Frankie reported to Major Wendy Goldstein and, despite being criticized for inexperience, was assigned to the Neuro ward on night shift. In the Quonset hut filled with Stryker frames and machines, Captain Ted Smith oriented her, showing how to assess fixed, dilated pupils, chart findings, and understand that most patients were brain-damaged and unlikely to recover. He emphasized that skills could be taught and encouraged Frankie’s heart and effort.

Frankie wrote an April 14, 1967 letter to her parents describing terror, exhaustion, and rapid learning. She detailed Neuro tasks—pupil checks, dressing changes, suctioning, ventilator monitoring, turning patients, assessing pain in nonverbal men—and noted friendships with Ethel Flint and Barb Johnson and respect for Captain Smith. She asked for news from home.

As weeks passed, the Neuro ward’s relative calm let Frankie build confidence and see her patients as individuals, often thinking of Finley. She cared tenderly for nineteen-year-old Private Jorge Ruiz, speaking to him and tending his wounds. Two of Ruiz’s comrades visited, credited him with saving their lives, photographed Frankie with him for his mother, and gave her an insignia.

Exhausted after a shift, Frankie tried to sleep but was roused by Ethel and Barb, who insisted on taking her on a field trip to broaden her experience. They joined Captain Smith and an infantry escort on a deuce-and-a-half to a nearby village for a MEDCAP. The ride exposed Frankie to the dangers of snipers, wartime scarring of the land, and Agent Orange–blighted jungle.

At a hill village surrounding a ruined French-era villa, the team received a local welcome and set up makeshift clinics, treating ailments with basic medicines and hygiene care, communicating by gestures. While Ethel gave shots and Barb cleaned a machete wound, a small boy silently led Frankie into a foul-smelling room where an adolescent girl lay with a gangrenous, mangled hand from a sugarcane mill roller.

Frankie summoned Captain Smith, who judged that an immediate amputation with antibiotics was the best chance to save the girl, as evacuation was unlikely. He sedated and gave morphine to the girl; with Frankie restraining and assisting, he performed a brutal field amputation. Frankie dressed the stump and instructed an elderly woman—likely kin—on bandage care and antibiotics, which the woman accepted with a bow.

As they departed, the boy gave Frankie a smooth gray stone; she reciprocated by giving him her Saint Christopher medal. On the ride back, Frankie viewed the stone as a talisman for the girl’s future and felt renewed purpose. Barb praised her progress, and Ethel hinted this was the first step toward moving Frankie out of Neuro, with plans underway for what comes next.