Rusty, sometimes the trauma that haunts us the most is not something huge or ongoing, but just one event that lingers in our minds. What you experienced was traumatic on several levels...you saw an infant die, which had to have been very hard on a small child...plus, you were asked to do something by an adult that was way beyond your capabilities, but at four, we are conditioned to listen to adults, so you couldn't have realized that she was out of line...then, this same person accused you of being to blame for the horrible thing you just witnessed. I hope that you do recognize now that what this woman did to you was extremely unprofessional. To ask any patient to look after another patient is wrong, and to ask that of a four year old who is also suffering from a severe illness is unconscionable. My guess is the reason you never saw this nurse again was because she was fired, because she should have been for that behavior.

Of course, realizing all of that is really only step one. Our minds do have a way of dragging these things back into our heads, no matter how hard we try to force them back into the past. You say you have told no one of this. Well, one thing I have found has helped me with things that keep popping up out of the past is to tell people about them...not to reveal how much it haunts me, but just to tell the story. Like, "you know, when I was a little kid, this happened to me.." Somehow, dragging that event out into the open, and making it just another story of something that happened (maybe a pretty nasty story, but still a story), takes some of the power away from it. I am absolutely sure that if you told people this story, more often that not you would hear things like, "that witch!!! how could she do that to a little boy!" And this will help reinforce that part of you that knows the incident was her fault and not yours.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this will work for you, but it does help me. And hiding the incident away from everyone doesn't seem to have made it go away, so perhaps it is time to try something new.

Good luck.
*hugs*
mj