Of all the horrors, all the misery, all the trauma of the war, one experience stands out in everyone's mind. The experience of walking into the mess tent at an indeterminate time in the afternoon only to find that you have a choice of either very old breakfast, or waiting another hour and a half until dinner. Hawkeye hasn't touched his Highly Dubious Foodstuff. Not because it's clearly unfit for human consumption, but because he's too busy gesturing, in the middle of an animated discourse. "...and then my high school biology teacher turns up, but he's also General MacArthur, and he tries to shoot at the whale, but misses, and the whale hits the boat with its tail and everyone just falls in the water and kicks around, and then I was at a Red Sox game." Pause. He stabs a lump of gravy with his fork. "Dreams are nuts." "It probably just means something about your mother and that you need more sex. Or maybe less." A philosophical answer from a philosophical buddha by the name of BJ Hunnicutt. He hasn't touched his own Daily Biohazard because he's too busy watching it for signs of life. It's a regular routine, but one that causes a lot of controversy. The camp's been divided over the issue - half of the residents believe that it couldn't be alive because it kills anything it touches. The other half believe that it's a new kind of life form, possibly not derived from carbon: after all, the 'eggs' are obviously some sort of plastic product. "Maybe your subconscious is telling you that you need to have sex with General MacArthur at a Red Sox game while your mother's swimming." It's afternoon, the sun is high, and it's pretty hot. Cooler than average for a Korean summer, but still hot if you're used to more temperate climes. Having been walking for a few hours compounds the heat for a lone soldier, tripping his way into camp. He shucked his pack a couple of miles back, and his rifle quite some time before then. He was hungry when he woke up, and he's even hungrier now. So hungry that the prospect of M*A*S*H unit food is wonderful. Smiling with relief, the infantryman strolls into the mess tent, gives Igor a friendly nod, and takes a tray of cold breakfast foods. A soldier in a mess tent. It'd be commonplace, save for the fact that while the latter is the olive drab of U.S. Army forces, the former is wearing the khaki brown of the Chinese. Almond eyes scan the tent, looking for a place to sit. A mock-serious expression. "Are you calling my mother a whale? Because I think I'd know. Hey, did you know the sperm whale has the biggest --" What is everyone looking at? Hawkeye thinks as fast as can be expected, practically bounding out of his seat. "Ha ha, Joe, you old joker, coming in here in the *wrong uniform*, you'll give us all a heart attack." He makes an attempt to take the stranger's arm and steer him away from the counter, all the while hoping desperately that 1) this guy speaks enough English to understand what's happening and 2) he's not the sort of soldier who feels the need to start massacres in public places. Uh. Right. BJ just moves down a space, making room, doing an admirable job of Not Reacting. "Aren't sperm whales the ones with no teeth?" he asks, looking up at the two. Yes. Room on the bench. What the hell! The stranger is steered, smiling at Hawkeye as if he'd been his pal forever. He might just have been. "Joe?" Joe. Sure. Joe. Try to remember that. The Chinese soldier sinks down into the seat next to BJ, eyebrows raising. "No, that's the humpback." Pierce's words, having been on the back burner of a still-addled mind, give his ears a nudge. Wrong uniform. 'Joe' blinks and looks around at the people in the tent. Green. He looks down at himself. Brown. Even a swiss-cheesed memory can recall that Americans have never worn brown. The Chinese soldier closes his eyes and sighs. "Oh boy." Sitting down on the other side of the inappropriately-uniformed soldier, Hawkeye grins cheerfully at the rest of the tent until it loses interest. And he processes that this guy apparently knows American English, even if he does have something of a Chinese accent. "What," he whispers in a carefully-controlled tone, "are you *doing*?" BJ Hunnicutt now allows himself the luxury of staring. "And who in the hell *are* you?" he asks under his breath, food mercifully forgotten. "And don't eat that if you value your life." Oh, just kidding. "It's not food." The soldier grips his tray rather more tightly, trying to calm the panic reflex. Okay, you appear to be among nice people, if only for the moment. He turns to look at Hawkeye, uncertainty in his eyes, chagrin in his smile. "Ah. Getting lunch?" He reaches up to brush a nervous hand through his hair, knocking off the hat he hadn't even noticed. The gesture reveals a generous bruise on his temple. Turning to look at BJ, he opens his mouth to give his name, then stops short. Sam? No. Joe? Nuh-uh. "Uh." He tries to subtly look at his own dogtags. "Dong.. Jingshen. Sheng. Dong Jingsheng." He chuckles weakly. "That's me." Al! "At least we know you can read, I guess - " Uh-oh. Hawkeye shifts in his seat, folding one leg underneath him so as to turn sideways. He reaches to carefully and gently tilt the Chinese soldier's head in order to get a better look at that bruise. "Concussion?" he murmurs to BJ. Congratulations, stranger, now you're a patient. "Yeah, sounds like. Mr Jingsheng, look at me--" Beej checks Sam's eyes, so carefully - he reaches forward cautiously to pull where there needs to be pulling so he can see better. "I think we're going to have to admit you." Sam pulls back at first simply because, you know, there's a guy reaching for his head. But then he lets the doctor have a look, wincing. Hey! There's a bruise there! "Concussion?" He performs a moment's self-diagnostic, waving BJ's probing hands away. "No, I'm