“Hold him up so that I can get a good shot,” he ordered. With one policeman beaming at the camera on each side of him, Frank Burns’ photograph was taken.
As the Reverend Mother reached the Grogarty ambulance, Air Hussid Eleven taxied up and Hawkeye and Trapper John almost immediately burst out of it.
“Am I glad to see you!” Hawkeye said. “Unless it’s too late.”
Dr. Grogarty appeared at the door of the Learjet Double-O Poppa. He supported Colonel C. Edward Whiley, who was singing the final verses of “The Fighter Pilot’s Lament” somewhat off-key, and with many slurred syllables.
“Drunk as an owl,” Trapper John said. “We can’t operate on him in that condition.”
“I beg to differ, sir,” Colonel Whiley said. “I haven’t had a drink since that very nice little martini you were so good as to provide me with last night.”
“He’s been drinking something,” Dr. Grogarty said. “It’s as plain as the nose on my face, which is to say, very plain indeed.”
“I have not!” Colonel Whiley said, in righteous indignation. “Not a drop!”
“Get him in the ambulance anyway,” Hawkeye said. “He’s lucky he’s alive, and I mean with his heart and lungs, not the drunken flying.”
“Oxygen!” Trapper John said.
“Absolutely,” Hawkeye said. “The minute you get him laid out in the ambulance, slap an oxygen mask on him.”
“I mean he’s already been on it,” Trapper John said.
“What do you mean, already?”
“I mean he’s been sucking on probably 100-percent oxygen from the moment he got in that plane. That would explain why he’s still alive, and why he’s obviously as drunk as an owl.”
“I have,” Colonel Whiley said, “been sniffing a little oxygen. As any old fighter pilot can tell you, it’s the next best thing to booze.”
Hawkeye went to Colonel Whiley and sniffed his breath.
“By God, you’re right,” he said. He propelled Colonel C. Edward Whiley toward the ambulance.
Mrs. C. Edward Sattyn-Whiley, who looked suspiciously as if she had been doing a little dignified crying, sat alone in the waiting room on the surgical floor of the Grogarty Clinic.
The door opened and three men entered the room. One of them wore an orange flying suit on the back of which was embroidered “Cajun Air Force.” The second was attired in a somewhat mussed black suit. The third was dressed in a uniform of a type that Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley associated with what she considered the amusing but not very important works of Sigmund Romberg, such as The Student Prince. The uniformed gentleman was being held up by the other two.
“What are you doing in here?” Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley asked them.
“Same thing you are, lady,” the man in the orange flight suit replied. “Waiting for good news from the operating room.”
“That man there,” Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley said to him, “is drunk.”
“Madame,” the man in the mussed suit said, “permit me to introduce myself. I am Sparkman B. Waterhouse, chief deputy assistant under-secretary for petroleum affairs.”
“How do you do, Mr. Secretary?” Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley said.
“And let me state the official position of the United States Government, which it is your patriotic duty to follow, via a vis this gentleman.”
“You mean that drunk in the comic-opera uniform?”
“Madame, you refer to His Excellency General Francisco Hermanez, El Presidente of San Sebastian. While it might reasonably be presumed from the way he smells that El Presidente has had a drink or two, I am sure that you will agree that it behooves us all to refrain from suggesting he’s drunk.”
“What’s he doing in here?” she asked.
“I told you, the same thing you are,” Horsey said. “Waiting for good news from the operating room. His grandson is in there.”
“I see,” she said. “My husband is in there. I have every hope, since I have secured the best possible medical care for him—”
“You didn’t secure it—you got it, but you didn’t get it,” Horsey said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your husband’s being cut by the two best surgeons around,” Horsey said. “But you didn’t get them for him. Aloysius Grogarty got them.”
“How dare you!” she began, but then she collapsed. This time, the tears weren’t discreet and lady-like. She cried like a frightened woman. Horsey’s anger immediately vanished, and he tried to do the best thing he could do for her, but she refused his offer of his Old White Stagg Blended Kentucky Bourbon. The door opened. Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley looked up to see her son, in surgical greens, standing there beside a nurse similarly attired.
“You can relax, mother,” Dr. Sattyn-Whiley said. “Dad’ll be all right. We just came from the recovery room. He won’t be flying any more for a while, but he’ll be all right.”
“Thank God!” Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley said. She turned to Horsey. “I think I will have a little sip now, if you don’t mind.” She turned up Horsey’s flask and took several good pulls.
“And who, might I inquire, is this young woman?” she asked. She sounded like the Mrs. C. Edward Sattyn-Whiley of a few days before.
“Mother, this is Betsy Boobs,” Dr. Sattyn-Whiley said. “Or at least that’s the name she used when she was the headliner at Sadie Shapiro’s Strip Joint.”
“And what, Cornelius Dear, may I ask, are you telling me this for?”
“Because I’m going to marry her,” Dr. Sattyn-Whiley said. “Just as soon as Dad can stand up with me. I thought you’d like to know.”
Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley said nothing.
“We’re ready for you, Doctor,” a nurse said, putting her head in the door.
“Where are you going now?” Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley asked.
“I’m going to repair an inguinal hernia,” he said. “On a friend of mine who’s a balalaika player.”
“My grandson,” General El Presidente Francisco Hermanez said.
“Take it from me, Francisco,” Horsey said. “If Hawkeye and Trapper John let this kid cut your grandson, he’s all right.”
“He is, after all,” Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley said, “my son.” She took another pull at Horsey’s flask. “I suppose that if a chief of state can endure having a balalaika-player for a grandson, I can learn to live with a terpsichorean ecdysiast for a daughter-in-law.”
The door burst open again.
“Did I hear those glorious words, ‘terpsichorean ecdysiast’?” Matthew Q. Framingham inquired. “Where?”
“Will you, for the last time, knock it off, you stripper freak, you?” Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov said.
“My God!” Mrs. Sattyn-Whiley said. “I recognize you from your photographs. You’re Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov!”
“How perceptive of you,” Boris replied.
“The Grand Duke Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov!” She did a very nice curtsey. “Your Highness!”
“Do me a favor, lady,” Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov said. “Hand me Horsey’s flask before you fall down doing that and break it.”
MASH 11 MASH Goes To San Francisco Page 19
