MASH 13 MASH goes to Montreal Read online

  “Zero eight hundred?” he asked. “Could I do the Sherlock Holmes bit and cleverly deduce that sometime in your life you have been around the military?”

  “Around the navy,” Esther Flanagan said. “Commander, retired.”

  “Two points for Red,” Trapper John said. “One for her performance in the OR when we cut Dago Red’s sister, and one for naval service.”

  “Three points and you get elected mayor,” Hawkeye said, and picked up his telephone. “Hazel, get me Crumbum* on the line,” he ordered. He pushed the button that turned on the amplifier, so that both sides of the conversation could be heard.

  (* Dr. Pierce here referred to T. Alfred Crumley, administrator of the Spruce Harbor Medical Center.)

  “T. Alfred Crumley, Sr. here,” a somewhat nasal voice announced.

  “How they hanging, Crumbum?” Hawkeye inquired.

  “I’ve told you, and I’ve told you,” Mr. Crumley said. “That’s Crumley. Crum-ley.”

  “Right you are,” Trapper John replied. “Sorry about that. Tell me, Crumbum, how are we fixed, personnel-wise, for nurse personnel, senior type-wise?”

  “If I understand your question correctly, Doctor,” Mr. Crumley replied, “and God knows how hard it is to understand anything you say, you want to know our position, nurse-wise? In particular, so far as senior-level personnel are concerned?”

  “You got it,” Hawkeye replied.

  “The only thing we have available is that frankly dreadful job of chief of nursing training.”

  “Why is it dreadful?”

  “Well, for one thing. Doctor, between us, the money is lousy. For another, the incumbent must reside in the student nurses’ dormitory. That alone has caused the last seven incumbents to depart, three of them hysterical. And, for a third, as if the first two aren’t bad enough, the incumbent’s hours are simply ghastly. The poor thing has to work sixty hours a week just to stay even.”

  “I’ll take it,” Esther Flanagan said.

  “Take down the help wanted sign, Crumbum,” Hawk- eye said. “I’ve just found you a highly qualified sucker.”

  Chapter Eight

  Hawkeye and Trapper John, skilled practitioners of the fine art of hospital bureaucratic chicanery, realized that Esther Flanagan would be a good person to have around. The important thing to do was get her officially on the payroll. Once she had been officially employed, certain changes could be made in the exact nature of her employment.

  In other words, they wanted her in the operating room. She would work in the operating room no matter what her job title was on the Personnel Distribution & Assignment Chart, which occupied all of one wall in Crumbum’s office.

  She joined them the very next morning, as a matter of fact, even before there was time for her to return to the apartment overlooking the Charles and start packing. But Drs. Pierce and McIntyre had been in error, and so had Mr. Crumley, who had feared when he welcomed Esther aboard that he had been done in by his surgical staff once again. Esther did not just become Hawkeye's and Trapper John’s more or less private Queen Empress of the operating room. She moved into a small apartment in the student nurses’ dormitory and quickly brought order out of that chaos. (She had, after all, many years of being senior officer aboard various bachelor officer’s quarters [female] all over the world. Handling young females was no problem at all for her.)

  Similarly, putting a little order into the training of student nurses was not much of a problem for a woman who had been the chief of nursing services, U.S. Mediterranean Fleet.

  When the position of chief of nursing services for the Spruce Harbor Medical Center became open (the incumbent retired), Esther Flanagan, R.N. was the natural choice for the position, not only because she was recommended by the departing chief of nursing services, the chief of surgery, and the hospital administrator, but also because she announced she would continue running the student nurses’ dormitory and their training as well.

  It was, for her, very much like still being in the navy. Her every waking hour was full of interesting things to do. The unwritten rule was that when anything interesting (in other words, a difficult procedure) was going on in the OR, Esther Flanagan would scrub. The respect in which she came to be held by the doctorial staff was reflected in their willingness to teach the student nurses. Keeping them happy, bright, and reasonably entitled to wear white on their ultimate wedding days occupied what would have been normally her off-duty hours.

