A New Life Nursing Their Damaged Warriors by Francis x. Clines

The two soldiers lolled speechless in wheelchairs, severely brain damaged by war, staring out at the home front from a diagnosis of "minimal consciousness." Their young brides fed them through gastric tubes, one of the frequent tasks in the women's brave new careers as veterans’ family caretakers.

It is a sweet and bitter fact of modern battlefield medicine that more warriors can survive devastating brain wounds that would have killed them in previous wars.

There are about 2,000 suffering the most severe brain trauma from Iraq and Afghanistan, with perhaps 200 more a year to come, according to an estimate by the Wounded Warrior Project, a charity that helps damaged military families.

Rather than store away these young men and women in nursing homes, more family members - their own lives forever upended - are opting to be trained to nurse and rehabilitate their loved ones at home. These gritty families insist that a home setting is essential to any recovery and hope of a worthwhile lifetime.

"I chose to stay with my man," explained RyAnne Noss, ministering to her husband Scot, a once powerful Army Ranger who was dragged from a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. RyAnne put aside her PH.D. in chemistry to become Scot's round-the-clock helpmate rather than leave him for visits across years in a convalescent home.

Across the way, Anthony Thompson, a Navy medic rendered helpless by a truck bomb in Iraq, was patted lovingly by his wife, Ivonne. "My life has taken a very different turn," she said.

Ivonne gave up her career as a schoolteacher in favor of what she concedes are unknowable years ahead. She's not afraid to face a question with her friend RyAnne: "How much can we handle?" Ivonne has an answer rooted in furious optimism about Anthony and their 2-year-old son, A.J., who she said is already drawing glints of recognition from his father.

RyAnne talks of what love is and what it can accomplish. "They knew we were strong women when they married us," she said, eying the two men in the sunshine flooding their room at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange, N.J. Photographs of the men smiling and able-bodied in uniform gleamed from the walls.

Both women have encountered comments from clumsy outsiders that battlefield death would have been more merciful for everyone's future. Their answer is that they can't imagine life without their men, however much damaged, and without the chance to inch them firsthand back toward themselves.

After eight years of war, Congress is finally debating rival bills that would provide these spouses - and parents, too - a small government stipend for their work.