AB_DeLane

Considering how forced, non-consensual infantilization is such a common trope in ABDL stories, if this movie had instead been submitted as a story on this forum, it seems like it would have fit in without anyone giving it a a second thought. Which does make me wonder just how ABDL-aware the director and writers are for this project. I'm not one for horror movies, but I may have to stream this once it is out later this year.

Thanks. My lips are sealed as to what Maddy's future condition looks like, but the next chapter will have a clear answer from the doctors when she is released from the hospital. If someone had seen Maddy get taken out of the house, they wouldn't have been aware of the pull-up. The medics did cover her body with a sheet for privacy. Another question that is answered in the next chapter (I've already got that scene written). I generally find that any speculation and theories in the comments tend to be helpful regardless of how accurate they are (and my lips are sealed on the ones in question). And I do have fun reading them. When you're writing a story, you have the full context of it in your head, so what you write is always going to make sense to yourself even if may not to readers. Speculation and theories can be good feedback to make sure that I'm making the things I want to make clear, actually clear. I don't change the plot based on theories, but I have at times made sure to explain things better in future chapters if it becomes clear that certain plot points weren't hitting the way I intend. There certainly are some very inaccurate theories out there, but there also have been a handful that have been so incredibly spot on that I've had to wonder if they've somehow gotten ahold of my outline. Her parents aren't the type that would punish her for any of this. Thanks, the last few chapters have been a bit more time consuming to write with trying to make sure all the symptoms, their progression, and how they are handled in the hospital is at least basically accurate. I've mentioned this before, but I'm still surprised that a UTI isn't a least somewhat more common trope in ABDL stories. It does seem to be the case that a lot of stories just have the protagonist lose bladder/bowel control without much of an attempt to explain why that is happening medically. We'll get her prognosis in the next chapter. All I'll say is that it will be plausible and medically consistent with everything that has happened up to this point. And yes, this is set in the U.S. She's going to be out of there as fast as possible. That stay is going to be expensive enough as it is for her parents. They and Maddy both have some blame (parents for not investigating the symptoms more and Maddy for not being forthcoming about all of her symptoms), but it is also just bad luck that the UTI was misattributed to her getting her first period. We will see. It's still going to be a little while before Hannah is back in the picture. At least in this chapter, Maddy is very much trying to still distinguish herself from being a baby and being like Hannah.

Chapter 53: All Tied Up Unfamiliar voices filled my ears as I lay on the bedroom floor. I opened my eyes to the unfamiliar faces that those unfamiliar voices were coming from, looking up from where my head lay against the carpet. Blue uniforms. Bright bold letters that I should have been able to read, but now blurred together into a lime-green haze. My heart thumped at a rapid pace at the realization that something was incredibly wrong. My limbs were unresponsive. They felt like they were on fire, except for the wetness of the not-so-solid mess inside my pull-up. One of the strangers knelt down next to me. Her mouth opened. What did she want? I caught a single word – “Name” – but not all of them. I mumbled something. Wasn’t even sure what. The woman frowned, then turned and said something to the man standing behind her. I was able to make out the first letter on his uniform – “E” – but not anything else. More footsteps. More voices. Some of them loud. My eyelids closed halfway again. It was too much work to keep them fully open. “Can you please get back in the hallway? We need some space to get her on the stretcher.” Gloved hands reached down, taking a firm grip. Then I’m no longer on the carpet. Something hard slid under me from both sides, then snapped together with a sharp click. The floor vanished, and then I landed on cold vinyl, which only felt colder as straps across my legs, hips, and chest tightened and pressed me more firmly against it. It was only when a cool sheet was layered over me that I realized I had only been wearing a soiled pull-up. I instinctively tried to move my hands to cover it, only to rediscover that my range of motion was extremely limited by the stretcher. The ceiling was suddenly a lot closer. I floated through the air through the hallway and down the stairs. I kept my eyes closed. The lights were too much. The realization that I was going to the hospital finally hit as another series of shivers coursed through me. I felt a lump in my throat. Was I dying? More voices. A hand briefly pressed against mine. I found myself unable to return the short squeeze it gave me before letting go. Now there was way too much light. I could feel the warmth of the sun on my face. I tried to move my hand to shield my eyes. I’d already forgotten again that it was hopelessly strapped down next to my side. All I could do was tilt my head slightly. More voices. A bit distant. Familiar this time, but I couldn’t place them. The sunlight faded as the stretcher suddenly settled into place with a loud thunk that jolted me slightly. Mom’s voice next to me. Assuring me that everything was going to be alright. My eyes opened for a few seconds, taking in the interior of the ambulance – walls lined with medical equipment. Mom settling into a seat in the corner. Both strangers standing over me, talking through what they were doing. “Thirteen-year-old female. Found on bedroom floor. Briefly unresponsive. Woke up confused.” “Fever for several days. Mom thought it was her first period.” Busy hands above me. They felt along my chest and side. I winced and yelped at certain points when they touched the areas that hurt the most. “Has severe belly and right-side pain.” Something wrapped around my arm. Another device was held close to my forehead. “Vitals: one-oh-two point four temp. Heart rate one-thirty. Blood pressure ninety-two over fifty-eight.” “She’s pale, sweaty, shaky, and looks dehydrated.” “We’re worried about a bad UTI with kidney involvement.” A sharp poke in my arm, the skin around it suddenly feeling cool. “IV’s in. Fluids running.” “Eight minutes out.” Another painful spurt of warmth into the pull-up. It wasn’t contained. A warm wetness spread on the back side of my legs. The sheet was lifted up, first uncovering my feet and then being rolled up past my waist. I could hear the pull-up sides as they were forcefully ripped open. I gagged at the smell of the uncontained mess that followed. My feet were unstrapped and raised slightly as cold wipes ran across my bottom in rapid succession. The pull-up wasn’t replaced, but something made of a similar material was slid under my bottom. Why was my arm so cold? I turned my head to the other side, gasping at the contraption coming straight out of my arm. Then I fainted. <><><> Bump. Bump. Bump. Metallic wheels clicked beneath me. More sunlight. My arm felt strangely cold still. My bottom was warm and wet. <><><> Cold lights slid past me overhead, one after another, breaking up the uniform pattern of the tile ceiling. My stomach swayed slightly with one turn, then another. It was like all the bad parts of a roller coaster with none of the good ones. The faces rolling me down the hallway were the same ones that had greeted me in the bedroom. I turned my head left, then right. Mom. Dad. Where were they? I tried to call out for them, but the words stuck in my throat. More words and phrases, though I again only caught bits and pieces — “Sepsis, kidney, UTI, fluids.” <><><> “One. Two. Three.” Hands – more than I could count – lifted me up off the firm stretcher board onto a much softer hospital bed. “Check her BP again.” A thick cuff squeezed my arm. It felt like it was going to pop. I tried to jerk my hand away. That was actually successful now that I wasn’t strapped in. “Maddy.” I turned my head. That was Mom’s voice. She was standing in the room next to me. “You need to hold still. The nurses are trying to help you.” I rested my head back on the pillow. It was really soft. I closed my eyes. <><><> I attempted to jerk my arm away at yet another sharp stab. A hand gripped it firmly to prevent me from moving any further. “We’re almost done. We just need one more sample.” <><><> “She’s stabilizing.” “So she’s better now?” That was a voice I thought I knew. My sister. “No, I said she is stabilizing. That just means things aren’t getting worse anymore. Which, given her condition, is good.” My suspicion was confirmed when I briefly opened my eyes. Grace was near the door with Mom and Dad, talking with a nurse. I attempted to sit up, but a wave of pain through my head forced me to lie back down. My bladder spasmed, producing the now all too familiar jolt of pain I had become accustomed to over the last several days. But it didn’t produce the expected wetness, nor was there any padding that I could feel that would have absorbed it. Whatever, that must have been a false alarm. There were more voices as I closed my eyes again. <><><> The lights were dim when my eyes re-opened, the darkness punctuated by rhythmic flickers of light — red, green, and blue — from a multitude of electronics. I started to move my left hand up to my face to rub my eyes as I attempted to fully take in my new surroundings, only to experience a sudden, painful ache along my arm. There was a thin tube coming out of my skin, it trailed off the bed and up to a metal stand containing a bag of clear fluid that was only a third of the way full. I sucked on my lips. My mouth was very dry, but I didn’t feel thirsty. My eyes skimmed back and forth across my body. Even in the semi-darkness, I could see that the IV was far from the only thing attached to my body. There was this weird clip thing on the index finger of my right hand. It glowed red, and there was a thin wire trailing off of it. Further up on my right side, there was a snug fabric cuff firmly wrapped around my upper arm. That wasn’t the end of the wires. There were several circular adhesive patches stuck to my side, with even more wires attached to them. Dad was in a chair next to the wall. His eyes were closed, and his head was back against the wall. He let out a small snore. No one else was in the room with us. My gaze returned to the hospital bed. There was one more tube I hadn’t noticed immediately. My eyes followed the tube coming out of the bottom of my hospital gown, tracing it to a clear plastic bag attached to the bed frame that was full of dark yellow liquid. My hand slid beneath the papery gown, tracing the tube, which was slightly warm, to where it was taped against the inside of my thigh. I winced as I tugged it on by accident, getting painful confirmation of exactly where it had been inserted into my body. That