AN HOMAGE TO VINCENT VEGA, SEASON TWO SCENE 55 (THE PLOT THICKENS)

[littlebopeeper]

 

Vickie's drumstick made this a Thanksgiving to remember indeed.  She is so passionate that it is hard to think of her as a fictional character.  Thanks for another great chapter.

[littlebopeeper]

On 7/15/2023 at 11:34 PM, Babypants said:

A.  A bowl of gravy

This is a tough one.  I'm going with a bowl of gravy right between the eyes.

[Babypants]

On 7/16/2023 at 10:23 PM, littlebopeeper said:

Vickie's drumstick made this a Thanksgiving to remember indeed.  She is so passionate that it is hard to think of her as a fictional character.

Thank you very much.  Sculpting Vickie and Ian has been the fun part of this project, and constructing a scene in which they come face to face with the fact that they have fallen in love was my own labor of love.  I'm surprised that no one has commented on Ian's conviction that he fell in love with one woman for the right reasons, and the other for the wrong.  Is Vickie the right one, or the wrong one?

The next scene will be forthcoming tomorrow.  Hope you will enjoy it.  

[Babypants]

SECOND HELPINGS

Hands on hips, Rita surveyed the wreckage, mentally adding up the pluses and minuses. She started with Don Phillips, who was on the floor, legs stretched out, back pressed hard into the wall, screaming his lungs out.

It's a breakthrough, of sorts. Now, the trick is not to let him relapse. Keep him aware, get him to start talking, however incoherently … then I can make the case for another committal, and shove the paperwork up Nelson's ass. Memo to the boss: get Ian and Amos together with a tape recorder, and let them do their greatest hits. Maybe juice the recording with special effects … a few bombs exploding in the background might be good … Bian went white as a sheet, and Phillips exploded like somebody with a firecracker up his ass … wonder if I could use the recording as trade bait with Glenn Albright; having access to VA patient files would be huge ...

Rita glanced at Marge, who was also surveying the wreckage and doubtless drawing up a list of her own. What Rita would tell the Director in writing, and what Marge would report to him in person, would doubtless disagree, even if only around the margins.

But there's only one video feed, and I control it. And it shows you personally escorting Ian into the ward, which makes you responsible for this mess. And my report will give you full credit for embracing a high risk strategy that's had a huge payoff …

Vickie and Rita had taken Marge's measure the day she walked into the ward. They had settled upon a strategy of neutralizing her by compromising her. They were gambling that the tattletale would pull her punches once she realized she was in so deep that, when push came to shove, the Director would have no choice but to fire her as well as Rita.

So far things have worked out just the way Vickie and I planned, and with Ian's help I may be able to get Keith off my back once and for all. Thanks to Bian … speaking of Ian …

Looking down, Rita couldn't help but laugh out loud. Vickie had curled up into a tight, little post orgasmic ball, the majority of which was now planted on Ian's chest. She didn't seem to be interested in going anywhere. And it was equally obvious that, for the moment at least, Ian wasn't thinking about his empty stomach and doubtless poopy diaper.

Well, it sure took the two of you long enough to figure it out …

“Poor Ian,” she whispered; “did he ever get anything to eat?”

“It doesn't look like it,” Marge whispered in return. “But I don't think anybody did.”

Marge frowned. “Rita, did Vickie just … you know …?”

“She did.” Rita had a very knowing grin on her face, confirming Marge's suspicion.

“But she's his therapist! This isn't permitted!”

“You're right, and I'm going to speak with her about it ...”

Something along the lines of “no more orgasms on company time” …

Watching the two lovebirds, Rita was having a very hard time keeping a straight face.

Sorry, Ian; I know exactly what's going through your mind, but it's not going to happen. Marge is right about that, and by now you must have figured out that your diaper cover doubles as a chastity belt. Vickie won't be changing your diapers for the foreseeable future … Sarah will have the last word on that particular subject. She'll share, of course … with both of us. I'll see to that … but I'm going to let her extract the proverbial pound of flesh in the process. It will be interesting to see whether either of us will be willing to pay her price ...

“Let's get them separated. For now, I want you to take charge of diapering our big baby, but going forward … since Becky has Phil well in hand ...”

Rita noted that her other pair of lovebirds hadn't moved, had somehow managed to come through without Thanksgiving dinner dripping down their chests, and were earnestly engaged in a muted conversation.

“Going forward,” she continued, “I want you to take the lead with Phillips. I was originally planning to give him to Reiko, but after what we just saw, I'm afraid that he might have a problem dealing with an Asian nurse. Don't get too ambitious; just try and get him talking.”

Marge nodded in agreement. “I'll need his service record ...”

“I'm planning to speak with Glenn on Monday; Ian's giving me serious leverage.”

“Rita, we don't have a lot of time. Bian will tell everyone in the ER what happened here, and then it's going to spread like wildfire hospital wide. By Monday, every patient administrator in the Twin Cities is going to know about Ian. And they'll be coming, checkbook in hand.”

“I know … I know … and you might want to give Keith a call.” Rita couldn't resist twisting the knife. “Give him a head's up, as it were. Tell him that we're going to need a bigger budget … more space … more staff … more of everything. If Sarah doesn't freak out, on Monday I'm going to try and transfer her into this unit.”

“WHAT!” Marge was gripping Rita's arm so hard that Rita winced. “The two of them together in the same unit, both in love with the same patient? You must be joking!”

“They'll work it out … and no, I'm not joking. Eight years ago, Sarah ran away from the VA because she couldn't deal with entire wards filled with patients like Ian, Don and Phil. She was overwhelmed, she couldn't cope, and so she ran. And for eight years it's been eating at her. But she's stopped running. Ian is her line in the sand, her one chance at redemption. They will heal each other; the rest of us are just here to help.”

Rita shook loose from Marge's grip. “That's what this is all about, Marge. That's what this has been about from the beginning.”

Turning away, Rita began issuing instructions to her staff. She wanted Phil and Ian to have their diapers checked, and changed where needed. She wanted the orderlies to get Don Phillips bedded down in full restraints. She wanted everyone else in the main dining hall, where the rest of the staff and their patients were already sharing their Thanksgiving meal. She wanted Amos and Andy to eat first, and then join her in her office. The mess that lay at her feet could wait until later.

It's good to see that Bian is still here, good to know that after all these years she still cares.

The Vietnamese nurse was standing just outside the blast zone, her uniform also miraculously unstained. But her gaze had softened, her concern for Ian a small frown on a forehead otherwise as smooth as the coldest marble.

There's so much that he's not telling us. Bian could fill in many of the gaps, at least about Hue. Should I talk with her, or leave it adrift in the fog of war?

Rita looked around, wondering whether she had missed something, but no, she had thought of everything.

But more than anything else …more than anything else ...

It's time to bring Sarah home.

. . . .

“Mom, this is a really tough call!”

“How so, Dear?” Sofia's tone was nonchalant, but with her attention focused on a mouthwatering slice of mince pie, only naturally so.

“Well, if I treat Ian as an eighteen month old, he can use a sippy cup … use his fingers to feed himself … walk and talk … physically, he wouldn't need that much care. But emotionally? Mom, he already throws temper tantrums. I would have to watch him constantly to make sure that he's not being naughty. Mentally, coping with a toddler would be really, really stressful.”

“And the alternatives?”

I need to lose weight, but it's so hard in the winter.  Oh, to Hell with it.  Bob could do with a few less pounds himself.  Wonder how Sarah will react to my latest beau?  We'll find out tomorrow night ...

“Let's say that I treat him like an eight month old, which is something I've already threatened him with. He'd have to crawl and cry, no walking or talking allowed ...”

“You're prepared to carry through on your threat? A zero tolerance policy when he tests you?”

“Mom, I'm prepared to spank the shit out of him if that's what it takes!”

“It will.” Sofia put down her fork, and grasped her daughter's hand. “Dear, I want you to keep in mind that training a husband in a D/s relationship is no different than setting the ground rules in a traditional marriage. A bride has to rule either relationship during the first month with an iron fist; otherwise, her husband will conclude that he can do anything he wants and get away with it. You have to be strict. Record every, single misdemeanor, no matter how trivial it might seem, and spank him for it. At first, you may have to spank him daily, but once he comes to terms with the fact that he can't get away with anything, he'll settle down.”

Sofia retrieved her fork, and paused only long enough to offer one more bit of advice. “Men are just raw material, to be molded as we see fit. They are not responsible for their behavior. Good husbands are made, and so are bad ones. It's the choices that a woman makes that determine how any husband will turn out.”

“Dealing with an eight month old would be a lot less stressful, but physically the work load would be a lot heavier. Bottles and baby food … bathing him and brushing his teeth … dressing him … it just goes on and on.”

“Have you considered breast feeding him? It would be less work, and a lot more fun for both of you.”

“I'd love to, but it's just not practical. I can't exactly walk over to his office to nurse him at lunch time. I'd have to use a pump, and I barely have enough time for lunch as it is.”

“Well, that still leaves the newborn, crib bound option. You would have to invest in a pediatric crib, and they're not cheap; are you planning to get one?”

“Absolutely. Once we're married, I'll find us a nice home, and convert one of the spare bedrooms into a nursery. He'll have a crib, a play pen, a changing table … everything that a baby needs.” “And,” she added with a smile, “he'll be spending a lot of time there.”

“He'll need a home office as well,” Sofia warned.

“I suppose.” Sarah let out a long sigh. “He's paid so badly, Mom. All that education, all the different hats that he has to wear on campus-- and his salary is exactly one-third of mine. A lousy $17,000 a year! A part of me wants him to quit, stay home, and be my baby forever. We don't need his salary, and seeing him exploited like this? It makes me really angry.”

“But the adult side of his personality needs the anchor, Dear, so don't get too carried away with your fantasies. And don't make the mistake of judging him by his salary. No one goes into teaching to make a fortune, and you've already told me that he lives like a monk. I'm guessing that money doesn't impress him.”

“If he's crib bound, a new born? That would be the easiest way to control him, and the least stressful. But how would he make the leap from being a new born in the nursery to being my husband in the bedroom? Mom, I want him to be a baby for the control it gives me, but I want him to be a man for the convenience. More than that, I want Sarah and Ian to make and share memories, How can I have my cake and eat it too?”

“How much does he weigh?”

“Oh, maybe 165.”

Sofia smiled wickedly. “You do realize, don't you, that a pediatric crib could hold both of you? That your combined weight would be little more than half of what it will tolerate? For the life of me, I do not understand why you would ever want to bring him into your bed. Indeed, he has no business ever entering your bedroom! Let him pleasure you in his crib, and nowhere else. Sleep with him there if you wish, or go back to your own bed afterwards … it's your choice. But for God's sake, Sarah, if you decide to let him have the occasional orgasm, which I remind you in my judgment would be a bad idea? Make sure that it happens in his crib. Do not, under any circumstances, ever allow him to experience sexual pleasure anywhere else!”

. . . .

“Up you go, Major.” Wrinkling her nose, Marge gestured at the changing table. “It's obvious that you need a diaper change.”

Ian hastened to comply, but he didn't have the slightest idea why Marge was the one changing him. “Uh … what happened to Vickie?”

“Oh, I think it's safe to say that she won't be changing your diapers again anytime soon-- not after the performance that the two of you just put on. Starting today, if you are in this ward and need changing, ask any nurse who's free, or go to the diaper changing station.”

The mere mention of the bowels of Hell sent a shudder down Ian's spine.

“I see that you've already been there,” Marge grinned. “Well, don't worry; in time, you'll get used to the smell. We all do.”

“Bend your knees,” she ordered, deciding to examine his rear. “That's what I thought. You have several red patches down there, and it's not from the spankings. Congratulations, Major; you've got a diaper rash.”

Marge walked over to the desk and opened one of the cabinets overhead. She came back with a jar that Ian knew all too well, and began industriously applying goop to his bottom. For added measure, she decided to do his front side as well. She took her time, deciding to be thorough and then some, but Ian's member did not respond.

When the lock clicked home on his diaper cover, Marge silently vowed never again to allow Vickie access. Marge knew that she could make or break Rita's ambitious funding request with a few well chosen words, and she wasn't above offering Rita a trade. When it came down to ambition or friendship, Marge knew exactly how Rita would respond.

And the beauty of it is that the bitch will go right on being his therapist. She'll be so near and yet so far …

“I'm curious, Major; do you love them both?”

Ian didn't hesitate for a moment. “Yes.”

Marge reached out, took Ian's hands, and pulled him upright. “I wish you well, Major, and if there's anything I can do for you, just ask. Now,” she added as she gave him a friendly pat on the knee, “what do you say we have another go at dinner?”

Leaving the room, Ian had still not seen the bright pink princess dress hanging at the foot of his crib, nor the frilly bonnet that went with it.

. . . .

“It's been a long day, Sarah, but a productive one. And Ian was at the center of it all.”

