Disclaimer: If they were mine, would I really be writing STORIES about them? Heck no. I’d be making them do it!. BTW: I think I read another War story where Maria's a nurse or something, so I decided to expand on that. Whoever wrote it, I mean no infringement. Nor do I intend infringement on the WB, yadda yadda yadda.

***

They wouldn’t let me fight. My sweet, caring, beautiful boyfriend wouldn’t let me help him. He didn’t want me to get hurt. But I did. Instead of fighting, I worked in the hospital. Everyone thought it wouldn’t scar me as much. It did. Can you imagine, every single day, having to look into the eyes of the dying? I saw people...no, kids, with laser wounds. Their skin charred. I saw them shoot their own feet to get away from the front lines. Kids, blinded by random artillery fire. Kids with shards of metal, rock, even tree embedded in their bodies. And every single day I had to pray that it wasn’t someone I knew.

Max, our fearless leader, was hardly ever in the front lines. But he made sure that they weren’t that bad, that our side had some hope. He only sent volunteers to the front. The problem was, most kids’ parents volunteered them. The adults thought it was a “good fight” and they had no problem sending their sons and daughters into battle. A lot of them didn’t come home. Isabel was the front line. She and my Michael were always there, leading their people. Never asking anyone to do what they themselves wouldn’t do. Isabel was in here four times in what passes for a month here, her wounds too big for her to heal herself. Michael, he was here a lot. I wasn’t allowed to work on him. All I could do is hold his hand when he cried. Soothe him when he shuddered with memories. And not cry when he went back to do it all over again.

Lizzie was safe, at least. She was a strategiser. She and Max looked over land layouts, battle plans, and reinforcement orders to decide what went where. Max wouldn’t let her near the front lines either. She came to see me a few times, when she could. It wasn’t a lot, but it kept me sane. Everyone wondered how I could possibly be so...not sad in the hospital. The way I saw it, these kids had seen so much terror, so much pain and suffering, that they needed a break from it. I was the break. Sure, it was hard to keep happy and optimistic, but when I had to send those kids back into battle, their spirits were lifted. A bit. And not one of them actually saw me cry. That happened at night, in my bunk, between the emergency runs and the bombing raids. See, even though I wasn’t on the front lines, I was close. No one knew how close. But we had occasional...problems. They always went away, though...for a while.

Alex, he was a computer geek. He was in charge of all the technology that we were using in our fight. Tess...was Tess. But better. She was still the annoying, over bearing, pain in the ass she always was, but she was softer, too. You’d look in her eyes, and you’d know she’d seen so many things that people just shouldn’t have had to see. Kyle was right there with her, though. Kyle always struck me as the grounded type, not the belly rolling, flying through the air at MACH 4. Yep, they were pilots. And they were damn good. They had got more POWs out of enemy hands by risking themselves than anyone. Everyone was in charge. Even me. Who’d have thought that I’d be a doctor? Me, Maria DeLuca, in charge of the major medical needs of thousands of people. Scary. But that’s not my story. My story is of how I died.

***

“Doctor?” Private Walter walks into my office with handfuls of paperwork. Gotta love the army. They have paper coming out their asses.

“Yes, private?” I look up from my roster sheet, noting the youngest in-patient we have is sixteen. Sixteen.

“Um, your...uh...Michael was brought in again.” He was flustered. It’s understandable. Michael and I, well, hell. Even I don’t even know what we are. Boyfriend/Girlfriend? Lovers? We know we’re going to be together for as long as we can. Forever, if possible. That’s all that matters. I realize I’ve got a dreamy look on my face and am avoiding Walter.

“When? Is he ok?” I ask, looking up.

“Um, sort of. He’ll be ok, but he’s pretty bad now. I just thought you’d like to know.”

“Thank you, private. Anything else?”

“No, ma’am.” I nod, indicating that Walter is dismissed. I don’t think I could do anything more than that if I tried. My eyes are threatening to spill over. I wipe them hastily, and scoot my chair back. Michael can’t see me crying. No one can. No one will.

***

“Hey, Spaceboy.” I say softly, holding Michael’s hand gingerly. There’s so much blood. His eyelids fluttered open.

