She hoped it scared him. （Who had she become, that she wished pain on someone she loved?）
Slinging her bag and purse over her shoulder, she stumbled down the street.
It wasn’t until she boarded the ferry and saw how people stared at her that she realized she was still in her bloody white uniform.
She went into the bathroom and changed into jeans and a T-shirt. She had forgotten to pack shoes, so she left her blood-splattered white nurse shoes on.
On the mainland, she walked to the bus station. Every step took something out of her, made her feel smaller, more worthless, more lost.
More alone.
Who could help her?
There was only one place she could think of.
She boarded a city bus and exited a few miles later, then walked to the Veterans Administration Outpatient Clinic.
The offices were closed when she arrived. She sat on a bench out front, smoking one cigarette after another, waiting impatiently, reliving the bad things she’d said and seen and done over and over.
At 0830 hours, the lights in the building came on. Cars began to drive into the parking lot.
Frankie walked inside. A wide lobby funneled into a beige hallway. Men sat slumped in chairs that lined either wall, some of them younger, long-haired, wearing ratty clothes—fatigues with the sleeves cut off, denim jackets, torn T-shirts—and some were older men, probably veterans from Korea or World War II. A few walked back and forth.
She stopped at the front desk. “I’m … I need some help,” she said. “Something’s wrong.”
The woman behind the desk looked up. “What kind of help?”
Frankie touched her head, the new bruise that was forming. A headache made it hard to think. “I am…” Crazy. Unraveling. What? “My thoughts … I get angry and sad and … my boyfriend was just killed in action.”
The woman stared at her a moment, clearly confused. “Well. I mean. This is the VA.”
“Oh, right. I’m an Army Nurse Corps vet. Just back from ’Nam.”
The woman gave her a skeptical look. “Dr. Durfee is in his office. He doesn’t have an appointment until nine A.M. I guess you could—”
“Thanks.”
She sighed. “Two doors down. On the left.”
Frankie headed down the wide hallway, where more men sat on plastic seats beneath a framed portrait of Richard Nixon. Frankie saw posters and brochures offering different kinds of help to veterans: employment help, state benefits, education, and training.
At Dr. Durfee’s door, she stopped, took a deep breath, and knocked.
“Come in.”
She opened the door and stepped into a narrow, almost closet-small office. An old man—old enough to be her grandfather—sat behind a cluttered desk. Stacks of paper were on every surface in the room. A poster was tacked up on the wall behind him: a kitten hanging from one claw with the words HANG TOUGH.
The doctor peered at her through black-rimmed, Coke-bottle-thick glasses. What strands of hair he had left, he’d combed to one side and maybe sprayed in place. He wore a madras shirt, buttoned to his wattled neck. “Hello, young lady. Are you lost?”
Frankie smiled tiredly. It was such a relief to be here. To say, I need help, and receive it. “I am lost, but I’m in the right place. I probably should have come before now.”
His gaze narrowed, moved from her face, down her rumpled blouse and wrinkled jeans, to the red-splattered white shoes.
“The woman at the front desk said you had until nine. I can make an appointment, but I really need some help now, if you don’t mind.”
“Help?”
She sank into the chair in front of his desk. “I was in-country for two years. And my boyfriend was supposed to come home in April, but he was KIA, so what came was a we-regret-to-inform-you telegram. And the way people treat us. We can’t even say Vietnam. We went to serve our country and now they call us baby killers. My dad can’t look at me. At my job, I was fired for being too good even though I might have saved a young man’s life. And I, well, I can’t seem to get a handle on my emotions since I got back. I’m always either banshee-angry or bursting into tears. My dad is so ashamed, he said I went to Florence.” She said it all in a rush and felt exhausted afterward.
“Are you menstruating now?”
Frankie took a moment to process that. “I tell you that I’m having trouble after being in Vietnam, and that’s your question?”
“You were in Vietnam? There were no women in Vietnam, dear. Do you have thoughts of hurting yourself? Hurting others?”