  And the prestige was there, too. She became the first woman admitted to the chief of surgery’s daily conferences on a permanent basis. The only other woman ever to be permitted behind the conference in session sign was the legendary latter-day Florence Nightingale with whom Dr. Pierce and Dr. McIntyre had served in the 4077th MASH during the Korean War, a fellow practitioner of the nursing art named Lieutenant Colonel “Hot Lips” Houlihan Wachauf Wilson, R.N., U.S.A., retired.

  No one was at all surprised when Commander Flanagan, retired, and Colonel Wilson, retired, met that the two almost immediately became fast friends. They had, after all, a good deal in common. But there was one thing, Esther Flanagan came to sadly (and very secretly) consider, that they did not have in common. Hot Lips had men at her beck and call, men presenting her with candy, flowers and booze, men to gratify her every hunger. Esther Flanagan was still as manless as she had been when a “husky stylish stout” in high school.

  One day there came into Esther’s hand a full-color brochure put out by the Canadian government’s Bureau pour l’Encouragement du Tourisme. This brochure dealt with the manifold charms of Montreal, in the province of Quebec.

  “A little bit of romantic France, but just across the border,” the caption beneath a hand-holding couple seated at a candlelit table said.

  “Old-world romance and charm in the new world,” read another caption, this one showing a hand-holding couple, her head resting against his broad manly shoulder, as they looked up at the Bonsecours Church (built 1771). Although the caption didn’t say so, Esther was absolutely convinced she was looking at the Bonsecours Church because it had been, or was going to be, the site of their joining together in holy matrimony.

  That alone would probably have been enough to have had Esther look fondly upon Montreal, but a third picture, showing a middle-aged woman having her hand kissed by a very distinguished-appearing gentleman of similar age, bore this caption: “Montreal is above all a friendly place, where you are a stranger but once.”

  That made her first trip to Montreal as inevitable as the dawn following the night.

  At first it had been, frankly, something of a disappointment to her. She arrived in the little bit of romantic France just across-the border, as night fell and the neon sign in front of the Holiday Inn in which she was to stay was just flickering on. Determined to savor as much of Montreal’s romantic old-world charm as she could, and as quickly as possible, she passed up the Holiday Inn restaurant, and set out in search of a candlelit table, and the Cuisine Française the brochure had told her she could find. Two hours later, after encountering nothing but hippies, souvenir stands, X-rated movie houses and hot-dog dispensaries, she gave up the search and wound up eating Kentucky Fried Chicken in a very familiar-looking structure that displayed the likeness of the founder on the roof.

  Coming to the not-very-flattering conclusion that she’d been had by the Bureau pour l’Encouragement du Tourisme, Esther had reacted characteristically.

  “To hell with it,” she said, to no one in particular, and marched into the Joan of Arc 12-Lanes No-Waiting Bowling Alley & Cocktail Lounge on Avenue Charles de Gaulle, not far from the Champs de Mars municipal parking lot.

  Esther had once led the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station “Florence Nightingales” to a smashing victory over the bowling team from the chief petty officer’s mess, and she knew that a couple of lines of bowling, with the pins scattering noisily, plus a couple of beers, would, so to speak, restore her normal cheerful spirits.

  It was at the Joan of Arc Cockt
ail Lounge that Esther met her gentleman admirer. She was sitting at the far end of the bar (so as to make it perfectly clear, should the question arise, that she was in the establishment to have a couple of beers, period) about to finish her third beer and return to her solo bowling for another couple of lines when the bartender slid another glass of suds before her.

  “I didn’t order that,” Esther said.

  “Courtesy of the gentleman at duh far end of duh bar,” the bartender said.

  Esther looked in the direction, already sucking in her breath to firmly announce that she was perfectly able to buy her own beer, thank you, when she got a good look at the gentleman and became, for one of the few times in her life, speechless.

