He started his talk, a factual kind of narrative, easy to listen to. He was talking about the year he had served as a physician in Vietnam. He'd written a book.

He recalled the day he was called up, an intern at the time; he had phoned the 1-800 number to understand what it meant. Then he recalled the helicopters, the sandbag wall, the number codes—how many litter wounded, how many walking wounded, how many dead. He talked on, transporting us and himself into the reality. Sensations of receiving the torn and dismembered bodies of marines. boys. Boy after boy after boy. Day after night after day. He paused and lowered his gaze.

From the fires of hell he dropped us self-consciously back into our auditorium. Was he crying? He continued, but his thought sequence seemed to stutter. More pictures, sensations. Another pause. He adjusted his glasses; his voice hesitated ... he recalled a 17-year-old with a triple amputation.

Take some questions. The audience rallied. Gentle buoying questions full of respect, care: awed students covering our collective pain as he had once covered ripped abdominal wounds with saline packs.

He works in shelters for homeless veterans in his free time—even now, our department chairman. Forty percent of homeless men are Vietnam veterans. Pause. Question. Recovery. He talked of coming home. No welcome, no room, no jobs for the veterans. Their agony under double lock—unknowable pain and vilification at home.

Pause, glistening brow, lowered eyes. Take another question. The hour is nearly done. He tells us of the boys who returned, who pleaded to go back to Vietnam, where the meaning of agony would not be shunned, shamed; where it would perhaps be blessed with death—who knows, maybe even with posthumous honor.

The applause was delayed, then thunderous. I went to the front and shook his hand hard, thanking him for his courage. He was strong, sweating, tearful, and gently smiling. "That was hard," he said. I asked to read his book. It was out of print; he held his last copy. He lent it to me, pressing past my hesitation.

The next week, in my outpatient office as usual, I saw one of my longstanding primary care patients; today it was another episode of low back pain. She too has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, from an entirely different experience, for more than a decade. She too has kept her life's structure together against overwhelming odds, being now a mid-level administrator. On my desk was the book I was returning. I told her of the lecture and my admiration for this man. We attended to her back and she left. It was many days later that I heard from her psychotherapist. He told me that my comments about this man had done something for my patient that I did not expect. I thought she'd simply be affirmed to know of this admirable person.

She was, but, much more than that, apparently she'd finally been given evidence that I was not afraid of her. I made him repeat that—I wasn't sure I'd understood. Evidence that I was not afraid of her. After so many years of care, could it be that I'd been afraid of her overwhelming pain? Could it be that this was so important to her?

A week or so later, a 42-year-old veteran was sent to our clinic by his shelter for a nonhealing foot ulcer. A 40 pack-year smoking history. Alcoholism. Multiple traumas. He was angry, didn't want to be examined. He barely stayed in the room. "Just my foot, not my leg," he yelled. Swollen; no pulse. I caught his gaze, apologized for irritating him, and explained why it was important for me to see his leg.

He flung off his pants. "Don't give me that," as I passed him a gown, "I ain't got no cooties." "It's a dollar a peep." He sat down.

Amputation loomed and I thought of the boys in Vietnam. Had he been there? Yes. 1968. I told him about the lecture. Did he know the doctor who came to the shelter? No. But "glad someone sticks by us."

Did he have friends with amputations? Oh. His head flung back. "Yeah. Grown men crying." He showed me his 7-inch scar on his shaven head and told me how he'd been warned of death and how he'd gone out to drink himself to oblivion. No, he didn't die. Pause.

He tried a joke. Someone had asked him how he was today. "I feel like a dog." Since when? "Since I was a puppy." His voice cracked.

I finished the examination. No, he wouldn't come into the hospital or have an angiogram. Yes, he would take antibiotics and stay for arterial noninvasives. Yes, he'd come back. I shook his hand—hard. He apologized for yelling.

As he left, two nurses crowded around: "Who was he? We nearly called security." Just a boy with locked-in hurt grown old, I thought, surprised to realize that his threatening behavior had not registered with me.

I began to think of other people who let their pain show. I thought of times I'd felt great pain. I thought of how so many people seem repelled by pain. I recalled how our department chairman spoke, after his talk, of the silence and shunning he felt in our own medical institution, by physician colleagues no less. After years of seeing patients, I too had only just now been confronted with this startling fact: Pain is frightening.

Apparently, to heal, one must witness pain without fear. Pain pleading with weakness and pain masquerading as anger ... no fear. Had I been doing it all along? Not too well, I decided.

Eager to share this perspective, I told some sympathetic colleagues of this triad of experiences. One said it was a matter of seeing the critical meaning of an unknown experience, kind of like transcultural respect. Few of us have known pain, but we should be able to hear it and be respectful. Another said it was about transference and countertransference, how we block meaning that we can't take. All people tend to be scared when we see pain. Yet another said it is like staying steady with a dying patient, looking death in the eye.

But we all agreed on this: Healers can hear pain, healers give people permission to show pain, healers are not afraid to see pain.

Did anyone teach us that in medical school? Each of us gradually recalled a role model who had shown some kind of fearless healing. But we weren't too confident. I wondered if anyone really understands it.