Rita was finally back in her office, finally alone, and getting ready to call it a day. For her part, Sarah had the phone on speaker, her mother sitting beside her. They now had the house to themselves, Kaarina having sufficiently recovered from her turkey coma to join her friends for an impromptu whist tournament.

“If she's working tomorrow, I expect Gayle Soderberg to come charging in here sometime before noon, demanding a piece of Ian's ass. And to be fair, Patient Relations does desperately need someone who speaks Vietnamese fluently. It turns out that Amos Waring also knows a bit of the language, but as you might expect, his collection of pet phrases won't be very helpful downstairs.”

Sarah bust out laughing. It didn't take a great deal of imagination to figure out where Amos had learned whatever Vietnamese he had picked up during his three tours.

“But the real fun will start on Monday,” Rita continued. “You know how the jungle telegraph works. Bian tells her friends in the ER that we're all nuts up here, and within two hours everybody in the hospital has all the gory details. And on a long holiday weekend, they'll all go home and spread highly embellished versions of what happened to their friends. By Monday afternoon, every hospital in the Twin Cities will have heard about it, and then Ian is going to have headhunters crawling all over him-- headhunters waving open checkbooks and basically telling him to name his own price.”

“WHAT? Rita … WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?”

“Where to begin?” Rita's tone was world weary. “How about with the book burning party that I'm going to host out on my driveway? All those textbooks with all their canned answers, none of which seem to have any relevance in Ian's case. Sarah, I'm going to have a tech up here tomorrow to edit the video feeds, but you'll still need several hours to process what I want to show you. And some of it is going to shock you to your very core.”

“Rita, you're not making any sense!” Sarah suddenly felt like she was drowning, fear washing over her in waves. Fear for Ian.

“Ian did it, Sarah; Ian and Amos, working together. They cracked Don Phillips over Thanksgiving dinner, opened up his psyche with a can opener. Phillips was just sitting there, catatonic, and two seconds later he was a missile, flying across the table. He tried to rip Ian's throat out with his teeth, but Vickie wasn't having it. She jumped on top of him, and warded him off with a drumstick ...”

“WHAT!”

“... with a drumstick. And then Amos and Andy piled on, and the table collapsed under the weight, food flying everywhere, most of it ending up on the five of them. Amos? Amos was so angry that he picked Phillips up, and drove him into the wall. Or should I say that he was trying to drive him through the wall? Anyway, Phillips was screaming his head off … still is. He's bedded down in full restraints, so I guess you could say that we're making progress on that front. All thanks to Ian. He's the magic bullet, Sarah; he knew exactly what to say to Phillips, and he said it. Poor Bian. Ian was taunting Phillips … 'lighting him up', he called it. She went white as a ghost; it was that obscene. You'll want to talk with her, about Hue … about what happened to Ian there, during Tet. February the sixth. We only talked a little, but it's bad, Sarah; it's really, really bad.”

“RITA, YOU'RE NOT MAKING ANY SENSE! STOP IT!!!”

“Sorry. Keith was hosting a family dinner, but someone called him, and he dropped everything to come storming in here, demanding to see the video. And no, it wasn't Marge … not this time. She realizes how valuable Ian is … what this means for the ward. When Keith calmed down, even he could see it.”

“Ian, Rita; for God's sake, WHAT HAPPENED TO IAN?”

“Oh, in the midst of it all, he started whining about the breast milk … we're bottle feeding him … and he wanted to know what he had to do to get some real food. Said he was starving ...”

Breast milk? Sofia could barely credit what she was hearing.

“... so Vickie ran her finger through the mashed potatoes and offered it to him. He licked it clean, then gnawed on the drumstick, or what was left of it, and then ...”

“And then,” Sarah prompted.

“... and then Ian leaned up to start licking the cranberry sauce off her chest, and she ... she … you can see it clearly on the tape … she had an orgasm … the mother of all orgasms, really. And you can see her fumbling in a pocket for the key to his diaper cover, not finding it, and then she started shrieking. She was beyond frustrated.”

“They were going to? In front of everybody?” Sarah felt as if all the air had been leached out of her lungs.

“Yes, and now it's all over the hospital. I've been fending off inquiries from Directors' offices for the last ninety minutes. It wouldn't surprise me if we make the nightly news.”

“Rita, are you okay?”

“I will be, or at least I will be when I get home and get so drunk that I pass out. Keith got the message, and the other Directors will fall in line. Sarah, this is big … ask your mother, and she'll tell you what it means, and why come Monday there's going to be a feeding frenzy. It looks like Ian was the only army officer who spoke the language, so he's the one guy who can penetrate the wall, get inside their defenses-- make it close and very, very personal.”

“There have to be others,” Sarah whispered. “It can't just be Ian … my baby, not my baby.”

“I don't know. What I do know is that … Vickie says that every once in a while the mask slips, and you can see it in his eyes. Reiko's samurai. Amos sees it, and I pressed him … I pressed him hard to tell me what he sees. And he has no explanation. All he keeps saying is that he looks at Ian and he knows. Two of our orderlies who were also in the service? Gil Freeling and Gordon Nagle? The same thing. They're going on and on about something called 'command presence'. It's all so nebulous, but it's as far as I'm getting.”

“Vickie. Tell me the truth, Rita; does she love him?”

“Yes, and it isn't lust, Sarah. It's the real deal. If you had seen Vickie leap across that table to protect him …”

Rita took a deep, deep breath. “And to be perfectly honest, you should know that I have feelings for him as well. It's been a long day, in no small part because something inside me is screaming that I have to protect him from the storm that's just over the horizon. Like Amos, though, I can't define what 'something' means.”

“Does he love her?”

“Yes, and the odd thing is that his feelings for her in no way diminish his feelings for you. Both are very real.”

“I see.”

“Sarah, please. Don't take this out on Vickie. She's his therapist, and that's not going to change, although I won't let her anywhere near his diapers. This is going to be very hard for her.”

“So … what? Exactly what are you saying? Do you expect me to share Ian with her? Is that what I'm hearing?”

“With her … and with me. I'd like all three of you to give up your apartments, and move in with me. The French call this a ménage à quatre … a foursome.”

“Three women,” Sofia cut in, “but then my future son-in-law has three distinct personalities, doesn't he?” She already knew where this was going, and she was thankful that she had at least raised the possibility with Sarah.

“That we know of,” Rita admitted. “There's the adult personality, with little visible difference between the soldier and the professor. Then there's 'little baby Ian', as we've come to call him … the male baby. Lastly, there's 'Princess Poopy Pants' … the female baby.”

“So he responds to anal penetration,” Sofia declared. She was watching her daughter out of the corner of her eye.

“Very much so,” Rita agreed. “To cover all the bases, Vickie wants to schedule him for a complete neurological examination, and I wholeheartedly agree. There's always the possibility that we're dealing with significant nerve damage, and if it's degenerative, his last scan might have missed it. Incontinence and impotence often go hand in hand.”

“Very true, so I would caution you not to jump to conclusions here. Still, for the sake of argument, I'm curious as to how the three of you would go about this … care for two infantile personalities and one adult personality simultaneously. Who takes responsibility for what?”

“I want to breast feed him,” Rita abruptly confessed. “And so does Vickie. After work on Wednesday, we're going to shop for breast pumps.”

“Sarah will be going with you. She has been telling me all day how much she is looking forward to nursing her big baby. And how,” she smiled, “is Ian responding to this breast milk diet of his?”

“He complains constantly about being hungry. And he's using a lot more diapers. It looks like he'll go through twelve to fifteen today, with six to eight being poopy.”

“Which is what you would expect of a newborn. And don't worry about the hunger. Feed him three dozen bottles a day until your milk comes in, but all four of you will need to take supplements. You don't want your baby to become anemic.”

Sofia laughed playfully. “Rita, you should see the look on my daughter's face. She's wondering how I know so much about this particular subject.”

Rita laughed in turn. “Sofia, she has always struck me as a tad naive. I take it that you breast fed her?”

“Of course. And the three of you should know that the bonding is intense.”

“Your husband?”

Sofia smiled; these were warm and wonderful memories. “For almost two years. And since Sarah refused to latch on once her first tooth popped out, he had me to himself for fifteen months. It was wonderful.”

“We could use you as a guidance counselor. Vickie has worked up Ian's matrix. We'll use little baby Ian as a buffer between the Princess and the adults. She's going to lock in the Princess personality, and use rewards and spankings to empower the Princess to get control of the adults. The Major will divulge his secrets to the Princess, and she in turn will share them with us. The adults will be community property, but Vickie and I are in agreement that Sarah should mommy whichever baby personality she wants. We'll take the leftover. But there's no textbook to show us how to blend his personalities into a cohesive whole. It's all trial and error, which means that we could use help. Do you have any ideas?”

“Oh, I may have a few useful suggestions.” Sofia loved the wide-eyed expression on her daughter's face. She vividly remembered the sheer joy with which her daughter had voyaged through life at age nine, every day bringing a new discovery to stir the imagination of a bright and highly inquisitive child. There was so much of that child still in her, but beaten down by the air of helplessness that had engulfed her at the VA. Sofia wanted her bright-eyed child back, and without even meeting him, she knew that Ian would somehow make it happen.

“Starting with keep him in the secure ward, and if he insists on leaving, go with him. Seriously. Don't let him out of your sight.”

“Agreed. He's my patient, and here I can protect him. No one, repeat no one, is getting in without a court order.”

“You should also talk to his department chair, preferably soonest. They need to know that the circus is coming to town, and just how disruptive things can get.” Sofia was speaking from first-hand experience, having recently lost a promising surgeon at the end of his residency to a corporate headhunter. Good hands and good judgment in a surgical suite could mean millions in additional revenue, and make the annual shareholders meeting go a lot more smoothly.

“Will do … and thanks, Sofia. I mean it; I really value your counsel. Sarah? Keep safe, and come home soon. I miss you.”

Rita hung up, and Sofia reached for her daughter's hand and nestled it between her palms. “The work load that we were discussing? For an eight month old? It's gets a lot lighter if there are three of you to share it.”

“Mom, get real. Do you seriously expect me to spend even one minute of my time thinking about doing a foursome? It's absurd.” Sarah was staring at her mother, and beginning seriously to consider the possibility that she had been abducted by aliens and replaced with a facsimile.

“I expect you to take your time and weigh your choices. Carefully. How much do you value friendship? How much do you respect Ian's feelings? And as a purely practical matter-- how many diapers do you think that you will be changing over the next forty years? How many messy bottoms will you be up to cleaning?”

Sofia yawned as she stood up. “It's late, Dear, and I'm going to bed. We'll talk some more in the morning. And I do have a few more suggestions.”

Sofia's smile would have put the devil to shame.

“Just a few,” she winked.

[littlebopeeper]

There's a lot of meat on the bones here.  Marge has always been the odd nurse out in this story, and now we know why.  You set this up very well.  And a PhD with Ian's skill set is only making 17 G's a year?  You better believe that he's going to have corporate headhunters crawling all over him.  I saw this in real life.  But the one I'm really waiting for is to learn why Sofia is so insistent that Ian rarely if ever have sex, and do so only in his crib.  What is it that she knows that Sarah is missing so completely?

All in all, another great chapter.  

[Babypants]

This reminds me.  Here's a real life quiz from the Dark Side:

Corporate headhunters are paid by commission, which is a fixed percentage of the individual's first year compensation.  This is paid by the corporation, not by the employee, so it is in the vested interest of the headhunter to auction her/his prize off to the highest of several bidders.  Which of the following is the customary rate that the headhunter receives:

A.  10%

B.  20%

C.  40%

D.  50%

E.  100%

[littlebopeeper]

I'm going with 20%

[Babypants]

THE BREAST MILK BLUES

“Good morning, Dear. Did you sleep well?”

“Not really … tossed and turned all night. I need coffee, very hot and very black!”

Sofia silently pointed at the coffee maker. The pot was almost full. “Couldn't get Rita's offer out of your mind?”

“Yeah … that, and what she said about talking with Bian. She wasn't making a lot of sense, but it sounded like something bad happened to Ian during Tet. Rita's always so cool, calm and collected, but not last night. Mom, you could hear it in her voice. Whatever Bian said really got to her.”

“If he was in Hue … well, that was ground zero, wasn't it?” Sofia was dredging up memories now more than a decade old. “I remember Walter Cronkite broadcasting from there, the marines having to retake the city street by street, house by house. It was brutal.”

“But Ian wasn't in the Marines ...”

“It's just another piece of the wall, isn't it?” Sofia's tone had turned distinctly bitter. “All those years as the Dominant in a D/s relationship, only to find out that your father was always hiding a big part of himself from me. Sarah, please … don't let Ian do that to you. Believe me, if you discover things the way I did, discover that the most important person in your life never trusted you enough to bare his soul? It hurts.”

“I won't, mom; I promise you. I will see this through to the end. But you know what I was thinking about around 4 AM?”

