Archive of Our Own

Radar typed out the last sentence of Major Frank Burns’ performance review, then carefully removed the sheet of paper from the typewriter. Technically Henry was supposed to be writing these evaluations up, but he couldn’t be bothered. He said that anything the US Army needed to know about their doctors and nurses they could figure out from looking at the unit’s casualty survival rate; as long as they were saving kids, it wasn’t important who was fighting or “fraternizing” with who. 

Nevertheless, Radar wrote glowing reviews of everyone except Frank, whom he labeled as “just OK” in contrast to Hawkeye (who was “the cat’s meow”) and Trapper (“the bee’s knees”). He figured Henry would do the same. After wiping his glasses and setting them back on the bridge of his nose, he unlocked the small cage to his right and took out a little white guinea pig.

Poppy squeaked at him. Radar tilted his head.

“What do you need, girl?” he said.

When he put her down on the table, she started nibbling on the corner of Hawkeye’s performance review. Radar laughed and slid the paper away from her.

“I’m hungry too,” he said. “I just need to get these reviews signed, okay? Then I’ll get you some greens.”

Poppy’s nose twitched. He took that as a sign of understanding and put her into his breast pocket. She was not the most unusual thing he had ever kept in his pockets: from interesting rocks to wadded up R&R passes to one of Henry’s fishing hooks, Radar made good use of them. 

He pushed open the doors to the colonel’s office just as Henry yelled his name.

“Yes, sir?” Radar said.

Henry was fiddling with his geisha doll. Its head had never returned to its original bobbliness after Trapper had broken it off. “Do you remember where I got this?”

“One of the women from the village gave it to you after you helped her son.”

“You think she could fix it?”

Radar smiled. “I’ll look into it.” He came around the edge of the desk with his clipboard and pen, which he handed to Henry. “Would you sign these personnel evaluations, sir?”

“Sure.” Henry clicked the pen. “Hey, what did you write in there about me?”

“I didn’t write anything about you.”

“Well, why not?"

“Why would you write a review of yourself?”

“Oh. Good point.” 

Radar flipped through the papers while Henry signed them. (There was a chance he might have slipped a blank form in there, but Henry didn’t need to know that.) 

“Say,” said Henry. “You didn’t hear what—”

“—what Hawkeye and Trapper did to tee off Majors Burns and Houlihan, yes I did.”

“Do I want to know?”

Radar shrugged. “They’ll come in complaining about it sooner or later. If they hand you a written report…”

“I’ll make sure to lose it.” Henry grinned at him, then picked up his orange mug. Radar took it from him. “Hey, I was—”

“I’ll get you some more coffee, sir.” Radar showed him the empty bottom of the mug. “Do you want it runny or sludgey?”

Henry rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Sludgey, I guess.”

Radar nodded. Usually the runny coffee was weaker and smelled worse. If Radar had written an evaluation of Henry, he would have mentioned that he had a good head on his shoulders, though he’d lose it if it weren’t attached. He shoved the clipboard under his arm and walked out of the office with the mug. Poppy’s little head poked out over the edge of his pocket.

“Colonel Blake’s a funny guy, isn’t he?” Radar said, setting the clipboard down on his desk so he could scratch behind her ears. “But he always means well.”

As he saw it, Henry didn’t have a dishonest bone in his whole body. Sometimes this came at a cost; when he got drunk he was liable to talk at length about his latrine habits and/or the nurses. Radar typically ushered him off to bed whenever he started going on about how attractive the ladies around camp were. It made his own face flush with embarrassment. Most of the time, though, Radar found his earnestness sweet. In a camp where people were constantly coming up with schemes— whether that was to earn some time in Tokyo, sleep with a nurse, get a discharge, or ruin another person’s scheme— Henry just did his best to get through the day. He’d been duped so many times that he barely attempted discipline. 

Radar looked up through the windows of the office doors and caught a flash of blonde hair. 

Then Margaret Houlihan threw open the door with so much force it knocked him clean out.

(Not that she noticed. She was so single-minded in her task, that being to get Hawkeye and Trapper sent to the stockade, that the sounds of Radar hitting the floor and the mug exploding into a hundred pieces didn’t reach her ears. This was why Radar had put “headstrong” on her performance review.)

When Radar came to, he was sprawled out on the ground. He sat up, his skull throbbing like someone had driven a tractor into it, and tried to determine why he had fallen asleep on the floor. How late had he stayed up working on the farm? 

After the ringing in his ears subsided, the familiar sounds of Margaret yelling and Henry acquiescing in the distance reminded him he was still in Korea. Radar stumbled to his feet. There appeared to be a double set of double doors. And, wow, the floor was a mess. He must have dropped a cup. Someone could get hurt if he didn’t clean that up.

He tried to go into the colonel’s office but found himself in post-op. Too many double doors in this place. Where was he again?

“Anybody got a sweep?” Radar said.

“I’d sure like to get some sweep,” said Hawkeye. It was just him and Kellye.

“What do you need, Radar?” said Kellye, not looking away from her patient. Even when she was just a blur (did he need new glasses?), she was real pretty.

“A sweep,” said Radar. “I gotta broom the office.”

Hawkeye and Kellye glanced at each other.

“And maybe glasses.”

The glittery light overhead was starting to hurt his eyes. Radar put a hand on his forehead and found that the back of Hawkeye’s palm was already there.

“You get hit on the head or something?” Hawkeye said.

“How’d you know?” said Radar.

It was thus determined that Radar was a bit concussed. While Kellye assured him that she’d find someone to sweep up the broken mug, Hawkeye helped him back to his cot. That was nice because suddenly he could really go for a little afternoon nap. Then there was a bright light in his eyes and someone was asking him questions about the date and president and finally they let him shut his eyes and drift off.

He was woken only a few hours later by Henry shaking his shoulder. By now the office was darker and his vision was clearer once he put on his glasses, although his head still throbbed. Far off, he could hear people laughing and shouting out crude things— evidently Klinger had put on their new movie, Bonzo Enters The Gentleman’s Club. It must be a great movie for them to be shouting that loud.

“How do you feel?” said Henry. He had pulled over Radar’s chair and had taken a seat next to the cot.

“Fine, sir,” said Radar. He sat up. “It was just a little knock on the head.”

“Concussions are serious, Radar. You should lay down for the rest of the day at least. Hawkeye thinks that you should—”

“—that I should press assault charges on Major Houlihan to get her off his back?”

“Yeah. But, you know, he’s not serious. He never is, really.”

Radar nodded. “I can get up tomorrow and do mail call, though, right?”

“Yeah. I mean, unless you have a seizure or something.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” Radar went through his mental checklist of tasks for the day. He’d gotten the evaluations done, procured Nurse Franklin’s transfer orders, called over to the 8766th about trading for fresh rags… “Did you open that package you ordered, sir?”

“Oh, yeah. It was a mystery book. And Then There Were None. Knowing me, I’ll only be halfway done by the time the war ends.” He chuckled. “You like to read, Radar?”

“Mostly comic books and stuff. My uncle was an author but he didn’t sell too many books.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it turned out his wife basically wrote all of ‘em. You know, transcribed them and added onto them and edited them. But after the first book got popular and he didn’t credit her at all she started, uh, taking liberties with them. Like replacing scenes where the cowboys and sheriff shoot at each other with paragraphs about how lazy her husband was. And then she’d just publish ‘em like that.”

“Huh. My mother used to say that the only book you needed was the Bible. But she mainly used it to stash candies and shopping receipts.”

Radar nodded. Then he remembered what he hadn’t done today. “Would you feed my pets, sir?”

“I don’t—”

“Just regular greens. And I already filled the glove with milk. You just gotta lift the middle and pointer fingers up to the bars of the cages with the white spots of paint so they can drink from it.”

Henry sighed. “Fine. But it’ll make me late to the—”

“Oh, don’t worry. All the best ladies are in the last half hour of the movie anyway.”

“How did you—”

“Have you seen Poppy, sir?”

“For God’s sake, Radar, can I finish a sentence?”

Radar had bigger concerns on his mind. He couldn’t remember if he’d woken up after the hit to his head with Poppy in his pocket. Had he fallen flat on his back? He must have; otherwise he would have crushed her. What if she’d jumped out and gotten herself lost? She was the skittish sort, the kind who reacted to a small threat by cowering for hours behind furniture. Realistically speaking, she could be anywhere.

Like a traveller emerging from fog, an image appeared behind his eyelids: the colonel’s office from an angle he’d never seen before.

“Sir,” said Radar. “Would you look under your liquor cabinet?”

“Sure.” Henry stood up, used to taking instructions without question. Then he furrowed his brow and sat back down. “Why?”

“My guinea pig.”

“Oh, okay.” He stood up like he was acting on muscle memory, then sat back down again. “Why would your guinea pig be under my—”

“I just have a feeling.”

