Chapter 40: Growing Pains

Monday rolled around again, reducing the countdown to just three weeks until our exams and less than four until Ness and her parents would be coming up. I didn’t know how long they were going to be staying, but my birthday was the week after and so I was hoping that they would stay at least until then. Now that I had accepted the idea of having a birthday party, I wanted them to be there.

I was also thinking about my parents. We had effectively run out of space. Gracie still had her room, although I suspected that she would still be in hospital by my birthday. Then there was our room, Josh’s and Louise’s room, and Jules’ workshop. That left just one spare bedroom. We had two sets of parents coming. I wasn’t sure how we were going to accommodate them, but I was pretty sure one of the girls might have some ideas. I would check in with them later.

These thoughts were running through my head as soon as I woke. It was just after four and I needed to get to the dojo. I slid out of bed and began my day.

“Good morning,” Kevin said as I entered the dojo.

“Morning,” I replied, before going into the changing room to get into my gi.

“Thank you for looking after Carys on Saturday,” he said, when I emerged.

“It was Josh and Louise who brought her home,” I said. “Not me.”

“I’m not talking about that,” he said. “She told me what you said. When she got in, she was still a little drunk and probably talked a little too much. She told me that she’d made a play for you, and you had turned her down because she was drunk.”

“Does she remember telling you all this?” I asked, a small smile on my face.

He smiled. “I think she does, but she is pretending not to.”

I laughed.

“I know you have an unusual arrangement with your fiancées,” he said. “None of you seem to have any issues with having sex outside of your relationship.”

I stopped warming up and turned to face him, waiting for whatever he was going to say next.

“Carys is all I have left,” he explained. “Her mother abandoned us both while I was away. I came back to find Carys at my parents’ house. I don’t want to see her hurt again.”

“Nor do I want to hurt her,” I said in return. “But Carys is a grown woman who can, and will, make her own choices. She knows that the girls and I are together and that we are not looking to extend our family. She has needs and perhaps she sees us as an opportunity to get those needs met, without all of the baggage of an entanglement that she is not ready for.

“Seeing what we do and how we live, how hurtful would it be for us to turn her away if she came to us? I’m not talking about what happened Friday night but if Carys, sober and in full possession of her faculties, came and asked us, we wouldn’t turn her away.”

“She may think that’s what she wants,” he replied. “But what if she becomes attached to you and to the girls. I just don’t want her to get hurt.”

“I understand that,” I said. “Believe me, I really do. But you are setting yourself up for failure. Carys is going to get hurt in her life – it’s inevitable. All I can promise is that we will not deliberately hurt her. I am not making the plays here; she’s the one who came to me.”

Kevin sighed. “I know,” he said. “But I know her, she is drawn to you. I just...”

He looked at me helplessly and sighed again. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a daughter, but I saw his anguish in his aura.

We sparred for the rest of the session. I had thought that we were going to be doing more Aikido training, but I suspect that Kevin was not in the right frame of mind for that.

After the session, I got changed and headed for the door.

“Caleb,” he said, I had my hand on the door handle.

“Yes?” I said turning.

“Just know,” he said. “If you hurt her, I will come for you.”

I smiled at him. “I know,” I said, and left the dojo.

The morning passed with little to differentiate it from so many other Mondays I had endured. I had a couple of hypnotherapy appointments, including one video call with Fiona. She had lost enough weight to be rewarded, and the change in her attitude was incredible. She was no longer a grumpy bad tempered brat; quite the opposite, in fact. I could see that losing even just over twenty six pounds had given her hope. I didn’t suppose that the orgasms were doing any harm either.

I ate lunch with the girls and Dana who had made it her habit to eat with us when her lunchtime coincided with ours. Dana was much less skittish around us now. I had expected some awkwardness from her after what had happened on Friday night, but she had come for dinner Saturday and Sunday and seemed to have found her place with us.

The girls and I discussed the issue of bedrooms over lunch.

“Why don’t we turn the den into a bedroom?” asked Jules. “We could store the furniture up in the attic space, there is still the bed and some other bedroom furniture that I would love to get out of my workshop. The only disadvantage is that it opens into the living room. Other than that, it’s a good size and would make a great bedroom. We rarely use it in any case.”

She was right. I could count on one hand the number of times we’d used the den. Even if it was only a temporary change, turning the den into a bedroom would make sense.

“Great idea,” I said. “Maybe get it moved around this weekend? That way we have still got a couple of weeks if we need to get, or do, anything else in preparation.”