Sofia glanced at her daughter, and instantly caught the mischievous look in her eyes.

Oh, this ought to be good.

“I was thinking that … if the three of us were to pool our incomes, which must add up to something like a hundred and seventy-five thousand a year … we could sell Rita's townhome and buy a big place out on Lake Minnetonka … something on the lake shore with a big lawn and a dock, maybe a swimming pool. We could live like queens, maybe even hire a nanny to take Ian to and from work, watch over him during the day. That's if I decide to let him keep his job.”

“I would suggest that you talk with him about that the first chance you get. Rita's right about the jungle telegraph, and the headhunters who will be heading Ian's way. I probably know some of their names,” she laughed. “Anyway, you want to respect Ian's wishes, but you also want to make it clear to him that this is your decision, not his. It's a classic case of you deciding what's best for your submissive, and then doing it. You get out in front-- and wear a skirt. His job is to hide behind it.”

. . . .

“Wakey, wakey, Princess! A new day awaits!”

Reluctantly, Ian began to swim up out of the depths of sleep, not quite remembering whether it had been dreams or nightmares that disturbed his slumber.

“I have a nice warm ba-ba for you, just as soon as we get that icky old diaper off you, clean your messy widdle bottom, and get you dressed for the day. Isn't your baby dress darling?”

Who? Oh …

Ian belatedly realized that it was Candy who was doing the honors this morning, efficiently unlocking his restraints. He was surprised to discover that his hands were already free of the mittens.

Must have been sleeping better than I thought …

He struggled in the narrow confines of the crib to get up on his elbows, but Candy instantly pushed him back down.

“We want you to use the pull rope, Princess. It's much safer. You just pull yourself up hand over hand.”

“That's it,” she soothed as Ian began to put arm muscles that shrieked in protest to work. Sitting up, he glanced curiously at the frilly pink baby dress hanging at the foot of his crib. This early in the day, it didn't immediately register that he was supposed to wear it.

Ian hated mornings. Upon resigning his commission he had taken a vow to banish them from his personal calendar, and by and large he had succeeded. Even his extracurricular activities behind the Iron Curtain had never ushered him out the hotel door before nine-- not that there was much going on at that hour of the day in places like Bucharest and Moscow anyway. But life, in the form of an Assistant Chair, had played a cruel joke upon the departmental rookie. He had only learned in late August that he had been given an 8 AM class, and nothing infuriated him quite so much as knowing that he still had three full weeks of this crap to put up with. Taking the bus to work had been the crowning insult to the inglorious start of his career, such as it was.

So, Ian was in a sour mood as he swung around to get down from his crib, and it didn't help that he could feel poop from the proverbial stem to the proverbial stern of his diaper. Climbing onto the changing table and having beautiful young Candy tickling him where it counted was something to look forward to, but on the flip side, memories of yesterday's Thanksgiving feast were busily bursting through the defenses that separated subconscious from conscious mind. They were a decidedly mixed bag.

Ian had found himself sandwiched between Vickie on his left, and Amos on his right. As it turned out, Amos had taken more than one R&R in Hong Kong-- an admission that instantly led to microscopic comparisons of bars hither and yon. Both agreed that Hong Kong's bars sported some of the most beautiful women on the planet; more to the point, both agreed that the most beautiful of all worked the bar on top of the Sheraton at the bottom of Nathan Road. This was the moment when Amos, much to Rita's obvious displeasure, suggested that they adjourn to one of his hangouts down on Lake Street, said joints all opening for business on Thanksgiving Day at sixteen hundred hours on the dot. Ian was sorely tempted, but Vickie was currently shoveling food into her mouth with her left hand while languidly raking Ian's thigh with the fingernails of her right. Occasional bouts of polite conversation interrupted the left, but her right hand's assault was relentless, with spirited attempts to find a way inside the thigh bands of his de facto chastity belt slowly driving him nuts. Ian was so horny he could scream, but his thick diaper and locking diaper cover were merciless. At dinner's end, Rita had pointedly exiled Vickie until Saturday morn, leaving Marge to escort a thoroughly frustrated Ian back to his room. Belatedly realizing that he had hardly touched his food and was still starving, Ian had welcomed the twin bottles of breast milk that turned out to be his reward for a job well done. One more poopy diaper later, Ian was back in his crib, fully restrained, Marge having decreed curfew to be the ungodly hour of 7 PM.

And now it's twelve hours later, I've spent much of it wallowing in my own shit, and I have a diaper rash. Wonderful.

Although his diaper change was complete, and his diaper cover once again locked firmly in place, Candy left the Princess strapped down to the changing table just long enough to fetch her pretty dress. When she had the baby back on her feet, she slipped her arms through the puffed sleeves with their wonderful rows of pink and white frills, zipped her in, and snapped the lock shut.

Stepping back to admire the view, she marveled at Vickie's exquisite taste. Her Princess was wearing a beautifully flared dress that barely reached to the top of her diapers … a dress covered all the way around with row after row of pink and white frills. Candy reached up to place an equally infantile bonnet on her head, and then bade her step into the matching rhumba panties, which completely covered her hideously institutional diaper cover. It was only at this point that nurse and patient eased to the floor, where two bottles of warm breast milk would begin Ian's day.

“I want you to grade twelve more exams,” Candy cooed, “then you can have another ba ba … then another twelve and another ba ba. Auntie Rita wants Princess Poopy Pants to be nice and full and oh, so poopy when I take you to her office. She wants you to meet some of her friends. Won't that be fun, hmm? Won't that be fun?”

Fun? Yeah, sure. Got news for ya, baby, I got the milk cow blues!

Ian was definitely in a sour mood, and the breast milk was fueling it-- the same dark mood that had driven him to smoky jazz clubs in cities all over eastern Europe, where singing the blues was as much a rite of passage as listening to Radio Free Europe. It was in Warsaw that he had last heard Sleepy John's evocative version, the words swirling inside his brain alongside images of Sarah leaning over to change his diaper, and Vickie's response as he licked cranberry sauce off her chest:

               Now ask sweet mama, let me be her kid

               She says, "I might get buggies I couldn't keep it hid"

               Well, she looked at me, she begin to smile Says,

               "I thought I would use you for my man a while

               That you just don't let my husband catch you there

               Now, just, just don't let my husband catch you there"

Since there were no husbands on the premises, Ian wasn't worried about being caught. Quite the contrary. He just wanted to be fed, real food in mountainous quantities.

. . . .

“Mom, I've never done a tour of duty in the OU, never mind neonatal. All I know about breast feeding is what I studied back in nursing school. Help me out here.”

“Hmm … let me think.”

Sofia decided to join Sarah in another cup of coffee. She was addicted to the stuff, caffeine being the drug that often got her through the day.

“I guess the first thing to say is that it's doable. There are pills, and if you're religious about the breast pump, you will lactate. But there's no predicting how strong your flow will be, nor how long it will last. You may produce too little; you may produce too much. You will certainly be producing too much if all three of you are breast feeding him simultaneously. The milk bank in your hospital will get to know you well.”

“Mom, what I really want to know is the, uh ... you know … the sex side of it.”

“Intense. Really, really intense. When I was nursing your dad, it felt like there was a stream of hot lava flowing from my nipples to my clit. The orgasms were so powerful that intercourse paled in comparison. And he loved it. My milk really turned him on. It was the best sex in the whole of our marriage.”

“Wow!”

“But for the guy, the downside is that you feel like you're experiencing perpetual diarrhea. Your dad spent twenty-two months running to the toilet about six times a day.”

Sofia chuckled, hard enough for coffee to dribble down her chin.

“Sometimes he didn't make it!”

“Did you put him back in diapers?” Sarah's eyes were as big as saucers.

“Oh, I teased him about it, and we always had some to hand. But it wasn't our thing. So, no … not until the end, when he became incontinent. And that was hard because it was such a blow to his pride. You're lucky, you know? You're starting out, with your eyes wide open, where your dad and I finished. If you choose to breast feed, Ian will just be a bit more poopy than he already is. And the three of you will manage just fine.”

“You want me to take Rita's offer, don't you?”

“Pupu, it's your decision, but yes, I think it would be for the best. Thinking about your dad that last year … it's like seeing Ian's future. As he gets older, everything that he suffered on the battlefield is going to start taking its physical toll. It's not the incontinence. It's the pain … the arthritis. He's going to become a lot more dependent when he gets older … a lot more. You'll need help. The cold, hard truth is that you are going to outlive him.”

“It's so unfair.”

“It's life. But talking about Ian's health reminds me of one more thing, which may well cause this whole scheme to blow up in your collective faces.”

“What's that?”

“What you'll discover when you start dealing with the milk bank. Sarah, you'll have to do a blood draw every week. They will be screening for TB, cancer cells, but above all for hepatitis B and C. Breast milk is a remarkably efficient conveyance for sexually transmitted diseases. Neither you nor Rita will have a problem being monogamous, but what about Vickie? Her reputation is … how shall I put it? Colorful? Her lifestyle would place Ian in constant danger.”

Sarah burst out laughing, a preposterous idea suddenly popping into her head. The perfect solution!

“It's funny that you should say that, Mom, because another thing that kept me up last night was thinking about preconditions. If I'm going to share, then it will be on my terms-- strictly take it or leave it. Now I know exactly what I'm going to demand!”

Sarah was about to explain when the telephone rang. Sofia prayed that it wasn't some emergency that would demand her personal attention-- not now, when the self-satisfied look on Sarah's face told her that something outrageous was in the offing.

. . . .

“Good morning, Sofia; it's Rita. Is Sarah up and about?”

“I'll put her on speaker.” Sofia depressed a button, and then returned to her coffee.

“Hi, girl; have you got a minute?”

“Let me top off my coffee. How's Ian?”

Watching the video feed coming out of room eleven, Rita chuckled. “Candy's got the duty this morning; I told Vickie to take the day off and ponder her sins. So, as we speak, Ian is laying in Candy's lap, slurping down his first two bottles of breast milk for the day. When he's finished, she'll stick a pacifier in his mouth, have him crawl over to the desk, and get to work grading a dozen exams. After the first round, he'll get another bottle before being put back to work, only this time without his pacifier. Then another bottle. We want to test whether the pacifier is a trigger for the way he moves back and forth between Princess Poopy Pants and Major Grady. And speaking of Princess Poopy Pants, you should see the baby dress that Vickie found for her to wear. It is beyond adorable. We have got to find her a matching pair of booties and get rid of the boat shoes. They spoil the look!”

“So you are still running with the theory that one of his core personalities is female?” The more she learned about Ian, the more fascinated Sofia became.

“Female,” Rita agreed, “and infantile. After what Bian told me, I suspect that we're dealing with transference … a coping mechanism that enabled him to remain sane on a night when he should have gone mad. For one awful night, I believe that they became mother and infant child, and that it was her deep love that literally kept him alive. Since then, he has used infancy as a refuge, and it's so pronounced because it gives him a convenient place to hide when he can't cope with whatever went so badly wrong later in the war.”

“My God,” Sofia exclaimed. “Rita, please tell me that you are not going to treat him for this! Please!”

“You'll destroy him,” Sarah wailed; “don't do this!!”

“We won't! Trust me, both of you … WE WON'T!! I'm with Vickie on this. We lock in the Princess Poopy Pants personality, and we do it by treating him like a baby girl at every conceivable opportunity. Do you understand me? We want to reinforce this side of his personality, not undermine it! But I need your permission to do this, Sarah, in part because that's how your relationship with Ian works, but also because he simply isn't capable of seeing this through without your support and guidance.”

“And what about his wall? Can we touch it, or not?”

“We can … or rather, Princess Poopy Pants can. Vickie's game plan is sound, Sarah. The Princess attacks the Major, who has to come to her defense by telling her the truth, knowing that she will use it to end her spankings. But once the source of his shame is out in the open, he will have less reason to go into hiding. Then Princess Poopy Pants will gradually fade away, unless we take affirmative steps to create a rough balance between the adult male and the baby girl. Given the nature of your relationship with Ian, which everyone in the Circle supports, the latter is what I would recommend. There will be other crises in the future, more occasions on which he will need to run and hide.”

“Do it,” Sarah snapped. She had no doubt about this whatsoever, not after her mother's warning. She had lost her grandfather and her father, both of them men who had gone to war. As a nurse, she knew that there would be very bad moments in Ian's future, and that the time to start preparing for them was now.

“You are prepared to deal with a core personality that is both female and infantile?” Rita wanted this on the record.

“I am.” Sarah knew exactly what Rita was doing.

“Good. Now, I need your help with another matter. Gayle Soderberg will be here at ten o'clock, and she's bringing her Director with her. Harrison? Harris?”

“Harrison Knowles.” It was Sarah's private opinion that, in the Kingdom of Jerks, Harrison Knowles was a crown prince.