explained why the hospital bed was dry even though I wasn’t wearing a pull-up. I licked dry lips again. I could really use something to drink. I had fallen to the floor in the bedroom shortly after lunch. It couldn’t possibly be in the middle of the night, but the window off to my right had no lights coming in through the mostly closed blinds. I found that I didn’t have the energy to move. Though considering all of the tubes, wires, and medical contraptions attached to me, I was more or less confined to the hospital bed for now. The door to the room swung open, letting in bright light from the hallway. I didn’t immediately recognize the face looking down at me due to all the light coming in from behind them. A few steps forward, and I could see her face. It was Mom. She hurried over to my side. “Oh my goodness, you are awake. We’ve been so worried.” I made another unsuccessful attempt to sit up. My muscles felt like jelly, and my body felt like lead. “No, no, no,” Mom said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “You need to take it easy.” “What time is it?” I yawned. Mom checked her phone. “It’s already after three.” “But it’s dark out.” “Three in the morning.” “Already?” “You were in and out of it all day after you fainted in your bedroom…” That brought back an unpleasant picture to the forefront of my mind as Mom’s voice faded to the background – lying face down on the floor with a soiled pull-up on full display. “… and here we were thinking that you were being a bit dramatic after getting your first period.” That last statement by Mom made no sense. “But I did get my period. There was blood.” Mom frowned slightly. “What color was it?” I thought back to how the pads and pull-ups had appeared this week. “Kind of like pinkish or orangish-red?” “And did you ever see blood any time when you hadn’t peed?” I again tried to retrace how the last few days had gone. Mom was right. Blood had always been accompanied by pee, whether that was in the pads, pull-up, or toilet. “No.” “The blood being off-color and only happening when you pee is a sign of something else going wrong with your body, like a UTI.” “A UTI?” “Urinary tract infection.” “Is that worse than getting your period?” Mom stifled a laugh. “Yes, it is a lot worse, especially when it isn’t caught early on, and the infection can spread to your bladder and kidneys.” All of the pieces finally fell into place. It wasn’t the pills or the period or too much water or even the times I had been intentionally wetting myself that had caused all of the bladder problems the past week; it has just been a fluke infection. I wasn’t a baby. I had just been sick. And I was in the hospital now, so everything would be better. <><><> There was now plenty of light in the hospital room. I didn’t even remember falling back asleep after my conversation with Mom in the middle of the night. I remained stuck in the web of tubes and wires. My mouth was parched, and even tilting my head to look at the stand that held the bag of IV fluids was a chore. The clear bag was almost empty. It had been nearly full when I had talked with Mom in the middle of the night. There was no way to get comfortable in the hospital bed. Besides the discomfort already present in my limbs, pulling on the wrong wire or tube in the wrong way was also painful. I managed to move my head around just enough to confirm that I was by myself in the hospital room. My stomach rumbled – when was the last time I had eaten anything? My bladder spasmed again a few minutes later. I averted my eyes from the catheter tube. It was beginning to gross me out. I drifted in and out of sleep as I struggled to stay awake until a bunch of voices finally roused me some time later. “You need to use your inside voice, Jackson, your sister isn’t feeling well.” My little brother’s response to Mom was only a little bit quieter. Everyone’s faces were a bit fuzzy in the bright light. I rubbed my eyes and opened them again with my vision a lot clearer this time. Mom, Dad, Grace, and Jackson were all in the room, which all of a sudden felt a lot smaller. After everyone had fussed over me for the next five minutes, I was ready to try to go back to sleep. “What’s that?” Jackson asked, pointing at the rather full catheter bag with his finger only a few inches away from it. Mom and Dad exchanged a glance. “That’s just hospital stuff,” Dad said. “You need to leave all of that alone.” My stomach chose that moment to let out a loud rumble. “Do you think you could try and eat something?” Mom asked me. My stomach answered for me. “I’ll see if I can get a hold of the nurse to bring you something,” Dad said. <><><> My breakfast options were plain oatmeal, plain yogurt, or plain applesauce. I stared blankly down at the tray the nurse had just set onto my lap. There was a banana as well. But I didn’t like bananas, and being sick didn’t increase their appeal. I didn’t really feel like eating, but there was also a discomfort in my stomach that was probably due to how empty it was. I hated oatmeal. I couldn’t recall the last time I had eaten applesauce. That was baby food. Yogurt could be OK if it were a normal flavor, like strawberry. “Maddy, you need to at least try a bit of something,” Mom said. Plain, boring yogurt it was. <><><> I kept trying to avoid looking at the catheter bag, but it was impossible to ignore, especially when I could see a little more urine move through the tubing and collect in the bag after each bladder spasm. The liquid was less dark than before, but there was still a slightly pinkish tint to it from the infection. The hospital room was crowded again, and a nurse and doctor had joined us, while Grace had left to take Jackson to his day camp. The doctor turned toward my parents and spoke, occasionally looking down at her clipboard. “She has a severe urinary tract infection that spread up to the kidney, and it likely made her very dehydrated and very sick. The infection and inflammation have irritated her bladder, so we’re going to need to do some further tests while we keep her medicated for both the infection and the pain.” I listened intently to her explanation. As scary as it was to be in the hospital, it was also a relief to have a clear answer to what had been going wrong the past week. It was just my luck that this had happened right as I was trying to give up on my diaper desires. But I wasn’t worried. They were giving me a bunch of medicine, both pills and stuff that came in through the IV tubes, so I was confident I would be better soon, and this was an even better way to excuse the events at the sleepover to make it clear that what had happened had been a one-off incident that wasn’t in any way my fault. “It’s not your fault that you didn’t realize,” the doctor said to me. “Especially since you hadn’t had your period before for comparison. But it is something really important to remember in the future. If you see blood when you pee, or bleeding that doesn’t match your period, that’s something you need to tell us about right away before it gets worse. You got to the hospital just in time. Even another day, and things would have been much worse for you.” <><><> “I need you to hold as still as you can,” the nurse said as she reached for the tube situated between my legs. I dug the fingernail on my thumb into my index finger in anticipation of what was going to come next. I had made the mistake earlier of accidentally tugging on the catheter tube, and it had been an unpleasant experience. There had already been too many tests today. And I still didn’t know if I had passed or failed them, or what passing or failing would even actually look like. That had made up most of the morning after I had managed to eat about half of the yogurt. Then there were a bunch more questions about all of my symptoms over the past week. I still didn’t bring up anything about the times I had peed myself during the day. It was too embarrassing to admit that with Mom in the room with me. I braced myself for what was to come next. I hoped it wouldn’t be as bad as when the IV had been removed a couple of hours ago. A loud gasp escaped before I could stop it as a sharp burn and pressure flashed through me, followed by the strange sliding sensation as the catheter came out. Then it was over. I let out a sigh of relief. “See, it wasn’t that bad,” the nurse said. “Now, we’re going to wait for a little bit and then get you over to the toilet. In the meantime, you can finish the cup of water on the table, but if you feel the need to pee at all before then, just let us know.” I took another small sip from the cup – drinking a lot all at once was still difficult, and I could only do it easily through a straw – then set it down again. “Do you think you could try going to the toilet now?” Mom asked. I shook my head. I didn’t feel like I needed to pee. The toilet, which was in a small closet-like room to my left, suddenly felt really far away. I hadn’t been on my feet since the fall yesterday. <><><> I managed to finish off the glass of water by the time the nurse returned to the room. Not that my bladder seemed to have noticed at all. It took both Mom and the nurse to help me to my feet, which were barely able to support my weight. But with their help, I was able to hobble over to the toilet. The cold plastic was a relief for my bottom. My bladder remained completely still. I knew I had drunk a lot, and before that, I had been plenty hydrated from the IV. “Can you feel anything from your bladder?” the nurse asked. “No.” She gave me some more instructions on what I could do to attempt to pee, and then stepped out of the bathroom, closing the thin door to give me some privacy. A few minutes passed. Still nothing. “I don’t need to go,” I called out through the door. “That’s OK,” the nurse said. “I’ll go grab a doctor once we get you back in bed, and we’ll do a scan of your bladder. We may need to put the catheter back in to help you empty.” Mom and the nurse helped me to my feet, assisting me with a few wobbly steps out of the tiny bathroom and toward the hospital bed. A flood of warm liquid ran down my legs without warning. I was only wearing a hospital gown, so there was no underwear or pants to slow the torrent down at all as the pee streamed onto the floor and splashed onto my bare feet. I swayed to the side as Mom let go of me, taking a step out of the way, but the nurse kept a firm grip on me. The warmth turned to heat, and the heat turned to a pain that would have sent me to the floor if the nurse hadn’t been holding me up. The peeing stopped the same as it had begun – suddenly and without any warning. The pain remained. