Ishigreensa

He put a hand on her shoulder, and he rocked her a moment. "Sweetheart, unless we decide differently on Friday, if you ever find yourself lost again, stay where you are if you can, and if you are really scared, go to the main office and tell the manager or person in charge that you lost your Uncle Larry Hauches, and if they ask you how old you are, just tell them you're eleven, and tell them you're not supposed to tell anyone your name. That's a common safe thing we teach kids, so they shouldn't bat an eye at that." He hugged her. "I'm really sorry. I thought you'd sleep a little long, and I just wanted to square away with the landlord her that we'd be moving on Friday and pay the extra for having an extra person in the room. I told him my niece is here with me for a few days because something happened at home and you can't go home just now, which is kind of true." "You need to get your diaper changed, and I need to get a good look at what is going on down there, so I know if you have a rash from wearing wet clothes all the time." He smiled. "I know you said you only noticed it getting that bad a couple of days ago, as far as full on wetting, and I believe you, but if you were leaking a lot and not noticing until you were wet, then you'd have moisture around your privates even longer, so I need to check, baby." He opened the door for her. "I might as well undress you, when I give you a bath because I want to see if you've injured yourself in other places, too or if you have any owies." He didn't stir her. He knew it was going to be uncomfortable for her, but he had to take care of her, if he was really calling her an eleven year old that had no sense of how to take care of herself, and being twenty-three and not being able to take care of herself, she had to know that sounded even worse than just eleven and not knowing some basic stuff. He didn't chase her into the bathroom or anything. He just watched where she was going while he started to get her some clothes ready.

When he didn't see her at the car, he started to panic. Did she just get a ride back and return to the streets? She's going to get hurt, or worse! She really can't take care of herself! Maybe she just went to the room. He was so dumb! She IS like an eleven year old, not understanding anything, and this sort of proved it! Hell, even an eleven year old knows to stay put and wait if their parent left them for a moment because you don't leave kids in the car for very long! He ran to the motel door, the motel did have just a two floor sort of apartment feel with all the doors facing outside to the parking lot. He looked up at the area, and he sighed. He saw someone standing right in front of his room, and he was sure that she was about the same height of the girl, Sarah. He mumbled to himself. "No more leaving her on her own unless she's aware of the plan. She can't be trusted to stay put otherwise." He walked up to her and sighed in relief as he got close enough to positively identify her. "Honey, are you okay?" he asked her. "Why'd you leave the car, sweetheart?"

When they get back to the motel, he sighed as he parked the car, and he went into the office letting her rest a few moments while he let them know he had a car, and he'd be out on Friday. When he came back from the office, he opened her door and looked in to see if she was there. She was going to need a bath, and then he would need to see if she needed any rash creme or anything else to ease her suffering. He hoped her skirt wasn't soaked, but he did tell her to just pee herself for now, so it was his fault if it was. He hadn't given her a key, so she'd have had to wait in the car, or by their door in a wet diaper under a skirt.

Larry smiled and kept patting her back. "It is a long time, I know, honey. It's just you are going to need some time to learn to be an adult or you'll end up in the same position, unless you parents somehow take you back, and actually teach you themselves. I'm just worried that you don't have the skills to survive is all." He patted her back and rubbed her back. "I can show you how I'd take care of you, at least some taste of it, sweetheart, but honestly, there is a lot that goes into helping a child that doesn't all come up in 24 hours. I want you to understand that I won't get to show you everything that could happen in just one day, but I can show you how I intend to do things. Actually, we could give you until Friday, if you like to make up your mind. That's when I have to come and report for work. If you decide to leave on Friday, then I can just get you to come with me, and confirm that your parents got out of their situation, and want you back, maybe." He rubbed her back. "Just remember, if you do decide to leave, I don't think your parents are going to toughen up on you to have you learn adult skills magically, so I am worried about you being on the streets in the future if you do go back to them. People need certain skills to survive, right?" He helped her off his lap and sat her back in her seat again. "When we get back to the motel, I'll need to give you a bath sweetheart. I want to check you are not irritated from all the accidents, and if you are, we should get you some medicine for your skin." He looked at her for a moment. "If we are in the middle of nowhere and there is no bathroom around, you are allowed to poop yourself, but I'm not going to tell you to do that if you can hold it. As far as we know, you only have a bladder infection or something, so there's no reason to make you do anything that upsetting, okay?" He smiled to her. "But you are to pee your pants for now, if there are no toilets around, okay?" He got out of the backseat again, and started to drive her home. He wanted to get her changed as soon as he could because he wasn't sure wearing a wet diaper too long was good for her, but he didn't want to scare her by checking her diaper right then and changing it in the car like that. She needed time to get acclimated to him changing her before he could just change her in the car when necessary.