“How very Ivy League,” Rita muttered, never having met the man but catching the note of contempt in Sarah's voice. “Anyway,” she went on, “Soderberg will try and snap Ian up for Patient Relations, and in fairness they desperately need someone who is fluent in both English and Vietnamese. The only conceivable reason for Knowles to tag along is to wave an open checkbook in Ian's face. I'm guessing that, at a minimum, they'll offer to double … even triple … his salary. But I'm guessing that this is your decision, not Ian's, so how do you want me to play it?”

“Turn them down flat! Ian doesn't give a damn about money. For God's sake, he's a teacher!”

“Thank you, and for the record? For the record, I'm not going to let anyone get their hooks into Ian. I may do a bit of wheeling and dealing, but he's my patient and he's off limits. But I want to play this a certain way and I need your help to do it because it's going to be a very public humiliation for Ian.”

“What?” Sarah just wanted her friend to get on with it.

“I want to introduce Princess Poopy Pants to Soderberg and Knowles, baby dress and all. And with four bottles of breast milk in his system, each laced with fast acting and potent laxatives, the Princess is going to be poopy indeed, and stink to high heaven! For once, in short, I want to put our hospital wide reputation for being a bunch of crazies to good effect. I want these two nitwits to run out of this ward pinching their noses, and to tell everyone who'll listen that Ian is a lunatic who just happens to speak a whole bunch of foreign tongues. We keep Ian, and I make the damage to his reputation good with his department chair. Keith gives us a bigger budget because Marge keeps him abreast of what's really going on. I give her the credit, but I get to keep my job because I cut a deal with Glenn out at the VA. You and Vickie cure Ian, and the four of us live happily ever after.”

“And you sell your townhouse, and we use the check as a down payment on a nice property on Lake Minnetonka.”

“Works for me,” Rita agreed.

“Then, let's do it, but I suggest that you let me speak to Ian before the curtain rises. I'll make it clear to him that his humiliation is my choice. In fact, I want him to fob off Soderberg by telling them that he wouldn't dream of making a decision this consequential without my approval. I want everyone to come out of this knowing that it's me they have to deal with, not Ian!”

Rita clapped her hands. “PERFECT!! ABSOLUTELY PERFECT!!”

“And the weird part of all this? Ian will enjoy his humiliation because he absolutely despises authority figures, and I can't think of a worse way to insult him than waving money in front of his face. He will rub it in!”

“BETTER STILL! Oh, Sarah, how I wish you could be here to witness this ...”

“Let's have a conference call afterwards, the four of us!

“YOU'RE ON!”

. . . .

“It feels like I've come full circle,” Ian commented as he entered Rita's office and took the same seat that he had occupied less than forty-eight hours earlier. In some ways, however, it felt like a lifetime had passed. Candy had escorted him out of the secure ward, still wearing his infantile dress, rhumba pants and bonnet. The one thing that she had determined from the morning's evaluation was that the pacifier was not a trigger. With or without it, Ian's transition from infant to adult and back to infant again was seamless. Hence it did not surprise her in the least that Princess Poopy Pants had taken a back seat to Major Grady the moment they exited the ward. What did surprise her, and what she was going to stress in her report, was how you could actually see the transition in real time-- if you knew where to look.

It's in his eyes. Princess Poopy Pants has dreamy eyes, eyes that are unfocused, eyes filled with trust and love. The Professor's gaze is sharply focused, but the Major's eyes are alert, wary, constantly scanning his environment. It's threat assessment, and it's autonomic … the human animal acutely aware that it is at once predator and prey.

Candy knew the details of Vickie's complex battle plan, and fully endorsed the assault that she was undertaking. Using the Major's sense of duty against him, forcing him to yield ground to protect the Princess from harsh and undeserved punishment. It's brilliant … almost breathtaking. But then Vickie's far and away the best therapist I've ever seen in action. I was lucky to have her for my mentor … Becky and me both ...

Candy sat the pink pacifier on the desk in front of Ian, but he made no move to pick it up. With an almost imperceptible shake of the head, she signaled Rita that this was a dead end. Then she quietly withdrew, leaving the two of them alone.

. . . .

Vickie was restless, prowling the confines of her apartment like a caged tiger. She was restless and frustrated and angry, although the anger was largely directed at herself. She had lost control, let her personal feelings run wild in the midst of a desperate, high-risk therapeutic gambit that had actually worked. The payoff was still uncertain, but Don Phillips was no longer catatonic. Ian had cracked him open, and now it was up to Rita to manage his care.

And then there was Phil Kettering. Just thinking about Phil made her feel all warm inside. We actually saved one, the three of us working together. Becky, Vickie and Ian … the Three Musketeers.

Before kicking her out of the ward, Rita had shared a bit of news that made Vickie feel like she could go out and conquer the world. Rita had spoken with Phil's parents. They were driving down from Hibbing to see their son … for the first time in almost ten years. The reunion would take place in the waiting room, under Becky's watchful eye. Vickie wondered how they would react to their future daughter-in-law.

Vickie stumbled into the bathroom, gripped the edge of the counter hard with both hands, and stared at herself in the mirror. She grinned half-heartedly at the sleepdeprived creature she saw staring back at her, with its badly mussed hair and pallid skin.

“Well, it's finally happened. The walls of Troy have been toppled. Victoria Ann Robinson has fallen in love. The once proud queen of the one-night stands has been vanquished, her heart captured by one Ian Samuel Grady, a soldier crippled in body, mind and spirit. And she never saw it coming.”

Vickie decided to pull herself together. A leisurely bath to start, then work on her hair, do her make-up, find something nice to wear in her closet. She would go shopping at the mall-- after all, it was the day after Thanksgiving, and she could lose herself in the well-dressed crowds at the decidedly upscale Galleria. In the evening, she would wander the hotel lounges along the Strip, hoping to get a sense of just how much her world had changed. Of course the businessmen would all be home, celebrating the holidays with their families. There would be no improprieties to stain this, her farewell tour. 

[littlebopeeper]

Another great chapter.  It is really, really refreshing to have a guy in diapers not being turned on by breast milk, baby bottles and pacifiers.  Ian looks like he's very close to telling the women running his life that enough is enough, and Amos is offering him an easy way out.  Will he take it, or find a more diplomatic solution to his problems?  Either way, it has become clear that a story about incontinence offers a lot of plot possibilities that are simply not there in the usual AB fare.

 

[Babypants]

Quickie historical quiz:

Dating back to the late nineteenth century, Milk Cow Blues lies at the core of the American Blues tradition.  For a generation plus, the lyric was literally about losing one's dairy cow.  There came a moment, however, when the lyric shifted from dairy cow to the female breast, and thereafter the songs became more and more overtly sexual.  The following two line verse is the bridge between the two traditions:

Now my hair is nappy and I don't wear no clothes of silk / but the cow that's black and ugly has often got the sweetest milk.

The singer is:

A.  Kokomo Arnold

B.  Big Bill Broozy

C.  Sleepy John Estes

D.  Son House

E.  Robert Johnson

F.  Sarah Martin

G.  Elvis Presley

A tip of the cap to anyone who knows the answer to this one without having to research it!

 

[littlebopeeper]

On 8/1/2023 at 2:38 PM, Babypants said:

F.  Sarah Martin

Confession time.  I had to research this one.  And in the process I was stunned to discover that the Kinks recorded the Kokomo Arnold version.  From what I've read, Milk Cow Blues influenced the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Animals, Led Zeppelin, and others.  I even own the Elvis Presley version!

[Babypants]

STREET RACER

“Ian, your baby dress is adorable, and you are beyond cute! I could just eat you up!”

“How's Don?”

“Come around here and I'll show you.”

Rita patted her desk, then played with the switches on her console and pulled up seventeen. The two of them watched as Don Phillips struggled against the restraints pinning him to the mattress of his crib, screaming one moment and whimpering the next.

“You did good, Ian. Phil's parents will be here tomorrow, a family reunion that's long, long overdue. And you've given us a fighting chance to give Don his life back. It's inadequate, I know, but … thank you.”

“Steak with all the trimmings would be nice.”

Ian's mood had not improved; if anything, it had gotten worse. He couldn't get the Milk Cow Blues out of his head, but now it had somehow morphed into a Beatles tune, Ringo belting out I wanna be your kid … um um um um … I wanna be yourrr kiddd!!!!

Ed Sullivan was not pleased, not with censors running amok and demanding that Ringo get a haircut.

Stupid, bloody breast milk.

“Sorry, but it's not going to happen. Sarah's orders. You are now on a strict breast milk diet. Thirty-six bottles a day until Sarah, Vickie and I start lactating. Then we will be breast feeding you.”

Rita patted Ian's bottom. With all the padding, she couldn't tell whether he was wet or dirty, but in any event he didn't stink nearly enough.

“Are you wet or poopy,” she asked.

In response, Ian walked around the desk, sat down, and started wriggling in his seat. “I guess I'm okay,” he concluded.

Which is not what Rita wanted to hear. She leaned across the desk and tapped his pacifier. “Do you like your nookie?”

Ian picked it up, played with it for a moment, then stuck it in his mouth. He began instantly to suckle, his features softening dramatically. Rita could see Princess Poopy Pants struggling to take over, the conflict between the two warring personalities manifest. The therapist inside her found it fascinating.

Ian removed the binky and dropped it on the desk. “It feels good,” he admitted. “Not sure why, but it's comforting. But why is it pink? The pacifier? The baby bottles? This dress? For that matter, why am I even wearing a dress? Is this part of my therapy?”

“It is. There's a little girl inside you … a baby girl. We call her Princess Poopy Pants, and all of us love her. She knows all about you, and we want you to become comfortable with her … accept that she's a big part of who you are. We think that she can help you get where Sarah wants you to go.”

“So I'm crazy,” Ian concluded; “just another nut case destined for the psycho ward.”

“Not at all,” Rita laughed. “In fact, you are so close to textbook normal that the difference isn't worth talking about. Nope, sorry, but this is about trust. It's about you attacking the wall that you hide behind, trusting Sarah with the truth. You don't want to do that because you know with absolute certainty that she will forgive you, leaving you no place to go but to forgive yourself. And you don't want to do that. You prefer to wallow in self-pity and drink yourself to death. And Princess Poopy Pants isn't having it.”

“Amazing.” And Ian was in fact nodding his head in open amazement. “I'm sitting here in a pink baby dress, fiddling with a pink pacifier, and you're telling me that I'm normal?”

“Yep.” Rita was truly enjoying the moment. “Just another guy with a problem he can't deal with, taking refuge in the bottle when what he really wants is to suck on mommy's boobs.” Rita gestured at the bookcase to Ian's right. “Would you like me to cite you chapter and verse?”

“So, we're going to reprise the old 'Ian is an alcoholic' routine? Again?” Ian knew damned well that he didn't have a problem with alcohol, and he was sick of the accusations. “Rita, the keys to my office are in my pants pocket. Take them. One key will let you into the building if it's locked. A second will let you into my office, and a third into my desk, where I keep my passport. Go over there and ransack the place … or simply take my word for it when I say that you won't find any bottles squirreled away. I like booze, but I also like New York strips medium rare, baked potatoes that are just launching pads for the sour cream, and on and on and on. Am I a steak aholic, too? A sour cream aholic? And while we're at it, drive over to my apartment, let yourself in, and go through my clothes closet. You'll find pink shirts and ties. But you'll also find blue, green, yellow, purple, brown and black. You'll find everything except white, because I hate white. I hate it so much that I would never have signed the contract if the university had a dress code. Jeesh!”

Rita clapped her hands, and her eyes lit up. She was sincerely delighted with Ian's little tantrum because it opened a door, and she was rather unceremoniously going to drag him through it.

“Sarah wants you to give up alcohol. She wants you to have breast milk rather than steak. These are her choices, and I thought that you agreed to give her control of your life, reserving only matters of principle. Was I wrong about that? Or is drinking beer and eating steak a matter of principle to you? Just how many 'principles' do you have, Ian?”

Rita was drawing imaginary quotation marks in the air. “How many? A few, or enough to fill a telephone book? And are they all slippery enough that you can call anything you want to do, or don't want to do, a matter of principle? There's very little to choose between a man who has too many principles, and one who has none at all.”

Ian gulped, and he was sufficiently honest with himself not to hide from the truth. Rita was right. He was happiest when Sarah ordered him to do exactly what he wanted to do anyway.

Seeing the hesitation, Rita decided to go for the jugular. She picked up the phone and started to dial.

“Wait!” Ian was near panic because he could see that she was dialing long distance.

“I'm calling Sarah. She's worried about you, and I'm tired of being caught in the middle. She has given me strict instructions on how to treat you, but maybe it will have more meaning if you hear it from her.”

Rita finished dialing, and put the phone on speaker. Ian could clearly hear it ringing. “Hello?”

“It's Rita. Ian's here. I think he wants to talk with you. He's on speaker.”