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I mumbled as tears joined the puddle on the floor. The nurse was not upset in the slightest as she helped steer me away from the puddle and toward the bed. “Don’t you worry,” the nurse said, wiping me clean and helping me back down onto the bed. “I’ll page someone to get that cleaned up. It’s a lot better that pee is coming out than being stuck.” A small dribble came out a few seconds after lying down on the bed, it was caught by the absorbent pad that had been laid down underneath me when prepping to have the catheter removed. I was mentally preparing myself to have the catheter reinserted when I looked up and gasped at the white, plastic undergarment the nurse was holding. “I’m not wearing a diaper,” I blurted out. “These aren’t diapers. They are briefs. It’s just to provide some protection while you are recovering.” My lip curled. “It’s still a diaper. Can’t I just use the catheter?” As much as I had been dreading having the catheter put back in, that beat diapers by a mile. “A catheter isn’t the best option right now,” the nurse said. “You’re emptying your bladder fine. The problem is control and sensation. We want to keep trying scheduled toilet trips, and a brief is easier and safer than repeatedly putting catheters in.” I continued to stare at the white, plastic garment in her hands that the nurse kept insisting was not a diaper. It was bad enough that my illness had forced me back into pull-ups the past week. But I wanted to be able to go to the toilet, and I had to concede that she was right that constantly removing and refitting the catheter would make that extremely difficult. I let out a long sigh. “Fine.” The nurse put the diaper on me without any delay. The process was far different than how Hannah had put a diaper on me in the middle of the night, but it wasn’t any less humiliating to again be treated as if I were a helpless baby. The nurse rolled me onto my side, placing the diaper next to me before easing me back down onto it. Some cold cream was rubbed onto my bare skin before the front of the diaper was lifted up to my waist, and the four tabs were taped shut. The padding wasn’t nearly as substantial as the diapers that Hannah used. I wondered if it could even hold as much as my nighttime pull-ups. I resolved not to find out. This time, I would be paying far closer attention to my bladder. <><><> I giggled as a nurse slathered cold gel right below my belly while I lay on my back on the hospital bed. That was followed by the scanner being pressed gently against the area as the nurse and doctor looked at a fuzzy image on the screen. “Yep, basically empty. “Is that good?” I asked. “Yes, it is a good sign,” the doctor said. “It means you are passing urine and fully emptying your bladder. It would be worse if there was something preventing it from emptying on its own.” More questions followed that, asking about what I had felt before, during, and after the accident. I explained again that I hadn’t felt anything from my bladder, just pain in my urethra during and after peeing. Both the doctor and nurse nodded along to my answers. “This can happen after a severe infection,” the doctor said. “It’s nothing to worry about. You still need time to rest and recover.” “How much longer is she going to need to stay in the hospital?” Mom asked. “At least another day or two,” the doctor said. “We’ll want to keep her for monitoring and give her more time to get her strength back before we’d be comfortable sending her home. Her fever needs to come down, she needs to be passing fluids normally, and we need to be sure her body is continuing to respond well to the antibiotics.” <><><> The spoon landed with a clank on the lunch platter. My options weren’t much improved from breakfast. Soup, some brown pudding, and yet another half-peeled banana that I wasn’t going to touch even if my life depended on it. It was just past noon, and I was so tired. I was just glad that the bladder scan thing about thirty minutes ago had been the last of the multitude of tests I’d undergone in the last twenty-four hours. I was still hungry, but I could hardly bring myself to grip the spoon, let alone raise it to my mouth. “Do you need some help?” Grace asked, sitting down on the bed next to me. I pushed the tray a few inches away, nearly causing the soup to splash out of the bowl. “No.” “You’ve hardly touched your lunch. If you keep at it like this, you’ll be in the hospital for the next month,” Grace joked. She grabbed the spoon off the tray and dipped it into the pudding. “Here,” she said. “I can help you take a few more bites.” I immediately pressed my lips together, “I could make airplane noises if you want me to. Or would you prefer whatever sound broomsticks make?” That was so stupid that I laughed painfully. Then she stuck the spoon in my mouth. <><><> The diaper was wet by the first time the nurse came by to help me to the toilet. I hadn’t noticed when I had peed, but the aftermath had become impossible to ignore as these diapers didn’t do nearly as good a job as pulling the wetness away from my skin. Maybe if I had been able to stay awake the whole time, I could have remained dry, but I kept dozing off for brief naps that kept being interrupted by the constant discomfort from my body – sore muscles, burning pain in my bladder, and an aching head. The medications I was on had made things better, but that was relative to how I had been feeling the day before. The diaper was removed the same way it had been put on, with the nurse rolling me gently onto my side to remove it and speedily wipe me clean. The second trip to the toilet was no more successful than the first. Though at least this time, I didn’t create a puddle on the floor on my way back to the hospital bed. The same pattern repeated for the rest of the day as I I drifted in and out of a hazy sleep: hours of waiting for any signal from my bladder, only to feel the diaper slowly grow warm, shivering as my bottom was wiped clean after its removal, a painstaking assisted walk to the toilet, several awkward minutes of nothing coming out, a return journey to the bed followed by a dry diaper taped around my waist. <><><> I sighed with relief at the sight of solid food on the dinner plate the nurse brought me. This time, Dad was staying with me for the meal while everyone else was at the hospital cafeteria eating food that probably wasn’t that much better in quality than what the patients were getting served. I had to grip it with both hands, but I managed to eat over half of the peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, along with some cucumber slices that I dipped in a small plastic cup of ranch dressing. I shifted beneath the tray, attempting to get comfortable again as my bladder spasmed and the diaper grew warmer still. The doctor had mentioned I might need to stay in the hospital for several days, but shouldn’t I be seeing signs of progress by now. My thoughts flickered to Hannah. Her full suitcase of diapers. My chest started pounding at the sudden fear of that being my future. I nearly asked the nurse when she came by to take the dinner tray away, but I hesitated. What if the answer wasn’t what I wanted to hear? <><><> I tapped the call button on the side of the bed multiple times, but there was no response. Mom and Dad had said their goodbyes for the night. There wasn’t anywhere they could easily sleep in the hospital room, and since the doctors said I was doing better, they were planning to catch up on sleep at home and be back first thing in the morning. I needed to use the bathroom really badly. It wasn’t my bladder that was sending me that message – I still hadn’t felt anything from it. I twisted and turned in the bed. The fact that the diaper would contain the mess wasn’t any comfort to me at all. The button had lit up when I pressed it, a clear sign that the system had registered my request, but still no nurse had shown up to help me out of bed. I had already tried and failed to push myself upright. I tried and failed again. A minute passed slowly. Another minute passed even more slowly. There was no keeping it in. My back arched as my bowels emptied. I gagged at the smell as it reached my nostrils seconds later, pressing my hospital gown against my face in a futile attempt to block out the odor. “Are you needing…” The nurse's voice trailed off by the time she was at the bedside. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I got held up by another patient. I’ll get you cleaned up real quick.” The only good thing that could be said about the cleanup was that the nurse moved fast, and within a couple of minutes it was over; that, and the fact that since I was lying on my side, I didn’t have to look the nurse in the face while she wiped my bottom free of poop. “Why don’t we give the toilet one more try before getting you tucked in for the night?” she said after the final cold wipe of my bottom. I turned to look at the open door to the bathroom. I had no expectation that sitting down on it would lead to anything other than disappointment. “Do I have to?” “Just for a few minutes.” Reality proved no different than my expectations. No sooner had I been tucked under a blanket with a dry diaper on then my bladder let out the tiniest, burning trickle. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com

I think the level of education is much better now than it was even decades ago, though there are still kids who don't know nearly as much as they should when the time comes. Maddy's ignorance about it is very much for the plot, as if she had been more knowledgeable, she would have realized something was wrong much sooner. I made sure to be intentional with all of the symptoms that were shown in the past four chapters so that they match what the outcome will be once we have the next chapter at the hospital. No spoilers as to what that means. The wait shouldn't be as long as it was for this last chapter. For sure, she's given her parents a really big scare. Certainly, but the mother also didn't have the full picture. Blood from a UTI is going to appear far different than blood from a period, so if she had seen Maddy's pull-ups/pads she would have known right away. And because of Maddy withholding all the information about her bladder issues, that was another key clue that her mother never got.

Thanks! Yes, they are lots of fun. I do promis answers soon though. Thanks! Thanks! If you didn't copy/paste that into Word, that is a very good guess. It actually was longer before I trimmed it down. It was crazy to think I had initially thought I could do this story arc in only two chapters. The next chapter will provide a lot of details on her actual diagnosis, but it is safe to say her symptoms are intended to be pretty serious. A lot of why this took place over four chapters was because I didn't feel like a sudden turn into it would make as much sense as having a long run of worsening symptoms that get ignored until they start causing more serious problems. Correct, that is what she was hearing. Thanks! I don't think the next chapter will be too much of a wait. As far as the situation with her and her parents not noticing, it's really a comedy of errors. The mom doesn't notice that the bedwetting is a problem because she assumes it has been happening for over a month already, and she isn't aware that Maddy is having a UIT vs a period because she doesn't see the blood and Maddy isn't sharing any details about her bladder problems because of a combination of embarrassment and wanting to avoid pull-ups. On Maddy's end, she has never had her period before, and it isn't uncommon for kids to have misconceptions or misunderstandings of what that entails, so it is plausible that she might have just accepted it as being part of that and would not have recognized how serious things were. I think Maddy is going to need to hope her recovery is that simple.