  Either they were putting something in this Canadian beer they didn’t put in beer in the States, and she was a lot higher than she felt, or the gentleman at the far end of the bar was the very same distinguished-appearing gentleman in the brochure from the Bureau pour l' Encouragement de la Tourisme, the one in the picture with the caption line “Montreal is above all a friendly place, where you are a stranger but once.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head to clear her vision and looked again. This was all that it took to see M. Henri Flambeau come quickly down the bar to her.

  M. Flambeau had noticed Esther Flanagan the moment she walked into the Joan of Arc 12-Lanes No-Waiting Bowling Alley & Cocktail Lounge, examined her carefully and initially dismissed her as beneath his notice. She did not, in other words, look like the type of woman Henri Flambeau was looking for, which is to say, a rich and lonely tourist.

  And then he had just happened to notice how Esther had paid for her first beer, that is to say, with a hundred-dollar traveler’s check torn from a rather thick little booklet of traveler’s checks which were probably, he judged professionally, of the same denomination.

  “I hope, mademoiselle,” Henri Flambeau said to Esther Flanagan, “that you will be able to find it in your heart to forgive my impulsiveness.”

  He sounded, Esther realized, just like Jacques Costeau, the fish guy.

  “Uh …” Esther said.

  “I could think of no other way in which I might hope to make your acquaintance,” Henri Flambeau said.

  “Uh ...” Esther said again.

  “And I could not help but notice that you somehow have become separated from your friends,” Henri Flambeau went on. “Even as I have. That we were both, so to speak, alone.”

  Esther drained her beer, having exhausted all she could think of to say.

  “And it occurred to me that you might be kind enough, my treat, of course, to bowl a line with me.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Esther replied. “But dutch treat, of course.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Dutch treat,” she repeated. “We each pay our own way.”

  “If you insist,” Henri Flambeau said.

  Within the hour, they had bowled three lines. Esther had learned that it was indeed Henri Flambeau in the BPET brochure: “They came to me and asked if I would pose for the picture,” he said. “And I decided that I could not refuse. My country was calling me to service.”*

  (* While this was, in a sense, true, M. Flambeau did not feel it necessary to add that the reason they had come and asked him to pose for the picture was that a dossier of photographs of him had been available at the Montreal Models Registry, together with his price: J15 per hour (negotiable).)

  Esther also learned that M. Flambeau was a bachelor, and professionally associated with the Quebec provincial government in a communications capacity, both of which facts he was too modest to discuss.*

  (* Again, this was the truth, but not the whole truth. Flambeau was a bachelor, but only in the sense that his third wife had just obtained a divorce from him on grounds of nonsupport. His professional association in a communications capacity with the Quebec provincial government saw him daily occupying the third window from the front in the Montreal post office, where he had full charge of money orders and international postal reply coupons.)

  On the other hand, M. Flambeau learned a number of interesting things about Esther Flanagan. For one thing, in addition to her stack of traveler’s checks, she had a steady job. Having a steady job, especially a well-paying one, was something Henri always looked for in his lady friends. For another, giving her an attraction that grew by the minute, she had a pension. He had no idea how large the monthly retirement check of a commander, retired, of the United States Navy amounted to, but it was very likely a nice little sum indeed.

  He also learned that Esther had yet to march to the altar, which told him that she should be handled with great care. (By the end of the second line of bowling, M. Flambeau had realized that he was quite as smitten with this Little American Duckling, as he thought of her, as he had been with his three previous wives; that she was a potential marriage partner rather than simply another fling for him.)

  That thought was clinched when she told him where she lived and worked, and that she had an automobile. It was only a few hours’ drive for her to come to Montreal. M. Flambeau found it difficult to leave Montreal. There were governmental reasons, he told Esther, and there were, although he didn’t go into them. He had, in fact, been bluntly told by the judge of domestic relations that the next time he left Montreal without permission, the judge would conclude that he was again trying to avoid alimony and child-support payments and the judge would be forced to toss him into the slammer again.