“Ian? Ian, are you okay?”

“Sarah. No, I'm not. God, how I miss you! I miss you so much!”

“I'm glad, Ian; I'm glad. Now, are you being a good baby and doing what Rita tells you to do?”

“No, he isn't,” Rita cut in. “He keeps going on and on about alcohol and steaks. Either he doesn't believe that I'm carrying out your instructions, or he doesn't care. Either way, I'm tired of the endless whining. Please set him straight.”

“Ian, I am very disappointed in you. I left Rita strict instructions not to let you have alcohol. And you know I did because I told you this was coming! And you're whining about it? Mister, when I get home, you are going straight over my knee!”

“I'm sorry, Mommy!” Ian was blubbering, all the fight gone out of him. “Sorry.”

“And the breast milk?” Sarah went right on, pretending not to have heard him. “This was a special surprise, Ian, a very special, wonderful surprise. I want you to have breast milk now so that you will welcome it when I start nursing you. Taking you to my breast, feeding you … it will create a bond between us that nothing can shake. It will be unbreakable. This was to be my wedding gift for you, but apparently you would rather have a steak.”

“No, Mommy, no! I want you to nurse me! Please! I'll be good, I promise! I'll do whatever aunt Rita wants me to do! I promise!”

“Words,” Rita spat out. “Just words. Well, right now I'm in Ian's debt, but in a few minutes I can cancel it.”

“What do you mean?”

Sarah looked at her mother, and was relieved to see that she was having an equally hard time not giving the game away.

If Ian could only see our faces …

"Gayle Soderberg is coming up here in a few minutes with her Director. I'm betting that Gayle wants to hire Ian, and that Knowles is going to make him 'an offer that he can't refuse' … maybe double or even triple his current salary.”

“Would you like that, baby? Would you like to quit teaching and work for the hospital? Patient Relations would love to have you because we have so much trouble with our Vietnamese patients. Do you know any other languages that we can use?”

“Khmer,” Ian admitted. “Lao ...”

“Wow! My baby is so talented! You can make us so much money! Would you like that, baby … would you?”

“No! I mean … Mommy, it doesn't matter. I wanna teach, but if you want me to quit, I will. I love you, Mommy!”

“So you want me to decide for you, is that it?”

“Yes, Mommy. Please! I can't decide! I can't … I can't ...”

Ian's voice had faded to a whisper and his pupils were dilating, his body going rigid. Rita paled. She didn't know how or why, but she knew that they had just stepped on a land mine. She sprang to her feet and rushed around the desk.

“Foxfire, we're taking heavy fire from the ridge … grids 16 through 21. Light it up!”

“Affirmative, Street Racer. Foxfire inbound, twenty seconds.”

“I need medics! We're taking close order fire from the tree line, and they're on our right flank. Where are the choppers? God damn it!!!”

He was screaming to be heard over the obscene symphony of M-16's and AK-47's as they exchanged fire, the enemy's tracer rounds illuminating the sky.

Street Racer looked to his left. Willis was down, top of the levee, fully exposed, blood gushing out of the wound on his right leg. He knew that the round had found an artery, that he would bleed out, but not before …another round slammed home, picking Corey up like a rag doll, shaking him.

“Cobras sixty seconds out,” he heard a disembodied voice say, its calm punctuating the chaos. “Confirm tree line. Input coordinates for your right flank.”

Trevoux was crabbing along the levee, trying to reach Corey, but that was a mistake and Street Racer knew it. Martin was making the sniper's job too easy … Martin, who had been with him since Hue, the first to sign on to the unit that MACV wanted him to build in the shadows, all volunteers, all men with grudges, all men who didn't care where they were … the Nam, Cambodia, Laos? Just lines on a map, and they didn't care. Martin's father had fallen at Dien Bien Phu.

“Stay back,” he screamed, the ridge lighting up, the familiar pillar of fire; “reste en arrière!”

“IAN, COME BACK TO ME!!! PLEASE!”

He knew the voice but couldn't place it, arms reaching out for him, pulling him down … other voices, more arms, everything in slow motion ...

Glancing to his right, he saw that Minh was down but still in the fight, banging away but staying off full auto, preserving his ammo.  Quy was taking cover in the paddy, popping up blindly to unleash hell on the tree line, burning up magazines one after another, covering fire for his brother.

Street Racer had to get to them, so he went right, staying low, trying to calculate the grid in his head, knowing that the rice paddies were a honeycomb giving cover to both sides, gambling that the fire storm would seal their left flank. He had attended their weddings, was the godfather to Minh's infant daughter.

“Three Sierra to ...”

Fire exploded in Street Racer's head, fighting for his attention with the whup whup of the approaching choppers. He felt his bowels give way, and knew that he had gone down … how bad it was impossible to tell.

“Repeat coordinates right flank … I say again … repeat coordinates ...”

“OH, GOD!”

The same voice, a woman, but from where?

“PRINCESS, HELP HIM!! FIND HIM!! HELP HIM!!”

“Mommy, I'm scared; I'm so scared ...”

Street Racer looked up, saw that it was Bian … Bian cradling him in her arms, singing lullabies, anything to ward off the pain.

Street Racer knew that he was near death, and he reached out for it, wanting to let the burden go. He was so tired, and he wanted to sleep, anything to make the pain go away. But they kept hurting him, the pain in his heart now as bad as the pain in his shoulder, bouncing his body up and down, over and over again.

Why is Candy shaking me, Ian wondered. It makes no sense.

He vomited, smelled the sour milk pouring out of him in rivers. He closed his eyes, the stink from all the shit in his pants gagging him ...

Street Racer smelled burning flesh, knew that it was his own, didn't care. Bian's gentle voice was telling him what to do, making the decision for him. He struggled to his knees and began to crawl along the levee, hiding in the shadows of the gunships finally overhead. He had to save the Princess, and Minh … only Minh was hurt far worse than he had thought … far, far worse. But he had made a promise to Anh, that he would bring her husband home. And he was going to keep it …

Minh! Street Racer kept calling out to him, screaming over the roar of the blades and the mounteds now lighting up the tree line, drowning out the cacophony of his unit's 16's still firing all around him. His men were spread out in good order, but without Minh anchoring the right flank, they could be rolled up and pushed into the flames, one of the choppers already down, its blades crushed as they bit into the levee's hard packed earth. The gunship exploded, blinding him, the ammo going off like firecrackers, brought down by a rocket fired at close range from somewhere in the trees.

“Again,” Rita ordered, fighting hard to get her emotions under control, and Candy snapped another ampule and waved it under Ian's nose. He gagged, and then started to cough.

“Good,” Rita muttered, more or less to herself. Candy had been close, quietly conversing with another nurse, when Ian's screams had shattered the ward's quiet. She had rushed in, and with Rita's help they had got him stretched out on the floor. Her companion had run off to grab the pillows that now supported his head and knees. Still more nurses had sprung into action, one grabbing smelling salts, another racing to get a pitcher of ice water out of the staff frig. Rita was on her knees, checking his pulse rate, a nurse standing by to summon a crash team. They were all seasoned professionals, no rookies in the bunch, and they knew the drill.

“One forty-eight,” Rita called out, staring at her watch, knowing that at one sixty everything would go on autopilot. She was counting in her head, watching the sweep of the second hand on her watch.

Candy tossed the ampule aside, and reached for the pitcher. Ian's eyes were still dangerously dilated. Carefully, she began to pour ice water on his forehead, the response instantaneous. He arched his back, and hurled another stream of vomit into the air.

His bowels let loose … Candy could hear it, but she couldn't remember whether it was his third or fourth evacuation. She knew that his pulse would climb one more time before falling precipitously. The trick was to stabilize him around a hundred, not let it fall as dangerously as it had jumped.

“One fifty-six.” Rita's nose twitched; the stench in the enclosed space of her office now overwhelming.

“Code 2222,” she ordered, and a nurse rushed off to alert the crash team to stand by. One of its members would summon and lock out an elevator, buying precious seconds for a sprint where every second mattered.

Hundreds of miles away, hearing everything over the speaker phone, Sarah and Sofia were helplessly clinging to one another. Sarah was mentally kicking herself all around the room, knowing that she should never have cornered Ian, should simply have made the decision for him. She was his Dominant, and she had made a terrible mistake-- one for which he was paying the price.

“Look at me, Ian.” Candy's voice was commanding, her hand a clinched fist with a single digit slowly waving in front of his eyes. He began to track the movement, first left then right, again and again.

“One thirty-four.”

Too fast, Candy thought, reaching deep into her first year of residency, switching tactics on the fly.

“Look at me, Ian. I need you to take slow, deep breaths, in through your nose, exhale through your mouth. Like this ...”

Ignoring the stink, Candy breathed in and out, and Ian began blindly to mimic her.

“One twenty-six.”

Still on her knees, Candy leaned back, her relief evident to all the nurses crowded in the doorway. She ran her fingers through his hair, which was drenched in sweat, the pretty bonnet abandoned somewhere on the floor. His beautiful dress with its elegant lines of pink and white trim was covered in vomit.

“You need a bath,” she smiled, “and I'm going to do the honors. Perhaps I can get Reiko to help.”

Ian smiled vacuously, present and past a muddle in his head, trying to remember where he was and what he was doing … but the effort was too great, and he let it go.

Rita looked up. “I need someone to abort the Crash Team. Then, call Patient Relations and tell Gayle that we have an emergency up here, so we'll need to reschedule. If she presses, tell her that I'll call her back in an hour or so. Maybe we can do it sometime this afternoon.” Rita was patting Ian's hand, taking deep breaths of her own, which made her gag all over again. She was shaking like a leaf, and she knew it … knew that this was the price any doctor or nurse must pay when becoming emotionally involved with a patient. And she was paying it gladly.

Suddenly remembering, Rita twisted around. “Sarah, are you there?”

“Yes,” she sobbed. “Yes.”

“He's going to be okay. His pulse is down, he's more alert … really, he's going to be okay. Sarah, we had no idea that we were this close to a Breakthrough, so it caught us completely off guard. Literally, there was no warning whatsoever. I have no idea what triggered this, and there's no video feed from this office, so ...”

“He wanted me to decide about his job. He kept saying that he couldn't decide … couldn't decide ...”

“Yes … yes … I remember. And he was calling out … something about 'Minh'. Person? Place? Thing? Event? Who knows?”

“Bian. Maybe she knows. I'll ask her. Minh and Hue. Maybe there's a connection.”

Ian heard his mommy's voice, and he smiled. He did not understand what she was saying, but he could feel the love and concern in her tones. He sensed a torrent of darkness rushing through the corridors of his mind, and once more he reached out to embrace it, gratefully swimming down into the depths. The pain had reached into all of his broken places, sparing nothing.

It was time to sleep.

[littlebopeeper]

Very intense, both the PTSD flashback and the trauma scene.  The last two paragraphs are writing at its very best.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Babypants]

Thanks for the compliment.  Going forward, I'll be curious to see how readers react to a story that is well removed from the familiar AB/DL universe.

[CCApril]

Wow! That was intense. The nurses push and push. Bam! They find the button and all hell breaks loose. 

Is it me or are they a little fixated on the alcohol? I'm no expert on the subject but if he were far down that path he would be bringing up wanting a drink and not the nurses. Might be a steakaholic.

I'm afraid to find out what happened to Minh's daughter. Is it the root cause of Ian's princess? 

This is such good stuff. Anybody not reading it because it lacks the traditional AB/DL stuff on this site is really missing out. Now if you put your fingers over your eyes and pulled in your emotions because this is yanking to hard, I can understand. This is a great story and I'm glad your sharing it with us!

April

[littlebopeeper]

21 hours ago, CCApril said:

This is a great story and I'm glad your sharing it with us!

I would add only that both of you are writing great stories, with emphasis on the word "stories."  It seems to me that what separates your two stories is that one is contemporary, and the other what an early commenter called a period piece.  That's a good description.  Since young people frequently regard anything that happened before their lifetime as of little importance, it's pretty much guaranteed that contemporary fiction will have a broader appeal on a site like this than historical fiction.  All you can do is write the story that you want to tell to the best of your ability (which is considerable) and let the chips fall where they may.   

  

[Babypants]

Quickie historical quiz:

During their discussion of alcoholism, Rita gestures toward the bookcase to Ian's right.  She is directing him to what was then the authoritative treatise on the subject-- E. Morton Jellinek's The Disease Concept of Alcoholism (1960).   There are five stages in the so-called "Jellinek curve," and despite his protestations to the contrary, Ian's history certainly seems to indicate that he falls into one of the following stages:

1.  Alpha

2.  Beta

3.  Gamma

4.  Delta

5.  Epsilon      

[Babypants]

On 8/4/2023 at 5:45 PM, CCApril said:

I'm afraid to find out what happened to Minh's daughter. Is it the root cause of Ian's princess?

This was quite a catch on your part.  I expected it to slide through without anyone noticing.  