okay." Realizing that doctors need convincing, he goes down the list of symptoms. "My vision's clear, I'm not experiencing dizziness, and my memory.." damn! "..my memory's fine." His eyes begin to dart around the tent, flicking toward the exit a couple of times. AL! "If your memory's fine," says Hawkeye, sitting back and taking a nervous glance around the tent, "why did you just walk into an American military base and join the lunch queue? I'm a doctor and I promise you there are more efficient ways to commit suicide." "And why'd it take you reading your dogtags to remember your name? Now, listen, there've been times I was too drunk to remember I was in Korea, but it takes a bit more than that to make me forget my name. And you don't look almost unconscious to me." BJ leans on the table and looks back at Hawkeye. "I dunno. He sounds like he knows what he's talking about." He looks back at Sam, eyebrows up, mustache doing this tilted thing which indicates his skepticism. "And when someone knows what they're talking about, they're much better at disguising symptoms." "..I was hungry." It's true. He just didn't realize he was on the wrong side of the front. As BJ and his moustache express their opinion, the soldier closes his eyes and sighs. There's no way he's getting out of this, is there? He gets to his feet, taking a step back. "I'm not covering up! I made a mistake. Let me g.." He stops short, looking at a bit of empty air. Folding his arms he turns his back and whispers in the way that people will speak hushedly into cellular phones fifty years from now. "I know! Where have you been? These guys wanna put me in the hospital. Not like that! The say I've got a concussion!" He half-turns and glances over his shoulder, smiling a 'just one moment' smile. Oh boy indeed. Hawkeye exchanges a glance with BJ. This guy is nuts. And we have to get him out of here before we get in any more trouble. He stands, disentangling himself from the seat, and moves to gently-but-firmly take one of the soldier's arms. "All right, you definitely could use a lie-down, *Joe*," ahahaha, stop staring, everyone. "BJ, let's get him to somewhere else before he falls down." "It wouldn't do for the world's greatest stand-up comic to give away his act before the show," adds BJ loudly, standing - leaving his evil tray - and taking Sam's other arm. In a much lower voice he adds, "You're making people stare. If you have to talk to your shoulder angel, wait 'til we get you someplace else, okay?" He begins helping Hawkeye steer Sam out of the mess tent. 'Dong' sighs as the doctors take his arms, too resigned to force their hold to be anything but gently guiding. Why not? At least the bruise makes him seem injured rather than crazy. They could be leading him off to a rubber room. Pretending to be playing along, he smiles and says to the empty air over his shoulder, "Tell me on the way, Clarence. I'm going to go have my head examined." Okay. We have a Chinese soldier who speaks perfect English and is apparently non-hostile. Probably nobody will come looking for him. Hawkeye leads the mutually-baffled little group towards the biggest tent of all, which unfortunately is all the way the hell across the compound. Don't watch us, everyone, we're just walking. "Don't think I'm getting fresh, Dong, but we have *got* to get you out of that uniform." "And into a bed. Even if you insist you're not sick. There's no way we can pass you off as anything but a patient, at least for the moment." Though whether it's injury or something psychological is a pressing question. "Humor us?" wheedles Beej. It's all the way the hell across the compound, but they're going at a fair clip, and the compound's not all that large. "Do you talk in your sleep?" "Yeah, okay." Sam chuckles nervously. This could be bad. He could be taken prisoner. America didn't treat POWs very nicely, no matter what the history books try to tell you. He's already unbuttoning his overshirt when they reach post-op. BJ gets a faint smile. "If I do, I'll be careful to do it in English." A beautiful nurse walks past. The kind of nurse who draws attention. Turns heads. Leads holograms to wander off, leering. Sam coughs, but it sounds a lot like "Al!" Oh my, she's new. Hawkeye's head turns, but contrary to rumour he *can* override the Other Brain when he has to. Hm, Dong looks worried. "Listen," he says seriously, "nobody's gonna hurt you here. Nobody. All right?" Watch me make promises I can't keep! Mmm. Well, Hawkeye's technically right. It's the people who're gonna take him out of here when he's 'healed' who might hurt him. Who probably will, even if it's all passive. BJ adds helpfully, "And we're the people who you have to worry about the least." He grabs a clipboard and starts filling out what he can - like, well, name. "Any allergies?" he asks, under his breath. Sam watches Hawkeye make promises he can't keep. "Okay." Best to humour the guy. He smiles as if relieved. BJ gets a bit of a shrug. "Only aspartame." Better known as Nutrasweet. Sam's too caught up with the whole 'might be killed' thing to notice his anachronistic slip. He mis-steps and looks over his shoulder for a moment. "You're sure?" That could be taken as a second thought about Hawkeye's reassurance, rather than the question to Al that it really was. "Sure I'm sure. You'll be all right as long as we can pass you off as a civilian." And as long as Colonel Flagg doesn't turn up with his usual beautiful sense of timing. Hawkeye reaches to pat Sam reassuringly on the shoulder. "Trust me. I'm a doctor." Aspar-what? Maybe BJ knows. BJ gives Hawkeye this lost look. So lost. He looks back at Sam. "I hope this doesn't make you -really- nervous, but what's aspartame? Here, no," he reaches out and snags Sam's sleeve. "Bed. Now. So we can make this dodge look convincing? Please?"