"Honey, I made mistakes, too. This is not all your fault. I want you to understand that. While I don't want to lose the job, blaming you completely would be wrong. The clues were there, I just chose to look past them and avoided asking if you were an adult. So, that was as much my fault as yours. If we are going to build a relationship based on trust, then you need to know that I'll take the blame for anything I do, too, and if you are truly going to be my adopted niece, then that makes me responsible for things more so that you, at least while I'm treating you like a child, okay?" As he tried to think about how to word his next words, she told him she was peeing. "Good girl," he told her. You told me something that I very much need to know if I'm going to be taking care of you for a while, and there's nothing to be scared of if you tell me the truth. I know you're having trouble, and I know it makes you feel bad, but it's now my job to take care of you. I'll never be mad or tell you it's your fault for an accident. Even if you could have held it and told me, honestly, we are in the middle of nowhere, so with your problems, I'd have wanted you to just wet for now, sweetheart. I don't want you trying too hard while you are sick, because if it's an infection causing you to pee, then its important to get that infection out of your body as soon as possible, so sometimes wetting your pants is better." He pulled her over and into his lap. "Can you try to be my little eleven year old niece long enough for me to teach you to take care of yourself?" he asked her. "I promise, if you do, you won't have to leave my care until I know you are ready to be an adult and can take care of yourself, and I'd insist you don't leave, but the down side, is you'll be a child, with everything that goes with it, whether I have to spank, or I pick you up and comfort you when you feel like crying. Okay?" He patted her lap. "I know this is a lot, but I really would not want to put you on the streets, so if you don't want me to take care of you, then we are getting you a bus ticket back to your parents. I don't like the idea of you being on the streets. I'll let you think on it and decide in the morning, but meanwhile, you are eleven years old until we decide if you are going back to your bio parents or you are staying with me longer as an eleven year old, meaning at least three years so I can start teaching you to take care of yourself."

"Well, sweetheart, I'm sorry to say, but you don't seem to have been taught much responsibility or how to make life work. I know your parents love you, but they seemed to have overprotected you so much, that you didn't learn some very important things." He sighed. "Look. If I take you in for a while, but I don't teach you anything, eventually, you'll be out in the street in the same situation as you are now, right?" He waited a moment for her to think about it. "I'm really sorry, but everyone around us at the moment believes you are eleven years old, and the best way for me to start teaching you to take care of yourself, is to raise you like you are a child for a little while. You would like to learn to take care of yourself, wouldn't you?"

"Okay, sweetheart," he frowned. "I might have overthought this, but I'm still worried about how you'd survive on your own. The shelters don't seem to be guaranteed by the way you are talking, and bad things happen all the time even in Tucson." He pulled the seatbelt off her and pulled her closer to hug her. "Can I be your adoptive uncle?" he asked her. "I know you have a real dad you love, and I'm not taking his place. I just want to take care of you until you learn to get on your feet. I mean, do you have any means to get a job right now that you won't have to worry about where you are going to stay? If you got sick at the shelter, then how can you expect not to get sick again, sweetheart?" He rubbed her back. "You are having a lot of problems, and you even said, basically, if you can't get your feet on the ground, your father has only one alternative, and it seems like he's going to put you doing hard labor." He frowned at her. "Honestly? Have your parents even had you doing house chores when you were ten years old? Did they ever show you how to get a part time job when you turned fifteen? I'm sorry if I'm assuming again, but it seems you don't those skills you should have learned before. I mean, if I'm wrong, honey... I'm listening this time. Please tell me."