[Babypants]

LESSING'S FOLLY

“To summarize,” Rita concluded, “as of this morning we have 37 patients in residence, with twenty voluntaries and seventeen committals. This leaves us with three rooms to spare in the secure wing. A fourth room is under temporary occupancy by a voluntary admission ...”

Laughter erupted all around the conference table, and everyone turned to look up at the video feed from room eleven. Professor Ian Grady, aka Major Ian Grady, aka little baby Ian, aka Princess Poopy Pants, was sitting at the desk, frowning intensely, red pin flying across the pages of his ever diminishing pile of blue books. Check marks here and marginal comments there, increasingly sloppy summaries, and then the verdict in the form of both a letter and a numeric grade. The young professor was a precision machine, and nothing if not thorough.

“I know, I know,” Rita laughed. “But for John's sake, we do have to observe the formalities. Anyway, we might have a fifth room open as well, because in a couple of hours Phil's parents will be here. Becky will be supervising, and if all goes well, I'm planning to relocate him among the voluntaries.”

The announcement sparked a round of applause; in this ward, the staff savored their hard-earned triumphs.

“To Becky,” Candy blurted out, raising her coffee cup on high.

“And to Ian.” Becky was not about to steal Ian's thunder.

“To Becky and Ian!” Reiko, at twenty-six the youngest and least experienced member of the Circle, was firmly of the opinion that Phil's redemption was the product of team effort.

“Our very own Dynamic Duo!” Vickie began to hum the theme from Batman, and the others promptly joined in.

It was a little after nine on Saturday morning, and the weekly roundup informally known as Lessing's Folly was once again underway. Rita thought of the ward's three shifts in military terms-- her own first shift took point, Martha Benson's second was the unit's beating heart, and Julie Neymar's third brought up the rear. The three charge nurses took reports from their staff, updated patient files daily, and fed the finished product to John Lessing, MD, PhD, for the weekly review. It was John's signature that graced the summary that Rita forwarded to the Director's office.

Lessing, at age fifty-three, was one of the most prominent psychiatrists in the Twin Cities. A full professor at Ian's university, he had a lucrative contract with the hospital, but was content to let Rita run the ward. She had been one of his best students, and together they had built a staff that he considered the best not only in the state but in the whole of the upper Midwest. All but two of the nurses were his former students. Reiko, Candy and Becky, who were at various stages of their four year residency, were handpicked, Becky now in her last year. He had expected to lose her to private practice, and her blossoming romance with Phil Kettering both surprised and delighted him.

John was deeply protective of his students, but he was also unsentimental about the realities of the medical industry. He had driven it home to each of them that, no matter where they worked, fully one-third of their hands-on colleagues would regard them as charlatans and grifters. He took perverse pride in his very own Hotel California, and he never tired of reminding his departmental colleagues at the university that, on a weekly basis, it was his privilege to attend Lessing's Folly. It was only his wife's concern for his reputation that prevented him from occasionally attending the Circle's Saturday night frolic as well.

“Marge, where do we stand with Don Phillips?”

“Babbling … incoherent. He's verbal, but it's as if the neurons are all firing in isolation from one another. My primary concern is getting him to eat. I've debated hooking him up to a feeding tube, but I'm worried about aspiration. Should we sedate him?”

“John, your thoughts.” This was precisely the sort of problem that Rita was happy to buck upstairs to her mentor.

“No sedation, and no feeding tube.” This was not John Lessing's first rodeo. “Get him on his feet, and get him moving. He needs to hear friendly voices, but not in large numbers because the cacophony will frighten him, which could trigger a relapse. Offer him food, but don't force feed him. If worse comes to worse, we'll run an IV, but let's give it some time and see if his body will drive a bargain with his brain.”

“Got it.” Marge was busily taking notes. “Do you want Ian to have another go at him?”

“Good Lord, no! The last thing that poor man needs now is to hear someone hectoring him in Vietnamese. No. Get Phillips to the point where he is coherent and able to tap into his memories, and we'll think about having Major Grady working with him the same way that he did with Kettering.”

“If sedation ever becomes necessary, ” Vickie commented, “I'd recommend Lorazepam intravenously. I've followed the clinical trials, and the results look promising, but we have no first hand experience. From what Marge is telling us, Phillips looks promising.”

“Giving up on Valium, are we Vickie?” Becky loved teasing her mentor.

“Yeah,” Vickie grinned; “I need a new drug.”

“And on that note we come to our beloved Princess Poopy Pants.” Rita was watching the clock. “Candy, what's your schedule?”

“Next diaper check is at ten, give or take a few blue books. I expect it to be messy.”

Forty minutes … more than enough time.

John looked up at the screen, and shook his head. “You know,” he observed, “one of the few things hitherto beyond the reach of my imagination was seeing a diapered colleague grading blue books inside the secure ward. But then I also never expected to hear about a member of staff leaping across a table to fend off a murderous patient with a turkey drumstick. Victoria, you are truly one for the ages!”

“Thanks, boss; I was happy to do my bit.”

“The rest of you should know,” John said as his eyes went round the table, “that Victoria and I have had a heart to heart talk about her relationship with Doctor Grady. And it is 'Doctor', by the way, and I do hope that none of you lose sight of that particular fact.”

“As you all know, as a matter of policy this hospital forbids doctors and nurses from entering into relationships with their patients. However, we also know that there is no rule in place forbidding attachments between doctors or nurses and FORMER patients. Hence it should come as no surprise to anyone here that the rules and regs are silent with regard to relationships forged BEFORE a patient's admission when they remain ongoing.” John was looking hard at Marge. “Given that Doctor Grady has twice attended and participated in certain allegedly drunken and promiscuous activities in Rita's home, it is self-evidently the case that he has an ongoing relationship with everyone in this room, myself excluded. Or am I wrong about that? If there is anyone in this room who has no prior relationship with Doctor Grady whatsoever, please raise your hand.”

No one did.

“Good.” John leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his neck, and studied the ceiling. He was visibly gathering his thoughts. “Right, here's what we're going to do. The first order of business is keeping him out of the line of fire. I'll have a quiet word with our campus police chief, and try to arrange for Ian to have a uniformed escort everywhere he goes on Monday. I'll also talk to his department chair, and explain the financial facts of life. I'll give Stuart an abridged account of what's happened here so far, with a decidedly heroic spin, and tell him to keep his distance. The last thing I want is for him or anyone else to be applying pressure. That's Vickie's job; she's his therapist, she has a good game plan, and it should work. But we want the meltdown to occur in a controlled environment … so, no more nasty surprises, okay?”

“We still have to address the issue of his diaper changes,” Marge objected.

“You're right. Sorry, Vickie, but when you think he's ripe, get somebody else to change him. I'll cut you some slack and let you give him his bottles and pat him on the back, hold his hand, but don't let your fingers wander. If you do, you'll be off this case like shit through a goose. Capiche?”

“Boss, I've set him up for rewards and punishments-- sexual relief and spankings. Under these restrictions? I'll get nowhere.”

John gave it a moment's thought. “Okay, I'll meet you halfway. You can spank him, over the knee, but Rita I want you or Marge in the room observing. Now, does anyone here feel like tutoring my colleague in the fine art of self-gratification when a reward is in order?”

Reiko and Candy instantly raised their hands, and to John's considerable surprise, Rita did so as well.

“Good, we have multiple volunteers. I'd suggest that you schedule a fixed hour for rewards, and take turns awarding them. But Vickie, and Vickie alone, determines when he's up for a reward or spanking. And her decision is final.”

John looked around the room, hoping that he had been reading it correctly. “Rita, I like this idea of putting together a tape and offering it to Glenn Albright. Let me know when you're ready to make the pitch. I'll have you both to lunch at the Faculty Club. And as for your friend, Sarah? In due course ...”

John had a pretty good idea how things would be playing out over the next couple of hours, so he didn't even bother trying to keep a poker face.

“In due course,” he grinned, “let's spread the word that Doctor Grady has a no-nonsense girlfriend with marriage on her mind, and hers is the final say in their relationship. When you next talk to her, make it clear that in my professional opinion she needs to take decision making out of his hands. All we know for sure is that yesterday morning he cracked when asked to make a consequential decision … so we stop doing that until Vickie gets this sorted out.”

. . . .

Leaving the conference room in a hurry, Candy and Rita rushed back to the office. There were only two guest chairs, and one of them was covered with files. Candy picked them up and dumped them on the floor. She barely had time to sit down before Vickie came storming through the door. She slammed it behind her, trapping the three of them in the lingering stench of Ian's much abused diaper.

Vickie sniffed the air, knowing that it had been a full twenty-four hours since Ian's collapse. “Is that what I think it is,” she asked.

“It is. Breast milk, in the quantity that he's receiving, definitely has its down side.”

“Funny that, because I came in here to clear the air. About what happened, which seems to have become a hot topic in this building. I got a lot of strange looks coming in from the car park. Two of my friends gave me a big hug, and one of them asked if I was okay.”

“It's over, Vic … ancient history. The song and dance was strictly for Marge's benefit; it's John's way of telling Keith that if he wants to go to war, John owns the battlefield. You're good to go.”

“Nope, not by a long shot.” Vickie was emphatically shaking her head, and she had a stranglehold on both chair arms. “I don't give a damn how many people see the tape, and anyone who expects me to apologize for what happened, for my … my ...”

“Orgasm?” Rita also wanted to clear the air because her journey from the car park had been equally slow. She was pretty sure that Vickie had misunderstood a great deal of what she had experienced.

“My feelings,” Vickie corrected. “God! How could I have been so blind, so full of myself? I knew that I had feelings for Ian; they've been there from the moment we met. But they confused me. I tried and tried to sort out what I was feeling. Lust? A new toy for me to play with? An easy conquest to toss on the pile alongside all the others? But nothing felt right. Rita, I DIDN'T KNOW! Honest to God, until Phillips leaped across the table, teeth bared, I DIDN'T KNOW. It hit me with the force of a sledgehammer. He wanted to kill the man I love, and I could stop him. And I did, me and my stupid drumstick!”

“And that's what people are talking about, Vic. Oh, sure, not Sarah's collection of jerks; they're chortling about Ian licking cranberry sauce off your blouse, and you having this mind blowing orgasm in full view of all. But they don't count. That's why we're the Hotel California, remember? That's why we come together every Saturday morning and add another chapter to Lessing's Folly. THEY … DO … NOT … COUNT. The people who matter, which includes just about every woman in this building, are concerned about you … about you and Ian, both. Because from what I was hearing in the corridors this morning, I'm guessing that when Bian went back to the ER and her friends crowded round, she told them the whole of it and not just a part. And then the Crash Team must have added their two cents worth.”

“It's what we all heard coming here this morning.” Candy spoke up for the first time. “How a wounded veteran came out of nowhere and volunteered to become a patient in the psych ward, hoping to help two deeply troubled vets whom we were about to lose forever. How he pulled it off, putting himself at great risk in the process, and how a nurse hurled herself into the fray to ward off an attack with the only weapon she had to hand-- a turkey drumstick. So what if the details are a little off. When you cut to the chase, isn't that exactly what happened?”

“You left out a few critical details.” Vickie was grinning from ear to ear. She really didn't give a damn about the tape. And she loved Candy … Candy and Becky both. Mentoring them was far and away the best part of her job.

“Not really. Vickie, you don't live life; you attack it. Day after day, you wrap your hands around its throat and you throttle it. It's who you are. A lot of people envy you, some are jealous, but everybody has been waiting for this moment to happen … wondering if it WOULD happen. And now it has. Vickie, there is nothing on that tape that is going to surprise anybody … nothing, because you are not a person for half measures.”

“Here, here,” Rita muttered. She was happy that Candy had beaten her to the punch. For her own part, Rita was pondering how Vickie could possibly carry on as Ian's therapist.

But John's good with it, and he's forgotten more about human relationships than I've ever learned, so …

“I'd like everyone earning a paycheck from this hospital to watch that tape,” Candy continued. She was really on a roll. “We're constantly being lectured about how doctors, nurses and patients get the best results when we work as a team … then in the next breath they're threatening to take our jobs away if we let our guard down and become emotionally involved. I'm sick of the hypocrisy-- and am I the only one who finds it odd that we're busily trying to knock down Phil's wall, and Don's and Ian's, while hiding behind our own? When did compassion go out of style?”

“You go, girl!” Vickie had never been as proud of Candy as she was in this moment.

“Everybody except you, Vickie.” Candy was eyeing the clock, knowing that she had to leave soon. “The moment you walked in this morning, I saw it in your stride … in the way you were looking at the rest of us. A Breakthrough. Your wall is gone, and you're happy. It's good to see.” Candy stood up, and on impulse walked over to hug Vickie tight. She was so happy for her friend that she was near tears.

