Chapter 2

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. Here in Germany, the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service runs TV for the American military, but Don didn’t see any improvement. The only thing watchable was old re-runs of shows he had seen when he was stationed here a decade ago. Hogan’s Heros and the Black Sheep Squadron. There were new shows, but they were dramas he avoided stateside, prime time soap operas.

Kunsan was better. Some guy over at the Comm Squadron operated the big satellite receiver and pumped out whatever he found onto the base cable system. He and Alice got hooked on watching Asian cricket matches, although neither he nor Alice ever understood the game.

In the ICU, he watched 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? twenty? 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 had a vague, fuzzy memory of Tam and Kim-ly saying goodbye. He remembered Cynthia remaining behind in the ICU; 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 had 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 accidentally 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 smiled 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.