Henry muttered something to himself as he left. Radar stared at his hands. It occurred to him that the mess tent was a fair distance away from the hospital, and that even during their Halloween party (four brawls, one pregnancy) he’d never heard the commotion this clearly. The personnel may as well have been packed into the hospital. 

And he’d never remotely predicted someone else’s words. In one-on-one conversation, sure, he could finish people’s sentences, but he’d known what Hawkeye had said without him even being present. 

It had to be a coincidence unrelated to the blow he’d taken to the head. Sometimes Radar just had days where the helicopter blades raised the hairs on his neck from a mile away, or he heard someone’s thoughts as a low murmur for just a few seconds. Granted, it was usually when he’d gotten more than enough food and sleep and was performing at his best— not after getting knocked out by a swinging door.

But he didn’t like to think about his thing too much. Ma had told him to never question a good thing and Uncle Ed had told him not to deliberate on the bad things in life, so between those two pieces of advice there wasn’t much room for careful rumination.

When Henry returned, he held Poppy in his hands. He dropped her in Radar’s lap and watched her wiggle over to Radar’s knees.

“You were right,” said Henry. “Maybe she needed a drink to steady her nerves, huh?”

He laughed. Radar smiled, but his heart wasn’t in it. He carded his fingers through Poppy’s fur. Poor little thing must have been scared out of her mind.

Henry put his hands on his hips. “Well, I’m off. If you need anything, there’s a full bottle of whiskey on my desk and a cigar in my left drawer.”

“What if I need something else?”

“What else would you need? That’s the stuff you need to live.”

Radar huffed out a laugh. When Henry shut the door behind him, Poppy curled up in a ball and squeaked. It reached Radar’s ears easier than it should have. He chalked it up to his imagination, picked Poppy up, and laid down with her sitting on his chest. Henry would know to feed her and put her away.

He slept lightly through the rest of the evening and night, occasionally woken by Henry to check that he wasn’t nauseous or confused or any of that. 

Laying there in the early hours of the morning, he discovered that there was a song stuck in his head that he couldn’t recall having heard before. Lots of trumpet. Modern-sounding. Very jaunty. Something about a “ring of fire”. Radar went around asking people if they knew it, whistling the melody though the piercing sound made his ears hurt, but nobody had heard of it. 

“Here’s your magazine, Hawk,” he said in the Swamp, handing him a long white envelope.

“It looks a little sunburnt,” Hawkeye said. “You weren’t holding it up to the light, were you?”

Radar shook his head, then winced. He put a hand to the back of his head as he handed Trapper a package from home. Just touching the box told Radar it was a calendar and a box of chocolates.

Hawkeye pulled Radar down onto the bed by his shoulder, then inspected his head.

“Still smarting from when Margaret bashed you?” he said.

“Aw, knock it off,” said Radar.

“Radar, if you press assault charges you’ll be my hero. I’ll carry you around on my shoulders for a month.”

“Go the full mile,” said Trapper. “Bring up Frank, too. He helped her plot to kill you.”

“Make your aunt and uncle proud. Send Majors Tweedledee and Tweedledum to jail.”

Hawkeye was petting his head like a cat. Radar batted his hand away and picked up the sack of mail.

“I wouldn’t mind letting Hot Lips handcuff me.”

“That’s gross,” said Radar.

“What is?” said Hawkeye.

Radar realized he hadn’t seen Hawkeye’s lips move. “Um, nothing.”

When he finished handing out all the mail, he headed over to the mess tent for a meal. Every table was occupied with people chewing, talking, and laughing; the commotion grated on his nerves. The conversation closest to him (“...sick as a dog over it, but what can you do, that’s how it goes in New York…”) was just as clear as what the group at the farthest corner table were saying (“...sent over a waiter to throw wine in his face…”).

Radar sat down with a tray at Father Mulcahy’s table. In comparison to some of the louder groups and their intermittent jeers and barks of laughter, the Father’s light voice was a balm. Klinger must have liked it too, because he was listening raptly to Father Mulcahy’s story about divinity school. Radar tuned in for a couple minutes, which was all he needed to finish his entire tray.

“That was the year my sister learned to play the saxophone,” said Father Mulcahy. “And, though she was dedicated, it took her quite a long time to improve. So you can imagine the noise in our house! Me practicing my sermons in the mirror, her practicing the saxophone…” He chuckled, and Klinger smiled. “Thankfully, our mother has the patience of a saint.”

Radar meant to ask if priests were allowed to say stuff like that, but Klinger’s train of thought distracted him. And made him blush. Was everybody around here hot under the collar for each other? 

He swallowed a mouthful of soup and glanced around, perking up at the sight of Henry. While he’d been asleep, Henry had put Poppy in her cage and left a bottle of soda by Radar’s bed. It was real swell of him. Sort of gave Radar the fuzzies, actually, but he knew Henry would just brush it off if he tried to thank him. The best thing he could do was go over and rescue him from the majors, who were accosting him about eggs. 

Radar came up just as Frank was punctuating his point with a particularly thin-lipped sneer. It was truly a marvel to see. Sadly, Henry’s eyes had fluttered shut ten seconds ago. 

“Sir,” said Radar. “There’s a situation in the supply tent. Would you come with me?"

“We were in the middle of something important, Corporal,” Margaret said. “Don’t interrupt.”

Henry opened one eyelid. “Aw, what are you gonna do, Major? Fire a door at him?”

“That was an honest accident!” said Frank.

“I’m sure O’Reilly doesn’t hold a grudge,” said Margaret. “Right, Corporal?”

“Um,” said Radar. “No?”

“See? It’s all water under the bridge.”

It was, perhaps, the closest thing he’d get to an apology. That was fine with Radar. It had been an accident, anyway, and there were more important people in the camp she could have hit. Henry brushed off Frank’s attempts to further engage him on the subject of eggs by getting up and following Radar out the door.

“What’s the situation?” said Henry, once they were safely outside.

“Oh, there isn’t one,” said Radar. He smiled and ducked his head. “I just thought you might wanna get out of there.”

“Good thinking. Boy, those two get on my nerves. You can hardly hear yourself think around here. And then you gotta listen to everybody else’s thoughts…”

“You want a day pass to Tokyo? You haven’t been in a while.”

“Hey, that sounds great.” Henry clapped Radar on the shoulder. “If you keep coming up with good ideas I might have to take you out, huh?”

“I wish you would.”

“What?”

“Nothing, sir. And before I forget: would you initial this daily quota?”

He handed Henry the clipboard and the pen. Henry dutifully scribbled his initials. They used to have a stamp with his initials on it, but it had “gone missing”; aka Major Houlihan destroyed it after Henry drunkenly used it to stamp the napes of five different nurses. Afterwards, Radar had been distracted for about three days by thoughts of marking up Henry’s neck in kind, only with his mouth instead of a stamp. 

Anyways.

Since Frank would probably spend the entirety of his time as commanding officer micromanaging and assigning useless tasks, Radar made sure to get done today and tomorrow’s work. He heard the choppers when they were farther off than usual and gave everybody a warning in advance; he summarized the week’s events for the monthly report while whistling that stupid “ring of fire” song; he brought in orange juice for the surgeons and alerted Father Mulcahy right before he stepped in a puddle of mud, then put through a call to home for a homesick Trapper. 

The Jeep came for Henry at 2100 hours, but Radar felt its rumbling in his chest minutes before it entered the camp. He stood outside the hospital, listening to Hawkeye and Trapper murmur to each other in the post-op ward and worrying at his lip. 

His hearing had only gotten worse over the course of the day, which was to say it had gotten better. Klinger’s dress was rustling against his legs across the camp and a Korean airplane was soaring overhead and someone, somewhere, was dreaming about getting lost in a labyrinth deep in the earth.

“Guess I’ll see you Monday,” Henry said. He was thinking about his favorite restaurant.

“Have fun, sir,” Radar said. “Keep an eye on your pockets in Ueno Park.”

Henry gave him a questioning look as he got into the passenger seat of the Jeep. Radar just saluted him. When the Jeep was finally both out of sight and off his radar, he let out a sigh. The noise and the constant influx of knowledge had exhausted him. He could only hope a good night’s sleep would fix the problem— he couldn’t stand the thought that it might keep getting worse. His skin was tingling like it did whenever he was really sick.

Radar searched through his desk, brushing aside mulch, an empty glass pistol, a photo Hawkeye had taken of Henry that time he dressed up like King Neptune, and other knick knacks, until he found his pair of earmuffs. Up until now, he’d only ever worn them in the winter. 

He slipped them over his ears. It reduced the volume of the background noise and scope of his hearing, but it didn’t stop him from knowing that Klinger was plotting his next scheme to get out of the army or that Major Burns was about to open a can of chicken. 

His sleep that night was fitful. And short. Frank Burns woke him three hours after midnight, face already fixed in a snarl. 