“Now, if the two of you will excuse me, there's a patient in room eleven that I've promised to give a bath. I didn't expect him to sleep for twenty-two hours, never mind set a world's record for poopy diapers. He stinks, and wet wipes and baby powder aren't going to cut it. And Rita, unless Vickie objects, I would very much appreciate it if you would cut the video feed.”

“Oh, he's definitely earned a reward,” Vickie laughed. “And by all means, make it a good one! Then I want him back in eleven. You might remind the Princess that she's due for a spanking, and I'll make it a good one as well!”

“Say around lunchtime?” Vickie winked at Rita. She intended to follow John's instructions to the letter, and she much preferred Rita's company to Marge's.

“I'll grab something from the cafeteria … enough for both of us. After her spanking, let's put the Princess in her crib and let her watch us eat. Pink this and pink that is not floating the Major's boat, and he's wondering what gives with the dress. Maybe we should try shamelessly bribing him with a pickle. ”

“Speaking of the dress,” Vickie moaned, “the dry cleaning is going to set me back a small fortune. Any chance you can reimburse me out of incidentals?”

“Consider it done.”

Candy silently left the office. She had a spring in her own step, and felt on top of the world. With the camera off, she could finally practice therapy the way that she and Vickie both wanted it done.

. . . .

Ian heard the door open, but he didn't bother to look up. He was on a roll, and calculated that he could polish off the last of the exams in three hours or less. He was determined to get it done, and to get the hell out of Dodge. With diaper changes now coming every sixty to ninety minutes, all of them poopy, he was desperate to get some real food into his system. Thanks to the breast milk, his run of the mill five poopy diapers a day was beginning to look like Paradise Lost.

He smelled her perfume before he felt her hand glide down his spine, and instantly recognized that Candy was back. He had awakened groggy and confused, to find her sitting quietly beside his crib. He was not restrained, and she looked exhausted. He thought that she might well have been there all night, watching over him.

Like Bian.

Twenty-two hours, she had said, anticipating the inevitable question. He had slept a long, long time, and he didn't know why. Where his memories should have been, there was only a blank screen. He remembered nothing of the day before.

The routine unfolded smoothly. The changing table and the diaper change with which he now greeted each new day. Cradled, looking up into tender and caring eyes, sucking down the two bottles of breast milk. Crawling to the desk, girding himself for work in an environment at once familiar yet strange. Back to the changing table, his diaper once again mushy and foul … another bottle … more blue books. She had left at some point, exhorting him to keep working, telling him that she would be back to give him his reward. He had obeyed without question, and she had returned.

He sensed her leaning down to whisper in his ear, inhaling the scent of her deep into his lungs.

“Finish this one,” she had said, “then it will be time for your reward.”

Ian thought it odd that she wasn't calling him “princess” or “baby.” and it left him wondering whether in turn he should drop the pretense of calling her his “aunt” or “auntie.” His confusion doubled when Candy led him not to the changing table but straight out the door, and then turned left instead of right. Mystified, he followed her to the end of the corridor, entering a room that took him by complete surprise.

It was huge, at least double the size of his own room eleven. One entire corner was empty save for the large drain on the floor and a lone stool. There were a number of hoses hanging on hooks, and Ian guessed that patients were literally hosed down here. A long and unusually wide porcelain bathtub was to the right, and set into the floor. The setup reminded him of a traditional Japanese bathhouse, where you washed first and then bathed in water so hot that it threatened to scald the skin. Thinking about the state of his diaper, and how long it had been since he last bathed, Ian licked his lips in anticipation.

Looking to his left, Ian spotted the ubiquitous changing table. With the hoses hanging in the background, it was obvious how this was going to go. Except that Candy was leading him by the hand to the right … to what looked like an ordinary dental chair-- except that this one came equipped with a fell set of restraints. For a perverse moment, he wondered whether someone had screwed up and scheduled him for electro-shock therapy. He debated whether it was time to panic.

Candy nudged him into the seat, but made no move to restrain him. She tilted the seat back, pulled up a stool, and sat looking down at him. Her eyes, always so alive, were filled with good humor. Ian abruptly decided to go with the moment.

“We'll begin with a good, old-fashioned dental check-up,” she laughed, “one of the many oddball things that I learned during my first year residency. Open and say 'ah'.”

Candy began poking around with the usual tool, and then stuck a finger in his mouth to survey his gums. But she wasn't wearing a glove, and Ian wasted no time latching on. He began sucking for all that he was worth.

“Ah, does my widdle Princess Poopy Pants like to suck on auntie's finger,” she cooed, making no attempt to remove it from his mouth. Instead, she began to twirl it in lazy circles, forcing his tongue to move hither and yon in order to keep up. Candy was finger fucking his mouth, and he loved it.

“Would you like your binkie, hmm?” With her free hand, she reached into a pocket, pulled it out, and waved it slowly in front of his eyes.

Ian was still in Professor Grady mode, but he was more than willing to play this particular game. He was pretty sure that he had Princess Poopy Pants down pat, and he really liked Candy. He wanted to please her.

“Yeth, pwese,” Relaxing his grip on her finger, he opened wide, but then Candy surprised him. Waving her finger back and forth in front of his eyes, a bit of his saliva still clinging to it, she announced that first she would brush his teeth and then give him his precious binkie.

Candy was thorough, and thoroughly professional, right down to having him swish and spit. Ian thought that she would have made a great dental assistant-- and he'd happily let her brush his teeth for him after every meal. This was way beyond service with a smile. Still, when she offered him the binkie, he accepted it happily, and began sucking noisily.

“Tank yu, aunt Candy. I wuv my binkie.” Ian debated whether he was overplaying his hand.

Such a baby, such a baby … but how does he make this transition without a trigger? The textbooks insist that there's a totem, but if it's here, none of us are seeing it.

Candy glanced up at the camera, and noted that it was still live. It would not go dark until Ian was prepped for his bath, and she knew that Vickie and Rita were both watching. She wondered if Ian's personality shifts continued to mystify them as much as they mystified her.

. . . .

“So now you've met Bob,” Sofia mused, taking a small sip from her first cup of coffee. In the morning, she liked it black, and scalding hot.

“Well, let me see,” Sarah retorted as she sat her own cup down. “Is this your roundabout way of telling me that he's 'the one'? Are you asking for my approval?” She was teasing, but she was also rubbing it in.

Turn about, fair play!

“It's possible, I suppose.” Sofia was being carefully non-committal.

“Well, he's certainly gainfully employed,” Sarah laughed, remembering how her ever practical grandmother had so quickly got to the heart of the matter. “The guy owns his own hardware store, no less.”

“And he's very handy with tools...”

“All of them?” In point of fact, Sarah had really liked her mother's latest beau. He was attentive, polite, surprisingly well spoken, and a true child of the Keweenaw. It was screamingly obvious that he was very much a one woman kind of guy. If he ever deserted her mother, Sarah concluded, it would be for the sake of his fishing rod.

A true child of the Keweenaw indeed. And a widower …

“Well, he could use a bit more practice … you know, here and there.” There was a soft but knowing smile on Sofia's lips.

“And do you think that he would be up for your … um, how shall I put it? Lifestyle?”

“He seems receptive. When his hands stray a bit, I slap them down … a bit harder than I really need to. I tease him about going over my knee if he doesn't mind his manners. He hasn't run away yet, and that's always a good sign. I think of him like a fish. He's taken the hook, and now I'm playing out the line, giving him the illusion of freedom while I debate the proper moment to reel him in. I want to wear him down, but still leave just enough fight in him to make it interesting. I do enjoy training a man to satisfy me without needing prompting.”

“I wonder if he'll like Ian, or be repulsed by his diapers. Mom, you should know that I do not, and will not, hide the fact that Ian is a poop monster!”

“Nor would I want you to. Bob's charming, in an endearing sort of way, but I think he would look absolutely adorable in a nice, thick diaper. I suspect pink baby pants would be a bridge too far, but blue or yellow should work fine. Wouldn't you like to see the two of them crawling around the house together, maybe sharing a playpen?”

“Mom, you are incorrigible. Where do you get these ideas? Surely they don't all come from books.”

“Actually, Dear, I've been thinking about how much I'm looking forward to babysitting my son-in-law. I really am, you know? And if you leave any gaps in his training, rest assured that I will plug them! Any … way, fantasizing about all the fun I'm going to have with Ian got me to thinking about Bob, and how much fun I can have bringing him to heel. I just have to be patient, and let my little fishie tire himself out on the line.”

“But diapers? Mom, does he need them?”

“Not that I know of, but that won't be a problem. We nurses do have our ways.”

[littlebopeeper]

Wow!  Ian's future mother-in-law has turned out to be an apex predator.  Can't wait to see what happens when she gets him in her clutches.  For that matter, will the commander of his university ROTC program also try to pick him off?  Now that Ian has been outed, "keeping him out of the line of fire" is going to get more and more difficult for his three mommies to pull off. 

[Babypants]

Quickie historical quiz:

In this scene, Candy is looking forward to practicing psychotherapy in a way that would outrage Marge, whom the other therapists in this story have nicknamed "Miss By the Book."  What are the two competing schools of psychoanalysis in play here?

A.  Adler

B.  Erikson

C.  Freud

D.  Jung 

[CDfm]

Just got caught up on this story.  Have to say 😳 WOW this is intense!  When you started this I couldn’t help but think you had seen a flash of my life.   At least a part of it.  
I was injured while in the Marine Corps that left me urinary incontinent.  I had met a nurse who enjoyed helping with my briefs.  Honestly it led to some fantastic times in the bedroom.  That’s about where the similarities ended though.  I really liked her and while much of her help was actually appreciated, it got to be to much.  The public checks just got to be to humiliating for me. (I have been using protection since the early 90’s and most people don’t notice.  Those that might never say anything.  While she was helping me that wasn’t the case.  I ended up calling it off between us as I just wasn’t prepared to be her baby. I visit places like this as a means of coping with my incontinence and stories like yours make me believe there are normal happy people who need and use diapers for their intended purposes. Life goes on even with diapers. 
I look forward to seeing how Ian makes out. 

[littlebopeeper]

On 8/12/2023 at 1:16 PM, Babypants said:

C.  Freud

D.  Jung

Miss By the Book is for sure a student of Freud.  Reiko hitting on giri the way she does makes me go with Jung because he was in tune with eastern philosophies and religion.  This is a huge difference between Freud and Jung.

[Babypants]

On 8/12/2023 at 5:35 PM, CDfm said:

Just got caught up on this story.  Have to say 😳 WOW this is intense!  When you started this I couldn’t help but think you had seen a flash of my life.   At least a part of it.  
I was injured while in the Marine Corps that left me urinary incontinent.  I had met a nurse who enjoyed helping with my briefs.  Honestly it led to some fantastic times in the bedroom.  That’s about where the similarities ended though.  I really liked her and while much of her help was actually appreciated, it got to be to much.  The public checks just got to be to humiliating for me. (I have been using protection since the early 90’s and most people don’t notice.  Those that might never say anything.  While she was helping me that wasn’t the case.  I ended up calling it off between us as I just wasn’t prepared to be her baby. I visit places like this as a means of coping with my incontinence and stories like yours make me believe there are normal happy people who need and use diapers for their intended purposes. Life goes on even with diapers. 
I look forward to seeing how Ian makes out. 

I'm glad that you are enjoying the story, and thank you for taking the time to comment.  Feedback is always appreciated.  The intensity of these chapters will be balanced by the Three Stooges taking over the hospital in the chapters lying just ahead.  Ultimately, it will be for each reader to decide for her or himself how Ian has made out.  All I can promise you at this point is that the final paragraphs will take most if not all readers by surprise.  But you have already gone to the heart of what this story is truly about.  It's real life, "even with diapers."  The only reason for happiness to be sacrificed on the altar of disability is if you choose to make it so.  I never did.  To the contrary, the limitations of incontinence in childhood yielded a rich adult life, both professionally and socially.  I have dated more nurses than I can count, married two, and have run the gauntlet in these relationships from professional detachment to full on mothering.  One lesson learned is that focusing on your partner, and trying to satisfy her needs, makes it a lot easier to go with the flow.

     

[Babypants]

CASINO NOT SO ROYALE

Candy tipped the chair all the way back, and began closing the restraints around Ian's ankles. Still sucking hard on his pacifier, his frown said it all.

“It's time for your shave, baby. And I'm sorry, but ward policy requires you to be fully restrained before I bring out the razor. But don't worry. This won't take long … unless you want me to give you a really clean shave!”

Candy tapped Ian's chest; she was surprised that no one had got around to removing the baby's body hair. Rather than wait until later, she decided to remove his diaper cover and baby pants before getting started. It was also firm policy for every patient in the ward, male or female, to be shaved “down there” on a weekly basis. But in Ian's case, there was a price to be paid. The breast milk really was running right through him. Reduced to his thick but ever poopy diaper, he smelled ripe.