“Maria? God, why...here?” He asks groggily.

“Michael, I’m a doctor, remember?” My brow crinkles in confusion. “But...close to...line.” His protest is weak. He’s lost a lot of blood. I look past the curtain shielding his lower body from his sight at the doctor. He smiles at me, and his eyes assure me Michael will be fine.

“Michael, shh. You’re too weak to talk.”

“But, I...”

“What part of shh didn’t you understand?” I smile. “Now go to sleep.” He opens his mouth to argue, but I place my hand over his mouth. “We’ll argue about it later when you can form a coherent sentence, ok?” He rolls his eyes in a typical me-gesture. Michael would be fine. “Sweet dreams, Space boy.”

***

“Doctor DeLuca?” I look up from my daydreaming. Paperwork. Must do paperwork.

“You know, Doug, you can call me Maria.” Sergeant Doug Mathwick is a first month-er. That is to say, he’d only been in M.A.S.H. 4077 for a month. It isn’t really called that. That’s just my name for it. So I don’t go crazy. No one here gets it except Liz and Alex. Anyway, Doug is standing straight at attention, clipboard under his arm. He may be a top-notch surgeon, but in everything else, the guy is a pain-in-the-ass army guy. Rules, schmules. “What is it, Sergeant?”

“There is a patient asking for you. As the procedure states I inform you of any such request, I came immediately from rounds.” Yeah. I haven’t let him near a scalpel yet. He’s pissed. I love it. It’s very hard not to break out laughing at him, in his army greens, walking around in the dirt doing post-op rounds. He wears the friggin’ “dress greens” for rounds. Me, I’m in jeans and a sweatshirt. Shoes if I can get ‘em. But my men get their things before I do, so I currently have three people in line. There’ll be four more by tomorrow. Shoes are overrated anyway. Who needs shoes in an operating room? Not me. Then again, I have a very easy way of running my MASH. I only have one rule: you do your job. If that means you have to run around in a clown suit, so be it. I realize I’ve been keeping dork-boy over there waiting.

“Any patient in particular?”

“A Commander Michael Guerin” I look at him as if he were crazy. Everyone who’s everyone knows who Michael is. He’s Max’s right hand man. And here’s this schmuck who says ‘a Michael Guerin’. Who does he think he is?

“Have you ever heard that name before, Sergeant?”

“No, ma’am.” Then it hits me. Michael isn’t Michael here. Neither’s Max, or Isabel, or Tess. They are Egean, Itam, Roshana, and Kathina, respectively. Damn, I always forget that. I also forget that they give their earth names when they’re in here so they don’t get any special treatment. Damn them and their equal treatment for all. I shake my head, amazed that they could be so...human.

“Thank you, Sergeant.” I bow my head over my paperwork. “I’ll be there in a minute.” I start to scribble my name on a ration order sheet, when I realize he’s still standing there, at attention. I hide my smile.

“Dismissed.” He turns with a click of the heels. Pain in the ass.

***

“Hey there.” I look down into beautiful brown eyes.

“Hey, yourself.” Michael is sitting up in bed, obviously better.

“Nice to see you can form a sentence now.”

He grinned. Yes, Michael grins now. He realized two days after we got here to “save the planet” that life was too short not to enjoy it. Now when he has an emotion, he lets it show. It was funny that first week. I think his smiles scared Liz...

“Maria, why are you so close to the front line?”

“Am I close?” I play dumb. I know we’re close. I’m going deaf from all the bombing.

“Maria.” He looks at me, his you-know-you’re-close look. I swear, that boy has looks for every occasion.

“I know I’m close, but I’m not leaving.”

“Maria...”

“NO, Michael.” He may be Egean to everyone else on this damn planet, but he’s still Michael to me. “I’m not leaving. People are hurt, they need help. I’m going to help them.”

“Maria. You don’t understand. You’re ON the front line. You ARE the front line. Hell, you’re probably standing on the freakin’ other side! You have to move now. Not just you, all of you. Everyone here.”

“Ah, shit.” That’s all I said. That’s all was necessary. I go off to tell people.

