MASH 13 MASH goes to Montreal Read online

  “See you around, Doc,” Esther said, draining her martini and heading for the door. “I’m off to Montreal.”

  “Montreal? Why Montreal?”

  The reply came before Esther could stop it. She had had no intention of making public what was the most interesting development in her life to happen in a long time. But now the truth escaped her lips as if it had a life of its own.

  “It just so happens, Trapper John, that I have a gentleman admirer in Montreal.”

  “No kidding?”

  “I wouldn’t kid about something like that,” Esther replied. “He’s connected with the government of the province of Quebec. In a communications capacity.”

  “You’ve got a French-Canadian bureaucrat on the string?” Hawkeye asked.

  “The only reason I haven’t thrown this gin bottle at you, Hawkeye,” Esther replied, “is because I am a lady, and because my feminine instinct tells me that this Widow Babcock is really going to fix your wagon, and fix it good. You just don’t go around telling Mother’s only child that it’s better to marry than to burn.”

  “What about you, Esther?” Trapper John said. “You got a little glow going with your French-Canadian bureaucrat?”

  “Doctors,” Esther said, icily, drawing herself up to her full five-feet two-inches, “should a medical emergency arise requiring my professional services, you may reach me at the La Belle France Motel in Montreal. Otherwise, you may expect to see me for Mr. Oscar Goldberg’s gall bladder, and not ten seconds before.”

  “We’re not going to jerk Oscar’s gall bladder until next Monday morning,” Trapper John said.

  “You certainly have a fine memory, Doctor,” Esther said.

  “Then you mean you’re going to leave us standing here naked and alone before the fury of the widow Babcock?” Hawkeye asked. “Your friends and fellow healers?”

  “You got it, Doc,” Esther Flanagan said and, with that, her stiffly starched nurse’s cap quivering slightly, she marched out of the office.

  “I have the feeling that there’s more to this than meets the eye,” Trapper John said.

  “Hmmmm,” Hawkeye said, thoughtfully.

  “I mean to say, that if she were just angry with us, she would have thrown the gin bottle,” Trapper John went on.

  “Ummmmmm,” Hawkeye responded.

  “Accompanied by one of those piquant scatological phrases she learned while sailing the briny blue with the Nurse Corps, United States Navy,” Trapper John said.

  “What is your diagnosis, Doctor?” Hawkeye responded.

  “I think there really is a gentleman admirer,” Trapper John said.

  “Does that surprise you?” Hawkeye replied.

  “Not at all,” Trapper John said. “But I rather liked Uncle Hiram, especially after Hot Lips gave him a bath and a shave. He seemed just right for Esther.”

  “I don’t think she would have turned so red so quickly if there was no gentleman admirer,” Trapper John said.

  “The real question, now that I have given it some thought,’’ Hawkeye said, “is not whether or not there is a gentleman admirer, but whether or not Esther is running to him, or away from Uncle Hiram.”

  “Pity Uncle Hiram’s nothing more than a dirt-poor buffalo rancher,” Trapper John said. “Say what you like, it has been my experience that a well-stuffed wallet frequently serves to make feminine hearts beat in three-quarter time.”

  “Forgive me for being a shameless chauvinist,” Hawkeye said. “But, so far as I’m concerned, better a poor American buffalo rancher than a French-Canadian bureaucrat, no matter how highly placed in the communications hierarchy, at least so far as our Esther is concerned.”

  “My sentiments exactly,” Trapper John said. “But do you know what’s even better than a dirt-poor buffalo rancher?” He reached for the telephone.

  “No,” Hawkeye said, thoughtfully. “Unless perhaps a formerly dirt-poor buffalo rancher.”

  “You really are the clever one,” Trapper John said and then spoke to the telephone. “Hazel, please get me Col. Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux, wherever in the world he might be. Collect, of course.”

  “You seem pretty confident that Horsey will have a job, a well-paying job, for him.”

  “Of course, I am. It was ‘Hail, fellow, well met!’ from the moment they saw each other. Didn’t you see how, without a word, they picked up that Texas Ranger and stuffed him, ten-gallon hat, cowboy boots and all, in the Dempster Dumpster?”