“Up and attem, soldier,” Frank said.

Radar reached for his glasses and pulled them on without having to squint in the darkness. When he sat up, his temples throbbed like something was pounding on them from within his head. He envisioned a house’s walls bulging outwards just before collapse.

“Do you need a bedpan, sir?” said Radar.

“What?” said Frank. “Why would I—”

“You’re gonna toss your cookies in fifteen minutes.”

Radar had learned long ago to never eat canned meat provided by the army. 

“That is patently untrue,” Frank said, apparently unaware that one of his hands had come up to clutch his stomach. “And I’d thank you not to try and predict me, fella. I’m a cold-blooded renegade.”

“Okay,” said Radar.

“A solemn guardian of American innocents.”

“Okay.”

“A lone ranger, if you will.”

Radar knew what Frank needed, but he wanted to hear him say it. “What exactly do you want, sir?”

Frank hesitated. 

“Sir?”

“There is a huge spider on top of the filing cabinet.”

So Radar got a cup and a sheet of paper to trap the spider. While Frank watched with beady eyes, Radar carried the spider outside and dropped it onto the ground. It skittered into a patch of tall grass. 

“Is that all, sir?” said Radar.

“Certainly not,” said Frank. “We have a lot to do around here, corporal.”

By ‘we’, he meant Radar and everybody else. Radar swept up the mess tent and the colonel’s office, put all the files in proper alphabetical order (Frank’s file stayed where it was, although Radar had actually put it under “F” for “ferret”), shined Frank’s boots while he talked about his dreams of meeting the president, and woke everybody at an ungodly hour for calisthenics.

“Henry had better be having the time of his life in Tokyo,” Hawkeye said to Radar while doing jumping jacks. “If he’s forcing us through this nonsense for a subpar massage and sushi-induced food poisoning, I’ll invert his belly button.”

“Invert his belly button?” said Trapper.

“Yes. I’ll turn his innie into an outie.”

“He has an outie,” said Radar.

This got him some raised eyebrows. Radar looked straight ahead and pretended he hadn’t said anything. 

It had been suggested once or twice back in Ottumwa that Radar had a staring problem. Sometimes he only realized he was doing it when people told him to cut it out. Or, in one case, hit him over the head with a towel because he had walked into the nurse’s shower by mistake. Try as he did to put himself in the middle of the action, to make himself bigger than he really was, his instinct was to be a fly on the wall.

Henry never told him to quit staring. Either he didn’t notice when Radar watched him or he didn’t care, too busy trying to get a hole in one or read a newspaper from ten years ago to acknowledge the strange little corporal five inches away. Radar appreciated that. If anyone subjected him to the same scrutiny with which he studied Henry, he’d probably run and hide. 

Which told him that Henry didn’t realize how much Radar watched him, because Henry always floundered under scrutiny. His last monthly lecture, supposedly to do with the sin of self-stimulation, had been compromised by his blushing and using phrases like “choking the chicken” and “pounding the flounder”. Hawkeye had nearly passed out from laughing so hard. 

Margaret came out of her tent well after calisthenics was over, looking green in the gills. Hawkeye suggested she take some bed rest in his tent and Margaret suggested he take a long walk off a short pier. It was such a busy morning that Hawkeye only noticed Radar’s earmuffs in post-op.

“Have you forgotten what season it is?” Hawkeye said, getting closer and louder so Radar could hear him. “Or are we due for a snowstorm soon?”

“It’s nothing,” said Radar. “My hearing’s been sensitive.”

“Oh, well, then I won’t—”

“—tease it, yup, you’re hilarious.” He may have been a little on edge. “You can just talk normally.”

“What if my normal is abnormal?”

Hawkeye glanced at his patient for a reaction, but the guy didn’t smile. Radar made eye contact with him and his stream of consciousness filled Radar’s ears: … wonder who operated on me who took my leg where is it now what am I gonna tell the kids bet they won’t even recognize me when I come through the door I just wanna wake up from this nightmare when am I going home what if Patty takes the kids and—

“I can dictate a letter to her for you,” Radar said, jumping at the first possible opportunity to help.

The guy gave him a strange look. “To who?”

“Your wife? Patty?”

“How did you…”

“The army knows everything,” Hawkeye said. “You know how it is.”

Blessedly, the guy accepted that as an explanation. “I’m not ready to talk to her yet. Maybe tomorrow.”

Radar nodded. Hawkeye’s thoughts spelled confusion and a hint of suspicion, but Radar just handed him the CT scan he hadn’t yet asked for and headed out the doors. Frank still wanted him to fix up the VIP tent (though they had no visitors) and rearrange the condiments on each table in the mess tent to Frank’s liking. A major nutcase in every sense.

He sat down at his desk and dropped his face into his hands. The headache was only getting worse. If he’d had any confusion or nausea or anything, he would have put it up to the concussion, but he knew this kind of headache. It was like when he made predictions without having had food or water for a while. A truck plodding along the road though its engine was running on empty. But he’d eaten just after calisthenics. What was the problem?

A particularly nasty wave of pain made him inhale sharply. Sometimes when he took a deep nap, he woke up confused as to where he was and what time it was. This was ten times worse. What were the post-concussion questions? Year and president? The year was 1960. No, 1950. Somewhere in between— or years before or after. And the president—

Klinger was about to shake his shoulder. Radar took his head out of his hands and tried to ask if he could grab him a glass of water, only it came out as: “Nixon was guilty.”

“What?” said Klinger.

“It’s all on the tapes. Watergate. No, I mean, I really need some water.”

“Who the hell is Nixon?”

“I dunno.” Klinger’s dress was nice today. “You coulda been in Some Like It Hot. Or you could be in it. What year is it?”

Klinger flounced off to post-op. Rude. Radar’s head was really killing him. He dropped to the ground and curled up under his desk, hoping the smaller space might alleviate the pain. The pressure. It was like his head was about to burst.

Frank came in, followed by Klinger. Radar couldn’t wait for Frank to get that transfer. Or was that Klinger? Someone was leaving soon. Radar’s head pulsed and he clenched his teeth. Even though he couldn’t focus past the pain, he knew what Frank was saying.

“Obviously he’s goldbricking,” Frank said. “Just trying to get out of work.” He cleared his throat, but Radar already knew his next lines.

They spoke the same words at the same time: “Corporal, get out from under there! What are you doing? Stop repeating what I’m saying. I said stop. Oh, you wanna play that game, huh? Mairzy doats and dozy doats and little lambs eat… fruitcake! Damn. I got a gal in Kalamazoo. Stop that. Stop repeating me. That’s an order , corporal!”

“Singing a duet?” said Hawkeye. Klinger had gone and gotten him. Radar would have been humiliated if he weren’t so desperate for someone to just tell him what was wrong. And maybe get Frank out of the room, because his thoughts were annoying.

“O’Reilly’s trying to con me,” Frank and Radar said simultaneously. “I said stop repeating me. I said—”

“Alright, Radar, what’s the problem? And state it in your own words, please.”

“My head,” Radar said. He winced. “Feels like I’m gonna die.” He tried to focus only on Hawkeye’s train of thought. “I think it’s a migraine too.”

“Did—”

“It can’t be the concussion. Colonel Blake okayed me.”

“Classic symptoms of goldbricking,” said Frank.

Radar squeezed his eyes shut. “Peter is gonna throw a glass of water at your head when he next sees you.”

“What do you know about my father-in-law, you little twerp?”

“Frank,” said Hawkeye, “why don’t you go drink a liter of rust remover?”

“Invest in Coca-Cola,” said Radar.

“Radar, tell me what I’m picturing right now.”

“Blue star. Green lobster. Red car. Drive-in movie theater. Cindy Finch from your high school. Cindy Finch under the bleachers with you. Cindy… hey, quit that.”

“I was about to say the same to you,” Hawkeye said. “Radar, I think your radar’s gone haywire.”

“What are you talking about?” said Klinger. “You think he can read our minds?”

“That and more. You should be fine, Frank, you’ve got white padded walls in there.”

The swish of Klinger’s skirt told Radar he’d made an abrupt departure.

“Hold on a second,” said Frank. His voice got louder, like he’d crouched down to look right at Radar. “Hey, O’Reilly, tell me what stocks are gonna go up in the next couple years.”

Hawkeye crouched down too. “Better yet, tell me how many babies Trapper and I are gonna have. He wants five, but I don’t know if my girlish figure will recover.”

“Pierce, if this fella can actually see the future, it would be of massive import to the US Army!”

“Import? Right now I’d prefer if they exported you out of here.”

They bickered back and forth for a while. Radar made a low, miserable sound and put his forehead to his knees. His skull was packed full of events that hadn’t happened yet, names and dates and headlines and voices, and they just kept coming. 

