Page Utilities
Jackie Nink Pflug, with Peter J. Kisilos, Hazelden Publishing (page 9 of 11) Page 9 of 11
I thought everything was going to be okay. Scott and I would go to live in Minnesota. I’d meet some new friends and eventually get a job. Life would move on and we’d be okay.
One day, shortly after I arrived in Germany, a U.S. Army psychiatrist came into my room. He walked over to my bed and sat down. He seemed like a kind man — something in his eyes told me that. “Sometimes,” he said, “people who have been in warlike situations, or gone through rapes, major accidents, criminal assaults, or other traumatic events experience posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD],” he said.
I’d never heard of PTSD before. “What does that mean exactly?” I asked.
“Sometimes, there’s a delayed emotional reaction to the event,” he explained. “You may find yourself crying or feeling bad in a few days, weeks, or months.”
Before the psychiatrist left, he told me to call him if I needed anything or just wanted to talk.
His words didn’t really have much effect on me. I was still so excited to be alive that nothing else mattered. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have any hair. It didn’t matter that I’d gone through a hijacking or that I’d had to leave the place I loved. I was alive!
* * *
One day, a speech therapist came into my room to do some tests. The first question she asked was what I did for a living. I couldn’t remember. I knew I was a teacher in Cairo, but what kind? I looked at Scott and said, “Why can’t I remember what I did?”
“Don’t you remember?” he said. “You’re a teacher. You’re an educational diagnostician. And you tested kids.”
When he said it, I thought, Yeah, that’s what I did. I tested kids.
She asked me another question about teaching and testing.
Again, I couldn’t remember the answer. I look at Scott and, again, he said, “Don’t you remember? . . .”
I just kept looking at him and saying, “Why can’t I remember this?”
No one in the hospital had asked me these kinds of questions before.
They had asked for my name and that was about it.
The speech therapist showed me a series of flash cards with different pictures on them. First, she flashed me a black-and-white drawing of a watermelon.
I knew what a watermelon tasted like. I knew it was green on the outside and red on the inside. But I couldn’t remember what it was called.
She showed me another picture, this time of a pyramid.
The same thing happened. I could see myself at the Pyramids. In Cairo, I saw them almost every day. Again, I couldn’t think of the name for pyramid.
* * *
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was still in shock. I hadn’t come to grips with the magnitude of what I’d just been through.
A few days later, things started to change. I started waking up in the middle of the night from nightmares about the hijacking. I kept seeing the little children, the ones that died. I’d hear them cry in my dreams. I’d see them boarding the plane. They were such beautiful children. When children die at an early age, it really hurts me. I couldn’t understand why they had died and I had lived.
As my memories of the hijacking slowly became clearer, I began feeling rage toward the hijackers. For the first time, the full weight of the tragedy was starting to sink in. I realized that my vision was damaged, that my memory was really weak, and that I couldn’t express myself. Scott was getting frustrated with me because I couldn’t do some of the simple things I did before.
It was very uncomfortable for me to let my feelings out. I didn’t want to get angry or cry in front of Scott. Growing up, I’d learned that feelings were private matters best kept to oneself.
Naturally, I didn’t want Scott to think anything was wrong. I wanted to protect him from my pain. He’d ask me how I was feeling and I’d say, “It’s okay, honey. Everything’s going to be okay. We’re going to get through this.”
Boy, who was I kidding! I was holding it all in.
One day, when the pain got bad enough, I decided to call the army psychiatrist. I was afraid Scott would be mad at me for sharing my feelings with a stranger, so I waited for him to leave. This was hard because he rarely left my bedside. I finally saw my chance when Scott left to eat and pick up a few things at the army store. I asked a nurse to get the psychiatrist.
It was over an hour and the psychiatrist still had not showed up. I was getting a little anxious, because I didn’t know when Scott would be coming back. Eventually, the psychiatrist walked into my room. I wanted some privacy, so I told him I wanted to talk in his office.
About a week after my surgery in Malta, I was forced to get up and walk around the halls of the hospital. The doctors thought it would be good therapy for me to get back on my feet. But I tired easily, and when I did, I’d stop and hold on to the walls until I caught my breath.
The psychiatrist and I walked to his office, and when we arrived, he shut the door and directed me to a chair across from him. It didn’t take long for the tears to come.
“I’m feeling really sad and angry about the hijackers and the things they did,” I said. “I’m having a lot of nightmares and waking up in the middle of the night. I see the faces of the children who died.”
“What would you like to do with the hijackers?” he asked.
“I’d like to hit ’em,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Hit ’em?”
I said, “Yes, I’d like to hit them.”
“Wouldn’t you like to kill them?” he pressed me.
“Well, I’m not supposed to do that,” I said.
I grew up with the idea that I shouldn’t have thoughts like that — and if I did, I certainly shouldn’t talk about them.
In the midst of our conversation, there was a tapping at the door. The door opened and Scott came walking into the room.
I was startled and afraid he was going to be mad at me for talking to the psychiatrist.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“We’re going to need some more time by ourselves,” the psychiatrist said.
“Oh, sure,” Scott said and backed out the door. “I’ll go wait in your room.”
Excerpted from Miles to Go Before I Sleep by Jackie Nink Pflug, with Peter J. Kisilos, published by Hazelden Publishing, www.hazelden.org. Copyright © 1996 by Hazelden Foundation. Used with permision. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission from the publisher. To learn more about the author, go to: www.jackiepflug.com.
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