Chapter 52: The Next Seven Days (Part 4) Day 6 My pull-up was wet when I woke up. So were my sheets. I groped for the rolled-up blanket by the wall and found it. Then I felt the damage in full. I peeled the pull-up down with shaking hands, flinching when my feet brushed the swollen, soggy padding. I wouldn’t look at it. I didn’t have to. I already knew the contents were the same as they had been yesterday morning. The pull-up landed with a squishy thud as I tossed it to the floor. I could not let Mom see me or the bedroom in this condition. What time was it anyway? The sun was out. But that didn’t mean much at this point in the summer. I glanced around on the bed for my phone, checking underneath the blanket and pillows as well. I couldn’t recall what I had done with it last night. Truthfully, I couldn’t recall much of what had transpired yesterday evening following that close call at the restaurant. But the phone wasn’t there. I sighed. I had probably left it on the bed, and it had tumbled onto the floor sometime during the night. I cautiously rolled over one more time, my body protesting against the movement with a sharp stinging in my right side, until I was lying on the edge of the bed with the blanket now barely covering me again. The soaked pull-up I had tossed off the bed was lying nearly inside out next to my phone, the rusty blotches across the center an undeniable reminder of yet another way my life had turned upside down in what was supposed to have been my week to return to normalcy. My head spun as I leaned off the side of the bed and stretched my hand out toward the phone. My fingertips grazed the case, but it wasn’t enough to get a grip on the phone. My head continued to ache as I lay it back down on the mattress for a full minute before a second, this time successful, attempt at retrieving the phone from the ground. When I finally checked the lock screen, it was only a few minutes past seven. Early enough. I still had time. A couple of new messages were present from Emma and Angie. I couldn’t deal with them yet. I lay in bed for several minutes, staring at the ceiling in hopes that my head would finally stop ringing, before it finally dawned on me that I couldn’t just continue lying there carefree. Not now that my period had started. My body had been turned into a ticking time bomb, ready to go off at any moment without any advance notice. Unlike the preventive measures I had attempted with my bladder the past week, there was no way to control my period. Every second I remained on the bed unprotected was another opportunity for my body to betray me. I forced myself upright and immediately regretted it. The room tilted; my right side flared hot with pain. I sat back down, rubbing my face, waiting for the fog to clear, angry at how wrong it felt to be this weak after a full night of sleep. I deposited the pull-up in the garbage bin under my desk. As I walked toward the dresser where the package of pads had been left, I considered for a moment what my sister had mentioned the other day, that some women used pull-ups to manage their period. I understood the appeal better now than I had yesterday morning, but to wear pull-ups during the day would only risk tempting myself down a road I was determined to never tread again. I wasn’t a baby like Hannah. More traditional solutions would have to do for me. My skin was still wet and sticky from lying in the urine-soaked pull-up for who knows how long. I didn’t just need clean underwear and a pad. I needed a shower. <><><> I stood with my back to the shower faucet as warm water ricocheted off the nape of my neck. Just getting from my bedroom to the shower had been rough as I fought between the urge to get myself clean and my body’s painful protestations that I need to lie back down and rest. I had helped myself to some more pain meds – this time following Mom’s instructions on dosages – before getting into the shower, but neither that nor the hot water was making much of a difference. I felt something warm between my legs. Had I? No, that was ridiculous; there was no way I could have just peed. I lowered my gaze to my feet. I doubted I would have been able to notice anything untoward if I had somehow peed, but there was also no sign of any blood. <><><> Mom was standing in my bedroom when I returned to it with my hair still damp from the shower. In my rush to get into the shower, I had completely missed taking care of the bed. The urine-soaked sheets were on full display. Even worse, I had left the bedroom door open the entire time I had been in the shower. “Maddy", Mom said with just a hint of exasperation in her voice. “What did I tell you about getting ready for bed?” “I didn’t forget. I didn’t.” I turned back to look at the open doorway. Had anyone else noticed? Was my younger brother still in bed? Had Grace gotten out of bed only to get this view of mine? “It leaked again,” I whispered, with a hand pointed to the garbage bin I had tossed the pull-up into after rolling it up into a tight ball. My face burned as Mom glanced over at the garbage bin. The pull-up was slightly visible from where we were standing. “Huh, I see,” Mom said. I let out a small sigh of relief as she didn’t investigate the pull-up any further. A door creaked open. Footsteps echoed across the floor. Both Mom and I turned to look at the hallway. And there was my six-year-old brother, Jackson, still in his pajamas. Please let him keep walking. But he paused in the middle of the hallway and turned to look inside my bedroom. “Mom, what is for…” As he spoke, I started to shuffle over to the side a few feet, attempting to block his line of sight to the bed. But it was no use. His eyes widened mid-sentence as his gaze aligned directly with the wet sheets behind me while he finished his sentence. “… breakfast?” “Just run along and get yourself some cereal,” Mom said. My brother’s feet remained still. “Go on,” Mom said. Then he left, but not without the obvious sign of his eyes lingering on the mess on the bed behind me. The bedroom was silent for several seconds. The only sound was Jackson’s feet going down the stairs. “Don’t worry, Maddy,” Mom said. “I’ll make sure to explain everything to him.” First Grace. Then Hannah. Then my friends. Now Jackson? This was supposed to be a secret. The question now wasn’t about who knew, but who didn’t know. “But Mom,” I protested. “You can’t. Please don’t. He’s going to tell everyone.” “Your brother isn’t going to do that,” Mom said. “Remember when you found out about Grace’s bedwetting? You were about the same age as Jackson. Did you ever tell anyone else about it?” I remembered that night on the vacation all those years ago, when I had stumbled across my sister’s secret. I shook my head back and forth. “See,” Mom said. “You have nothing to worry about. I’ll give your brother the same explanation, and that will be the end of it.” I bit my lip. My cheeks still felt warm. The idea of facing my little brother after Mom’s conversation with him was not appealing. “Can you please get your bedding in the wash before breakfast?” Mom asked before heading out the door, leaving me alone in the bedroom. I struggled for a moment with getting the sheets off the bed before one last tug finally got them free. Mom’s response did little to comfort me. I tried to remember being Jackson’s age. Finding out about Grace’s bedwetting had been a shock, but it wasn’t something that I had thought about at all until several years later, when I encountered my bedwetting cousins. <><><> “Maddy, you need to eat more than just a few bites,” Mom said as she hovered over me at the kitchen table. The lightly buttered toast on my plate had exactly two bites on adjacent sides. The scrambled eggs and bacon remained untouched. Taking the first bite hadn’t been much of a problem, but I found my stomach resisting the second mouthful of bread once I had sunk my teeth into it. The idea of even one more bite of food felt like too much. It wasn’t even that I felt full; nothing on the plate was remotely appetizing. It had taken almost a minute to force myself to chew up the last bite until it was able to be swallowed. I didn’t often care much for breakfast under normal circumstances, but couldn’t Mom just understand that I wouldn’t want it when I wasn’t feeling well? “I’m not hungry,” I complained. Mom took a seat next to me. “It’s extra important for you to eat and stay hydrated right now.” I stabbed my fork into the pile of scrambled eggs and then lifted it up into my mouth, grimacing as I started to chew before finally swallowing ten seconds later. I set my fork down roughly on the table. “I just can’t,” I whined. “Everything just sucks right now.” “Believe me,” Mom said. “I know that all the changes your body is going through aren’t fun, but that doesn’t mean you can stop taking care of yourself. Why don’t you try ten more bites and finish drinking half of your glass?” “Two,” I countered. “Eight.” “Can I just take four?” “Six, and they need to be regular bites. Your body needs to have some calories.” “Fine, I’ll try.” <><><> The front door slammed shut, and I was all alone. I had done everything I could to avoid Jackson before Mom left with him. I just needed to let things settle down. Give him a few days, and he’d forget all about what he’d seen in my bedroom. I grabbed my phone from my pocket after sitting down on the couch. The message notifications from my friends were still front and center. My heart raced. I had done my best to put the events of the sleepover out of mind. