On a hot June afternoon, three months after her return, Frankie woke from her first good sleep to see a newspaper headline announcing First Lieutenant Sharon Lane’s death by enemy fire, the first U.S. nurse killed by enemy action in Vietnam. The news triggered acute anxiety and grief; she prayed, cried in the shower, and struggled to steady herself. Her mother suggested seeing old friend Rebecca “Becky” Gillihan and passed along an invitation to a party that afternoon.

Reluctant but determined to reengage with life, Frankie went to Becky’s bungalow, where a group of well-dressed women held a bridal shower for Dana Johnston. The domestic normalcy and celebration contrasted painfully with Frankie’s memories of war. As the women admired gifts and chatted about weddings and honeymoons, Becky mentioned that the men they knew had avoided Vietnam. Frankie’s panic rose, and when a song she associated with the war played, she snapped at the group to turn it off.

When Frankie stated she had been in Vietnam, the women laughed, assuming it was a joke. Frankie confronted Becky and the group, describing graphic scenes from her nursing experience and condemning their obliviousness before fleeing the party, screaming as she left. She spent hours alone at Ski Beach Park, chain-smoking and reflecting that her anger and anxiety were spiraling, concluding she should avoid upsetting situations and stop talking about Vietnam because people did not want to hear it.

Near 2300 hours, still shaky and underfed, Frankie reported for her night shift at the hospital. The shift was quiet and menial until an ambulance brought in a young man with a close-range chest gunshot wound. With the ER overwhelmed by a bus accident and no doctor immediately present, the patient began to suffocate. Frankie twice called for help, then performed a rapid tracheotomy herself, restoring his breathing, and applied pressure to the bleeding chest wound.

A doctor and Mrs. Henderson arrived after the procedure. The doctor was startled and asked who had performed the trach; Frankie said she had, because no one had come and the patient was dying. While the doctor called for a team, Mrs. Henderson accused Frankie of endangering the patient and the hospital. Frankie asserted her combat experience and that she had saved the man, but Mrs. Henderson called her a loose cannon and summarily fired her for exposing the hospital to liability.