They flocked to the clinic after Saving Private Ryan, grizzled veterans awash in fifty-year-old memories. One shuffled into my office chair, gaunt and haggard, wearing a bulky foot brace, his white hair curling beneath a ball cap with a 1st Marines patch. “What happened to your foot?” Great salty droplets began to stain his cheeks. “Shot at Guadalcanal. A round hit my sciatic nerve. One year in a cast, left with a permanent foot drop. Never a day without pain since.” He swiped at the tears with one knuckle, and sniffed. The wound as raw as the day it happened.
William W. Campbell is a neurologist, writer, artist, and philanthropist who lives with his wife and dogs in the woods near a lake in Virginia.