“Don’t forget we agreed to go see Nana Babi on Sunday,” said Amanda. I had, in fact, forgotten.

“It shouldn’t take too long,” I said. “We should be able to get it done Saturday.”

After lunch, I went to a class and then went home to cook an early dinner in preparation for meeting Jeevan.

We were in a church hall once again.

“It’s time,” said Jeevan, in his full Maharishi regalia.

“Time?” I asked.

“I’m hoping that the lady with the pancreatic cancer comes tonight,” he said. “If she does, I think we will be able to Heal her. With your power, and my guidance, we should be able to manage it. I hope you are fully rested?”

“I am,” I said.

He nodded. “Good.”

Jeevan went backstage, and I took a seat in the auditorium and watched as people filtered in.

She was one of the last to arrive, and she looked terrible. Her skin was jaundiced, and the whites of her eyes looked yellow too. I sent an image of what I was seeing to Jeevan.

“That is not good,” he said. “Her cancer must have progressed. We may already be too late.”

I had already made the mistake of digging into her mind. Now I knew all about her, I had to try to help her.

Her name was Nicola, and she was just forty four years old. She had a husband named Nick and two children who were in their early teens. Despite her diagnosis she was still working as a call handler at a local insurance company. She had initially been on the road, and was a very effective sales representative, but when she became ill the company had brought her into the office.

“Let’s Heal her, ” I said. “Whatever it takes.”

“That is exactly the wrong thing to think,” he sent. “You cannot go into a Healing with that attitude. All that will happen is that you may or may not Heal the patient, but you risk your own safety. I fear that we are too late to help Nicola.”

“No,” I said. “Let’s at least try. If nothing else we can give her more time, and perhaps even alleviate some of her symptoms.”

The cymbals crashed and Jeevan appeared on stage to begin his show. As always, I was impressed with both his ability to work the room, and to multitask. He kept up a constant stream of banter, while we assessed and worked on our patient.

“I suspect,” he began when we first started to assess her condition, “that she has perhaps a few weeks left of her life. The tumour has gone everywhere, it is in her lymph nodes, and her liver.”

“So, what do we do?” I asked.

“We have to make a decision,” he said. “Do we treat her, or not. I am not one hundred percent confident that we can Heal her, and if we do not, we may significantly shorten her life.”

“How short?” I asked.

“Possibly to days,” he said. “If we do nothing, I estimate she has about a month to six weeks remaining.”

I examined her mind again. Nicola was ready to die. The only reason she hadn’t taken her own life was that there was a suicide exclusion on her life policy which meant that her family would lose out on the insurance if she killed herself. She was in constant pain and misery. The only reason that she kept coming to Jeevan’s meetings was that they seemed, for a short time at least, to ease her pain. She had no hope of a cure. She was done.

I had shared this knowledge with Jeevan. “If we asked her, she would agree,” I said. “We need to try.”

I felt some small amusement from him at that.

“No consent?” he asked.

“Whatever happens, we are giving her what she wants.” I responded. “If we can heal her then that is the miracle she most desires. If not, and we shorten her life, then we are cutting short her misery. I won’t say it’s a win-win, because it’s not, but in either case she gets relief. I know that is what she would choose if given the option.”

Jeevan was silent for a few moments.

“Very well,” he sent. “Let us begin.”

The next fifteen minutes was the most difficult and taxing I had ever found using my powers. Previously I had just imagined things into being, but this time there was active resistance. It was as if the disease was a sentient creature that was unwilling to let go of its victim. I was reminded of the time I tried to help Ness when she was so far away; this was actually harder. It was working, but it was like pushing a railcar, on rusty rails, uphill.

I kept an eye on my energy bar, and saw it falling at an alarming rate. We were less than five minutes in, and it was already a third gone. Jeevan’s was better but I realized that he was preferentially using my power and just using his to guide. I didn’t mind; it made sense. Hopefully by the time I ran out of power, if there was anything left that needed doing, he would be able to finish it off.

We had implanted all of our plan to her body now. The tumour cells were all set to self-destruct over a period of about two days. All of the cells, not just in the primary tumour but wherever they had spread, would die. At the same time we bolstered her lymphatic and immune systems to be able to cope with all the waste products that the death of so many cells would produce. We didn’t want to cure her cancer only for her to die of rhabdomyolysis.

While we were working on Nicole, on stage, the Maharishi was working on one of his plants. It was apparently a particularly difficult case. When he had finally pronounced her healed, he was on his knees, sweating, and blood was dripping from his nose.