Hawkeye decided to drop Radar off in the supply tent where it was quieter and darker. It was an eternity getting over there, Radar muttering warnings about shootings and elections while Hawkeye cheerfully instructed anyone who would listen not to think about their deepest, darkest secrets. Once they were in the supply tent, the only sound was Hawkeye’s rapid stream of consciousness. He was smiling but he was clearly keeping a little distance between them. 

“Um,” said Hawkeye.

“Don’t tell him,” said Radar. “He’s on R&R. And he can’t do nothing about it anyhow.”

“Right. Well, if it’s anything like a normal migraine…” 

It’ll end in a couple of hours, Hawkeye thought. But I guess there’s no point in talking out loud, huh?

He was kidding, but he didn’t really sound happy. Radar guessed he’d feel the same way if someone could look right into his mind. Especially if his head was all fireworks and explosions like Hawkeye’s.

Hawkeye patted the top of his head, gave him a painkiller, then left. Radar swallowed the pill even if he didn’t think it would help. 

Time passed like molasses, slow and sticky. Even if he’d wanted to remember what was entering his head, the minutiae of days and the turning points of the century, he couldn’t keep it crammed in his mind that long. The pressure was so immense he wanted to cry out. 

Hitting his head against the ground stopped the flurry for a precious second or two. But that wasn’t enough. All he could do was curl up with a blanket wrapped tightly around his head and wait for it to end. Every now and then someone came in to ask him a question about forms or mail or requisitioning and he’d instead respond to what they were actually thinking, not realizing what he’d done until it was too late to take it back. 

Radar wished he could scoop his brain out with a spoon.

When he wasn’t processing new inventions and memories that weren’t his own, Radar’s mind kept returning to the day the family car had broken down seven miles out of civilization and he’d had to walk all the way back. It had been the beginning of a heatwave, so he’d been drenched in sweat after ten minutes. There was nothing he could do except trudge forward, mop his brow, and bear the heat. Take it. 

Afterwards he wondered if that kind of desperation, the kind that made a guy want to give his soul for a drink of water, turned nonbelievers to Christians and vice versa. 

He thought maybe this pain was worse.

At some point the painkiller kicked in and he managed a light sleep. The flow of information trickled to a stop. Radar could remember a couple things from it, but nothing important. He was glad for that. If he’d managed to retain everything he’d learned about the next two decades, then what would be the point of living through them?

Once the pain became manageable, he headed back to the office. Though he’d only been gone five or six hours, there were already a plethora of tasks waiting for him. Frank didn’t spare a second in hounding him. Between rounds of direct instructions and chiding him for “abandoning his station”, Frank tried to extract some information about the future from him. Apparently his usual disdain for “paganism”— aka any kind of belief system that didn’t easily fit in with his being Christian— was outweighed by his greed. Even if Radar could offer anything helpful, he wouldn’t. 

“Dictate a letter for me, Corporal,” Frank said. 

“To General Clayton?” said Radar.

“What, do you think I mean to write to General MacArthur? He’s much too important to come down here.”

Dutifully, Radar sat down at his desk and flipped open the notepad. He started writing before Frank opened his mouth.

“Dear General Clayton,” said Frank, not noticing that Radar was far ahead of him. “It has come to my… uh, to our attention, that being me, Major Burns, and Major Houlihan, that, though there have been many advances made to advance this camp’s military standing, it is necessary to warn you in advance that—”

Radar tore out the piece of paper and handed it to Frank to double-check. “Will that be all, sir?”

“What? But I hardly…” Frank’s eyes scanned the page. “Well, this is—”

“Excellent. I’ll send that off as soon as possible, sir.” 

Radar took the paper back just as Frank was gathering the indignation necessary to ream the corporal out. If Radar was being unnecessarily fresh with him, well, one tended to get impatient with a movie after having rewatched it enough times to learn the dialogue. Besides, Trapper was going to get slapped by a married nurse in a minute and Radar figured it might be nice to bring him an ice pack.

The day wore on only slightly faster than a herd of turtles. He’d stopped receiving gratitude for his help right around the time Nurse Fraser connected the dots about what Hawkeye had joked about earlier with Radar bringing her a necklace she’d lost yesterday. Word about his overactive sixth sense spread fast. 

It was one of those pretty nights where the sky was purple and empty. When he spent too much time cooped up inside he forgot how big the sky was; it wasn’t another roof over his head but an endless expanse thousands and thousands of feet above him, fresh and intangible. He’d once been told that looking up at the sky was really looking down into space, and that only gravity moored him to the ground. On nights like this he could feel the truth of it, face tilted up to the heavens and eyes blown wide.

He realized he was tilting his head slowly from side to side like a satellite dish. After shaking his head to snap himself out of it, Radar adjusted his earmuffs and glasses. Then winced because the sudden motion had added to the pain between his ears. 

Though Frank had been going for a complete transformation of the camp, complete with everybody in uniforms and spick-and-span quarters, the sad reality of the matter was that it looked exactly the same as Henry had left it. Radar missed him. Sure, his Jeep was due to return any second now, but Radar missed him anyway. Whenever Henry went off to give a lecture or take some R&R, Radar felt like he was slowly slipping off the face of the planet. Like he was standing in the middle of the wide open plains unsure where home was.

A nurse and an enlisted man, the former apparently taking her ten-minute break from the operating room, passed him hand-in-hand. When they met his eyes, they hastily separated and hurried away. Maybe something on his face gave away that he could hear the lusty things floating around in both of their heads. Radar supposed if he were in the same room with Henry and a mind reader he’d probably run off too. Sometimes the knowledge that people had an image of him in their heads he had no control over, that they updated every time he spoke, made him want to hurl. 

Henry’s Jeep pulled in exactly when Radar thought it would. It had barely slowed to a stop before Radar was pulling the colonel’s luggage out of the backseat.

“Did you have a good time, sir?” he said.

“A good time?” said Henry. “It was perfect. Especially with that discount you gave me to the geisha house. I could kiss you.”

Not gonna acknowledge that. “That’s great, because they need you in the operating room. A couple wounded arrived an hour ago.”

“Oh, damn. Radar—”

“I know, sir.” He yawned. “Just go scrub up.”

Henry hurried off to pre-op, and Radar dragged his suitcase back to his tent. With only a few minutes to spare, he took a quick look through the suitcase. Henry always brought the same stuff to and from Tokyo: a change of clothes, his wallet, a Swiss Army knife that was too dull to cut paper much less a mugger or a rogue masseuse, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and some new trinket from the city. This time it was a miniature sewing kit. Radar thought of the doll on Henry’s desk and giggled huffed out a soft laugh.

So he found the guy charming. Sue him. 

The next day Radar went out searching for the woman who had given Henry the doll. After giving him a strange look (which he was used to), she recommended that he straighten or replace the spring to which the doll’s head was attached. Out of gratitude, he told her that the last soldier to pass through had buried a beer bottle stuffed with cash by a nearby clothesline, which earned him an even stranger look.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been glared at that day. When he’d gotten breakfast in the mess tent, he could feel people’s eyes on him. Some of them tried to suppress their thoughts with limited success. A few superstitious personnel up and left. Radar wanted to tell them he wasn’t all that interested in what they were thinking about this early in the morning— most of it was banal complaints about the quality of the food or their sleep or whatever— but he couldn’t find the words. It would definitively make him an object of suspicion if he acknowledged that the rumor was true. Right now he could at least pretend that he couldn’t hear Lieutenant Jenson wondering whether Radar knew if he was thinking about Nurse Lee’s naked chest.

The harder a person tried not to think of something, the more they actually thought about it. Tell a person not to picture, say, a cow under any circumstances, and chances were they would instantly picture a cow. (You probably did, just now.) Ergo, if an entire camp was trying not to think of anything private…

Radar left the tent with his tray halfway through breakfast. At least he couldn’t hear what his pets were thinking. He gave them bits of lettuce and fed them powdered milk, cooing at a shy rabbit he’d found a week prior. Her little leg was all twisted from some kind of accident. Radar had tried to bandage it but there wasn’t much he could do for her.

He walked into post-op just as Henry was wondering where he was.

“Here’s the forms for the day, sir,” Radar said. “Oh, and there’s a message from General Clayton’s secretary in there.”

“General Clayton?” said Henry. He took the clipboard from Radar. “What does he want with me?”

“Major Burns sent him a letter. Or, well, a list of complaints. His secretary wants you to sign that you’ll refrain from letting Major Burns ever contact him again.”

“Oh. Well, cheers.” Henry signed the forms on the clipboard. “Hey, what’s with the earmuffs?”

“Just a little hearing sensitivity.” 

Trapper passed by, wondering what to give his wife for their anniversary. Radar suggested he order a catalog and Trapper suggested he stop being a little fink. 

Can he really read minds? Henry thought.

“No,” said Radar.

“No to what?” said Henry.

“If I can really… uh, nothing. I think I know what’s wrong with your doll, sir.”