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to text them. I had tried to think through what to say on multiple occasions, but my mind had always gone blank. But now I had to look. Otherwise, they would think I was ignoring them. My hand hesitated for a moment as my finger hovered over the icon for the messaging app. Then I tapped it quickly and pulled away, like I had touched a surface that was too hot. A few messages had gotten posted to our group chat yesterday evening. I skimmed through the messages. Nothing about the sleepover. Nothing about the bedwetting. Nothing about how I had worn one of Hannah’s diapers for the second half of the night. Emma had shared a video of a new TikTok trend that was apparently going around. She wanted help making her own version of the video. Angie had commented about it and then asked if I wanted to hang out later today. I didn’t think that was a good idea with how I was feeling. I replied that I had been feeling sick. It didn’t take long for a response. It turned out both were on their phones, not that much of a surprise. My message showed as read almost immediately. Emma’s response was to ask if I was contagious. My fingertips hovered over the digital keyboard. This was my chance to get out of the embarrassment from last weekend. Say that my first period started, that it really sucked, and that it was why I hadn’t been feeling well the last week. No need to explicitly mention the bedwetting. Absolutely no way was I going to put something like that in writing. I typed out the message once before deleting and starting again. Then I pressed send. I closed the app right away without checking to see if the message had been read, too nervous to see what the replies would be. My stomach lurched violently. I scrambled to my feet and rushed down the hallway to the bathroom, bending over the toilet as all the food I had unwillingly forced down came right back up. I didn’t even feel better afterward. That sucked. As awful as vomiting was, it usually at least led to a period of calm for my stomach. My hands rested on my hips as I breathed heavily, staring down at the toilet as my breakfast was flushed away. There had better not be a second round coming. It wasn’t until the toilet had finished flushing that I noticed a slight warmth between my legs. Had that just happened now? Or had I just now noticed it? My hands slid down to the waistband of my shorts and then hesitated. What was I going to see? Did I even want to see it? I shut my eyes as I slowly dragged my shorts and underwear down to my knees, and only then did I reluctantly open them. The pad was wet with pee and pinkish blood, and it had overflowed slightly, leaving a damp patch on my underwear that hadn’t reached my shorts. I scoured the bathroom. Maybe Grace or Mom had left supplies of their own. I opened every drawer and cabinet. Nothing. All those supplies were in the upstairs bathroom. <><><> Each step was worse than the last. I stood halfway up the staircase leading to the second floor, one hand firmly gripping the railing. I forced my foot to the next step. Then, the next, finally reaching the top of the stairs a short while later, I took a seat on the floor at the top of the stairs to catch my breath. My heart was racing like I’d sprinted, even though I’d barely moved faster than a snail. My phone buzzed a couple of times for incoming messages. I opened the app on my phone. Emma had replied to my message with a bunch of vampire emojis. I snorted, which only made my head worse. Angie’s response had been a bunch of shark emojis that left me bewildered. What exactly was that supposed to mean? I replied back with a few question marks. Her response arrived twenty seconds later – “Shark Week.” I was a little annoyed. I didn’t get it. Was she making fun of me? I responded again with twice as many question marks. I waited impatiently as the app showed her typing for nearly a minute before her response came through. Oh. That made sense after all. <><><> The only benefit of having climbed the stairs was that at least I had my Harry Potter books to read. But as I turned the pages, I found it difficult to maintain the strength to keep the book upright. I collapsed flat on the bed. My eyelids shut of their own accord for a few seconds until I forced them open. I didn’t want to sleep. The day had just begun. My mouth opened wide as I let out another yawn that spoke an undeniable truth about how my body was feeling. I’d just close my eyes for a second or two. I could continue reading after that. <><><> “Maddy, Maddy!” Mom was saying my name with some urgency as I opened groggy eyes halfway and rubbed my face. Was it lunch time already? Could I have actually slept that long? “What Mom?” “You had another accident while you were sleeping.” My eyes shifted down toward my shorts. It hadn’t been a tiny leak. It was as bad as any of my recent mornings had been. “Let me feel your forehead.” Mom stretched her hand downward and placed her palm on my head. “Yeah, you still have a slight fever,” Mom said. She proceeded to interrogate me on my symptoms Fever. Check. Nausea. Check Headache. Check. Chills. Check. Aches and pains. Check. I didn’t mention that it hurt when I peed or that I had been wetting myself during the day while I was awake. “We can get you some more medicine before lunch,” Mom said. “Why don’t you go hop in the shower and get cleaned up? I’ll take care of your sheets and get lunch started for you. I can let my boss know I’ll be running a little late.” <><><> I rubbed my eyes wearily as I set my spoon to the side on the napkin. My head had ached less when I had been in the shower, but had gone back to hurting fairly badly by the time I had dried off and gotten dressed. Soup. I could go the rest of summer break without eating soup again, and that would not be a long enough break from it. Wasn’t there some other food that could be fed to sick people? But Mom insisted. And I was too tired to fight it. And I needed to pee. Again. The need wasn’t urgent so much as it was painful. I squirmed slightly in my seat. That didn’t do me any good. Mom turned to look at me as I stood up from the table. “You need to at least eat some more of your soup still.” “I know. I need to pee.” I walked off toward the bathroom. I wasn’t sure if I could have run if I needed to. I kept my steps shorter than usual, as stretching my feet out further only served to exacerbate the pain between my legs. The pad was dry for once when I pulled my underwear down. No blood this time, though there had been plenty when I had stripped my soaked clothes off before the shower. <><><> “It’s not fair,” I protested loudly at Mom’s latest request. “Maddy,” Mom said gently. “You have one set of bedding in the dryer and another set of bedding in a wash. Your last set of clean sheets is already on your bed.” “But I don’t want to.” “Whether you want to or not isn’t the point,” Mom said. “It’s about whether you need to. Your body needs to rest, and if you fall asleep, you should be wearing some protection because we’ve gone through too much laundry today.” I sniffled loudly, then rubbed my eyes, which left my hands slightly wet. “Please?” Mom leaned in and gave me a hug. “It’s going to be OK, Maddy. The first time is always the hardest. You’re just going to need to tough it out for a few more days, and I promise everything will be better.” I ripped the pad – dry for once – out of my underwear and tossed it on top of my dresser to put back on later. I held the pull-up in front of me, staring down into its white insides; I should have been only a day away from leaving them behind forever. I stretched out the elastic sides with a firm grip and then stepped into the first leg hole, and then the other. My body shuddered as the stretchy sides of the pull-up rubbed against my bare skin as I ever so slowly lifted it up to my waist. My head screamed at me as I crawled into bed. It felt as though my brain was liquid, with any amount of jostling only making matters worse. I wasn’t able to find a comfortable position to lie in. Everything hurt, though my right side seemed to hurt the most, but after tossing and turning for a minute, I lacked the energy to try any further. <><><> When I woke, it felt more like January than July, like that week or two in the worst parts of a Minnesota winter when there was nothing our overworked furnace could do completely keep the chill out, and I would be stuck lying in bed, shivering beneath a half-dozen blankets. The one blanket currently on top of me was hardly enough to calm my shaking limbs as I woke from the nap. I scrunched up between the blanket, curling up tightly for a few minutes in an attempt to warm up in spite of the rhythmic shivers running through my bones. The only exception to the cold was the insides of the pull-up. Why did Mom have to be right? And to top it all off, I needed to pee. Very badly. My joints protested as I unfurled my legs until my toes were poking outside the blanket. The shaking wasn’t as bad as it had been when I had woken up a couple of minutes ago. My arms felt like jelly as I tried and failed to push myself up off the mattress. What difference would it make? The pull-up was already wet. I let out a loud gasp as I started peeing. It was like my urine was on fire. I tried to get the stream to stop, but all I could do was press my hands hopelessly between my legs, as if the pressure would somehow stop the flow or ease the pain. It did neither of those things. I told myself that I had only peed because the pull-up was already wet. If I had been wearing dry underwear, I could have gotten up on time to reach the toilet. Wait, the pull-up was already wet. What had I been thinking? The pull-ups had never held a second wetting before. And they hadn’t just now, either. <><><> Another five minutes passed before I finally managed to get out of my wet bed. Wet clothes – even my shirt, which had gotten some urine on the bottom of it – were removed and tossed onto the pile of bedding I had stripped off the mattress and tossed to the middle of my bedroom floor. I wiped some sweat off my forehead before putting on clean clothes and the still-dry pad from before the nap. Going down the stairs was not much easier than going up them had been earlier today. I ended up tossing all of the blankets and clothes all the way down to the bottom so that I could keep my hands free to grip the railing on my way down to the main level. I pulled the same trick when I descended to the basement, but not before stopping in the kitchen to rest my hands on my hips and catch my breath. As I placed the last of my laundry into the washing machine, I buckled over as a spasm between my legs sent me to my knees. I pressed my hands between my legs only to encounter an all-too-familiar warmth. The leak wasn’t bad. Just a half-inch wet spot on my shorts, but it was enough. I tossed my wet underwear and shorts into the wash with the rest of it. <><><><> My knees ached as I reached the top of the stairs, but that was because I had opted to crawl, rather than walk. Clean underwear. Clean Pad. Clean shorts. I looked longingly at my bed, with the bare plastic-covered mattress I had inherited from Grace. The bed didn’t look comfortable, but it also wasn’t in danger of being damaged. The protective mattress crinkled excessively beneath me, now that there were no sheets and blankets to muffle the sound as I lay down first on my back and then on alternating sides every few minutes. Sleep refused to come, though I also wasn’t sure if I wanted it. <><><> It was only when my bladder started aching another thirty minutes that I dared to think of getting off the bed. For a second, I contemplated just letting the accident happen as I anticipated how much my body would ache when I got up. But it was bad enough that Mom was going to find out that I had leaked onto the bed again. I couldn’t pee on the bed when there was nothing on it to soak up the liquid. It was my head that took the brunt of it as I swung my feet onto the floor and stood up. The room turned into a blur as I stumbled toward the door, catching myself from falling with a hand on my desk. I blinked rapidly as my vision stabilized, crossing my legs to try to reign in my bladder. I couldn’t have another accident. It was just a short walk to the toilet. I could make it. My bladder gave way the second I stepped foot in the bathroom as pee streamed down my legs in painful bursts. It smelled something awful as well. Still, despite the urgency, the puddle I left on the floor wasn’t massive. It was small enough that I could use my shorts and underwear to mop it up before burying them in my laundry hamper to deal with later. I was standing naked in front of my dresser when