Rick could handle the sight of an open wound, work for twenty hours with no sleep, and tell a patient they were dying, but he did not have the courage to hold his own wife, tell her she needed help, or say he would love her until the day he died. Yes, he was a man of his era, one in a generation of boys who were trained to lead but never feel, one in a generation of boys who became staunch, withholding men in lonely rooms, looking out at life with no way to touch it.