***

Well, they were gone. No. I was not with them. Do you want to know why? Because the surgery they did on Michael meant they couldn’t move him for twenty-four hours. Yes, Michael was with me. He didn’t want to be, but he was.

***

“Maria, I need to get up.”

“Michael, do I have to pull rank on you?”

“What do you mean, pull rank on me? I’m higher than you are.”

“No, you’re not. Doctors can make Commanding officers step down. That’s what I’m making you do. Do you want the order, or will you come peacefully?” He grumbles.

“I’ll come peacefully.”

“Good boy.” I go back to my book. I read about a paragraph. And inevitably,

“Maria, we’re not moving.”

“Heh. No, we’re not.” I had hoped this conversation wouldn’t happen. That he would just go to sleep like a good little alien and not notice where we were until after he woke up again. Of course, he is Michael. He has to be difficult.

“Why are we still here?” Here being in a small tent, where the hospital used to be. Being bombarded, might I ad, by dust every time a bomb went off.

“I can’t move you.”

“WHY DIDN’T YOU GET SOMEONE TO MOVE ME FOR YOU???” He roars. I shake my head.

“No one could move you, Michael. If we had moved you, you’d have died.”

“WHAT?”

“Why do you think you’re strapped to the bed?” He looks like a mental patient, crazed eyes and everything. At least his hair’s normal...well, normal for Michael, anyway.

“I, but, you...” I raise my eyebrows.

“You know, your voice box is not impaired. You can still talk.” He glares at me.

“Maria, I know I can still talk, but why were you...Maria?”

I sit straight up. It feels like a fly had just decided that, instead of going around me today, he was going to go through me. Right through my navel, if you want to be specific. Now it feels like Obi-wan Kenobi decided to do that cool thing he did in Star Wars part 1 with the door, you know, sticking the light saber in and moving it all around? It isn’t really cool to have it done to me, however. But hey, that’s what I was thinking. I stand up, and then sit right back down again after my legs gave way. I’m being torn apart like the Black Night in Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Funny, I don’t feel any pain. Maybe it’s because I was looking into Michael’s eyes and knew he was going to kill whoever was doing this to me. Maybe because I knew he loved me. Maybe, maybe it was because before I could think of all these analogies, my eyes were shut and I was lying on the floor, dead. Yes, Alice. Welcome to Wonderland.

So how am I telling you all this? You got me. All I know is that, after I died, I stayed with Michael. I think he knew. He kept looking all around when I kissed him. Or ghost kissed him. Whatever. I followed him to the front lines. I saw what he saw. I saw him die. I saw Izzy die. I saw Max and Liz and Alex try to get on with their lives. After Michael and Iz died, they somehow wound up with me. We just followed our friends around for the rest of their lives. Max and Liz had a little girl. They named her Michela Isabel. I felt a little left out.

But then, two years later, they had a boy. Mark Alexander. Ok, so Mark’s not as close to my name as Michela is to Michael’s, but hey. I don’t care.

Alex died about a year after Mark was born. The war was still on. His computer station was hit. He joined Michael, Isabel, and I in the...afterlife? It’s kind of boring. Don’t get me wrong; Michael and I knew exactly what to do to not be bored. But we felt bad for Izzy, so we...didn’t.

When Alex came, it was different. While we were looking after Liz and Max, we...did other things. Max died next. Assassinated. It’s weird, Liz was the first one of our group to get shot, and she was the last one to die. Max moped without Liz. Liz moped without Max. But then, when she died, she was happy. Not happy that she left her 12 and 13 year old in the hands of the elders, to grow up to be royalty too fast, but happy she had Max. And she knew her kids were going to be ok. They were Evans.

***

“Hey, Blondie. You coming?”

I looked up from my book. “Yeah, Michael.” I took his hand and got off the couch in his apartment. He held out his hand and I took it. As we walked toward my mom’s Jetta in the parking lot of his apartment building, he asked what I was doing.

“Oh, just...imagining what things might be like...after this summer.”

“And you’re writing them down?”

“Why not? Who knows? Maybe I’ll be a fortune teller someday.”

“Nah. You’d make a better Doctor or something. Not a flaky fortune teller.” I smiled.

“You might just be right, Spaceboy.”

Back to Area 51 (Section III)