We're a Wonderful Wife

A photo album of Don and Lanh's painful recovery

PHOTOGRAPH

Scene around a hospital bed, Don, Lanh, Tam, Kim-ly, and Al Zimmerman are all conversing happily, Lanh is feeding Don with a spoon as he lies in the bed and Kim-ly looks on with a concerned smile.

Don doesn't know how or when they arrived, he woke up one day and saw Tam sitting by his bed. He closed his eyes for what seemed like a moment (which was actually several hours) and Kim-ly was there instead. Later he saw all three girls, but he soon tired of their chatter. Kim-ly said "We're going to a gasthaus, do you want us to bring you anything?"

Don whispered, "Bitte ein Bit."

"What?" Kim-ly didn't understand. Don gave her a withering look and she remembered. Ten years ago she visited and there was a brewery in Bitburg and "Bitte ein Bit" was the catch phrase for Bitburger beer.

"No beer!" scolded Lanh. "She'll probably have several for you," then she softened, "Are you sure you are going to be ok with us gone?"

Don relaxed, he knew that Tam and Kim-ly were here for Lanh, and he was grateful for that. "Go enjoy time with your sisters, I'll keep busy chasing nurses."

He closed his eyes for a moment after Lanh kissed him goodbye, and when he opened them again, all three women were sitting around him speaking softly in Vietnamese. "I thought you were going to dinner," he said.

"That was last night," said Tam.

Such is Don's life, drifting in and out of consciousness, waking only to eat and take medications. Don was grateful for the company, but Tam and Kim-ly had lives to live, Tam has a blind husband that needs her, two young boys and a baby on the way. This time she and Jake asked the doctor to not tell them what the sex of their baby was, hoping that number three would be a girl. Kim-ly has a successful life as an accountant, in fact she is Don and Lanh's accountant. "You guys should go, you got a family back there," said Don.

"We have family here too," said Tam, her facial expression never changed, and she studied Don to see what his expression would reveal. Tam was doing her psychology professor thing on him.

Don felt guilty that the sisters were here, all three of them. They had lives to return to, including Lanh, they shouldn't be punished because of his stupidity. Right now, Lanh and Kim-ly were out for a walk, they both needed to get out for a while, even though the weather was so wet and cold.

Just then alarms and beepers started sounding off and Cynthia cried out in agony. Nurses sprinted to her bedside, Don could hear them working with Cynthia, asking her questions like "Where does it hurt?" and "ok, the doctor is coming, you just hang on." Doctor Ortiz sprinted to Cynthia's bed, she gave several stern instructions to the nurses, then Cynthia howled in agony. It sounded to Don that she was talking on the phone "Is there an OR available? ... It will have to do... Ok, we are on our way... hang on Cynthia we're going to take care of you... Nurse! Start prepping her as we go..." and they wheeled her past his bed, she was groaning as she passed by.

"She was so strong..." Don looked like he was heading into shock.

"She IS strong," Tam tried to correct.

"No, she WAS strong, then she got crushed, and that's all my fault," he said quietly. He thought that he had no more tears, then he remembered Cynthia showing him pictures of her two-year-old son and the joyful smile she had, and the joy she felt knowing she would be home in just a few days... and he felt his heart lurch. "I killed her," he gasped, and the tears began to flow.

"No, you did not! That's why I'm here," said Tam. "I'm here to help you realize that none of this is your fault."

Just then the sound of Wendy weeping over her friend could be heard. "I'm responsible for that too," Don said, choking back his tears. "I destroyed them both, and me." He gestured a little with his mangled right hand. Metal appliances were bolted to his hand as the bones healed, it looked like someone was trying to replace his hand bones with pieces of scrap metal but mounted them outside of the skin. He couldn't see what was going on with his legs, and he was terrified to look. "I took Lanh down with me," he groaned, "She's chained to a rusting anchor."

"Look," said Tam, "There's a Latin phrase you need to learn, ready?" She waited until she had Don's full attention, which took a long time as waves of anger and self-loathing washed over him. "Now repeat after me,

Stercore

accidit

."

"Sterno accredit."

"No, listen...

Stercore

accidit

."

"

Stercore

accidit

."

"Good," Tam nodded, "say it again."

"

Stercore accidit

. What does it mean Doc?"