the car door slammed shut in the driveway. I darted to the window and peeked through the blinds. Mom. I simply couldn’t have an accident in front of my parents or siblings. I tried and failed to count how many accidents I had today. Everything seemed fuzzy. The solution was in the top drawer of my dresser. But if I wore a pull-up, there would be no way to hide it. I paused after placing one hand on the dresser drawer, but the embarrassment of discovery wasn’t the main reason I hesitated. What if accidentally peeing in the pull-up turned into intentionally peeing in it again? That was a trap I couldn’t step into. I stepped away from the dresser, leaving the pull-ups untouched. I was not a baby. <><><> I was dressed in big girl clothes by the time I could hear Mom’s footsteps coming up the stairs to check on me. There was no way to avoid having to explain that the pull-up had leaked. Not with the absence of bedding on my bed. Mom didn’t scold me for it, though she did take my temperature again, noting that it was slightly higher than this morning. Before she left to go back downstairs, she offered to finish doing the laundry from the three times I had peed the bed in the last twenty-four hours. <><><> “Maddy,” Mom hollered from the foot of the stairs. “Dinner is ready.” I slid off the bed, wincing as my right side grazed the mattress. If I wasn’t going to wear a pull-up, I needed a different kind of insurance. I detoured into the bathroom as a plan formed in my head. How often would I need to go to the toilet to guarantee that I wouldn’t pee myself? Once an hour? No, that would be way too far apart. Maybe every thirty minutes? No, a trip to the toilet every twenty minutes would be needed, The pad was dry as I started my newest plan. I sat on the toilet, forced out a few painful dribbles, then checked the time on my phone before heading downstairs. <><><> Dinner lasted twenty minutes. Mom scolded me for checking my phone near the end. Devices weren’t supposed to be out at the dinner table. The only thing dinner had going for it was that it wasn’t soup. Not that my appetite was any better. I was able to manage a small nibble every minute or so, provided I took a small sip of water afterward to help get the food to go down. Forcing myself to drink wasn’t proving much easier than forcing myself to eat. I abandoned the dinner table with only about a third of my meal finished. The compromise was that leftovers had to go in the fridge to be eaten before dessert, but that was fine by me. Back to the bathroom. Pad still dry. The toilet seat felt oddly warm when I sat down, or maybe my body was. I had to strain just to coax out another small dribble. There. See? Twenty minutes. I could do this. <><><> “I’ll pause the movie,” Dad said when I stood. “No, it’s fine. I don’t care.” Movie nights had been better a few years ago when Jackson had been little enough to be sent to bed before them. Now, everything we watched as a family had to be appropriate for him as well. About twenty-five minutes had passed since my previous trip to the toilet. I had delayed stepping away from the movie, mostly out of a sense of embarrassment for my family potentially noticing how often I was going to the bathroom. I could recall how frequently Mom had made Jackson go to the toilet for the first several months after he had been toilet-trained. But the pain in my bladder, which had been building for the last several minutes, could no longer be ignored. The pad was dry again. Good. My body was screaming anyway. I sat, waited, tried to relax. Nothing. After a full minute of straining, a hot, brief stream finally dribbled out. The pain eased but didn’t disappear. I wiped quickly. I didn’t notice the small blood stains on the toilet paper until I stood up and turned around to flush the toilet. <><><> I didn’t even need to pee the next time I got up. My head hurt. The singing in the movie was way too loud and annoying, and I wanted an excuse to leave. Mom and Grace shared a look as I slipped away again. I kept my eyes forward and tugged at my shorts to readjust them. In the bathroom, the pad was slightly yellow and pink. My bladder produced a reluctant drizzle after half a minute, and I tossed the pad in the garbage only to remember there were no replacements in this bathroom. I texted Grace. My older sister arrived a minute later with a soft knock on the door. “Here,” she said, passing me a half-full package of pads through the slightly opened bathroom door, followed by a second package. “You can put them in the cabinet under the sink. Are you feeling OK? You’ve been changing a lot. You can use those overnight pads during the day as well if you think that would help.” I shook my head rapidly in response. The pads I was using were already too close to diapers. <><><> Another brief absence from the movie after twenty minutes had passed. Another look was shared between Mom, me, and Grace. Another check down into my underwear – dry, a minor relief. Another attempt to pee. This time, nothing came out. I wasn’t concerned. If I couldn’t get anything to come out, I would be fine for another twenty minutes. <><><> I timed my latest departure from the couch with the next musical number. I was so proud of myself, I didn’t even mind if everyone – well, everyone except for Jackson – thought I was leaving every few minutes to deal with my period. I arrived at the bathroom to find that once again there was a small amount of blood and pee in the pad. Well, I hadn’t peed last time. Maybe that was my fault for not trying harder to get something to come out. I strained as hard as I could on the toilet. But again, no luck. <><><> I knew what state the pad was going to be in before I checked it. This time, it wasn’t the warmth that alerted me but the discomfort from the wetness in my underwear. The walk from the couch to the hallway was one of the scariest in my life. I just had to be wearing pink shorts instead of black ones. To my relief, none of the wetness had made it outside of the pad. But my attempts to instead relieve myself in the toilet continued to prove futile, and I got up from it after a minute without bothering to flush. The pangs in my bladder began again the second my hand touched the doorknob as I attempting to exit the bathroom. I hurried to strip and sit back on the toilet. Maybe this time? No, no matter how much my bladder yelled at me that there was pee inside that was dying to get out, I simply wasn’t able to pee. <><><> I pulled my feet up onto the couch as I scrunched myself together to try to deal with the pain between my legs. Thank god this movie was nearly over. I rubbed my arm up against my forehead, which was feeling slightly sticky with sweat. Even with just a thin t-shirt and shorts on, I had been feeling overheated for the last ten minutes. The screen went black. Then the closing credits appeared, and I was off the couch in an instant. Dry. I closed my eyes as I sat down on the toilet and let my imagination run. Visions of a return to normal life floated through my head. The next sleepover in big girl underwear. Shame set aside, as I could blame my period for messing everything up. I jerked awake to my own head lolling forward. Had I dozed off? The pain was still there, but the urgent need was gone. I looked down into the toilet. The urine was dark, concentrated yellow, threaded with thin pinkish-red strands drifting through it. <><><> It was still well before my bedtime, but I didn’t care. I just needed this day to end. I peeled off my sweaty t-shirt and immediately started shivering. I put on a pull-up and long-sleeved pajamas, then waited behind my door until I heard Jackson leave the bathroom. I took my medicine, tried the toilet one last time – nothing came out – and gave up. Mom had remade my bed. I crawled under the sheets, and somehow everything felt worse: the shaking that wouldn’t stop, teeth clicking hard enough to hurt, my head punishing every tiny adjustment. My bladder swung between burning pressure and brief, lying calm. I stopped trusting it. I tossed for a while. At some point, I noticed dampness in the pull-up and couldn’t even place when it had happened. I was too exhausted to care. I’d deal with it in the morning. Day 7 Everything was dark when I woke up, and everything was wet. The familiar bulge of the soaked pull-up between my legs was unmistakable, but my body was also sticky with sweat from my toes all the way up to my forehead. But I wasn’t warm. One shudder ran through me. Then another. It was hard enough to make my teeth click. Within seconds, it turned into full-body shaking that I couldn’t stop, no matter how tightly I curled under the blankets. Everything felt damp except my mouth. My lips were dry enough to sting when I pressed them together. There was no way I was falling back to sleep in this condition. I needed clean clothes, clean sheets, and something to drink. This time, it was my back that ached as I rolled out of bed. I fumbled for my phone, using its dim light to get to my dresser. I let my pajama pants tumble to a heap around my ankles. The pull-up followed after them with a heavy thud. I hurried to put on fresh clothes as the shivering had started up again the moment I had stripped naked. I needed to pee the second I finished dressing, the pain in my bladder going from zero to a hundred in a half-second. I stumbled in the dark toward my bedroom door, but as I walked through the hallway in the dark, a small but steady warmth filled the new pull-up I had just put on. I waited to shut the bathroom door before turning the light on so I wouldn’t wake anyone, but the instant it flashed on, pain stabbed behind my eyes, and I snapped it off again. Even in the dark, my bladder kept changing its mind, switching between urgent, burning pressure and a few seconds of relief that didn’t last. I wasn’t sure if I actually needed to pee or if my body was just panicking. The dribbling stopped, and pressure ended before I was able to locate the toilet. Whatever. I just needed something to drink so my mouth would stop feeling like sandpaper. I took a sip of water from the sink, then proceeded to spit it out right away. It tasted awful. I examined the bed after changing into a clean pull-up for the second time in only a few minutes. Somehow, the pull-up hadn’t leaked after all when I had been asleep. That was good. I didn’t have the energy to put on fresh sheets. I slowly crawled back in. <><><> Mom’s face was staring down at me when I opened my eyes again. I could feel a hand on my shoulder. Had she been shaking it to wake me? “Mom,” I groaned, dragging the single word. “I came to check on you because it’s already nine-thirty and you hadn’t gotten up yet.” “It’s that late?” I asked. Even accounting for waking up in the middle of the night, that meant I had gotten more than twelve hours of sleep. “Are you not feeling any better than yesterday?” Mom asked. I nodded affirmatively, but even that short motion caused my head to sting. Mom placed a hand on my forehead. “You are feeling warmer. Let me go get a thermometer. I’ll be right back.” I rubbed both hands on my face as Mom walked away