So they ended up in the colonel’s office, Henry trying to loop a thread through the eye of a needle and Radar taking a pair of pliers to the little doll. It made him smile to himself. Any other guy in this unit would have shoved it deep under a pile of clothes or under their bunk, pretended it was ludicrous they’d ever handled toys other than G.I Joes and miniature racecars. Or they would have covered up for being embarrassed by making fun of themselves for having it before anyone else could.

Henry put it on his desk because he honestly liked it. He did everything that way: open, earnest, dependable. Even when he was fooling around with that girl from Tokyo— she wasn’t that young, really, she’d been a year older than Radar— he really thought he was in love. If Radar hadn’t disabused him of the notion by putting him on the phone with his wife, he might have written that letter and gotten himself into a messy situation.

Radar admired the fact that Hawkeye and Trapper always knew what to say and what to do, that they pulled off ridiculous stunts and just barely managed to avoid getting punished. When Frank found a mouse under his bed, recognized it as one of Radar’s pets, and threatened to release all of Radar’s pets because he didn’t know how to keep an eye on them, Hawkeye and Trapper had lied for Radar and said they put it there. They came up with a story and stuck to it. Smooth as butter.

But admiration didn’t mean love. Radar loved that Henry fumbled through all of his interactions with higher authorities, that he repeated and restated his point multiple times when he was frustrated, that he didn’t know how to discipline his troops. That he was honest when he needed help. Of course Radar was always looking out for him; Korea was dangerous and people were confusing and Henry was just doing his best.

“I think it’s fixed,” Radar said. He put the head back on the doll, wishing his own head were detachable. It was still throbbing with pain. “Do you need anything else, sir?”

“Nah.”

Radar stayed. Henry thought about dismissing him, but they both knew Henry just wanted him to stay.

“Can you really,” Henry started.

“Yes,” said Radar. “But I’m not doing it on purpose, sir.”

“Huh. Hear anything interesting?”

Radar shrugged. He poked the doll’s head, watching it bobble, then handed it to Henry. “I’m not gonna hold anything you think against you or nothing, sir. I mean, that’s what some of the guys think I’m doing. But I’m not.”

“I would think you’d like being able to read minds.”

In any other case, Radar would have agreed. He’d been losing himself in streams of information since the first time he’d eavesdropped on his Ma and Uncle Ed arguing about his daddy’s will. But his head was killing him, nobody wanted to sit with him, and whenever he took the earmuffs off to give his sore ears a break he had to endure the amplified sounds of the camp.

“What did you do in Tokyo, sir?” he said.

“A little of this,” said Henry. “A little of that.”

“Did you go to that restaurant next to the pawn shop? The Outer Market?”

As expected, Henry immediately launched into the same story he’d told a hundred times before about the restaurant. Seven months ago he’d choked on a piece of sushi and a Japanese man gave him the Heimlich maneuver, possibly saving his life. Each time the story got more and more exaggerated. Radar just stared at him, watching him use the same hand motions, the same widening and narrowing of his eyes, the same pauses for tension. 

Old reliable Henry. He’d probably tell that story over the dinner table if he ever met Radar’s Ma and Uncle Ed. Radar’s heart fluttered at the thought.

The story reached its conclusion. Henry cracked the same joke he made every time and Radar smiled. 

“Guess we better return to the outside world, huh?” Henry said.

“Yes, sir,” said Radar.

Henry tossed back the last few drops of gin in his glass. He went ahead of Radar to hold open the door for him. Just as Radar was passing him, he heard, If I had my way, we could wait out the rest of the war in my tent.

Radar paused.

“Er,” said Henry.

“That’s alright, sir,” Radar said. “Sometimes people think things they don’t mean.”

He passed his desk, picking up his keyring as he went, and made it out of the office before he smiled to himself. Sure, everyone had occasional thoughts from sources they couldn’t identify, but Radar knew what was really going on in Henry’s head. What kind of clerk would he be if he didn’t?

The fact of the matter was that if he acknowledged it out loud, that he knew Henry was sweet on him and moreover that he was sweet on Henry too, it was going to be on his terms. He was going to plan it and carry it out. Fate had handed him a pretty good opportunity, sure, but it wasn’t the one he wanted. Henry still had residual doubts about Radar being a kid and not having a lot of experience. 

And if he was honest, Radar wasn’t ready to figure things out with him yet. Trailing after each other and playing the staring game was a lot easier than saying to Henry’s face what he really wanted. 

Radar didn’t have experience with girls, much less with men. But he did have almost two years of watching and longing under his belt. They were more equal than Henry thought.

He’d pocketed the keyring because Kellye was about to get stuck in the supply tent. When he unlocked the door from the outside two minutes later, she stammered out an acknowledgement and fled before Radar could get a word out. Skittish and afraid. She always danced with him at the Officer’s Club, though, her leading and Radar happily following along. He furrowed his brow. What did she have to worry about? Sure, her eyes lingered on the ladies every now and then, but it wasn’t like that kind of attraction was all that uncommon in their camp. Sometimes Radar figured the army had sent their biggest kooks here to avoid their craziness spreading to the rest of the world.

He’d last written his Ma just a week ago. Usually he spaced his letters farther apart on account of he wanted to give her time to think and answer, but now he felt a sudden pang for home. Everybody in Ottumwa looked the same with their dirty hands and brimmed hats to keep out the sun; and talked the same by being real friendly to everyone and knocking off the “g” at the end of “ing” words; and did their best to ignore that there was anything different about Radar. It had been like that ever since he was a kid. Any time one of the other kids asked why he was so weird in front of their parents, they got a cuff to the back of the head and a scolding for being nosy.

It didn’t stop them from leaving him out at school, though. There weren’t choppers for him to warn them about, only thoughts they wanted to keep hidden and sentences they would have preferred to finish themselves. Radar kept it to himself the best he could. He even locked it out of his own head. Tried to be less of an observer and more of a participant, making friends and asking girls out to get sodas together and helping out around town.

But nobody knew quite what to say when he’d turn his face to the sky and announce an incoming storm. 

Radar brought Father Mulcahy a fancy bible he’d ordered, then repainted the Officer’s Club sign, onto which Frank had made him add “No Enlisted Men Allowed” the day prior. That man was two poppy seeds short of a hamburger. He got a painkiller from Sergeant Glassberg, who ran the pharmacy. Then he went around camp hollering that a fresh batch of wounded were coming in five minutes.

There were a fair amount of wounded, enough that he knew the surgeons were going to be exhausted when the work was finally done in two days. When he stepped onto the bus, filled to the brim with bloody, desperate men, their thoughts swarmed him and left him nauseous. He tried to tell one of the nurses that one of the men had an injury somewhere she hadn’t yet checked and she snapped at him before confirming that he was right.

He brought in a tray of coffees for the surgeons and nurses staying in the hospital overnight. Henry waved him off with tired eyes; Frank found his voice.

“Get away, O’Reilly,” he said. “I don’t need you mucking up my concentration with one of your little predictions.”

“Aw, lay off,” said Henry.

“Colonel, haven’t you noticed that something bad happens every time O’Reilly’s around?”

“Correlation doesn’t equal causation,” said Hawkeye.

“I dunno, Hawk,” said Trapper. “Sometimes the sight of Frank’s ugly mug causes me to want to rearrange his face. You think that’s correlated with why it’s so ugly?”

“Could be.”

But they were the only ones to say anything. Radar supposed everyone else was thinking along the same lines of Frank. If he was always showing up to help right when things went wrong, someone paranoid might conclude he was a harbinger of those things. Ma would have told Radar to chin up: conditions were dismal around here, after all, and he couldn’t blame anybody for assuming the worst. The only thing you can change is yourself.

She’d raised him to be kind and empathetic. Right now, though, he didn’t feel so charitable.

The operating room was filled with wounded for just over two days, as Radar had predicted. Afterward, Henry headed off to get lunch and take a nap— which weren’t necessarily separate actions— while Hawkeye and Trapper retired to the Swamp for drinks. Radar tried playing basketball with the other enlisted men, but their suspicion and his foreknowledge interfered with the game. After one of the guys broke and asked if he was only there to shift through their thoughts and gather information about them, Radar slunk off with a red face.

He found himself knocking on the door to the Swamp. Maybe Hawkeye and Trapper would have something useful to say.

“Come in,” said Hawkeye, after a few moments.

Radar shut the door behind him and adjusted his hat. The two of them were in the middle of a drinking game they’d made up last month— some unholy combination of checkers, Go Fish, and four square. 

“Here to read our palms?” said Trapper. “We’ve got a kettle and a teabag if you’re interested in the leaves.”

“Oh, I’m not much of a tea person,” said Radar. “Um, you guys remember what Major Burns said in surgery? That I shouldn’t be around people? And you said that thing about his face?”

“It’s like I was there,” Hawkeye said.