Tam frowned at him. "Well Doc, it's Latin, it means

shit happens

. It's one of the hardest lessons we have to learn in life. This whole thing, isn't your fault, you weren't driving that airplane that caused all of this, you're as much a victim in all of this as they are, even more so."

"Even more so?"

"You're their supervisor, you picked them for that duty, you got injured too and you're helpless to do anything, you can't help them, so you have to put up with bullshit feelings of guilt and inadequacy."

Don's eyebrows went up. "My feelings are bullshit?"

"They are when you're wrong," said Tam.

"That's what I've been trying to tell him," Zoomer mumbled as he returned from trying to calm down Wendy and sat in a chair at the end of the bed. He was trying to read a paperback and was doing a horrible job pretending not to hear their conversation.

"I thought you weren't that kind of psychologist," said Don.

"I'm not, but I am a mom, which allows me to dispense wisdom. Do you know the difference between knowledge and wisdom?"

"Of course."

"Tell me."

Don went into "teacher mode" and spoke like he was teaching a school child. "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."

Tam chuckled, "Exactly, wisdom is the proper application of acquired knowledge... can I use that tomato analogy?"

"Yeah," sighed Don, "It's public domain, I saw it on a t-shirt."

Tam smiled, the brother-in-law that she has loved since he first held her little sister's hand was still there buried under bandages, guilt, and pain. "You know you were not at the controls of that airplane; you made sure that everyone was in a safe location and following all safety guidelines, therefore you did not cause it, you may have saved their lives. That's knowledge, so feeling good about that is wisdom. Am I right?"

Don nodded slowly.

Tam continued, "you can feel bad for yourself, and Cynthia, and Wendy because you're all hurt, that's knowledge too. Letting yourself feel bad about that is wisdom because it's natural and you need an outlet for the pain. Am I right?"

Don nodded, what was she getting at. Zoomer leaned forward to hear better what she was saying, his book forgotten.

"But blaming yourself for the actions of someone else, that's false knowledge," said Tam. "And what do we call the application of false knowledge when you know it to be false?" Tam glared at Don with that cold stare that has been known to emotionally shatter underclassmen.

"I don't know," he finally sputtered.

"We call it fucking stupid," she glared at him and waited for a response then said, "It's a medical term. Feel free to use it."

Zoomer started laughing so hard he left the room to compose himself. From behind her curtains Wendy shouted, "You go girl!" then muttered "... been trying to tell him that since he woke up."

"Ok, sheesh, point taken. No wonder you're not that kind of psychologist." He was quiet for a long time, then he finally said, "You've been telling me since we met that you're not that kind of psychologist, what kind of psychologist are you?"

She glared at him with that look that could freeze a roaring fire into a solid block of ice. Finally, she said, "Industrial."

"Oh... ok... I didn't realize that drill presses have emotional trauma."

"That's not..."

"Are there deep-seated resentments between hand tools and office equipment like copying machines?"

That's not..."

"What's the deepest, darkest secret a torque wrench ever told you? Tell me, I can keep a secret..."

"That's not..."

"I've always suspected that torque wrenches were emotionally unstable, I mean, if you drop one more than a foot, they need to be re-calibrated, to me that shows a deep-seated need to..."

"THAT'S EXACTLY WHY I NEVER TOLD YOU." She didn't shout, but she said it with such "mom-force" that everyone within earshot came to attention mentally. "It's the study of psychological associations between all participants in a workforce, I did not select the NAME of the specialty."

"I know... I was there at your graduation... I just had all those one liners bottled up..."

Tam smiled, and she had the most beautiful smile, Don and Lanh knew the moment she and Jake got serious because that beautiful smile emerged, before that point in time Don never saw a smile grace her beautiful face. "I'm doing a study on this incident; I interviewed your wing commander, and he gave me permission to perform the study, write a paper, and submit my findings to him so he and his medical staff can make appropriate decisions."

"Cool! Then you can write off this entire trip as a business expense," he grinned.

She leaned over and kissed his forehead, "I never said that. You'll have to talk to my accountant. But I have something to take your mind off of things for a moment." She stood up and moved close to his bed. "Give me your hand," she very carefully took Don's mangled hand and gently placed it on her belly. "Feel that?"