I wasn’t in a much better state. As I was sitting on the end of a row, I was able to turn away from the person next to me, and cover the fact that my nose, too, was bleeding. I was sweating, and dizzy. I actually thought I might black out.

My energy bar was completely gone, and I had encroached by about half a segment into my other bar, the one Jeevan said I should never eat into.

“Bhaiya,” he sent. “We did it, but you and I were both reckless. How far into your life bar did you go?”

“Only a little,” I replied, breathing hard.

“A little is still too much,” he sent. “I shouldn’t have allowed you to convince me to take this on.”

“Did we succeed?” I asked.

I considered his words. I was getting my breathing back under control, and my nose had stopped bleeding. Nicola wasn’t even aware that she had been given a reprieve. In fact, she was disappointed in tonight’s meeting. Since neither of us had anything left, we hadn’t blocked her pain. Her pain would resolve itself over the next few days, but the relief that she had felt in attending these meetings before was no longer evident. She took it as a sign that her cancer was too advanced and that her death was imminent. She would call in sick from work, something that she had resolutely refused to do so far and spend her last few days or weeks with her family.

I thought about my family. How I would feel if one of them were in her position. How I would feel if I lost any of them. Then I realized that I had been incredibly selfish. Risking my own life to heal someone else wasn’t noble ... it was stupid. If I died, it wouldn’t matter to me; I’d be dead. It would be my girls, and my friends, that would suffer the loss. They would have to pick up the pieces of each other’s grief. Why would I even consider putting them through that?

I ‘saw’ the twins, Jules, Ness, my parents, even Cheryl and Dean, faces contorted by grief as they stood around my lifeless body All of them were asking themselves and each other the same question: Why? Why did I think so little of them that I would kill myself just to help a complete stranger?

I swore to myself, to them, that I would never do something that stupid again. I vowed that if I wasn’t one hundred percent certain I could Heal someone with the energy I had available that I would walk away. I would try and find alternatives, perhaps stage the healing, but if not then all I would do is make their passing as painless as possible. Blocking pain took little or no effort. I could do that much – if I could do nothing more.

“I promise,” I sent.

Jeevan was silent – I guessed that he had ‘overheard’ my musings prior to my promise and he seemed relieved. He picked himself up off his knees and faced his audience. They were rapt. I don’t think they had ever seen him collapse to his knees before, and the nosebleed was new too. For a moment I wondered whether his demonstration of power would help or hurt his image. He continued the meeting healing another couple of his plants. His audience was the most receptive I had ever seen them.

After the meeting was over he took me to a local diner. It would be an understatement to say that we raided their menu. We both ate copious amounts of food. He paid.

“Next week,” he said as he ate, “we are taking the week off. We need time to recover after we both tapped into our own life forces like that. So, you, and the girls, are coming over for dinner.”

Jules and the girls were waiting in the living room for me when I got home. Josh and Louise had made themselves scarce.

“That’s the last time,” Mary opened, “that you do anything that stupid.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but Amanda beat me to it.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” she snapped. “Putting your own life at risk for a perfect stranger?”

“I...” I began.

“You knew before you started,” Jules interjected, “that you might not have enough energy to heal her. You also knew what that meant.”

The killer was the remote connection – Ness.

“I thought you loved us,” she sent. “Why would you do that to us?”

I sank down on one of the chairs. I felt guilty and defeated; I knew they were right.

“I’m sorry,” I said and sent simultaneously. “I know it was stupid. If it means anything I have already promised myself, Jeevan, and all of you, that I would never do something so monumentally stupid again.” I sent them all the memory of my conversation with Jeevan after the healing, my thoughts, and my promise. “It was only after, when I thought about what Jeevan was saying to me, that I realized how selfish I was being. Again, I promise you all it will never happen again.”

All three girls stood, and came over to me, pulling me to my feet and enveloping me in a hug.

“It better not,” mumbled Jules into my chest.

“Or else...” came over the connection from Ness.

To lighten the mood, I thought to Ness “Or what?”

Her reply was almost instantaneous and directed to everyone. “I’ll put you over my knee!”

I smiled. Everyone laughed. Both Amanda and Jules swatted my ass.

The rest of the week passed without much of interest happening. Kevin seemed to have settled down and our training routine continued as it had previously. Carys wasn’t at the dojo on the Tuesday night when I went to teach my class. But that was not unusual; she sometimes missed an evening session. Her father was there to supervise and lock up when we were done.