“Right. I think— I think the whole camp’s thinking that.”

Trapper slid two cards out from under a checker and stood them up against each other. “Well, you’d know, wouldn’t ya? You can read their thoughts.”

“I mean they’re acting like I’m a threat. But I’m not doing anything on purpose, you know?”

“Check,” said Hawkeye, as if Radar hadn’t spoken. “Take a shot, Trap.”

Radar looked at the floor. Was he interrupting? But they didn’t seem busy. If it were a bad time, they would have told him to hit the road. All he could hear in their thoughts were their plans for their next moves in the game, which was strange because usually they were more responsive.

He tried again. “You guys don’t think it’s too much of a risk to have me around, right?”

“Why would we be scared of a pipsqueak?” said Hawkeye.

Trapper just nodded. 

He always had something to say. Always had something to add onto Hawkeye’s comment. The only reason he wasn’t making a jab at Radar’s height right now was because he was laser-focused on the game, but everyone knew they only played those games to make their drinking more interesting, so why—

Then it hit him. Their words were unhelpful, their thoughts were honed in on the game, and their faces were turned away from him because they were hiding . Neither of them had said one earnest thing to his face since his migraine.

“You do think it’s a risk,” Radar said. His heart sank.

Radar’s name slipped into Hawkeye’s head, but it was suppressed too quickly for Radar to pick up the full thought. 

Trapper forced a chuckle. He met Hawkeye’s eyes for a moment before they returned to staring at the board. For Pete’s sake, he hadn’t even taken the shot Hawkeye had told him to. They were so distracted trying to kid around and pretend everything was normal, to keep Radar away from their private thoughts without outright telling him to get out, that they couldn’t even meet his eyes.

It wasn’t their fault. They probably had important things on their minds, secrets that they couldn’t let even Radar hear. And yet it still hurt.

“Boy,” Radar said, giving them one last glare before he left the tent. He wished he hadn’t heard a relieved sigh as the door shut.

It was especially painful because usually neither of them hid anything. They flirted brazenly with the nurses, told people off when they’d done wrong, and (Hawkeye especially) criticized the war right in front of colonels and generals. The few times they didn’t want to be honest about what was happening in their head— like when a nurse asked Hawkeye to get serious in their relationship or when Trapper came across shrapnel-torn kids younger than his own— they covered it up as quickly as they could, usually by kidding around. Radar understood that. 

Yet they couldn’t even be honest about the fact they felt vulnerable with him around. He didn’t blame them for being paranoid, sure, but to just pretend nothing was happening…

With Henry asleep and everyone else acting funny around him, Radar sat himself behind the colonel’s desk and cracked open an old comic book. He’d read this one about a hundred times and would have given it away a long time ago if not for the fact he knew it would come in handy negotiating with Sparky one day. In a month, actually. They were going to have a going away party for Nurse Grayson and her favorite dessert was neapolitan ice cream. 

Gosh, his head hurt. Radar dropped his head against the back of Henry’s chair a little harder than he’d meant to. The collision stopped the throbbing for a few seconds before it started up again.

Radar closed his eyes. His sleep had been restless ever since the blow he’d taken to the head, foreign words and phrases floating through his head and keeping him awake. Every now and then he thought about writing his predictions down like Frank had suggested back when he thought he might be able to make some money off Radar, but it didn’t feel right. It was like those thought-provokers about getting three wishes from a genie: everyone said they’d wish for world peace or infinite wishes or billions of dollars, but who would actually have the courage to interfere in God’s plan like that? Who would want to deal with the ramifications of a wish gone wrong? Radar certainly wouldn’t. He let each glimpse of the future slip away like water through splayed fingers.

Outside the window, the sky slowly darkened. Radar rested his head on his folded arms and tried to doze off. Every time he came close to sleep, some new thought or sound disturbed him. Stuff about Reagans and full moons and movies and Christmas parties five years off and public bus schedules in places he’d never been. Yesterday a nurse with the first name Janet dropped a tray of surgical instruments in the operating room and he spent the rest of the afternoon humming a show tune with her name in it.

“Radar?” said Henry. “Oh, sorry, didn’t know you were busy.”

The doors shut. Radar opened one eye. Three seconds later Henry remembered it was his own office and opened the doors again.

“You’ve got a bed out there, you know,” Henry said. 

“I’ve just got a couple forms for you to sign,” Radar said. He groped around on the desk for the copies of the supply room requisitions he’d brought in and retrieved a pen. “Sleep well, sir?”

“Fine. Uh, I gotta call General Clayton in a few, so—”

“You’ve got time. He’s gonna be a half hour late to the phone.”

“Right.”

“Did you want to play golf, sir?”

“Nah. I’m probably gonna wet my whistle at the Officer’s Club.” Henry signed the forms Radar had given him, then watched Radar take off his glasses and rub his eyes. “Having trouble sleeping?”

“A little.” Radar put his glasses back on.

“Is it your headache? Hey, when I was younger, my mom used to—”

“Oh, I don’t think that would help. I just need a little white noise, I think.” He had an idea. “Um, sir?”

“Yeah?”

Radar took the mystery novel Henry had ordered out of his desk. “Would you, uh, read a little bit of this? Not out loud or anything. Just until I doze off.”

“You mean you want me to read it in my head?” said Henry.

Radar nodded. Thoughts were quieter than spoken words, in every sense. Even with earmuffs on, someone talking out loud to him while he laid in bed would be too noisy to lull him to sleep. But the familiarity of Henry’s stream of consciousness might just do the trick.

Henry sighed. “Look, Radar, I’ve been hankering for a drink since I got out of OR, and…”

“Please? It won’t take too long.”

A couple of seconds passed. Henry rubbed the bridge of his nose, then took the book off the desk. He followed Radar out of the office, dragging a chair with him, and stood by as Radar took off his boots and glasses and got into bed. Then Henry sat down and opened the book to the bookmarked page. He started to read:

Rogers cleared his throat and passed his tongue once more over his dry lips. There was a mention, sir, of me and Mrs Rogers. And of Miss Brady… (Did I eat dinner? Focus.) There isn’t a word of truth in it, sir. My wife and I were with Miss Brady till she died. She was always in poor health, sir, always from the time we came to her. There was a storm, sir, that night – the night she was taken bad. The telephone was out of order. We couldn’t get the doctor to her. I went for him, sir, on foot. But he got there too late… (Boy, this book is a drag.) We’d done everything possible for her, sir. Devoted to her, we were. Anyone will tell you the same. There was never a word said against us… (I wonder if that Anthony kid will be the first to die, he’s a complete jerk…)

When Radar woke up the next morning, there were two painkillers waiting for him on his desk, for which he was grateful. His headache had gotten worse during the night, which was at odds with how deeply he’d slept. He knew Henry had stayed by his side longer than ten minutes.

Outside the hospital, dark clouds gathered overhead. Tents cast long shadows and, in the distance, an overturned trash can spilled its contents onto the dry ground. It was easy to believe the sullen stillness of the early morning would never end, that the rest of the world would remain asleep forever. 

Yet there was still work to do even at this hour. Radar pinned a new notice to the bulletin board announcing an upcoming fundraiser for the orphanage, helped clean up around the mess tent (apparently the officers had taken it upon themselves to throw an impromptu party sometime after midnight, undoubtedly being a little under the influence), and woke the first batch of nurses for a shift in post-op. Afterwards, he got some greens from the mess tent and went out to feed his pets.

“Hey, girl,” he said to Peaches the rabbit. He lifted her out of her cage and smiled as she ate a piece of lettuce out of his hand. “Kind of a dreary morning, huh?”

Did animals get headaches? They got brain freeze, sure— he’d once fed his cat Tibbles a spoonful of ice cream and he’d yowled at the top of his lungs. Radar supposed he wouldn’t really know on account of animals weren’t too good at communicating what exactly was bothering them. And, though he was sure animals could think, he couldn’t read their minds. The silence on that end was a relief.

If they could get headaches, he hoped they’d never experienced pain like this. It was like the barrier between his brain and the rest of the world, the boundary between what he could learn from his senses and the total sum of knowledge out there, was crumbling with each throb of his temples. Radar hurriedly put Peaches back in her cage. She squeaked at him.

A siren blared in the back of his head— a tornado, gotta tell Ma, get on the tractor— and he sank to the ground. Another migraine. He’d taken the painkillers a half hour ago, but he had the feeling that they didn’t have much effect on psychic headaches.

He was Radar in Korea. He was Walter in Ottumwa. He was pulling over on the side of the road to listen to an important broadcast, he was hiding under a colonel’s desk because shells were dropping all around them, he was dancing with someone much taller than him to a new record. The sun above him was too bright— the only thing stopping it from being excruciating were the clouds above absorbing some of its light. All Radar could do was close his eyes and rest his forehead against the wire mesh.