"I didn't mean a game as in you were doing this for the fun of it, sweetheart. I know you were in trouble, and you took an out that presented itself, though it did put you in a peculiar situation, and because I wanted to see a child, has put me in the same web, now." He sighed. He saw her move a little strangely and mutter something. Seeing her age on her license, he put it in his wallet and in his own pocket. "Well, we can't have this getting out right now, baby. We need to figure out what we are going to do so you don't end up on the streets, and so I don't end up losing the job over fraud, being that I lied about having custody of a "child," you." Larry looked at her. He sighed. "You don't want to go back out on the streets or go home, do you?" he asked her trying to get her permission to enact a plan. "And you don't want to worry about trying to get back into school at the same college where the teachers that worry you are still possible professors you could get stuck with, do you?" He frowned as he thought about it, and it was blackmail, but it wasn't meant to be mean. He was just trying to make her see reason that if she followed his plan, she wouldn't have anything negative happening to her, going back to her parents a failure, being stuck on the streets, or having to face a college that probably already had rumors floating around about her being in trouble for academic fraud. "I need a child to stay with me to keep the house we were promised," he told her. "And you do need a place to stay if you don't want to end up on the streets again. You don't have the skills to hold down a job, sweetheart. Even with all the bad luck you've run into, you still acted like a child with me all the way up until now. You can maybe say it was an act, only, some of what you were doing, was unconsciously like a child. I took you to eat, and you knew I didn't have a lot of money, but like a child, you wanted to order the most possible I'd give you. That's a child's mind, sweetheart. Children don't understand the full concept of money and how hard it is to get. That's why you were unable to understand why you were fired from your lower end job. Getting sick was unhandy, but they don't fire you for getting so sick you can't work. They fired you because you missed Too much work, sweetie. And you've been out on the streets, just peeing yourself, and haven't done anything about trying to figure out why you are doing it, have you? You know, before I assume, how long have you been wetting the bed? It normally starts small, and when you are not aware of it before it gets as bad as it is... so that will be important to tell the doctor anyway. How long have you been neglecting or thinking it was nothing before it got bad enough that it is now very inconvenient, sweetie?" He rubbed her leg. He was trying to take it slow, but she needed to understand that just going back to what she was doing, was not going to ever get a better result. She needed help.

"No, baby," he had been quiet during her whole story, though he had breathed a bit in irritation at how bad this was. He didn't know if he was more mad at himself, her parents for not preparing her for the real world, or her for putting herself in this situation, but he kept quiet except for some obvious snorts of displeasure at the whole mess. "No," he shook his head reaffirming. "I told you already, even if you are twenty-three years old, I'm not putting you back on the streets just so you can keep living this shame." Larry pulled the car over somewhere between the towns, and he got out and got in the back with her, sitting next to her, he turned to look into her eyes. "Just so I know you aren't lying this time, can you show me your student card or something with proof that you are an adult?" he asked her. He wanted to believe her with everything she laid out to him. It seemed a rather far fetched scenario for even a teen with little world experience to lay out, but kids were crafty. He didn't want her to think she could pull the stunt twice on him. "Well, we are in a pickle, but I just lied to the school about you being my niece, your parents being homeless, and I was expected to take you in. I don't know what the nurse at school knows about your age, but she didn't seem to have let on that she was on to it, and honestly, I feel like we got the extra car and the extra house because they were worried about putting a kid on the streets. They even gave me a sign on bonus that doesn't make sense unless they felt sorry for the fact I had a kid with me." He rubbed her arm. "Honestly, your quiet game probably wouldn't have worked with anyone else. I do take part of the blame, wanting to see a kid this whole time, but the wetting aside, your story has a lot of actions of someone that is just... well, I'd even have expected better from someone starting high school. Partying happens in college, but not to the point that you described. Accusing your teachers of just wanting to fail you seems a bit irresponsible too, honey. One teacher? Yeah, maybe they were salty after you turned in a paper with GPT chat. Even if you were using that ap to just clean up your work, you were kind of cheating. GPT chat doesn't let the teacher see what you actually know about grammar and how to write to be persuasive since it corrects all your weaknesses in a paper." He rubbed her leg. "Of course, if no one taught you that, then that's not entirely your fault, sweetie." He sighed a moment to let her get a word in, and so he could think about how to word a proposal that he thought would help her. He didn't want her back on the streets, and he was sure that she would not be able to hold a job down with where she was currently in her head. She thought the landlord was just raising the price on her every month to get rid of her, but honestly, being constantly late with payments would be a good enough reason to get rid of her. She probably just got something confused. He wasn't going to bring that up though because he felt that she honestly believed this, and he didn't want her call her a liar on something she believed. It wouldn't solve her problem if he just called her a liar. In his mind, she had to learn things that she didn't apparently learn at home. He listened to her, almost half-heartedly, as he tried to think of a way to ask just how strict they were with her at home before she came to live on her own. He figured they probably didn't get strict on anything, which is why she has no idea how to do things on her own. She couldn't keep a job, she blamed everyone else for everything that happened instead of trying to change her behaviors to change it, and he didn't know why she was wetting her pants, but he knows there are free clinics, so even if she had a health problem that caused it, she obviously didn't have the survival skills to get that checked out on her own. But how was he going to convince her that she was still a child and needed to learn to be an adult? That's what it all boiled down to. In his eyes, she was eleven despite her years of time on Earth and a piece of paper or plastic that said that she was alive for 23 years. She just didn't have the skills of even an eleven year old... Did she?

