Chapter Thirty-Three #2
“The Fourth of July party, remember?”
She couldn’t answer.
“It’s called post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s a bit controversial, they haven’t added it to the APA manual yet, but we’re seeing similar symptoms in your fellow vets. What you’re experiencing is a familiar response to trauma.”
“I didn’t see combat.”
“Frankie, you were a surgical nurse in the Central Highlands.”
She nodded.
“And you think you didn’t see combat?”
“My… Rye… was a POW. Tortured. Kept in the dark for years. He’s fine.”
Henry leaned forward. “War trauma isn’t a competitive sport.
Nor is it one-size-fits-all. The POWs are a particular group, as well.
They came home to a different world than you did.
They were treated like the World War II veterans.
Like heroes. It’s hard to underscore too much the impact of that on one’s psyche. ”
Frankie thought about all the yellow ribbons on the tree branches in 1973. They hadn’t been there when she came home. Hell, they’d had parades for the returning POWs. None of them had been spat on or flipped off or called a baby killer or a warmonger.
“And they were pilots, for the most part, so their war experience was different than the soldiers or Marines on the ground. In captivity, they banded together, held rank, communicated in secret, all of which strengthened their commitment to each other. We don’t really understand PTSD yet, but we know it’s highly personal.
What about your friends, fellow nurses?”
“We don’t really talk about it.”
“The war no one wants to remember.”
“Yeah.”
“I talked to Barb this week,” he said. “She told me about the fighting around Pleiku.” He leaned toward her.
“Nothing you feel is wrong or abnormal. It doesn’t matter what your friends did or didn’t experience.
You’re allowed to be uniquely affected by your wartime experience.
Especially you, someone who was idealistic enough to volunteer.
You have nothing to be ashamed of, Frankie. ”
Ashamed .
It hit Frankie hard, that word. She had let herself become ashamed; maybe it had started when she’d been spat on in the airport, or when her mother asked her not to talk about the war, or maybe as news of the atrocities began coming out.
Almost every civilian she’d met since coming home, including her own family, had subtly or overtly given her the message that what she’d done in Vietnam was shameful.
She’d been a part of something bad. She’d tried not to believe it; but maybe she had.
She’d gone to war a patriot and come home a pariah. “How do I get back to who I was?”
“There’s no going back, Frankie. You have to find a way to go forward, become the new you.
Fighting for who you were at twenty-one is a losing game.
If that’s what you’ve been trying for, no wonder you’re struggling.
The naive, idealistic girl who volunteered for war is gone.
In a very real way, she died over there. ”
Frankie stared down at her hands. Died over there. The words resonated keenly. Hurt. She realized just now, sitting here, that she’d known that, felt it. Grieved for the innocence she’d lost in Vietnam.
“Now take my hand,” he said, pulling her to her feet. “I’m going to introduce you to Dr. Alden.”
Dr. Alden was a quiet, pale man with a thin neck and creased forehead and kind eyes. He gave off a Mr. Magoo vibe that was oddly comforting.
In his office, which featured dozens of inspirational photographs, he’d gotten her settled in a comfortable chair and begun to ask her questions. She’d wanted to talk about Rye, her heartbreak, her shame and anger, but Dr. Alden had a different idea.
“Memories,” he’d said. “Vietnam. Let’s start there.”
At first it had been difficult to tell her story out loud, but once she said, I remember the first time I saw a traumatic amputation… the floodgates opened and her memories poured out. She realized the power they’d gained by being withheld.
In session after session, day after day, she exposed herself and her past, opening up her deepest wounds.
She talked about the baby who’d died in her arms suffering from napalm burns, the expectants who’d died on sawhorses set in bloody mud, about the young men barely out of their teens who’d clung to her hand, about red alerts, and operations on the Quonset floor by flashlight during a mortar attack, about Mai, the little girl she still sometimes dreamed about.
She talked about the terrible suffering of the Vietnamese people.
The dark memories gradually gave way to others, also repressed until they’d been nearly forgotten.
Like the way the soldiers had cared for each other.
So many had refused treatment until a brother-in-arms was seen.
They tried to hold each other together, literally, when horrific wounds had torn their insides out.