To avoid crying out, he dug his fingers into the cool dirt and tried to steady himself. By now the rest of the camp was awake, going about their days a little distance off. It was like his earmuffs weren’t even there. If he took them off, he’d probably go deaf.

Some time passed in that fashion, unable to even think about getting up, when someone called his name. He didn’t register who it was until Henry was hauling him to his feet and snapping his fingers in front of Radar’s half-lidded eyes. If it weren’t for the unnaturally clear sound of each snap, he might not have even known what was happening.

“Migraine,” Radar said. He needed a dark place to curl up and ride out the storm. “1969, Camille, stay away from the windows.”

“What,” Henry started, then lowered his voice when Radar winced. “What did you do last time?”

“Huh?”

“Pierce told me this happened when I was away.”

Radar was torn between forgiveness, because clearly Hawkeye was concerned even if he wouldn’t face Radar right now, and agitation: Henry didn’t need to be getting worried about him. There were plenty of feelings Radar hoped to inspire in him, some of which were less innocent than others, but pity wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t a kid who needed to be taken care of. What if Henry took this whole thing as a sign that Radar couldn’t look after himself?

But this headache was melting his pride like the sun on an ice cream cone. He fumbled for the words necessary to ask for water and instead muttered something about Daniel Ellsburg, whom he didn’t know and which was completely unhelpful. It was like new connections in his head, between people and events and timelines, were forming and dying so fast he kept getting on the  wrong line.

On his second try, Radar managed to get out the words “water” and “supply”. Henry patted him on the shoulder and went off to get some water, while Radar dragged himself over to the supply tent. The full shelves cast a shadow that he sat under, back against the wall and eyes brimming. Normally he had a pretty good tolerance for discomfort on account of working his butt off on the farm, but this was a new kind of agony. Just as bad as the last migraine and just as difficult to bear. 

When the door opened and shut quietly, Radar stared at a cobweb in the corner opposite him and traced its pattern with his eyes to beat back the tears. Henry handed him a glass of water, of which he drank half while ignoring his nausea. He’d be worse off if he were dehydrated.

Even if Henry’s thoughts weren’t echoing loud and clear in Radar’s head, he’d know the man was nervous from all his hand-wringing. 

“You don’t care if I hide out here for a few, do you?” said Henry. He looked away. “You know, just because, uh…”

Frank, thought Radar, always ready to supply him with a lie. “Chain of fools.”

It was nonsense, but Henry responded anyway. “Like Frank and Margaret?”

Radar smiled. Then a wave of pain wiped the smile off his face. Henry leaned against the wall and watched the door, ready to tell any interlopers to buzz off. Assertive in the way he only got when Klinger was blocking his way to the latrine in the middle of the night or when someone important was in danger. For about ten seconds, Radar circled back to his scheme to get the two of them some alone time, where they didn’t have to worry about the war bursting in and cutting off any confessions. 

Not even his favorite daydream could distract him for long, though. With a low whine, he dropped his head back against the wall. The impact temporarily dammed the flow of information. He gave it a couple more strong thuds before the back of his head met something soft.

“Cut that out,” Henry said, his palm cradling Radar’s head. “That’s not gonna help you any.” He paused, then started speaking louder and louder. “Wait a minute. Hey, I’ve got an idea! Radar, have you tried—”

Radar groaned and put his hands over his earmuffs over his ears. He knew Henry was doing what he could to be quiet, but the combination of his voice and his thoughts was a disorienting cacophony.

“Sorry,” Henry muttered. 

He stood beside Radar’s huddled form for some time, keeping his hand behind Radar’s head, before he whispered something about an important phone call with HQ and had to leave. The moment he was gone, Radar mourned the loss of his presence, and not just because his stream of consciousness had helped distract Radar from the craziness in his own head.

With nothing to do but ride it out, he laid on the floor and stared at the opposite wall. A spider flexed its skinny legs and crawled down its web. He made a mental note to check the older supplies for dust and cobwebs, but a wave of pain quickly erased the thought, leaving him frustrated and helpless. A tornado was wreaking havoc across the farmland of his mind and all he could do was clench his jaw. 

He’d never liked being around other people when he was sick and miserable. Now that self-imposed solitude was tinged with spite. People liked that he had ears all over the camp; they revelled in the gossip he brought them and entrusted him to spread the word when they needed something. He could get anything for anyone. That made him reliable. But when he needed their trust more than ever, they pretended he didn’t even exist.

It got him thinking. Well, in the few lucid moments he had. How long did he have to endure this? Not just the headaches. The knowledge that he’d probably never look at some of his friends the same ever again was just as bad as the physical pain, and the only thing worse than the few secrets he’d learned by reading people’s minds was what they assumed he was going to do with that information. 

Sure, he’d shared more than a couple of secrets in his time, but not when they really needed to be kept. Part of knowing what made good gossip was knowing what would happen if that gossip got out, and he’d never tried to get anybody in trouble. He told Hawkeye and Trapper when Henry had done something harebrained they needed to yell at him for, he shared with Klinger compliments he’d overheard when Klinger was feeling self-conscious about a new outfit, and he carried messages between nurses and doctors too nervous to approach each other. Radar only creeped when he needed to creep. 

(And when Henry was concerned. But that was a given.)

If he never went back to normal, what would happen to him? Who would feel safe around him and who would freeze him out forever? Heck, would he have deja vu the rest of his life? Always five seconds out of sync with what was really going on, eyes glazed over and head swiveling, listening for the next incident?

Radar’s hands were trembling. As a matter of fact, so was the rest of him. Sometimes he felt like his body was a traitor, his blushing face and squeaky voice that got higher instead of lower when he was angry and shorter-than-average height giving away what he wanted to lock up forever. Did not having control over his body mean it was impossible to judge him because of it, or did it mean it could be trusted to disclose things he didn’t even know he was hiding?

The Bible said God had a reason for everything, especially suffering. But it was hard to take comfort in an assurance so elevated when he was face-down in the dirt.

This time he didn’t fall asleep. It was several hours until he felt steady enough to get up and deal with the outside world. When he stepped out of the supply tent, the clouds had receded and the sun was smack-dab in the middle of the sky. Radar wished he could go back to bed.

There was an “Out of Order” sign out in front of the supply tent. It made him smile. He’d heard Hawkeye and Trapper come around sometime in the first two hours but he’d assumed they’d just passed by. Maybe the three of them would be alright after all.

He pushed open the doors to the hospital. Henry was having a meeting in his office, but Radar was too down in the dumps to take off his earmuffs and listen, which was probably the equivalent of starving oneself out of apathy in normal people. He started gathering documents for the monthly report. Requisition orders, patient vitals and reports, scans and statistics…

Then Henry needed him, so Radar walked into his office with a “yes, sir”.

“Should I go get him?” Henry said. He realized Radar was already there. “Dammit, Radar, can’t you… uh, nevermind.”

“When did you emerge from your hidey-hole?” said Trapper. He and Hawkeye sat on the edge of Henry’s desk, while Frank and Margaret had taken the chairs. 

“Ten minutes ago,” said Radar. “Why?”

“We think we’ve got a solution to your little problem, Radar,” said Hawkeye.

“I came up with it,” Henry said proudly.

“And we should expect chilly temperatures soon, because Henry Blake having a good idea is a sign that Hell has truly and fully frozen over.”

Henry shrugged. “It happens every now and again.”

“By little problem,” said Radar, “you mean the, um, the thing with my head being in overdrive?”

“Unless you’ve got another little problem we need to know about,” said Trapper.

“Maybe he’s talking about the problem of him being so little,” said Hawkeye. “In which case, I don’t think we can do anything about that.” Before Radar could chew him out, he continued: “We’re thinking we need to bring this full circle.”

“This whole thing started with you getting knocked on the head,” said Trapper. 

“More specifically, Margaret hitting you with the door.”

“That’s Major Houlihan to you, Pierce,” said Frank.

“I’d staple your lips shut if you had them.”

“I do too!”

“Frank, it would be easier for a toddler to read Crime and Punishment than for me to read your lips.”

“You think you’re so smart—”

“For the love of God,” said Margaret, picking up Henry’s half-full glass of bourbon. “O’Reilly, I’m going to hit you with the door again to see if that brings you back to normal.”

“Oh,” said Radar.

“I love a direct woman,” said Trapper. He batted his eyelashes at Margaret, who downed the rest of the glass.

Radar met Henry’s eyes. Though people rarely remarked on it, Henry’s eyes were an excellent shade of blue. Like the sea. The thought stirred something in the back of Radar’s head, but it was shaped like grief and he didn’t want to touch it.

“Well?” Henry said. “Willing to give it a shot?”