  “That’s true,” Hawkeye said. “But Uncle Hiram may be too proud to accept Horsey’s generosity.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Trapper John said. “Uncle Hiram’s in love. He said so. Men in love can’t afford pride. Uncle Hiram will just have to learn to live with shame and humiliation like the rest of us did.”

  As the crow flies, it is less than 150 miles from Spruce Harbor, Maine, to Montreal in the Canadian province of Quebec. (By road, Maine roads being, as they are, under jurisdiction of politicians to whom the words “straight line” are as incomprehensible as is the phrase “saving the taxpayer’s money,” it is, of course, a good bit farther away.)

  It was, in other words, close enough to become at first an odd notion, then a real possibility, then a tantalizing, attainable dream for Esther Flanagan, R.N. Born in Boston, Esther had been, frankly, an ugly child and, in her teens, like so many of her kind, she had stuffed herself with food as compensation for her unhappiness, with the inevitable result that she had graduated from high school a fat, pimply, and unattractive female.

  Most of the fat and most of the pimples (but not all of either) left her during her four years of training at Massachusetts General Hospital School of Nursing. Whatever else she was, Esther Flanagan, who at 21 had just entered her name on the Nurse’s Register, was a pragmatist. She faced the fact that she was a short, redheaded, dumpy, bespectacled young woman, and that the odds against a knight in shining armor riding up on his white charger to carry her off, via a stop at the altar, to a vine-covered cottage and happiness everafter were very high indeed.

  She had what she thought of as “her nursing” and that, she told herself, was enough. Then the navy came along, with its offer to let her see the world while practicing her profession. A month later, she reported aboard the U.S. Navy Hospital, San Diego, California, as Lt. (j.g.) Esther Flanagan, Navy Nurse Corps.

  The knight that came along, three years later, and who had seen beneath what he thought of as her rather cute pudginess to find a good woman, came in navy blue, riding a shining Grumman F4F fighter plane.

  And six months after that, two weeks before he was to be reassigned to shore duty at Pensacola Naval Air Station (there was no point, they agreed, in getting married until he had some shore duty, and they could start out housekeeping), the gear collapsed on his F4F as he made an approach to the Forrestal, and there wasn’t hardly enough left of him to bother burying.

  She thought about leaving the navy then, and decided against it, and stayed in the navy. Before she knew it, she had her twenty years in, and it was Comdr. Esther Flanagan, USN, chief of nursing services, Mediterranean Fleet, stationed aboard the hospital ship USS Consolation.

  They piped her over the side in style. There was a farewell dinner in the wardroom of the carrier USS Roosevelt, and the admiral who offered the first of the toasts and recalled meeting Commander Flanagan at Guantanamo and Cabite and Pearl Harbor didn’t seem to notice that what they were drinking was an intoxicating beverage forbidden aboard U.S. Navy vessels.

  And, when the banquet was over, the Roosevelt ship’s band was formed on the flight deck lustily and then sadly playing “Anchors Aweigh” as she boarded the Grumman twin turboprop transport that would fly her into retirement.

  They were glad to have her back at Massachusetts General, and for a couple of months she enjoyed being on the beach, and in the little apartment she rented overlooking the Charles. But the good feeling didn’t last long. For one thing, she missed the girls in the Navy Nurse Corps. For another, s
he learned that at Massachusetts General, they thought she was a little strange for being in the habit of dropping back afterward to see how her patients were doing. She had been hired as an operating room nurse, and that was all they expected—more importantly, wanted her to do. She wasn’t even allowed to help pass gas. In the navy, she had been recognized to be one of the best gas-passers around.

  And, while the apartment overlooking the Charles River was very nice, it was also very lonely.

  Esther Flanagan, R.N. was no fool, and she knew that she was going to have to do something. The only problem was what. Certainly, the problem wasn’t money. She had her navy pension, and it was a generous one, and she drew top pay as a nurse. And she had her bundle in the savings and loan. She could afford to do anything, go anywhere she wanted to. But she didn’t know where to go. Where she really wanted to go was back in the navy, but that was out of the question. That part of her life had ended on the flight deck of the Roosevelt when she saluted the colors for the last time and the officer of the deck had given Commander Flanagan permission to leave the ship.