Don concentrated, touch was very sensitive on his right hand now, through his pain he could feel it clearly. It was almost like a mouse was dancing inside of her. "Is that..." He smiled for the first time since he regained consciousness.

Tam smiled, "Yeah, that's your new nephew Arlo."

"Nephew? I thought you didn't want the doctor to tell you."

"She didn't tell us, but I can tell, this is boy. Boys are gentle in the womb." He was very gentle, much gentler than his brothers.

Don continued to feel Arlo's movements until he fell sleep and dreamed that his hand was on Lanh's stomach feeling their baby's movements as he prepared to meet them.

PHOTOGRAPH

Don and Lanh lying together in a hospital bed kissing tenderly, behind them a nurse peeks in the door

Time was meaningless to Don, he woke up and went to sleep as needed, the lights were always the same, there was no clock to see, the TV was boring and a waste of time, just old re-runs of shows he had seen when he was stationed her a decade ago, Hogan's Heros and the Black Sheep Squadron. Or there were shows he avoided stateside, prime time soap operas. He did watch Guten Tag however. Guten Tag is an ancient German TV show designed to teach people how to speak German. He watched it when he was here alone waiting for an apartment to free up... crap, ten? twelve? years ago? Math is hard when you're on nuclear powered pain killers. The show was based on repetition and Don would repeat along with it, over and over, buzzed out of his skull on pain pills, until he fell asleep.

He didn't notice for a couple of days that he was moved out of the ICU to a private room and a bed for Lanh was set up next to his. He has a vague, fuzzy memory of Tam and Kim-ly saying goodbye, he does remember Cynthia leaving however, he didn't get to say goodbye to her either. He woke up one day and noticed the TV was on a different wall and there was a window on the wall to his left. How much time he spent there he has no way of knowing. His life was mostly x-rays, nurses, and Lanh.

He woke up in pain, and there was Lanh, his love, his partner, his everything, sleeping gently next to him. She's so beautiful when she's relaxed, a smile always graces her lips when she sleeps, her closed eyes even look like little smiles. He tried to go back to sleep but he couldn't, there were other urges... how much water did he drink? It feels like gallons. He probed around with his right hand and accidently rubbed the metal bars holding his bones together against her stomach causing her to wake up immediately. "Hmmm? What?"

"I'm sorry baby, but I have to go." He felt awful for waking her up.

"It's ok, don't apologize. Number one or number two?"

"Number one," he felt so stupid, so useless. He was one bad thought away from bawling like an infant.

"Shhh, shhh, shhh... I like touching you here," she said as she got the "night bottle" between his legs. He felt her manipulating his cock, then he felt her putting the head of it in the neck of the "night bottle" and she said what she almost always says "We might need a bigger bottle, you barely fit," which she follows up with "I'm a lucky girl," and she smiles at him. Sometimes he smiles back, but sometimes he breaks down in tears, it's hard to gauge which way he'll go. This time he gave her a smile that she couldn't read. Once he was done, she took the bottle to the bathroom and left it for the night nurse, then she used the toilet herself.

After washing she returned to Don. As she climbed into bed he whispered, "Stay with me... please?" This was new, because of the pain medications, one day with Don is like any other day with Don because he can't tell the difference and he can't remember yesterday's conversations.

"I will always stay with you Doctor Donovan Aloysius Campbell." She emphasized Doctor because he forgets, but that's understandable, he was named Doctor only hours before the accident. She leaned over and gave him a kiss. "You will never get rid of me Doctor Campbell," she said, her dark brown eyes seeking out his in the dark hospital room. "I will follow you wherever you go." She snuggled as close to him as she could without causing him pain and her hand strayed to his cock. As she idly caressed his cock with her hand, she felt it begin to grow. She was reminded of that day, years ago when he was exhausted from his swim meet and was sleeping on the couch and she took him in her mouth soft and as it got harder, she let his cock work its way down her virgin throat.

Before she knew it, she was crouching over her husband, his semi-hard cock in her mouth and she was suckling on it, coaxing it to life. She wasn't sure if it was possible, or even right to sexually excite your man when he was this injured, but no one told her not to. Slowly her ministrations began to bear fruit, his cock grew and grew and grew. Soon he was bone hard, hard as he was when he was a high school virgin, and back then high school virgin Lanh actually did wonder if there was a bone in his penis. Why not? Every other mammal on earth has one, why not Don?

