First impression: unreachable. Not that I cannot "meet" with her, but because I know that her dragon is deeply buried: PTSD, four clinical letters, a typical contemporary perception of the war trauma, that has to match the impossible frames of the Veteran’s Administration… Wendy "does not want to go there": her PTSD is not something she wants to bring up. During the year following her return from Iraq in 2006, Wendy nearly died and she didn’t seek help. She wouldn’t admit that this could happen to her. Wendy: an L.A. Latina with a strong bright mind, who arrived in Los Angeles with her undocumented mother; she joined the military at the age of 17, deployed at the age of 19 with a combat support hospital. She saw death every day, was often under fire in a helicopter transporting casualties.

She does not want to go there: when she talks about it, one sees another person. This is this other "self" who loses her compunction when confronted with deadly memories, reviving the helicopter’s stress in the angel’s jumps, under the parachute that brings her back to life.

Another "jump": In Iraq, Wendy became a U.S. citizen.