1st Lt. Frances Cappadocia, a registered nurse in her twenties, helped a wounded 19-year-old soldier crawl under his bed, wrapping him in his mattress. The mattress and crates filled with dirt provided extra protection during rocket attacks.
For nearly 50 years, Van Skike never forgot Cappadocia, one of the nurses who cared for him in Vietnam. He always planned to find her—and in January, he finally did.
Cappadocia, now 71, joined the US Army as a registered nurse in 1967, the same year Van Skike volunteered for service. She chose to serve in Pleiku, a hotly contested and strategically vital area.
“She was there during the height of the war,” says Sue Pennington, Cappadocia’s partner. “I never knew what that was like for her because she never talked about it.”
Of Cappadocia’s three years in the Army, one was spent in Vietnam. Later, she served 22 years in the U.S. Air Force as a nurse practitioner. She retired in Tucson as a lieutenant colonel and then worked as a nurse practitioner at the Arizona Department of Corrections’ maximum security prison in Florence.
The stress of that job revealed what Pennington— a clinical nurse specialist in mental health who worked at several Veterans Affairs hospitals—had always sensed beneath Cappadocia’s capable exterior. The two women met around 1969 while earning their bachelor’s degrees in nursing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“I worked at the VA for 32 years,” says Pennington, 74. “I know what post-traumatic stress disorder is, and I knew Fran had it, but she would never talk about it, ever.”
Cappadocia agreed to go to therapy only if Pennington accompanied her. Through therapy, Pennington learned about her late-night panic attacks and nightmares filled with images of bodies with bugs in their eyes.
“Fran is so stoic,” Pennington says. “I never knew she would wake up in the middle of the night with panic attacks, feeling like she was going to die.”
Therapy also helped Cappadocia overcome the shame tied to her Vietnam service.
“She was one of those people who, when the plane landed, were screamed at—‘Baby killer! Baby killer!’—and had tomatoes thrown at them,” Pennington recalls. Therapy “helped her go from feeling ashamed to being very proud.”
Still, the war left its mark. About four years ago, Pennington noticed a change. After a serious fall two years ago, Cappadocia’s VA care coordinator recommended moving her to a place like the Arizona State Veteran Home in Tucson.
“It was the worst day of my life to do that,” Pennington says.
Cappadocia no longer walks or speaks, though Pennington still sees flashes of recognition in her eye contact and hand squeezes. Doctors have diagnosed her with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and Alzheimer’s disease, Pennington explains.
Dr. Priti Sinha, a psychiatrist with the Southern Arizona VA Health Care System, says while PTSD and Alzheimer’s are distinct and unrelated, their symptoms can overlap early on. Both can increasingly affect daily life.
Van Skike, now 66, held various law enforcement and government jobs mostly in California and Washington before retiring and traveling, with plans to settle in Washington. About 20 years ago, at his aging parents’ request, he moved near Benson, Arizona.
His Vietnam memories remain sharp—the explosion that embedded shrapnel in his knee, the doctor who sewed him up without removing the metal, the blood poisoning with red streaks up his torso, the whispered hospital talk about amputation. Penicillin shots given by Cappadocia saved his leg.
“I got a penicillin shot for breakfast, lunch, and dinner because I was so infected,” he says.
He recalls one day when Cappadocia gave him a shave instead of a shot.
“She looked at me and said, ‘I don’t care if you’re 19, you don’t need to be looking this scruffy,’” Van Skike says. “She shaved my baby face, and I winked at her.”
He admits to having a crush on the young nurse and still has a photograph of them outside the hospital.
“She was more of a friend than any of the other nurses there,” he says.
Van Skike spent about three weeks at the 71st Evacuation Hospital, was transferred to a Japanese hospital, then sent back to the U.S. He completed his two years of service at Fort Carson, Colorado, as a private first class, though the Army later corrected his rank to specialist.
He lost touch afterward. “I never had any more contact with Fran,” he says.
When Pennington received Van Skike’s first voicemail message in January, her heart dropped. In 44 years with Cappadocia, Pennington had never met anyone from her partner’s Vietnam days.
“I knew it was real and something big, but I was scared,” she recalls. “Part of me feared, ‘Is this someone who will cause her pain? Or bring her joy?’”
She waited weeks before returning the call. In Benson, Van Skike wrestled with facing his war memories. He had found Cappadocia’s contact info through veteran websites, and when he got her Tucson address, he was shocked. He thought about it for years before reaching out.
Finally, Pennington returned the call.
“He wanted to know how she was,” Pennington says. “I warned him, ‘Fran is not at all like she was back then.’” She explained Cappadocia’s condition. “He still asked, ‘Can I come see her?’”
When Van Skike visits, he cradles the delicate hands that once shaved his face and cared for his leg. She squeezes his hands when he shares stories from Vietnam. Sometimes, tears roll down her cheeks.
“It’s good because I’m dealing with it,” Van Skike says of his memories. “I don’t like some of what I remember, but I have to go through it.”
Since January, Van Skike has visited several times a month. In April, Cappadocia was recognized at a ceremony for women veterans at the State Veteran Home. Sponsored by the American Legion, about 20 Arizona women veterans, including Cappadocia and two others at the Tucson facility, were honored, said Samuel Nanez, the home’s therapeutic program manager. In June, two of Cappadocia’s uniforms will be displayed, encased in glass, at the State Veteran Home.
Pennington calls their reunion a miracle.
“These young people were in a foreign country, bombed daily,” Pennington says. “They risked their lives, and the connection they share is something none of us can truly understand.”
When their hour-long visits end, Van Skike prays with Cappadocia.
“I’m disappointed in myself for not trying harder before,” he says. “I moved here 20 years ago, never forgot her, but didn’t try to find her until recently. She’s been in Tucson since 1985—back then, she wasn’t like she is now.”
But still, he comes. Now, it is his turn to care for Cappadocia.
“It was so heartwarming to see them together,” Pennington says. “He thanked her and told her how much she meant to him all these years and how she saved his life.”
— Story by Johanna Willet