  The longer Henri Flambeau knew Esther Flanagan, the more he learned about her financial position, the greater his conviction grew that here, finally, was the woman of his dreams, the woman who could, with relatively minor effort on her part, support him in the manner to which he would like to be accustomed. Her pension, a little research in the Montreal Public Library’s U.S.A. (formerly American) Collection told him, would be more than enough to pay all of his alimony and child-support obligations, with a nice little piece of change left over. By driving across the border, and making a station-to-station call from a phone booth and identifying himself as the Greater Maine Credit Bureau, he had been able to get a chap named T. Alfred Crumley, Sr. to inform him just how much Esther Flanagan was paid as chief of nursing services of the Spruce Harbor Medical Center.

  Marriage was the obvious answer. Esther had no way of knowing this, of course (although she had her hopes), but Henri Flambeau had already decided to pop the question, to ask Esther to become his bride. He didn’t want to blow it, of course, and made rather elaborate plans for the great occasion.

  As Esther Flanagan approached the Canadian-American border in her navy gray Ford, another lady, to whom the idea of marriage was, at least so far as her Precious Babykins was concerned, unspeakably outrageous approached Boston’s Logan Field in her silver gray Model 60 Learjet.

  The Learjet touched down, and then taxied to the terminal building, where its sole passenger was escorted to the VIP waiting lounge.

  “Ah, there you are,” said the tall, still-blonde, still-attractive Mrs. Josephine Babcock to the short, rather purple-haired lady wearing eyeglasses, each spectacle of which was a good five inches in diameter. “Have you been waiting long?”

  “Only four hours, Mrs. Babcock,” Sydney Prescott replied, flashing her choppers and gesturing with the eighteen-inch cigarette holder in which smoldered a freshly lit Cognoscenti cigarette. (Another fine product of Burton Babcock & Company, Cognoscenti cigarettes are advertised as being for those in the know. Exactly what is known is not specified.)

  “Well, your time isn’t really very valuable, when you get right down to it,” Josephine said. “And I’m sure you were glad to get out of New York City.”

  Sydney Prescott smiled even wider. “Sydney Prescott stands ever alert to be of service to Burton Babcock & Company generally, and you, specifically, Madame Chairperson,” she said.

  “In that case, you can start by getting rid of that horrible-smelling cigarette,” Mrs. Babcock said. “It’s enough to make o
ne toss one’s cookies.”

  Sydney Prescott ground out the offending butt as Mrs. Babcock held her nose.

  “What the hell was that, anyway?” Mrs. Babcock inquired. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think someone was slipping soja hispida Babcockisis into the mixture again.”

  “It was a Cognoscenti, Mrs. Babcock,” Sydney Prescott replied. “I was just trying to show my corporate loyalty.”

  “Next time, try some Old Mountain Lion Chewing Tobacco,” Mrs. Babcock ordered.

  Sydney Prescott wrote this little suggestion down in the notebook she habitually carried for just that purpose.

  “And now, Madame Chairperson, how may I be of service?” she asked.

  “The thing is, Prescott,” Mrs. Babcock said, “I have a personal problem which you may possibly be of some use in solving. It’s a strange problem, and you’re a strange woman, don’t you see?”

  “Tell me more,” Sydney Prescott said.

  “To get right to the point,” Mrs. Babcock began, “let me begin by saying that if anything said in this room leaves this room, not only will you never get another dime of Burton Babcock & Company’s business, but I will personally tear your purple hair out down to the last gray root. Do we understand each other?”

  “Perfectly, Madame Chairperson.”

  “Very well then,” Mrs. Babcock went on. “The problem is this. My son, Burton Babcock IV, my only child, Mama’s Precious Babykins, has fallen under the influence of an undesirable young woman.”

  “I see,” Sydney Prescott said.

  “Don’t be absurd,” Mrs. Babcock went on. “I have barely begun. How could you possibly see?”

  “As one woman to another,” Sydney Prescott said.

  “Don’t presume, Prescott,” Josephine replied. “You’re a woman. I’m a lady.”

  “Please go on,” Sydney Prescott said. “How is she undesirable?”