Wednesday morning was my ethics class. The topic for debate, for once, had nothing to do with anything that was going on in my life. I enjoyed listening to the arguments without feeling the need to get involved. The professor glanced in my direction a couple of times, as if expecting me to say something, but stopped short of calling on me directly. If he had, I wasn’t exactly sure what I would have said other than – ‘I don’t care.’

Just after lunch, I got a text from Carys.

_Can we talk?

_Sure, I responded.

_Can you come to the dojo after class?

_Okay

I let the girls know that I would be late home and where I would be.

The electronic door beeper announced my entry to the dojo. Carys was on the mat teaching a couple of kids in their mid-teens I guesstimated. Business had picked up for them quite a lot, and they had even started giving private lessons.

She glanced up at the sound of the door buzzer and then continued talking to her students. I looked at my watch – it was five minutes to the hour. I guessed that their session would finish on the hour so I settled in to wait.

I had been correct. On the hour, Carys sent the kids to get changed.

“That is my last class of the afternoon,” she said. “Once they get dressed and go we’ll have the place to ourselves until the evening class at seven.”

We sat in uncomfortable silence for about ten minutes until the teens came out of the changing room, bade Carys good night – gawped at me, and then left. Carys closed and locked the door.

I wondered what she had in mind.

“Dad told me he spoke to you,” she opened.

“He did,” I returned.

“It seems I said more than I should have when I got home from the barbecue last Friday,” she admitted.

“He told me that too.”

She worried at her nail for a second.

“Amanda said...” she began but stopped herself.

“Amanda says quite a lot of things,” I said. “If she got her way, I think I would be sleeping with just about everyone we know.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why is she, are they, so okay with you sleeping around. Do they do it too?”

“I don’t think,” I said, “that our relationship’s boundaries are what you really wanted to talk about. Are they?”

She worried at the nail again.

“I like you Caleb,” she said hesitantly. “I really like you. When you are around, I feel safe ... and comfortable ... and...”

“Horny?” I suggested – she blushed, looked down and worried at her nail again.

“What is it that you are looking for Carys?” I asked her. “You know that I have four fiancées that I love more than anything else in the world. I’m neither looking to replace them nor add to that number.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just...”

“I want you to fuck me,” Her mind screamed at me.

“I had a boyfriend,” she began. “Back in Iowa.”

I hadn’t known where they lived before moving to Oregon. They had never offered the information, and I had never thought to ask.

“When we left,” she continued, “Dad offered for him to come with us. He didn’t want to move out here. Obviously, I wasn’t worth moving for. We’ve been out here for months now. I live with my father and I’m either at home or here at the dojo. The only men I have met are sleazeballs who only want one thing Although it is exactly what I want, I don’t want it with them.”

“What do you want, Carys?” I pressed.

“I want you to fuck me,” she said, out loud this time. “I know that you and I are never going to be a permanent thing. I really don’t understand your family dynamic, but I know you make me feel safe, and comfortable - and horny. I also know that you and the girls like to ‘play’ together with others but that really doesn’t interest me; I’m not into girls at all. Amanda told me I could borrow you and I want to take her, you, up on that. Does that make me a slut? Maybe, but I don’t care. I just need someone to make me feel like a woman from time to time, until I find a man of my own.

“Will you do that for me, Caleb, please?”

She stood up and walked over, until she was standing in front of me. She held out her hand, and taking hold of mine, pulled me to my feet.

“Here?” I asked.

“Neutral ground,” she said. “My house has my father; your place has your girls.”

“They would leave us alone,” I said.

“But they would still be there,” she said. “I’d know they were there, just outside the door.”

“It’s kind of public,” I said gesturing to the windows. The whole of the inside of the dojo was visible from the street through the front windows.

“Not ‘here’ here,” she said leading me to the staff changing room. “Here.”

She pulled me inside and, closing the door, pulled me into a kiss.

She tasted of mint, and need.

When I left the dojo an hour later, Carys was back in her gi. We had both showered in the small cubicle in the changing room, separately. It was too small for anything else.

We went back into the main room, and she unlocked the door, her class was due to start in about forty minutes so she expected people to start arriving soon.

“Caleb,” she said as I opened the door to leave. I looked back at her.

She smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “Tell your girls ‘thank you’ too, I hope they’ll let me borrow you again sometime?”

I smiled at her and went home.

“How was she?” asked Mary when I arrived home.

It was simpler to just send them the memories.

“It’s a shame,” said Amanda with a pout. “I would have liked to play with her too.”

“I got the impression that she has issues about that,” I said. “It may be an interesting project for you, but I honestly can’t see you changing her mind.”