  And then Sister Saint Francis of Assisi of the Convent of Saint Peter & Saint Paul had been brought in to Massachusetts General. The good sister was in bad shape, and they should have cut her immediately, but the good sister wasn’t in any mood to be cut until she had talked to her brother, even after the gravity of her situation had been carefully explained to her. Her brother was in Rome, but was leaving immediately for Boston.

  “My brother, Nurse Flanagan,” Sister Saint Francis said, with quiet pride, “is an archbishop. The gossip has it that he knows His Holiness himself, personally.”

  The same gossip had apparently reached the archdiocese of Boston, for when the archbishop arrived at Logan Field, he was greeted by the cardinal himself, who told him that, in addition to his prayers, he was offering the use of his limousine and any other facility of the archdiocese at his disposal so that the good sister could be nursed back to health.

  Flanagan, who had (to hell with what the others thought of her; she recognized Sister Saint Francis as another lonely woman) been spending long hours with Sister Saint Francis, was there when the archbishop arrived, accompanied by his personal secretary.

  “Your Eminence,” Sister Saint Francis said.

  “Knock that off, Kathleen, I’m your brother John,” the archbishop said, bending over his sister to kiss her on the cheek. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not too well,” she said. “I’m prepared to meet Saint Peter.”

  “Don’t get too anxious,” the archbishop had replied. “That’s not your decision to make.”

  “Nurse Flanagan told me the truth when I asked her,” Sister Saint Francis said. “I’m in bad shape, Johnny.”

  “Well, that may be,” he said. “But we won’t know for sure until some friends of mine have a look at you. They’re on their way at this very moment.”

  “And who are they, Johnny?”

  “You remember when they took my lung, Kathleen?” the archbishop asked. “I was in worse shape than you are now.”

  “I rememher, Johnny,” she said.

  “The same two doctors,” the archbishop said. “And it’s not only my opinion that they’re the finest surgeons around, but that of the Reverend Mother Bernadette of Lourdes, as well. And she’s the chief of staff of the Gates of Heaven Hospital, so she knows what she’s talking about.”

  After that, Esther Flanagan, R.N. was not quite prepared for what she got. Instead of two solemn-appearing senior surgeons of the type one would think would be intimates of an archbishop was a tall chap in a plaid sweater and knickers and a slightly more stocky chap in a sweat shirt bearing the likeness of Ludwig von Beethoven, worn over a pair of rather fraying khakis.

  They burst as quietly as they knew how into Sister Saint Francis’ room where, in turn, they each picked up His Eminence the archbishop and kissed him wetly on the forehead.

  “Dago Red,” the taller one said, “we’re sorry we took so long.”

  “Hawkeye was chasing a small white ball with a weighted stick,” the other one said. “And I, Dago Red, was communing with nature, and it took some time to find us.”

  “I’m glad to see the both of you,” the archbishop said.

  “What did he call you?” Sister St. Francis said.

  “A little nickname, Kathleen,” the archbishop said.

  “I could have sworn he called you Dago Red,” the good sister said.

  “Who’s this lady?” the taller one said.

  “Hawkeye, this is Esther Flanagan, who’s been sort of keeping an eye on my sister.”

  “I don’t want to be rude, miss,” the taller one said, “but Dr. McIntyre and I would like to examine Sister Saint Francis now. Take Dago Red with you and wait outside, please?”

  "Dr. McIntyre?” Flanagan had asked, incredulously. “And that’s Nurse Flanagan to you, Slim.”

  “Nurse Flanagan,” the archbishop said quickly. “This is Dr. Benjamin F. Pierce and Dr. John F. X. McIntyre.”

  “What kind of a nurse?” Dr. Pierce had inquired.

  “I’m an operating room nurse,” Flanagan had replied.

  “O.K., you can stick around. You get out of here, Dago Red.”

  “I’ll wait in the corridor,” the archbishop said.

  While they were examining Sister Saint Francis, the chief of vascular surgery came into the room. He stood watching silently as the examination progressed.

  When it was over, Dr. McIntyre met the eyes of Dr. Pierce. Then Dr. Pierce turned to Sister Saint Francis.

