Preview: We're a Wonderful Wife - Dr. & Dr. Campbell - Book 3 of 4
by Duleigh

©Copyright 2024 Duleigh

Chapter 1

Lying in the Wiesbaden hospital intensive care wing, Don Campbell lived in a world of pain that was managed by different pain medications. He was almost in a full body cast. He was sure that the only thing he didn't break was his dick, maybe. He remembered nothing about the accident that put him in the hospital. One minute, he was in his dispatch van at the small arm-up ramp at the end of the runway at King Abdul-Aziz Air Base in Saudi Arabia. He was on the radio getting the tail numbers of the planes headed to his team to arm up. The next moment, his truck filled with jet exhaust fumes, and he was blown off the ramp over a 30 foot drop to piles of sharp, broken boulders.

Then another truck landed on him.

Then a huge fire extinguisher landed on the mess and exploded. The only thing he knew for sure was that he would not have survived the ordeal without the help of his wife's angel. The mostly invisible woman whispered to him and encouraged him, reminding him of his darling wife and that angel kept him from giving up until they flew him to Germany for emergency surgery.

Don opened his eyes, and he saw his wife Lanh, a tiny, sweet Vietnamese woman, and with her were her sisters Tam and Kim-ly, who were equally beautiful. He didn't know how or when his sisters-in-law arrived. They just appeared. He woke up one day and saw Tam sitting by his bed. He closed his eyes for what seemed like a moment (which was several hours) and Kim-ly was there instead and Tam was gone. Later, he saw all three girls, Tam, Kim-ly, and Lanh, sitting around his bed, but he soon tired of their chatter. What made it worse was that they were chattering in Vietnamese, which he barely understood. Finally, 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. Years ago, she visited and there was a brewery in Bitburg and "Bitte ein Bit" was the catchphrase 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 was 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 like Doctor Ortiz 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 crying 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 this happened, and that's all my fault," he mumbled. He thought 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 groaned. "I killed her…"

Don was inconsolable for a long time, and Tam heard Wendy weeping on the other side of the curtain. Zoomer looked just as bad when he peeked in Don's curtains, so whatever was going on with Cynthia was bad. It was time for Doctor Nguyen-Johnson to go to work.

"No, you did not kill her!" said Tam forcefully. "That's why 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 her too," Don said, choking back his tears. "I should be killed… I destroyed them both, and Lanh." 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 accident."

"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. "You, a psychologist, are saying that my feelings are bullshit?"

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

"That's what I've been trying to tell him," mumbled Captain Allan "Zoomer" Zimmerman as he returned from trying to calm down Wendy and sat in a chair at the end of the bed. Zoomer was assigned by the Wing Commander Colonel Gilliam to keep an eye out for his wounded airmen. Zoomer was trying to read a paperback and was doing a horrible job of 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 stared at his gorgeous sister-in-law and said, "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. You saved Skip Humphrey, if you hadn't ordered him to move to a different area, him and several other people, they could be dead right now. That's knowledge, so feeling good about that is wisdom. Am I right?"

Don nodded slowly. He had ordered Skip and several other smokers to move away from the pavilion to have their smoke. They were unharmed, but they all had a front-row seat to the massacre of their co-workers. Don wondered if they were as fucked in the head as he was now.

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 icy stare that has been known to emotionally shatter underclassmen.

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

"We call it bullshit," 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? Rasp files hating 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 carefully took Don's mangled hand and gently placed it on her belly. "Feel that?"

Don concentrated; touch was very sensitive to 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 a 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.

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