Mary shook her head. “We can’t put pressure on her,” she said. “If it’s not her thing, then we’re just going to have to accept it. Caleb can take care of her needs until she finds someone for herself.

“Now, speaking of needs, it’s nearly seven and we are hungry...”

I grinned at her and went into the kitchen to make dinner.

Jules followed me into the kitchen.

“How was it?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked, you saw my memories.

“Only of the ‘event’” she said. “You didn’t share the lead up. How was your first time ‘sharing’ outside of the house without the girls nearby.”

I thought about that for a moment. “You know,” I admitted. “It wasn’t an issue. I knew that the girls would be fine with it, so it never even registered with me. I was sad that she wouldn’t come back and include the girls, but other than that...”

“You know what the next step will be though, right?” she asked looking me in the eye.

I considered her words. “They will share without me,” I said. “Possibly with someone I haven’t even met.” I considered once again how that made me feel, or how I would feel when it actually happened. I also considered that having sex with Carys would accelerate the opening of those doors.

“Or you may come back here and find a stranger in your bed,” she said. “I’m not trying to upset you, but you need to be prepared. You have a lot of power and you sometimes ‘react.’ You need to be ready for those scenarios.

“The girls are really proud with how far you have come. Judging by your reaction just then, you are not all the way there. Now it may be that, just like the other times, the actuality of it will be much less problematic than the mere thought of it. However, you need to be prepared. You could do a lot of damage both physically and to our relationship if you react badly.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?” I asked. “Have they already shared, or are they planning to share, with someone?” I felt I knew the answer given our network but now I was unsure.

Jules shrugged. “If they are they haven’t told me about it,” she said. “They wouldn’t, or couldn’t, hide it from you in any case. They think that you are okay with it. I know that intellectually you are okay with it. Well, maybe not ‘okay’, but you know it will happen regardless. I’m less certain how you will react when actually faced with it.”

I continued to ponder Jules’ words all through dinner, and afterward as I cleared up. I conjured up scenarios where I came home and found them having sex with someone I didn’t know. I tried to decide how I would feel about it, but I couldn’t. I would just have to wait and see how things played out.

As it turns out, I didn’t have long to wait.

The next night, instead of going to the range, we went to see Gracie. Once again Dylan was there, they were fast becoming a couple. He was apparently spending all of his off-duty hours with her. He fed her her liquid diet, and kept her company. It soon became obvious that we were encroaching on their time together so after about thirty minutes, we left them to it.

Friday night, we went bowling again. For once Dana cried off, she said she had an assignment to finish and was ‘in the zone’ and wanted to complete it. So, it was just me, the twins, Jules, Josh and Louise.

I was doing really well. I’d just hit my fourth consecutive strike, without powers, and as I came back to sit down, I saw that Amanda was talking to one of the guys who were bowling on the next lane.

I thought nothing of it at the time, although we did have to interrupt them for her to take her next turn.

When I came back from my next shot – another strike - both Mary and Amanda were talking to him and one of his friends. Their auras showed that all four of them were horny.

As I sat down – it was Josh’s turn to bowl - I watched the twins and the two boys. There was definite chemistry there and it looked like they were getting ready for something more. I gritted my teeth. I could feel something building in my chest, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

Intellectually I realised I was being stupid. The twins needed to share just as much as I did, and so far, other than the couple of episodes with Dean, Josh had been their only outlet. Did other women count for them? I presumed it did, since they played with Daisy and Gracie with me. Even so they needed this. It was wrong of me to get in their way. Emotions are not so logical. I was severely conflicted over what I was seeing. These were MY GIRLS and they were overtly flirting ... and more ... right in front of me. It stung and I was on the verge of turning the two boys into meat paste.

I felt a hand in mine. Jules.

“Look at the love,” she said. “Look at the love they have for you, and their feelings for those two.”

For a moment I did just that. I looked at the love that the twins had for me. It was incredible. It was vast, a living thing that permeated their every fibre. Suddenly the burning ball of rage in my chest evaporated. I knew that my girls loved me more than anything in the world, and no matter what they did, or didn’t, do with those guys, they would always come home to me. They needed this as much as I needed it. I thought about Jeevan and how badly he had been hurt by not sharing. Could I do that to my girls? I knew that if I were against it, they loved me enough to not share. They would sacrifice that for me.

I looked over at the twins again, and Mary looked at me. She cocked her head to the side and smiled. Then the boy she had been talking to said something, and she turned back to him.