By the end of the first week, which was a rigidly scheduled combination of group and individual therapy, Frankie was emotionally drained.
Dr. Alden had given her a journal to write down her feelings, and she’d started, slowly, writing about her shame at being here and how much she hated Rye and herself.
By the end of the week, she was filling several pages a day.
On her third Saturday here, visitors’ day, she drifted up one hallway and down another, too tense to talk with her fellow patients, too jittery to stop for long, smoking cigarettes one after another, trying to ignore the headache pounding behind her eyes.
Now she was at the vending machine, buying another Coke (her latest addiction), when her name blared through the speakers: “Visitor for Frankie McGrath.”
Unsure whether she was ready to see anyone, she headed down to the visitors’ area, a room near the entrance.
It was painted a pretty, calming shade of blue and had pictures of rainbows and oceans and waterfalls on the walls.
A corner table held children’s toys and boxes of puzzles.
A tea-colored poster of “Desiderata” gave advice for living: GO PLACIDLY AMID THE NOISE AND HASTE AND REMEMBER WHAT PEACE THERE MAY BE IN SILENCE.
She sat down in one of the empty chairs, tapping her foot on the floor. Her headache had dimmed but was still there; her mouth was dry. Sweat dampened her skin.
No doubt her parents were walking toward her now, feeling uncomfortable in a place like this.
What would they say to her? If they’d been ashamed of her military service, what would they say about addiction?
About driving drunk? Losing her nursing license?
About all of her failures? What would she say to them?
Barb came around the corner, looking nervous. When she saw Frankie, she surged forward, yanked her into a hug. “You scared the shit out of me.”
Barb held Frankie’s hand, led her outside to a grassy area full of chairs and picnic tables, where families sat clustered together, talking.
Frankie sat down at a picnic table.
Barb sat down across from her. “What the hell, Frankie?”
“Rye,” she said simply.
Barb looked confused. “Rye?”
“He… came to see me one night, and… no, that’s not the start. I saw him at the beach with his family… it feels like a lifetime ago. I followed him. Like a crazy woman. Then he came to the house and…”
“And you believed him again?” She leaned forward. “You?”
“I thought he loved me.”
“I could kill that son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, I thought that, too. I hated him—and myself—so much, it… destroyed me. That’s all I can say.
When I first got here, I dreamed of confronting him.
I thought I needed to hear, I lied and I’m sorry.
But I don’t. I know what he did and I know what I did.
None of it is pretty, but he isn’t the problem.
My doctor and group are helping me understand that.
I should have talked about things a long time ago, I should have told you…
” Frankie drew in a steadying breath and looked at her friend.
Her whole body felt shaky, fragile. Vulnerable.
“I should have told you that I was struggling with memories of ’Nam, been honest, but you seemed so damn okay .
I thought it was all me, that I was weak or broken. ”
“You think because I don’t say anything about ’Nam that I don’t think about it?” she said.
“How would I know? We almost never talked about it.” She paused, took a deep breath, heard Dr. Alden’s even voice saying, Just begin, Frankie. Talk. “I don’t know why I can’t let some things go, why I keep remembering when others can forget.”
“I remember, too,” Barb said. “I still sometimes have nightmares…”
“You do?”
Barb nodded. “Red alerts… napalm. There was this one night at the Thirty-Sixth. A kid from my hometown…”
Frankie held on to her best friend’s hand and listened to her stories, her pain, which was like her own. They talked for hours, until night fell slowly around them; the stars came out. Frankie had never known before that words could heal, at least be the beginning of healing.
“You were a damn rock star in the OR,” Barb said at last. “You know that, right? Men came home because of you, Frankie.”
Frankie drew in a breath, exhaled. “I do.”
“So, what’s next for you?”
“It’s one day at a time,” Frankie said. Truthfully, she wasn’t ready to think about her future yet, had no idea if she could believe in the idea of truly healing. She wasn’t okay, wasn’t even within striking distance of it, and that was something she would never lie about again.
But.
I will be, she thought. She could feel strength growing in her, gathering like sunlight in the distance, beginning to warm her. If she stayed the course, worked the steps, believed in herself, she could heal, be a better version of herself.
Someday, she thought.