Radar glanced around the room. The rational thing to do, probably, would be to get a full check-up, or to take some R&R, or even head over to Seoul to see a head doctor. But doing the rational thing didn’t work very well here at the 4077th. The paperwork was a maze, of course, and people’s heads were so fried from lack of sleep and bad food and whatnot that it was very easy for two people to have a conversation without either actually participating. One might ask “how are you” and the other would say “good, how are you”, and the other would automatically say “good, how are you”, and the other would automatically say “good, how are you”, and the other would automatically say…

It thus figured that to try an irrational solution might yield better results than a rational solution. And, well, he didn’t want to let anyone down.

“Sure,” said Radar. 

Margaret and the others started chatting, but Radar was still paying attention to Henry. Like his inability to get control over the camp in preparation for visitors, Henry was struggling to get a hold of his thoughts. Apparently he was under the impression that if Radar could hear some of the thoughts he had about him, things would never be the same. He also thought about that one time he’d drunkenly pulled Radar into bed with him and fell asleep tangled up with him about five times a day. Matter of fact, he was thinking about it right now and bringing a hand up to his face out of nervousness.

Radar found it funny. Henry had done more inappropriate things when he was a lot drunker— it was just that he usually didn’t remember them, on account of even when he wasn’t drunk his memory was pretty cruddy. He’d become so reliant on Radar to remember what he needed to do on a day-to-day basis that sometimes he just wrote important things down on sticky notes and stuck them on the inside of Radar’s jacket. Probably because they saw each other so often that it was more reliable than leaving reminders on his own desk.

An indignant squawk from Frank, repeated seconds later in a mocking way by Hawkeye and Trapper, shook Radar out of his head. Correction: out of Henry’s head. He spent enough time in there, anyway.

Margaret left the office and Radar stood beside the doors. They figured Radar would flinch if he saw her coming, so he faced his desk and tried to ignore the alarm blaring in the back of his head. Hawkeye had taken him aside a minute ago and whispered that it would be hilarious if he faked having amnesia after the door hit him, but Radar had refused. 

She was striding up now. He forced himself to go slack, shoulders dropping from his ears. If she hit him with the door and nothing changed, well, at least they had given it a try.

Impact in 3—

2—

1—

“Did I get him?”

“Get him? You might have killed him.”

“Some nurse you are, Hot Lips.”

“That’s obscene, McIntyre!”

“Hey, you cracked his glasses.”

“Better his glasses than his head, Henry.”

“Margaret, if you ever marry a wealthy senior citizen and ‘accidentally’ bonk him over the head like this, I’ll testify against you in court.”

“Don’t speculate on my love life, Pierce.”

“Many a nurse has asked me to—”

“He’s coming round. Who wants to move him into his cot and pretend he’s been in a coma for the past five years?”

“I need a drink.”

Someone helped him sit up against the wall. They took the glasses off his face, slid his earmuffs down around his neck, and waved a hand in front of his face. It took Radar a few seconds to realize it was Hawkeye.

“Anyone in there?” Hawkeye said. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

This time, Radar remembered almost immediately why he was on the floor. “Uh, three.”

“Who’s the president?”

“Harry Truman.”

“What day of the week is it?”

“Monday.”

“And what am I thinking right now?”

Radar stared at him. In his periphery, he knew Trapper, Frank, Margaret, and Henry were watching. The only pain in his head was where he’d been hit; Henry’s breathing was quiet and far off. Hawkeye’s questions had given him no deja vu.

“I dunno,” Radar said.

Hawkeye stuck his hand out to help Radar up, and the unexpected motion— golly, the notion of anything unexpected— made him flinch. He murmured something about not having seen it coming and let Hawkeye pull him to his feet.

“You think it worked?” said Radar.

“If you don’t know what we think,” said Trapper, “then it must have, right?”

Radar smiled. He put his glasses back on.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” said Frank. “Do you plan to just stand around here doing nothing all day?”

“Much like you,” said Hawkeye.

“I know the games you enlisted men like to play. You get a little headache and spend a week ‘recuperating’. It’s just another form of goldbricking, if you ask me.”

“Nobody did,” said Trapper.

But Frank was steadfast. “You’re back to normal, so get back to work, buster. Did you hear me?”

“No,” Radar admitted. “I was distracted.”

“By what?”

“Um, I was trying to remember whether it’s cats or spiders you’re real scared of.”

“Ha! It’s both, you little non-com.”

Hawkeye’s face lit up with glee. “Oh, Frank, you should have told us.”

Frank realized that he had divulged some information that he probably shouldn’t have. Judging by the look on Margaret’s face, so did she. He excused himself to post-op and, after glancing at Radar, Margaret followed along.

“Guys,” said Henry. “You’re not gonna torment him over that, are you?”

“Do you really want to know?” said Hawkeye.

Radar knew what Henry would say.

“No,” Henry said, with a sigh.

Hawkeye and Trapper made Radar do a quick balance test to make sure he hadn’t concussed himself or anything. It became evident that his symptoms the last time he hit his head hadn’t been the product of a mild concussion but of his radar getting knocked askew, which explained how quickly he’d been on his feet afterwards. 

Then he announced that choppers were coming. Hawkeye headed out the door, accompanied by Trapper after he told Margaret and Frank to stop canoodling behind the curtain. They emerged with flushed faces. Radar tried to follow but Henry grabbed him by the back of the collar.

“Sit it out,” he said. “At least for an hour.”

“I’m fine,” said Radar. 

Henry took out his pen light and flickered it in front of Radar’s eyes. Suddenly he was too dizzy to stand. Radar dropped onto his cot.

“That’s what I thought,” Henry said. “Join the party in an hour. We’ve got it covered.”

He clapped Radar on the shoulder, then headed out the door. Radar told himself firmly that he was not going to fall asleep, not while there were incoming wounded and everybody was gone and it was blessedly quiet for the first time in ages. Ten seconds later he dozed off.

Behind him, glasses clinked together and Kellye laughed. The door opened, revealing a sliver of the night sky. Henry entered the officer’s club. Radar quietly asked the bartender for a beer and waited for Henry to pull up a stool next to him. It had been a couple of days since his head went back to normal, and though he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t use anyone’s thoughts against them, tonight he sort of felt like doing something about the stuff Henry had been thinking. That they’d both been thinking, really.

“Hiya, sir,” Radar said. He handed Henry the beer. “How’s that guy in post-op? The one with the, um, the era— the erry—”

“Erythrasma?” said Henry.

“Yeah. What’s that, anyhow?”

“It’s when you get these brown, scaly skin patches in the folds of your skin.”

“Oh.” Way to set an atmosphere, Radar. “Well, is he doin’ alright?”

“Just fine. We’re administering antibiotics.” He downed about half of his drink in one go. Radar watched his throat bob. “Look, I don’t really like talking about the patients. I just wanna get in there, fix ‘em up, and send ‘em on their way.”

Good old Henry. 

“I got something to give you,” said Radar. He pulled two tickets out of his jacket; he’d meant to pretend to rummage around first, to not look so eager, but he’d had a drink or two to ease his nerves and now he was stumbling over the finer points of his plan.

“What is it?” Henry said, taking a ticket from Radar.

“You know how you’re going up to Seoul in a week to give that lecture?”

“I do now.”

“Well, you said they had real impressive firework shows over there. So I figured maybe you’d want to see one with me.”

Radar held up his own ticket.

“You’re inviting yourself to Seoul with me?” Henry said.

“Sure.” It was cute, thought Radar, that Henry was under the impression he could get away from him. Out loud he said, “I heard it’s real, um, romantic.”

In the background, Hawkeye and Trapper were snarking back and forth about who had the right to take home a pretty nurse. If Radar turned to look at them, breaking eye contact with Henry, he’d almost certainly see them looking more at each other than the woman. He hoped she made a break for it before they involved her any further in their business. Real kooks, those guys were.

“Radar,” said Henry. “You don’t really want to—”

“Yes, I do,” said Radar. “And you do too.”

“Look, you can’t just tell me how I feel.”

“Can’t I?”

Henry looked away. “Yeah. Yeah, you probably can.”

He took a sip of his drink. Radar could see the cogs turning in his head. Henry had only ever taken one person out of the camp with him, and that had been Nurse Leslie, whom he’d accidentally abandoned in Tokyo. Surprisingly, she’d put up with him for another couple of months. Almost half a year, actually. Then Leslie had gotten a better prospect elsewhere and left the 4077th permanently, which was a shock to everyone including Radar, who had definitely not interfered in the matter. He hadn’t gotten her the transfer. Nobody could prove that.

Anyway, it was a big deal. A lantern just a few feet away cast up Henry’s face in gentle light.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll see the show. And if anything happens—”

“When,” said Radar.

“What?”

“When it happens.”

He smiled, put Henry’s ticket in Henry’s jacket pocket, and went to change the song on the jukebox. A quarter later, “You Make Me Feel So Young” was playing. A few couples started swaying along to it. Radar slipped out the door as Henry was opening his mouth to say something. Whatever it was, Radar knew what he’d say.