"You did lie," he looked at her. "Not about your family, about what you've done when I worried about your health. The nurse caught you lying, too, or do I need to have you back back in and you can tell the nurse you didn't lie about pottying your pants in front of her?" He crossed his arms. "We are not going anywhere until you clear up two things for me. One, how much you've really been going to the toilet in your pants the last two days, and two, what your real family situation is. I'm not putting a child on the streets, and even if you are a bit older, it's still not safe nor healthy for you to be on the streets. I'd even help an honest young woman over 20 years of age, if she needed a place, and if she accepted. Most wouldn't accept though, because as you get older, you'll realize that not everyone you see on the street is safe." He sighed as she scooted away and put on her seatbelt. "Look, I care about your wellbeing even if you think I'm being strict or mean. If you don't like me anymore, then we need to do something because the Church, the school, and others have been involved in trying to help you because we all believed you were a child on the street that had nowhere to go, and if that's not the case, then you did lie. Not with words, but with omission of the truth from the first time we met. You never told me anything was wrong with what I said about your situation, and just acted like a scared little child that didn't know me enough to want to tell me anything, but if things were not like it seemed then you should have told me as soon as I brought it up, that that wasn't exactly the way it was. If you are lying about being in such need for help, and you were just pulling a scam on me, then you should be returned to your family along with a sore bottom for playing such serious thing. And if you were an adult, you'd actually go to jail for conning people, but I don't think you're an adult, exactly. He sighed. So, if you are older than eleven years old, no is the time to come clean, and tell me how much needing a new family is a lie or a misunderstanding, or if that part is real.

He gave her a very stern look as he positioned his hand over her lap to swat her. "You look here," he told her. "I don't know where you get off telling adults off, and yelling at someone that took you off the dangerous streets! You are a child, and you will behave." He grabbed the seatbelt end from her. "I'm not assuming anything about your family right now. I just know you are out here and lost. Now, if you can go back to them, and they are not mean to you, then we'll contact them and let them know I'll put you on the next bus back home if you've traveled a bit, otherwise, we can look for your foster family right now. It has to be a foster family. There is nothing on the news about you missing, so it's not a real family, or at least not one that wants you. People worry about children." He pushed the middle seatbelt closed on her. "Now, we are going to drive to the motel, and since you are so concerned about me assuming, you are going to stop trying to hide things and just tell me about your family then. Because you're right. I don't know anything about them, and as entitled as you've been acting lately and being ungrateful and even lying when I worry about your health and if you are wetting, I think you better just spill the beans instead of getting mad at me when you haven't told me anything but a name, that might not even be real."

