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.
Thirty-Four
It was remarkable how quickly a turbulent world could calm. In early 1974, with the war over, the country seemed to release a great exhalation of relief. The fight for rights went on, of course: Civil rights and women’s rights were a constant battle and the Stonewall riots had put gay rights in the news, too. Equality was the goal, but no longer in that hold-a-sign-and-march kind of way.
The Vietnam veterans disappeared into the landscape, hiding in plain sight among a populace that either held them in contempt or considered them not at all. The hippies changed, too; they graduated from college and left their communes and cut their hair and began to look for jobs. Even the music changed. Gone was the angry protest music of the war. Now everyone sang along to John Denver and Linda Ronstadt and Elton John. The Beatles had broken up. Janis and Jimi were dead.
Frankie was fighting for a metamorphosis of her own. She had come to the inpatient center unwillingly, or maybe not that, exactly. Unconscious was more like it.
By February, although she felt stronger, she was well aware that she could relapse in an instant, fall again to her knees. Sometimes it felt overwhelming, to think of what her life would look like from now on. So much of what had filled her up in the past few years was dark—memories, love, nightmares. She didn’t know who she was without the pain or the need to hide it.