Five Things That Never Happened To BJ Hunnicutt's Wedding
Ring
by Am-Chau Yarkona (amchau@popullus.net)
Thanks to Britt and Leigh for the betas.
The shop was too
expensive; like most young doctors, he was only just managing to make ends meet.
He didn't normally buy jewellery from the cheap shop down the road, let alone
trinkets from somewhere as up-market as this.
But today was different—Peggy was with him. The plans were unfolding. They needed a ring.
"That's beautiful."
"Is that the one you want?"
"It's very expensive, BJ."
"I don't mind," BJ told her, starting to reach for his wallet, "if it's the one you want."
She hesitated, and then shook her head. He put it carefully back on the rack.
* * *
When the law changed, they were the second couple to take advantage of it; the first minutes ahead because the motorbike wouldn't start.
"Do you, BJ Hunnicutt, take this man, Benjamin Franklin Pierce…?" the registrar asked. BJ took the time to admire his lover, who would soon be wearing the ring he'd bought twenty years ago.
Not that Hawkeye knew that he'd bought two rings for Peggy, mislaid the first, and so only given her one. It wasn't important. He answered the question, slipped the ring on Hawkeye's finger, and wondered how long it was humanly possible to stay happy.
* * *
The mud outside OR was thick, black, and slippery as an eel in Vaseline. Combining it with two exhausted surgeons could only lead to disaster.
"Idiot!" BJ snapped, uncharacteristically. "You made me drop my ring."
"Don't worry," Hawkeye said, when a frantic search in the dark revealed nothing. "We'll look again in the morning—or put a reward out. In this cash-strapped camp that's bound to sharpen everyone's eyes."
BJ worried anyway, and for once, Hawkeye was proved wrong. They—a camp of surgeons and scrounges, eagle-eyed all—couldn't find it.
Dear Peggy, he had to write, I'm sorry, but….
* * *
"Just for a while," Klinger pleaded. "Honestly, BJ, it might save my life. The woman's a madman."
BJ regarded Klinger, who was wearing a blue calf-length dress. "And she's chasing you?"
Klinger shrugged. "I happen to be very attractive."
"So you want to borrow my wedding ring, to pretend to be unavailable."
"That's right," Klinger said, peering out and then flattening himself to the ground behind Hawkeye's cot. "And hurry—that's her jeep!"
Slowly, reluctantly, BJ took his ring off the chain where he normally kept it, and handed it to Klinger. "You'll give it back the moment she leaves?"
* * *
Leo was the best man at their wedding. BJ had some slight reservations about allowing a practical joker an important role in the one occasion in his life he wanted to be wholly serious, but his best friend was the obvious and natural choice, so he accepted it.
When Leo handed him a trick ring (designed to create the illusion of having a knife stuck through your finger) because the proper one was mislaid, BJ regretted not making a fuss earlier.
He told Peggy that it was symbolic: that it meant that any damage to their relationship would be illusionary.