"I'm not talking about that right now," Larry told her. "We'll talk about school once we are on our way in the car. Now get in, and you are an elementary school girl, so in my car, you will ride in back until I'm comfortable putting you in the front seat." He reached down and hugged her. "I'd never forgive myself if something happened to you that could have been prevented by being more careful, sweetie." He frowned. "You've had a pretty hard day so far, so I'm going to just have you sit in the back, and pretend you didn't try to backtalk me. I'm the adult here, little lady. I decide what is best for you from now on. I'm practically legally your guardian now, because in a small town, them having acknowledged you as my niece, and buying the story we've given them, they expect you to be under my care now, sweetheart. Papers will be filed for you within the week that gives me custody over you." He smiled at her. "But that's a good thing for you because it means no more bad foster homes and no more living on the streets where you have to go potty on yourself and don't get enough to eat, or have nowhere decent to sleep, and being scared all the time." He then gently pushed her into the back seat, and even started to buckle the seatbelt for her.

"Well, when they learned that I was stuck with my niece because her mommy is on the streets, and your mommy sent you to me so you wouldn't be on the streets, they decided that if I'm working in a small town like this, then I need something more than a bus to get around, and I guess they had such a hard time filling the place, they sort of figured a few bonuses added in might keep a teacher more than a year for once." He smiled at her. "So, honestly, I think I owe you for the car because the school probably wouldn't have thought I'd needed it without you." He was sort of just trying to boost up her importance to him though, because the car was part of the deal already, and he knew it. It wasn't like it was brand new or anything, but it was well maintained enough that they figured it would get him by for at least a couple of years. "They also decided that a child your age needed a house closer to the school for the mornings you have to walk, so they actually changed the place they had set up for me. This one is a little nicer and has plenty of room for you." He smiled. "They have to finish the details though, so we have to stay at the motel until Friday while they prepare it for us with water and lights turned on." He unlocked the back door for her because believing she was eleven, he didn't know the exact law about how old she had to be to be in the front, and her size definitely screamed elementary school student to him. "Get comfortable, sweetie. It's going to be a long ride again, so don't hold it anymore. An infection will get worse if you keep it in the body longer than it should be. Just wet your diaper and tell your Uncle Larry, sweetheart."

"Don't worry about school right now," Larry told her. "You don't start until Monday, so we'll talk about it and what scares you about it, and then hopefully we'll have all the issues you have about it taken care of before it starts, baby." He smiled up at the nurse. "Well, I better get her out of here so we can talk. It seems she has some issues or fears about going to school, like maybe she's just needing some extra help or something, but when I figure it out, of course, we'll talk to whoever," and he turned back to his little one. "Don't worry, sweetheart. Whatever has you scared about going to school, we'll fix it so you are not so scared, and so you don't have to face whatever issues you have with it alone." He picked his baby girl up, and patting her bottom, he started to walk out of the school towards the school parking lot. It seemed the principal had been so serious about hiring him for any but the worst possible reason not to, that she had even had the car there in the parking lot waiting for him. "Baby?" Larry turned her to face him. "The nurse said that the drive is pretty far for your condition. She thinks you might have an infection or something, so I'm going to tell you this right now. If you need to pee, just do it, even in the car, sweetheart. You have a diaper on, and have a doctor look into your problem as soon as we can, but meanwhile, no more lying about wetting your pants, baby. If you lie about it again, I'll be checking you all the time and even changing you, understand?"

Larry saw them come out, and he had a few things to think about as the nurse had gone in, and what the nurse told him. Maybe she was a little bit more capable of taking care of herself, but then again, as he remembered her at certain times, he wasn't so sure of that. Maybe the nurse is talking about a normal kid, and he didn't think she sounded or acted as mature as most middle school kids or even upper elementary ones. He went straight to his baby as she was walked out with the nurse and the nurse told him she was ready. "Honey, it must have been so scary to have it happen in front of everyone," he reached out to hug her. "Are you okay?" He put a protective hand on her shoulder. "I have the position, and they want us to register you to start next Monday. I've told her about you being put in my lap because your parents don't have anywhere to go and are going to be on the streets for a while," he said it all out like that, one so that the school thinks he's telling her it's okay that they know, and two, so she'd know the story he told the school about her situation. "Your mommy may have a hard time getting a job right away with her problems, but you will be welcome to stay with me for as long as needed, like I said, though the school is waiting for your mommy to send them transcripts." He smiled at her and winked. "Don't worry about wetting your pants at school, sweetie. We'll keep you in better diapers at school, and the nurse said she'd be there to help anytime you need to be changed."