed of a patient who had generously given it up.

By this point, the head of the baby could be seen.

“She’s not screaming a whole lot, just breathing funny,” Radar observed.

“You’ll hear a scream in a minute, don’t worry,” Trapper told him.  “Come on, honey, you’re doing fine.”  A thought crossed Trapper’s mind.  “Someone find something to cut the cord with, and fast!”

“Cord?” Radar enquired.

“You’ll see,” Trapper promised him.  “Okay, honey, just one more push, and it’ll all be over.”  The woman complied, and her son was welcomed into the world.

Radar watched in horror as the umbilical cord was cut.  He promptly fainted, partly from this, but mostly from exhaustion.

Trapper wrapped the boy in a couple of the provided towels, and gave him to his mother to hold.  “You were great,” he whispered, and the woman smiled.  He then lifted the surprisingly light Radar back into bed.

A wave of exhaustion swept over Trapper.  He barely noticed as the doctors and nurses flooded into the room, tending to the patients.  It was all Trapper could do to crawl out of the back doors of Post-Op, crawl across the compound, and climb longingly into his bed in the Swamp.

It was a few days later that Trapper awoke.  He was still in the Swamp, with Hawkeye sitting not far away, playing cards.

“Hawk?” Trapper croaked.  He cleared his throat and tried again.  “Hawkeye?”

This grabbed his friend’s attention.  “Well, it looks like the local hero woke up.  How do you feel?”

“Not bad,” he replied.  “How long have I been asleep?”

“That baby you delivered got drafted,” Hawkeye joked.  “No, really, two or three days.  The medicine got here, and no one could be bothered to move you back to Post-Op, especially since your bed was needed, so we left you here and moved the necessary stuff into here.  And, no kidding, you are the local hero around here.  I talked to some of the guys in Post-Op after you found your way back here.  They said you totally took charge, and that you were great.  The boy’s mother has nothing but praise for you.”

“All I did was catch the kid when it fell out,” Trapper protested.

“Not according to the mother,” Hawkeye told him.  “She even named her kid TJ.”

“That sounds Korean,” Trapper said sarcastically.

“TJ as in Trapper John, as in you, you moron!” Hawkeye practically yelled at him.  “TJ stands for something Korean, something I probably can’t pronounce, but TJ equals she named him after you!”

“That’s nice, Hawk,” Trapper yawned as he settled back down to sleep.  “Wake me up in time for his first birthday.”

The End

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