Candy dramatically waved her arm in front of her face. “Whew, baby, you are STINKY, STINKY, STINKY. You are just a poop monster, oh yes you are!” She closed the cuffs around his wrists, and brought up and cinched the waist and chest straps tight. She debated using the strap across his forehead as well, but decided that her baby was so cooperative that she could do without.

It was only when he was immobilized that she crossed the room to collect not one but three razors-- the hair on arms and legs dulled even the best of blades very quickly. She thought that he would enjoy the warm shaving cream, an expensive spa product that Rita somehow managed to smuggle into their supply budget.

Standing over him, razor in hand, Candy made a mental note of how relaxed his body was. He was helpless, fully restrained, and yet totally relaxed. They had debated this, and now here was another entry for the file. Patients did not welcome restraints. Some of them fought so hard that it took two nurses and two orderlies to get the job done. But Ian offered no resistance whatsoever. It was an obvious behavioral clue, but they had no context within which to interpret it.

Candy began spreading the warm foam over Ian's neck and cheeks, and he moaned with pleasure. She smiled, guessing that more than one nurse had performed this very personal service for Major Ian Grady in more than one military hospital. She hoped that her predecessors had enjoyed the moment as much as she was.

. . . .

Becky cursed herself for not seeing it coming. She had dashed downstairs to the gift shop, hoping to find a nice box of candy for Phil to give to his parents. She was in her eighth year of residency, and had friends in every department. There were always greetings to be exchanged going to and fro, and she had been teased more than once about the goings-on in the Hotel California. As she walked the corridors she was not, therefore, surprised to find that Vickie's fabled turkey drumstick had assumed mythic proportions, with a few of the bolder wags asking whether her colleague had been arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. It was all good fun, and the attention secretly pleased her.

As is always the case with stories passed from hand to hand, or rather from mouth to mouth, Vickie's orgasm had also scaled the heights of volcanic eruption. Poor Becky had to fend off more than one query about leftover cranberry sauce, and she was sure that it was mere coincidence that Fats Domino was repeatedly leaving his thrill on Blueberry Hill on radios tuned everywhere to the hospital's very own station. Victoria Robinson was, after all, the liveliest wire in the hospital set, a creature of notoriously insatiable appetites-- and was it true that, in the midst of the carnage, she had contentedly curled up into a little ball on her beloved's chest, her beloved being the mysterious but no doubt dashing young officer whose fluent command of Vietnamese had triggered the fracas in the first place? And did she know that Gayle Soderberg down in Patient Relations was climbing the walls, or as some would have it, organizing a commando raid on the seventh floor to steal Rita's prize?

And then someone who had actually been there remembered that Sarah Haikkonen, up on three, had only recently proclaimed to a cafeteria that was all ears that she had gone and fallen in love with a badly wounded soldier [that's way back in Scene 3, a bit of seeming fluff that is actually there to trigger this moment]. Given that Rita, Vickie and Sarah were thicker than thieves, someone wondered what the odds might be that Vickie and Sarah had fallen in love with the same guy. The mere mention of “odds” was enough to cause bated breath hospital wide, everyone wondering whether the true lords and masters of the edifice had made up their minds-- the kingpins being not the Directors on the top floor but the Building Services manager and his cronies down in the subterranean depths. THEY KNEW THINGS.

But it was the ever enterprising Ted Norris [Scene 4], who brought matters to a head. Ted dashed to the cashier's stand, grabbed the telephone secreted beneath the register, and made the call. He listened for a few moments, and then slammed the phone down. “FOUR TO ONE,” Reiko's hunk shouted. It struck him as pointless to add that it was Vickie who was the prohibitive favorite.

But the bookies couldn't get any action, even on the lazy Saturday morning of a four day holiday weekend when virtually the entire staff had nothing out of the ordinary to do. It wasn't until the odds moved up to six and a half to one that Sarah got any takers, and even that wasn't enough. Desperate to balance the action, Manny Cepeda went all in, kicking the odds to ten to one!

Up on three, Heidi Freymiller, the second shift charge nurse who was double shifting to cover for Sarah, placed the call.

. . . .

The phone rang, and Sofia picked it up, hoping that it was Bob calling to arrange their next date. Grimacing, she passed the phone to Sarah.

“Hello ...”

“Sarah, it's Heidi. You heard about Vickie and your boyfriend? The Great Turkey Shootout?”

“Rita gave me a blow by blow description, but I think she was drunk.”

“Well, somebody figured out that the two of you are in love with the same guy. Manny's put it top of the board. Odds are currently ten to one against. You want in?”

“YOU BET YOUR SWEET BIPPY,” Sarah shouted. “It's a sure thing because Ian can't blow his nose without my permission! If they can handle the bet? PUT ME DOWN FOR A THOUSAND!”

Heidi slammed the phone down, did the math, then dialed Manny on his private line.

In a matter of seconds, the odds dropped to six to one. Everyone figured that three had answered the call; the $64,000 question was whether Sarah's backers had inside information. People were starting to get nervous, especially on the top floor.

. . . .

Ian was drifting in the warmth of Candy's shaving cream, convinced that the lass would have made a great barber. She had taken especial care above and below his lips, the places where Ian routinely nicked himself. Then, switching razors, she had moved on to his groin, but only after tackling the river of poop that filled his diaper. Ian knew the score, and he sincerely hoped that she was very well paid because at the moment he was in no position to leave a tip.

One by one, Candy had released his arms and legs from the restraints, and shaved him clean. He wouldn't miss the hair in his armpits because he had always removed it when tropics bound. Ditto for the hair on his chest. He wasn't sure about his arms and legs now being baby smooth, but he was willing to give it a try. He was just about ready for his bath.

. . . .

Becky grabbed a box that looked like European chocolates, noted the price, and raced for the door. “Keep the change,” she yelled as she tossed a twenty dollar bill in the cashier's general direction. She sprinted up the corridor, thankful for the sensible trousers that she was wearing, and equally thankful for the weekly racket ball dates that kept her reasonably fit. She had more than a hundred and fifty yards to go, and then the long, slow elevator ride up to seven. There was a fortune to be made if she could just get there in time because Rita Stevenson also had Manny Cepeda's private line!

. . . .

Nude and now hairless from the neck down, Ian stood over the drain and spread his legs. Candy waited until the water warmed, and then began to hose him down. She had stripped down to a two-piece bathing suit that, from Ian's point of view, still covered way too much skin, but he let it go when she began vigorously to sponge his body with a liquid soap that smelled strongly of strawberries.

Ian loved strawberries.

Candy was thorough, getting down on her knees to attack the deep folds of skin in his diaper area. Then she grabbed the nearby stool, pushed him down, and went to work on his hair. It was dirty and there was a lot of it, so once again she had to take her time. Ian simply closed his eyes, encouraging her with the occasional “oh, that's good.”

Her task done, Candy stood him up and once more hosed him down. Confirming that the video feed was indeed off, she took him by the hand and led him to the tub. The water was hot and frothy, the pulsing jets making sure that whatever happened beneath the surface would remain hidden from view.

Ian did not know that Candy's collection of certificates and degrees included one for massage therapy.

. . . .

Becky charged into Rita's office as if she had been shot out of a cannon. “Have you heard,” she screamed.

“Heard what?” Rita, Vickie and Marge were observing the feed from the hydrotherapy chamber, and once more debating the hidden meaning behind Ian Grady's obvious love affair with heavy restraints.

“The betting pool! It's got out that Vickie and Sarah are both in love with Ian, and Manny's running with it! Vickie's a ten to one favorite … we can make a fortune!!!”

“HOLY SHIT!!!” Marge grabbed the phone and started frantically dialing. “Keith's got to get in on this; he'll owe us big time!!”

Rita dove into the bottom drawer on the right side of her desk, frantically looking for the piece of paper that had Manny's private number as well as the caps on the bets that every one in the department had given her. The entire staff knew well that, when it came to the betting pools, seconds mattered.

“Is it against the rules for me to bet against myself,” Vickie shrieked.

“I'll put you down both ways. HALLELUHAH!” Rita triumphantly held the sheet of paper over her head.

“That's right, that's right.” Marge was yelling. “It's a sure thing … believe me … cover your bet!”

She pitched the phone to Rita, who caught it in one hand while dialing with the other. “Ollie? Yeah, it's Rita. A hundred on Vickie … yeah, that's right, a hundred. And twenty-two hundred on Sarah!!”

“We've got to reach Amos and Andy,” Vickie cried. “They'll both bet on me, and get hosed!”

Down in Sublevel B, Manny Cepeda had a big grin on his face. The odds had dropped to four to one-- right where he had set them in the first place.

. . . .

Candy slid into the water behind Ian, who was kneeling, the water up to his chin. His eyes were closed, and he was purring with contentment. Still on her feet, Candy began kneading his neck and shoulders, using her thumbs to attack the knots. Ian lifted his arms and set them adrift on the surface, his hands regularly closing around the hot foam. From this angle, it was easy to see where the shell had passed through his right shoulder, the scarring now dimpled and pale.

She gradually worked her way down his spine, her touch becoming more and more gentle as she approached the lumbar region. Here his skin had the texture of sandpaper, and L5 was a hard, badly misaligned lump beneath her fingers. She knew that he must be daily living with pain normally reserved for men more than twice his age, but he never spoke of it.

They never do.

Following her instructions, Ian turned to sit crosswise, one foot resting on the ledge. Candy worked each foot, then climbed his calves and thighs, easing off on what would normally have been a deep tissue massage. She popped his fingers and thumbs, and combined a light massage on his lower arms with a hard massage on his upper-- hard enough to make him wince with pain.

Ian was convinced that Candy would have made a great masseuse. Her strong and knowing fingers brought back warm memories of Bangkok in years gone by.

She turned him, tummy flat on the floor, his ass almost wholly submerged. Candy knew that his cheeks were small and firm, but it was only when she set to work that she discovered just how muscled they really were. She started in the crevice at the top of his thighs and worked her way north. Reaching the piriformis, she pushed down firmly with a knuckle, and was pleased to get an immediate response, Ian's right cheek jumping into the air. The muscle was in good working order, unlike the surrounding nerves. Candy searched for the pudendal nerve, the body's workhorse, instrumental not only for bladder and bowel control but also for sexual stimulation. She kneaded the overlaying tissue, using the heel of her palm as well as her fingertips, and didn't stop until Ian began to moan in obvious pleasure.

Rolling him over yet again, resting the back of his head on the edge of the tub, she leaned down. “Are you enjoying your reward,” she whispered. Reaching into the back of her tankini bottom, she extracted a condom and set it to the side. Knowing exactly where to press, Candy began stroking a nerve on the inside of Ian's left thigh, driving him wild.

“Rewards are sooo much better than spankings,” she teased, “but both are so easily earned. You lied to Vickie about Hue, and she has not forgotten. You will be spanked, but not now … not here. Here is where we are rewarding you for all that you have done to help us, and to help Phil and Don.”

Firmly gripping his balls in her left hand, Candy reached out with her right, using her thumb and index finger to form a ring. She started at the tip, and worked her way in smooth, rhythmic strokes up and down his shaft, all the while continuing to massage his testicles.

Ian's eyes were shut, his mouth hanging open. Candy leaned down a second time to kiss him, her tongue entering, dueling with Ian's, tickling the roof of his mouth. But her fingers, as if blessed with a life of their own, continued to work their magic on his cock and balls. His tongue imprisoned, his body helpless, she reached up without warning to pinch a nipple that was standing to attention, hard as a rock. Ian opened his mouth still wider, wanting to cry out, trapped somewhere between pain and pleasure, but Candy took this as an invitation to probe deeper, her tongue becoming more and more aggressive, mastering him.

She raked his shaft with a single fingernail, then clutched it in the palm of her hand. She squeezed, just hard enough to remind him that he was her captive, then resumed her relentless stroking. She eased out of his mouth, taunting him, asking herself out loud whether he should be allowed to come or returned to the enforced chastity of his diaper, baby pants and diaper cover. She pretended that he was not even in the room, talking about him in the third person, her fingers drawing him ever closer to the edge.

When he was near, she reached for the condom, opened it, and bidding him stand for a moment, in one smooth motion rolled it onto his straining cock, noting in the back of her mind that Ian was so thick that he might hurt a lot of women upon entering.

Sarah needs to be warned: look before you leap!

Mind wandering, his body awash in pleasurable waves nearing the peak, Ian sank into the water, and Candy ran her fingers up and down the bottom of his shaft, pretending to check that the condom was properly seated. A fingernail caressed the bottom of his testicles, and Ian exploded. Candy waited for his convulsions to stop, then tightened her grip around his shaft and squeezed. She wanted to drain him, but the condom would stay on until they exited the pool. It was destined for the lab, where its contents would be the subject of a comprehensive and painstakingly thorough analysis.

Utterly spent, Ian fell into Candy's arms, helpless as a baby. It was only with her assistance that he was able to crawl out of the tub.