before letting out a large yawn. Mom returned with a thermometer, which she promptly stuck in my mouth until it beeped. “102.6,” Mom said. “Is that bad?” “It’s not going the right direction. Maybe we’ll get you something extra-strength to take after breakfast.” Just the thought of food was unappealing. And more medicine for dessert wasn’t any better. “I’m not hungry.” “Why don’t you at least get cleaned up and ready for the day and see how you feel then?” With that, Mom was gone, and I had the bedroom to myself. The room tilted back and forth as I attempted to ease myself into a sitting position. It took almost a minute for my vision to stabilize enough so that I could get out of bed. Food wasn’t appealing. But getting clean was. I wrinkled my nose as I started to slide the pull-up down once I had gotten to the bathroom. The interior of the pull-up was a foul-smelling, dark yellow, with pinkish blotches throughout. I sat on the toilet before turning the shower on, but nothing happened. No stream came out, just a few hot drops that burned and didn’t relieve the pressure at all. <><><> After showering, I chose to use one of the larger pads Grace had referenced – there had been some in the upstairs bathroom as well – and as I walked through the hallway, I was starting to regret it. The regular-sized pads had reminded me too much of wearing a pull-up or diaper. This bigger overnight pad was practically a diaper, just minus the parts that would keep it secured to my body. The pad crinkled loudly beneath my shorts as I inched my way down the stairs. I kept both hands on the railing as I descended to the main floor. <><><> Pancakes were waiting for me in the kitchen. I used my fork to cut a small piece and slid it into my mouth. It was almost impossible for me to swallow. After chewing for nearly a minute until it was basically pulp, I managed to gulp the last of the bite down. A wave of nausea nearly threatened to send it right back up. I attempted to settle my stomach with a sip of milk, but that proved just as revolting. I stared down at my plate. The idea of taking even one more bite felt impossible. A burning sensation began growing in my bladder. My bathroom schedule. I had forgotten. I should have gone to pee before coming down for breakfast, but I had skipped it. Never mind. I needed an excuse to leave the table. The chair screeched against the floor as I slid it back and stepped away. “Madelyn,” Mom said. “I need to pee,” I responded curtly as I rounded the corner without looking back. But it didn’t matter how much my bladder insisted I had to pee. I strained and waited, and all I got was a weak dribble. It was just enough to burn, not enough to help. The pad told a different story, providing a clear indication that multiple types of liquid were still capable of coming out of my body, though in small amounts. Another wave of nausea hit me as I pulled my pants back up. I turned to face the toilet, bending over at the waist until my face was directly over the bowl. I heaved and heaved, my mouth opening as wide as it could, but nothing came out. There probably wasn’t anything that could really come out, for that matter. My heart was pounding even after the heaving stopped. Just the act of attempting to vomit had been exhausting. <><><> Mom was waiting for me when I walked by the kitchen. I had been hoping to slip past her unnoticed, as I had no desire to eat anything. Her eyes widened when she saw me and called me over. “I said I’m not hungry,” I whined. “That’s OK,” Mom said. “Come here and let me feel your forehead again.” Her hand felt cool to the touch when she placed it on my head. “On second thought,” Mom said, frowning. “You feel hotter than you did an hour ago. Go upstairs and lie down. I’m bringing medicine, and we’ll see how you feel after you’ve gotten some more rest.” <><><> “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.” I stared down at the tiny cup that contained an ounce of dark orange liquid that Mom had poured out for me. “This is going to help reduce your fever and let you get some more rest,” Mom said. “It’s just one quick sip. It will be over in a few seconds.” I tilted my head back till I was looking up at the ceiling. “Mom. Please.” Mom placed a hand on my shoulder. “I promise you’ll be feeling better soon.” My breathing sped up as I took hold of the little clear plastic cup again. My stomach was warning me that it wasn’t a good idea. But I did it anyway. I raised the cup to my lips. Tilted my head back as far as I could. And tried to chug it down faster than my taste buds could notice. Too fast. A thirty-second coughing fit followed, but at least I didn’t end up vomiting it out in front of Mom. <><><> At Mom’s suggestion, I put a pull-up back on before getting back into bed. As unhappy as I was about it, I was too tired to object, and all of the times I had wet the bed during naps yesterday left it impossible for me to conjure up an argument in favor of remaining in underwear. Mom had warmed up another compress for me to help with the aches and pains. I was now lying on my stomach with the warm pad resting on my lower back. It was just what I had needed. What I didn’t need was my bladder to tell me that I was about to pee. I set the heating pad aside and shuffled down the hallway to the bathroom. It was no good. No stream, just a few hot drops again, not enough to help. The pressure eased only a little after two minutes on the toilet. Back to bed again. <><><> I groaned loudly as the need to pee returned. How long had it been since the last trip to the toilet? I check my phone. Not even five minutes. It had taken me practically that whole time to just finally get into a comfortable position in bed. Getting up now would mean enduring all of that all over again. This time I felt lightheaded as I got to my feet. But I pressed on anyway without delay, catching myself with an outstretched hand on the doorframe to stop from falling over as I staggered into the hallway. Again nothing. The pull-up was actually dry as well. I started shivering as I walked back to bed. My arms felt heavy as I lifted them above my head to grab an extra blanket from the closet shelf. The chills continued underneath all of the extra layers. The pain in my bladder returned once more. I ignored it. Whatever. I probably didn’t even need to go. It wasn’t like I had drunk anything since before bed anyway. The chills were interrupted with a brief, but incredibly unpleasant, burning sensation between my legs as a trickle of pee was involuntarily released into the pull-up. I groaned loudly as the pain subsided. The same cycle continued on repeat. A few minutes of calm. A few minutes of building pain that had me almost begging my bladder to just let the pee out, no matter how much it would burn, because that would restart the cycle and give me a few minutes of peace. And then a trickle of pee that felt like hot lava leaving my body. The pull-up hadn’t leaked yet. I had rubbed my hand all around that section of the bed to check. I couldn’t imagine that I was peeing that much. Not given that I had not had anything to drink since yesterday evening. I didn’t know how much time had passed. At some point, my phone had tumbled to the floor, and I lacked the strength to bend over and pick it up. I had heard it buzz a couple of times. I suspected it was additional messages from Angie and Emma. I had been so preoccupied with my oscillating bladder that I didn’t notice at first when the chills went away. But now everything was feeling so hot. My blankets were shrugged off one by one until only a single sheet remained. I still felt like I was burning up. My shorts came off fairly easily, but it was my shirt that I struggled with. My arms simply didn’t seem to want to obey the command to tug the shirt up over my head. The sheet was the last to go. I had kept it on in case Mom returned, but as sweat continued to build up on my forehead, I finally gave in. My insides lurched as a cramp twisted through my gut. Then a second time. Absolutely no way was that coming out of me in any place other than on the toilet. I slid my feet off the bed and lowered them until my bare toes were touching the floor, moving cautiously to keep my head from spinning too much. Another jolt ran through my tummy. I was running out of time. I stood up, pausing for a second for my head to stabilize. All good. The first step was fine, if painful. Same for the second one. It was with the third step across the room that everything went wrong all at once. My legs gave way the second my foot reached the ground, as if my muscles were Play-Doh. I fell hard to the floor, tumbling forward to land on my hands and knees. I made one attempt to push myself back up onto my feet, but I only got a third of the way up before I collapsed again. It was no use. The cramp returned, sharper, and this time my bowels let go into the pull-up without warning. I rolled onto my right side, shaking and too weak to fix anything, I could no longer pinpoint where I hurt. The pain was simply everywhere. My eyes rapidly flickered between open and closed a half-dozen times. Loud footsteps. Raised voices. The pull-up somehow growing warmer still. It was all too much. I closed my eyes to shut it out and found that it was too much work to open them. A siren wailed in the distance, the noise reaching a fervent crescendo as the world slid out from under me. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com

We will get into the friend dynamics again very soon. As far as the fanfic goes, Maddy handled that in a way that Emma would not have any ability to know that she had read it on the phone. One might argue that she currently has a need for them at the moment. But yes, an actual diagnosis for Maddy is coming soon. Thanks!

Time will tell on the reason, though her family attributing her symptoms to Maddy getting her first period will certainly delay treatment. All I can say is she isn't done racking up symptoms, there's more she'll be dealing with in the next two days. For sure, she is just at a point where she doesn't have that context about her body to understand exactly how bad of a state she is in at the moment. Thanks! They most certainly are at the moment (that and time to write them, which is the most important part). We'll see if it gets that far for her, but it is safe to say she isn't going to wake up feeling better. It is a pretty foolproof strategy. Though at this point if I noticed that someone had spilled a drink on themselves in real life, I might wonder for a second if there was something they were covering up. Thanks! We'll get more on what's going on with her friends soon. Its not unreasonable for there to be some awkwardness at a bare minimum after what happened at the sleepover. Consider how they basically didn't talk to each other that morning before Maddy's mom picked her up. Yes, it's a seven day counter because that was her post-sleepover plan to get away from pull-ups and diapers. What is actually means we'll find out in the next chapter, which will for sure cover days 6 and 7 (Five was a standalone because of how long it ended up getting(.

