Heart and Soul - 174

The government was taking legal action against a contractor of defective aircraft Heads Up Display (HUD) units. Chegwidden wanted Harm to take him up in an F14 in order to "understand" the problem which was making pilots disoriented. C loosened his belt before a maneuver, hit his head on the canopy and accidentally pulled the ejection lever blasting him out of the plane an into a snowy forest. His survival gear consisted, in part, of a rubber raft, tent, matches and a condom (no winter clothing). He set up the tent and built a fire on a flat snowy place, chipped a trough in a frozen log, built a fire, heated rocks, melted snow in the trough and caught the water in the condom- both to drink and to mark an arrow in the snow. The fire melted the ice on the lake he had made camp on dropping him and his gear in the water. Freezing he began hallucinating about being by a fire with Meredith on Valentines day and receiving the large silver heart inscribed with: "A woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart," words from Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor.

H was told that "he had done enough" by "dumping a two star in the forest" and should go back home. Instead he took the worn Hum-Vee he was offered for transportation into the forest to look for C. He found Cs original camp site but he was gone. Just as the search helicopter had picked up the signal beacon C was attacked on the arm by a wolf knocking him into the raft which slid down the mountainside. The helicopter saw the signal look like it was on a snowmobile then disappear. C fired his signal flare but it misfired and hit a log setting it on fire. It kept him warm enough until an abandoned dog found him. He followed the dog to some garbage cans. Hs Hum-Vee wouldn't start so he began following Cs trail on foot and was frustrated because C kept moving around. Finally he stumbled into a diner and asked to start a search party and offered a reward. The waitress pointed to a booth in the corner where C was sitting huddled in blankets drinking coffee. He was taken to the hospital where he met Meredith and told her that he loved her. Startled she thought he was under stress so he told her of the heart and said "I've had to run through fire and water to get to the feelings I have, are you backing out?" He also introduced her to the "other lady" - the dog which he had decided to adopt.

M was judge on a case where Turner was prosecuting PO Matthew Cantrell for putting a small video camera in the female head ostensibly to look for mice. Bud's only defense was that he was doing it in the line of duty and as a favor to the women to "prevent the mice from making electrical sparks and fire while the women were using the facility." M didn't buy it for a minute and told B & H to work it out before she had to rule on it asking B to "look at my face" and see if he would like the verdict. B & T negotiated him out of the service. M tried to keep Cs disappearance a secret but Coates, who she had sworn to secrecy in order to watch the phones, told Tiner then Harriet then B then T. Finally the whole crew knew more of the details than M.