Caleb 40 - Growing Pains

Author's note.

My editor, Dr Mark, tells me that with this chapter - my little tale has reached the landmark of 500,000 words. That's almost as many words as I wrote, as impositions for my history teacher during my school career, for not turning in homework.

My thanks to Dr Mark for having the forbearance to read through the rubbish and help me produce something that perhaps someone might like to read.

Once again thanks to all of you, the readers. Please rate and comment. It's what makes it all worthwhile.

KR

PM

Caleb 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 believe we did," he said. "I am convinced that we have removed her cancer. She will live."

"Then it was worth it," I said. "We will recover."

"This time," he sent. For the first time ever, I felt anger in him. "But next time we may not be so lucky. You cannot do what we did here without consequences. For the sake of your girls, please, don't do this again. It is mostly my fault, I allowed myself to be convinced. We should have pulled back. We succeeded this time. But next time the consequences could be much worse.

"What worries me more than anything is that I have now given you the idea that it is okay to push yourself like that. It isn't. One or both of us could have died! If you love your girls then promise me that you will never do anything like that again. Please Caleb, promise me!"

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.