“I loved you.”
“Past tense. Yeah.” She looked away, unable to meet his gaze, remembered that she’d been in a psych ward for a suicide attempt. Suicide. She couldn’t process that terrible word. “How did you get me out?”
“Your mom called me. She signed you up here for eight weeks. To start.”
“Wow. Mom facing the problem head-on. That’s new.” Frankie pressed two fingertips to her throbbing temple.
“Your headache, by the way, it’s withdrawal. You may experience other symptoms: anxiety, chest pains, sweats, tremors. Also, your cognitive abilities may have been impaired for a while now.”
“No shit.” Frankie sighed. Withdrawal. “So, in addition to everything else, I’m officially a drug addict and an alcoholic. Yay.”
“The yellow pills you’ve been taking? Diazepam. More commonly called Valium, but I’m sure you know that. The Rolling Stones called them ‘Mother’s Little Helpers.’” He went to his desk, pulled out a magazine, opened it to an advertisement with the headline NOW SHE CAN COPE, which showed a woman in an apron, smiling broadly as she vacuumed. “Docs have been prescribing them like candy to women for years.”
“Did I lose my nursing license?”
“You will. At least for a while, but that’s not your biggest concern right now.” He took her by the hand, led her to an antique fainting couch. “Sit.”
She looked at it, and a bit of her old self rose up, made her laugh. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m a shrink,” he said, smiling back. “It’ll make you comfortable talking.”
“I don’t know if I want to be comfortable talking.”
“Haven’t you been uncomfortable and not talking for a long time?”
“I have a headache. No fair outthinking me.”
She sat down, remained upright. Her hands were shaking. “Do you have a cigarette? I don’t think I can stand you exploring the murky depths of my soul without some aid.”
He found her a cigarette, a lighter, and pulled over a standing ashtray, then positioned his chair next to her.
Frankie stood up. She was afraid, agitated. She walked over to the credenza, studied the photographs displayed. Henry’s life in images. It made her realize that she hadn’t taken a picture in years. She picked up a framed photograph of him and a woman with long graying brown hair and round rose-colored glasses.
“That’s Natalie,” he said. “We’re engaged. She loves me.”
Had he meant to put the slightest emphasis on she?
Frankie felt both happiness for him and a sliver of pain for herself. Would she be sitting here, head pounding from withdrawal, if she’d married him?
Henry smiled. “She’s an elementary school teacher and poet. But we’ll talk about me later. Right now I want you to get better, Frankie. My colleague Dr. Alden specializes in Vietnam veterans. We’re seeing too many addicted military personnel, especially after coming home from the war.”
She drifted back toward him, sat down on the ridiculous couch. “No one gives a shit about the women.” Frankie lit the cigarette, drew smoke into her lungs, and exhaled.
“Why do you say that?”
“I went to the VA for help. Twice. They brushed me off, told me to run along, that I wasn’t a real vet, I guess.”
“Why did you go to the VA for help?”
Frankie frowned. “I don’t know. I just…”
“Just what?” Henry asked gently.
She felt his scrutiny. This was no idle question. He was asking a question Frankie had barely asked herself. She had never answered it aloud, not to anyone. She didn’t really want to answer it now.
But she was in trouble here, disintegrating, losing pieces of herself. She needed to reach out to someone with her truth. “Well. It’s been a rough patch. I almost killed a man because I drove drunk. Then there’s the baby, the miscarriage … Rye coming back, lying to me. Our affair. And now I’ll lose my nursing license. There’s nothing of me left.”
“That’s all the middle, Frankie. You’ve had trouble sleeping for years, trouble with nightmares. You used to scream in your sleep,” he said. “Before the baby, the miscarriage … before Rye.”
Frankie nodded.
“What about surges of irrational anger? Irritation? Anxiety?”
Frankie couldn’t look at him.
“Vietnam,” he said. “That’s why you went to the VA. You know Vietnam is the beginning of it all. Do you have memories that are more than memories, that feel like you’re there again?”
“You mean, like…”
“Like a flashback in a film.”
Frankie was stunned. She’d assumed it happened only to her, that she was crazy. “How do you know that?”
“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.”
* * *