Vietnam
"I'm going back to Vietnam," I told my husband, pulling on my scrubs. I was referring to my new patient, a man I'd seen the day before and left his home feeling like I would never truly be able to explain what I'd seen or how I'd felt, and that nobody would really understand except the three of us in the house: the man, his wife, me. I don't pretend to know what it's like to be at war, but I do know what it feels like to have my senses overwhelmed, to be completely spent physically, emotionally, mentally...and then to hop back into the regular world of homework, dishes, birthday cards. Whiplash. Re-entry. I knocked. His wife hugged me. "I'm so glad it's you again," she said. He was exactly as I'd left him the day before. Exhausted, in agony, puddles under his feet as his body filled with fluid that had nowhere else to go except to leak out through his skin. In nursing, we call this weeping . My mind was racing. What next? Where...