Chapter 19

“Geez, I never had a nurse love me so much that she’d do anything for me.” Hawkeye, ever the jokester, poked and prodded at me all the way to Pre-Op (I was still leading him by the hand), where we had sections dedicated to examinations and such. Trapper had turned the other way and headed outside, so he left me and Hawkeye alone.

“Stop teasing this nurse and you’ll get your hand looked it,” I grumbled, bringing Hawkeye to a place where he could sit down. However, he was squirmy and I had to keep putting him back to his seat when I tried getting supplies from the cabinets and closets. After ten minutes of chasing him around the room (Hawkeye wanted a chase and I gave him a good one, catching him a few minutes later), he finally sat down and cooperated.

I washed and gloved myself and got everything ready on the table. “Ok, are you ready for me to unwrap that, Hawkeye?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.” A grin on his face told me otherwise (another urge to run around and escape me was there, just to be the pain) but he sat still, giving me a break…for once.

I unwrapped my coat (ignoring the cold the whole time and knowing I could easily get another jacket from the Supply Room) from Hawkeye’s hand, the old glass bottle still held in-between his fingers in pieces. Gloved, I picked up the loose pieces and threw them into a wastebasket meant for glass pieces and other solid materials that we deem hazardous waste. Then, knowing that I needed to wash his hands, to make sure that the extra blood was off of his hands, I took Hawkeye to the sinks in the next room.

There was silence between us (I mean, I had wasted my breath when cursing him as he ran around and tried to delay everything earlier) and, as I washed Hawkeye’s hand carefully, I worried. What if he had an infection? I doubted it, because his cuts were small, but there was still glass in his fingers that I needed to pull out.

“I don’t see anything serious here, Madam Nurse,” Hawkeye said as we went back to the examination room.

“I don’t see anything wrong, either,” I replied quietly as I sat him down and took off my gloves, putting on a new pair to keep myself clean. I then took out a pair of tweezers, sanitizing it with alcohol in a bowl prepared next to me before proceeding.

“It’ll be a few days before I get to use my magic fingers again.” Hawkeye’s eyes twinkled. “And I’ll need a company of a nurse, Love.”

I stopped jabbing at his fingers with the tweezers for a minute, looking up at him.

“This is an interesting turn of events” was all I could say because I was so surprised by the name. It was true that Hawkeye had never before called me “Love”. It seemed like he wanted to tell me something, but calling me that was the best that he could do.

“For you, maybe, but for everybody else, it won’t be.”

There was a smile there, but I wasn’t sure with Hawkeye sometimes. So, I looked up at him again, searching for something in Hawkeye’s face, but I found nothing but a shining pair of blue eyes and a silly grin on his face. I didn’t know what it meant, other than he had something on his mind, but I had to find out sooner or later.

“You chase every other nurse in this camp with Trapper,” I pointed out, going back to work once more. “Then, a few months ago, when you see me at Henry’s office, it seems like you’ve stopped it completely. Trapper’s been parading girls in and out of the Swamp, and yet, you take an interest in just me…little old me. Hawkeye, I’m not super attractive. I’m not like the other nurses. Why choose me over all of the others?”

“Because, Love, you’re different from the rest and that’s attractive enough,” Hawkeye simply replied.

There it was again: Love. He kept calling me that and yet, I didn’t know if I was his Love or not. I knew that he was mine – I could say that at the time and knew it well, if I could still hold him by the collar – but was I his Love?

I quickly finished picking at the glass, more intent on making sure the small cuts on Hawkeye’s hand was not going to be infected (the palm area looked more horrible, to be honest). It didn’t look bad when I was finished, but I could not be sure. However, it was the excuse I also needed to avoid this conversation, one that was going in a direction I didn’t think was possible.

“You’re not talkative, aren’t you?” Hawkeye took his other hand and pick my head up by the chin. “Oww, you missed a piece.”

I could not tell, since I was not looking at his hand. But I didn’t say anything. I was enjoying the moment too much, looking into Hawkeye’s eyes and trying to find myself in there. But, I was lost in his eyes again and I could not get out of it…and it was a wonderful feeling.

Then, just when I thought I couldn’t be more lost, Hawkeye kissed me again, the same way he did the first night we were together. This time, though, it was more persistent, harder and…well, it had more sparks to it than the last one. And it felt so right to me.

Our kiss was long and it ended suddenly when we heard someone clearing their throat outside of the door, as if the person was watching and wanted our kissing to stop.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I finally said, so softly, when Hawkeye finally let me go, allowing me to go back to work. “I’m almost done. Let me get the last pieces out and clean and bandage it.”

“As you were then,” Hawkeye replied, looking at the doors and seeing somebody leave, a few shadows out of the corner of my eye almost. So, I followed his eyes and saw Frank and Margaret leaving just before they could disappear completely.

I laughed. “They’re never going to leave us alone.” I picked the last of the glass up (ouch, his hand looked awful from all of the cuts) and cleaned his hand. Then, after bandaging the palm and placing Band-Aids on his fingers, I added, “This is going to cost you.”

“Yeah, but it won’t hurt me.” Hawkeye tried to wiggle his fingers with all those Band-Aids on, something he insisted upon. Then, after playing with his fingers, he gave me my payment, the one he knew I wanted: another kiss, but it was a quick one.

“Will I see you in the Supply Room later on?” Hawkeye then asked, getting up.

“Sure…” I said, thinking that my luck was…well, so unreal, that I had to be dreaming about it. But, I wasn’t. It was so surreal, though. It surely had to be a dream…

“Twenty-four hundred hours,” Hawkeye whispered in my ear as he leaned in for another kiss near my ear. “Make sure to lose Dad, Colonel Insanity and Majors Baby and Malpractice. I’ll lose Captain Courageous and Major Bastard.”

And then, he was gone. It happened so quickly that I had no idea that Hawkeye was gone until an hour later, when I was still dreaming about those kisses.