Last year I ingested enough tranquilizers to kill a horse. A hundred milligrams of an experimental, pharmaceutical-grade sedative, name unfamiliar, something her dealer had. I floated out into the damp evening like a glider on a thermal up-draft. Cars glistened, as if their paint was still wet, in lime street light. Shaking off an eerie shiver, I was confident I'd make it home, only blocks away.

We reached the grave, and I got down on my knees to hold my tiny daughter, mud and wet seeping through my wool suit pants. I kissed her on her forehead with the lips that had killed her mother only three days before.

Former Army nurse, Susan O'Neill has written a collection of fictional stories which capture the essence of her 13-month tour of duty in Vietnam entitled Don't Mean Nothing. When asked why she chose to attack this subject three decades after the war, she talks about the residual anger of the '70s: "I couldn't have written about Vietnam if you'd bullied me with an M-16 ... . Once my kids were grown and gone, I found myself holding the newspaper at arm's length and realized that I'd reached the point where distance made things clearer. I figured it was time to put the experience -- or at least my interpretation of it -- on paper."