Second-Time-Around

by Lynn Veach Sadler

Former college president Dr. Lynn Veach Sadler has published widely in academics and creative writing. Editor, poet, fiction/creative nonfiction writer, and playwright, she has published four chapbooks; has two more and a full-length collection in press; and won The Pittsburgh Quarterly’s Hay Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Hemley Award, and Asphodel’s Poetry Contest and tied for first place in Kalliope’s Elkind Contest. One story appears in Del Sol’s Best of 2004 Butler Prize Anthology; another, about Patrick Swayze, won the 2006 Abroad Writers Contest/Fellowship (France). A novel will soon join her novella and short-story collection, and she was named 2007 Writer of the Year by California’s elizaPress. She won the 2009 overall award (poetry and fiction) of the San Diego City College National Writer’s Contest and City Works Journal. A play on Frost was a Pinter Review Prize for Drama Silver Medalist, and she won the 2008 Pearson Award at Wayne State for Second-Time-Around, a play on the Iraq wars. She has traveled around the world five times, writing all the way, and now works full-time as a creative writer and an editor.

published October 2009

Summary

Lt. Col. Vanessa Parting is conflicted about her roles as mother, wife to an enlisted man, and Army nurse and about the wars in which she is deployed: Operation Desert-Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Outside the soon-to-be-closed Walter Reed Army Hospital, where she fully recognizes the results of the victims’ injuries for the first time, her warrior and nurturing sides exchange foci, and she achieves reintegration.

Characters

Lt. Col. Vanessa Parting—Around forty. Played by two actresses. Both should look about ten years younger in Scene i.

Nessie: Dressed in earth-shoe-like sandals and an ankle-length shift over a white tee. Curly hair long and a-fly as if glad to be let-go. (Possibly) changes to a uniform in Scene v.

Van: In the uniform of a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Nurse Corps. Hair up and under her cap.

Scenes

Scene i. The First Time (Operation Desert-Storm)
Prop(s): Sound (and perhaps image) of a separating oil pipe; breast pump.

Scene ii. The Second Time (Operation Iraqi Freedom)
Prop(s): Party hat and horn, sign with “Happy Birthday, Mindy!”

Scene iii. The First Base the Second-Time-Around
Prop(s): A laptop. The makeshift seat is probably a cot.

Scene iv. The Second Base the Second-Time-Around
Prop(s): Same as Scene iii.

Scene v. Outside Walter Reed Army Hospital
Prop(s): Hospital identified contextually. Sound (and perhaps image) of reconnecting oil pipe

Setting

Iraq; (Outside) Walter Reed Hospital

Scene i. The First Time (Operation Desert-Storm)

(Before the lights come up, we hear [Perhaps an image appears on a screen.] a heavy oil pipeline disconnecting and clanging loudly as the two parts hit and bounce. Lights up. NESSIE, holding a breast pump limply in one hand, hugs her breasts, winces from the pain. VAN, hands on hips, stands looking at her harshly.)

VAN

Put down that stupid breast pump! It’s embarrassing.

NESSIE

It hurts. Eight days, and I’ll dry up.

VAN

Eight days, and Operation Desert-Storm will be over, dried up, and a lot of our troops will come home to dry out. As in every war in every place all over the world.

NESSIE

Eight days...

VAN

Dry up now, for Christ’s sake, before somebody hears you. Sees you! Stop holding yourself that way. Get a hold on yourself. Get a grip! Or an Iraqi SCUD missile will dry you up permanently.

NESSIE

The baby—

VAN

You knew the call could come any time. You expect the Army to do call-ups at your convenience? Get a life! Get an Army life! Or just settle for the one it’s given you. Nursing, my boobs! Nurse! You’re an Army nurse. An officer in the Army Nurse Corps. Act like it!

NESSIE

The baby—

VAN

The baby won’t even know you’re gone. She’s a baby, for Christ’s sake. What do babies know? Now if it were a teenager, say, or a middle schooler even...