In Don the calamity of tactile inputs was confusing, he was bombarded by the pain from all over his body yet at the same time the delicious pleasure of his wife's warm, wet tongue sliding over his cock competed with the pain, and her tongue was winning. She couldn't take him too deep into her mouth because he was too hard, it was like hot steel covered with smooth velvet. She held the head of his cock and a couple of inches in her mouth and slavered her tongue over it while her saliva slid down his cock, lubricating her hand as it slid up and down his shaft.

He arched his head back on the pillow and groaned "Oh my God that is incredible!" and he gave himself over to the sensations she was causing. He tried to see what she was doing but it was so dark in the room, and he didn't dare touch her with his right hand, not with all that exposed metal. His left hand was splinted and immobilized, so it was like he was completely bound. There was no escape from her ravenous mouth as the warm wet friction she inflicted coaxed the sperm out of his body.

Sensing his mounting excitement, she shifted position and took his swollen balls in her mouth. Back to the basics, they used to love this so much in high school, up in the hay loft, and more than a few married nights spent teasing and tickling in the hay. To accommodate her he spread his legs a little which caused him intense pain, he almost lost his erection, but Lanh continued to mouth his balls and stroke his cock and soon she brought him back to full strength. This was their favorite when they were eighteen, her suckling his balls and stroking his cock, she could make him cum in moments if she wanted to, but this time was so much more. The constant bombardment of sensation, the pain, the pleasure, they hammered at him. It confused and excited Don and soon he was gasping and groaning, trying to communicate his passion but it was impossible. In the end he just let the sensations assault him as her tongue and lips occasionally slithered up and down his cock.

His cock strained in near release, it was a missile ready to launch, demanding more and more attention, throbbing and tingling as the sexual tension built, overriding the pain that has been his constant companion, casting off the fuzzy brain fog from the drugs. He needed more, more... he arched his back forcing his cock up, his breath was coming in tiny gasps, he was nearly paralyzed with pleasure when suddenly, with what felt like a body wide "click" his orgasm struck. It was an orgasm to exceed anything he's ever experienced. It was so intense it hurt.

Lanh switched from his balls to his cock just in time, swallowing as much of his length as she could, intensifying his pleasure. Each spurt into her mouth was huge and his semen was searing hot, but she took his sperm, every drop. It was the first time since September that she was able to enjoy her man, and she wasn't going to pass up a moment of it.

Don almost lost consciousness from the intensity of his orgasm, it was like an electric shock to his brain and his cock at the same time. After the third, mind-bending spurt, his body suddenly relaxed and his hips dropped to the mattress where he lay and shuddered as the orgasm slowly subsided. Lanh gently licked him clean then arranged his right arm so she wouldn't hurt him or get her nightgown caught on the metal appliances and lay down next to him where they snuggled.

"Oh my God, thank you so much," he finally gasped as he returned to his senses.

"You don't thank someone for a blowjob," she sneered.

"Who came up with that stupid rule?" Don chided. "I bring you roses; you thank me. I bring you chocolates; you thank me. For a guy, a blowjob is flowers AND candy."

"And who came up with THAT stupid rule?" but she was smiling when she asked.

"It's not a rule, it's true. Trust me, I'm a doctor."

She propped herself up on an elbow and looked into his eyes, "You know, that's the first time I've heard you say that... the part about being a doctor," she added quickly. It's true, he has never mentioned anything of his academic accomplishment since he was informed by Colonel Gillian almost two months ago.

He raised his damaged hands a little and said, "They're not going to let me sergeant anymore, so I guess I'll have to doctor from now on..." he considered his degree, Ed.D. Doctor of Education. He didn't plan on this degree, it grew organically, he just kept studying in a course of studies that he enjoyed, and he ended up a Doctor of Education. "I diagnose and treat sick schools?"

"Exactly!" said Lanh, "there's a lot out there that need your help." She was about to expound on how the educational system for American military dependent children in Europe needs help when there came a tap on the door and a nurse poked her head in the room.

"Are you up?" the nurse asked.

"I was," said Don.

"Hush!" said Lanh blushing furiously, and she slapped his shoulder.

"She wouldn't have thought anything of it if you hadn't reacted like that," said Don slyly. "She would have thought I messed up my word tense or something."