  “If you’re willing to have a couple of heathens cut a hole in you, Sister,” he said, “I think we can have you back in the convent in about two weeks. No guarantees, of course.”

  “I’m not exactly a heathen, Sister,” Dr. McIntyre said. “More on the order of a backslider, actually.”

  Dr. Pierce went to the door and summoned the archbishop.

  “I just told your sister, Dago Red, that if she’ll let a couple of heathens have at her, we can probably, no guarantee, have her back in the convent in two weeks.”

  “Thank you, Hawkeye,” the archbishop said, hugging him.

  “You’ll vouch for these ... gentlemen, Johnny?” Sister Saint Francis asked, rather doubtfully.

  “With my life, Kathleen,” the archbishop said.

  “Will you set up a team for us, Charley?” Dr. McIntyre said to the chief of vascular surgery. “Right now?”

  “I don’t know what I can do right now,” the chief of vascular surgery replied. “Would you like me to assist?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Hawkeye said. “Yeah, Charley, please. Then all we’ll need is a good gas-passer, and a head OR nurse.”

  “You’ve got your head OR nurse,” Esther Flanagan heard herself saying, in violation of the protocol.

  Dr. Pierce looked at her for a moment.

  “O.K., Red, you’re on,” he said. “Come along with us, we’ll show you the pictures, and how we’re going to adjust the little pieces inside the good sister.”

  Five hours later, Esther Flanagan, R.N. was paid what she considered two of the nicest compliments she had ever been paid.

  They were in intensive care, waiting for Sister Saint Francis to come out of anaesthesia, when Dr. Pierce suddenly looked at her and said, “Incidentally, Red, you know your business. Thanks a lot.”

  “That’s right, Red,” Dr. McIntyre said. “You’re not bad at all. If you should ever decide to chuck this joint, look us up.”

  Sister Saint Francis of Assisi returned to her convent ten days after her surgical procedure. Nurse Flanagan watched her ride off in the taxi and then went to the parking lot and, armed with a road map, set out for Spruce Harbor, Maine.

  When she walked into the lobby of the Spruce Harbor Medical Center, Hazel Schultz Heidenheimer, the telephone operator/receptionist, told her that Drs. Pierce and McIntyre were in conference and could not be disturbed.

  “I’ll wait,” Esth
er Flanagan replied.

  Hazel Schultz Heidenheimer, who liked Esther Flanagan at sight, and fully aware that Drs. Pierce and McIntyre might continue in conference until suppertime, ignored the blue conference in session light on her switchboard and rang the telephone in the office of the chief of surgery.

  “There’s a lady waiting to see you,” she said. “She won’t tell me what she wants. Her name is Flanagan.”

  “Has she got red hair?” Trapper John asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Send her down, Hazel, please,” Trapper John said. Esther Flanagan two minutes later walked into the office of the Spruce Harbor Medical Center chief of surgery for the first time. Trapper John opened the door for her. The chief of surgery, a martini glass in one hand, was in the act of throwing a dart from the other at the photograph of a man in the uniform of an army doctor.

  “Glad to see ya, Red,” Trapper John said. “I don’t suppose we could interest you in a little martini?”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Esther Flanagan said. She did not approve of drinking on medical premises, of course, but she needed, she realized, a little liquored courage.

  “I knew you were our kind of people,” Trapper John said, handing her a martini.

  “Be with you in a minute, Red,” Hawkeye called. “Just as soon as I let old Frank have a dart in the eye.” He proceeded to do just that.

  “Now, what brings you to this crossroads of the world, and what, in addition to the martini, can we do for you?” Hawkeye asked.

  “I’m looking for a job,” Esther blurted.

  “Here?” Trapper John asked, surprised.

  “I’ve checked this place out,” Esther said. “You’ve got a good reputation.”

  “You refer, of course, to the hospital,” Hawkeye said.

  “Dr. McIntyre said if I should ever chuck Massachusetts General, I should look him up,” Esther blurted, and then drained her martini. “Well, I chucked it. As of zero eight hundred.”

  Hawkeye drained his martini, too, and then went and pulled the dart from Maj. Frank Burns’ photograph, where it had landed in the eye, before speaking.