Chapter 51: The Next Seven Days - Part 3 Day 5 I knew everything was wrong the moment I opened my eyes in the morning. My head ached. My mouth was parched. My skin was damp and clammy from sweating beneath the excessive layers of pajamas and blankets. The house was nowhere near as cold as it had been when I had fallen asleep. My stomach churned, and not in the hungry for breakfast kind of way, but the something isn’t right inside of it kind of way. I attempted to push myself up off the mattress only to give up halfway and collapse back down. And to top it all off, the way the pull-up squished between my legs when I landed back down let me know that my attempts to deprive myself of liquids had been for naught. I had practically drunk nothing yesterday. It should have been scientifically impossible for my bladder to have had anything to release while I was sleeping, let alone work up such a sweat. The only thing that hadn’t gone wrong was that it didn’t seem like the pull-up had leaked at all this time. The only reason I was able to get out of bed a few minutes later was that cleaning myself up was a superior option to letting Mom stumble across me in this condition. “You feeling OK?” Grace asked, taking her toothbrush out of her mouth for a second as I shuffled past her. I muttered something that vaguely resembled “Yeah” and slipped into the other half of the bathroom and shut the door behind me. After taking off my pajamas, I let the pull-up drop to the floor and then let out a loud gasp at what I saw. The pull-up wasn’t just wet with pee; there were some red patches that were unmistakably blood. “You OK in there?” Grace asked through the other side of the door. “Yes,” I yelled back. “It’s nothing.” I wanted to scream. Had I been alone in the house, I might have. I was dealing with way too much to have to suddenly be dealing with getting my first period. I hadn’t given my health sciences classes any more attention than the rest of my subjects at school, which is to say that I had paid very little attention to them at all. But I had gotten more than enough information on that topic from Emma and Angie, as both my friends had reached that developmental milestone ahead of me. There was a knock on the bathroom door. “If something is going on with your bedwetting, you can tell me,” Grace said. “I’ve been there. I promise I won’t judge.” “It’s not that,” I blurted out, before instantly regretting having provided that information. “Did you get your period?” she asked after a short pause. I was too mortified by the accuracy of her question to find the words to deny it. “Maddy,” Grace said. “I’m not an idiot. Do you want me to help you or not? Or should I get Mom?” I rolled the pull-up into a ball and tossed it in the garbage bin before opening the door with a towel wrapped around my waist. Grace had a bit of a smirk on her face. I don’t know why my older sister thought this was so funny. “How did you know?” I muttered, looking down at the floor. “Well,” Grace said with smile. “Something about your pull-up shocked you when you took it off, and if it wasn’t because you had peed in it, the only options were you starting your period or shitting yourself. If you had done the latter, I think I would have noticed it when you walked past me.” I stomped my feet. “Stop smiling. It isn’t funny.” “Well,” Grace said. “I’ll just say there are far worse circumstances for a period to start in that I, of course, wouldn’t know about from personal experience.” I stared at her. I didn’t get my older sister at all sometimes. “Just hop in the shower,” Grace said with a wave of her hand. “I’ll have some stuff for you by the time you are done.” The shower wasn’t much help. I couldn’t manage to get the right temperature. I thought turning it colder would help with my aching head, but that only seemed to make things worse. I hesitated for a moment when putting on underwear after getting dried off. I knew I couldn’t continue the day like this, but I wasn’t sure what to do next. Grace was waiting for me right outside the bathroom door, with a handful of small plastic-wrapped items in her arms. Before I could say anything, she launched into a long spiel in which she explained what she used for herself for her period and what other options were available: some of which I was already well aware of, others I hadn’t heard of before, and one that I hadn’t even remotely contemplated as a possibility. “You know,” Grace said at the end. “Some women even wear adult diapers, like if they need more protection or want extra coverage while they are sleeping.” I stared at my sister. I really couldn’t figure her out. Was she being serious, or was she making fun of me? “You’re joking, right?” I asked cautiously. There was no way she could be serious about that. “Nope, completely serious,” Grace said. “They even make cloth ones that you can wash and re-use.” That led to a question I couldn’t help but ask. “Do you wear them?” “Oh no,” Grace said casually. “I mean, I wouldn’t be embarrassed to if I needed it, but those would be overkill for me.” I just gawked at my sister. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? It was such a perfect excuse to wear pull-ups that I couldn’t even believe that the idea had never crossed my mind. Of course, there was absolutely no way I was going to do that now. I reached out to grab one of the small packages in my sister's hands. Pads it was. <><><> I wasn’t sure how it was possible, but the pad somehow seemed to crinkle even louder than my pull-ups ever did. I was fairly confident that I had it positioned correctly in my underwear, but I guessed I would find out for sure by later this morning. The pad didn’t cause me to waddle anywhere near as much as a pull-up did, but it was something even harder to forget I had it on than when I was wearing a pull-up. My initial theory was that something smaller would be less noticeable and more comfortable, but it turned out that the opposite was true. My older sister at least had the courtesy to assist me with getting set up to deal with my period before informing our mom of the situation. Then I was inundated with pretty much the same advice that Grace had already given me. My temperature got taken. I had a fever – no surprise there. Mom proceeded to interrogate me about my symptoms. I told her about everything except for the accidents I’d been having during the day. She did chide me about taking the medications on my own last night, though she did agree that she would have let me take them if I had asked first. Thankfully, Mom did not ask to actually see the evidence in the pull-up firsthand. Now that the shock had worn off, I actually felt an immense sense of relief in spite of all the discomfort my body was experiencing. I had an actual explanation for all the craziness that had been going on with my body this week, and a renewed sense of hope that everything would be better once my first period passed by in several days. “I already called your therapist,” Mom said. “I got the appointment cancelled so that you can stay home and rest.” That was a relief. I didn’t really want the pads to get tested for the first time while I was out in public. “You can get settled back in bed to rest for the rest of the morning,” Mom said. “I already changed out all of your sheets.” I was more than happy to comply. By now, my head was in a fog from the information overload. As I got settled underneath the covers, Mom brought me a whole bunch of pills – some pain killers along with the ADHD meds. There was no way to skip out this time, though I was less inclined to now that I had a better explanation for my recent bladder issues. Mom left and returned a few minutes later with even more supplies for me – a warm compress to place on my chest, a cup of hot tea, a water bottle, a granola bar, and a bunch of chocolates. She handed me the compress and set the rest of the items on my bedside table. I attempted to take a sip of tea, but stopped the second the scalding liquid touched my lips. “Yeah, you better let that cool for a bit first,” Mom said as she took the cup from my hands and set it down carefully on the table. “You should be all set. Don’t forget to stay extra hydrated. I’m going to come by on my lunch break to check on you as well, but please call me if you need anything. I’ll make sure my phone isn’t on silent.” <><><> It was more fun being sick in bed on a school day than in the middle of summer break, but at least I got to still skip the therapy appointment. After Mom left, I contemplated continuing my self-imposed liquid restrictions, but decided it was as pointless as stopping my ADHD pills now. It wasn’t the medicine or liquids that were the issue; it was just my changing body. I’d be better in a few days – how long could it last anyway – so I was content to discard my previous plans to prevent the bladder accidents. I attempted to take a sip of tea, but it was still way too hot, so I switched to the water bottle instead. Even with my mouth still a bit parched from the lack of liquids yesterday, I found that I wasn’t all that thirsty. Even the bite-sized chocolates Mom left me were less appealing than normal. I ate one, but only took a nibble out of the second before setting it aside. An urgent warning from my bladder interrupted my reading about twenty minutes later. I stumbled out of bed, with my stiff joints almost making me feel like a zombie. I didn’t sprint out of the bedroom. The need to pee was urgent, but it didn’t feel so pressing that I needed to worry about making it on time. I made it into the hallway before my bladder gave way all of a sudden. For the briefest of moments, I wondered if perhaps the pad might be enough to contain the fallout. It was not. The pad delayed the inevitable by maybe a second or two, and then pee was running down my legs, all the way into my socks. I slid my hands across my face in annoyance. Just great. The pads had all the downsides of wearing a pull-up with none of the benefits. As I was getting cleaned up, I noticed that the pad must have performed its intended purpose prior to the bladder accident, given that there was some blood on it as well. <><><> I was still in bed a few hours later when Mom arrived home on her lunch break. I had managed to avoid any further accidents, though there had been a couple of close calls. I hadn’t needed to change the pad since that first time, though I checked it each time I went to the bathroom. Mom glanced over at the bedside table as she entered the bedroom. “Maddy, you hardly touched your water.” “I’m not thirsty.” “It doesn’t matter whether you are feeling thirsty or not. Your body isn’t feeling well, so you need to drink up.” Mom grabbed the water bottle, unscrewed the cap, and handed it to me, not letting up until I had gulped down a third of it. “I’m going to warm up some soup for you in the kitchen,” Mom said. “Why don’t you get changed if you need to before coming downstairs.” Once I could hear Mom walking down the stairs, I got out of bed and pulled down my shorts and underwear. There wasn’t any blood in the pad still, but it wasn’t all-white either. A third of it was now yellow. I had peed just a little in it without noticing at all. I grabbed another clean pad from the pack that Grace had given me. I thought I had put it in place properly, but it still felt weird walking down the stairs afterward. “What happened to your other shorts?” Mom asked once I was in the kitchen. “The pad leaked,” I replied. “I guess I didn’t put it on right.” "I can help show you how to do it,” Mom said. "I’m fine. I’ve got it figured out.” Mom didn’t press me any further on that subject. She instead set a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich on the table. I wasn’t usually a big fan of tomato soup. I found it even less appealing in the present circumstances. I grazed on the meal slowly as Mom ate her own lunch next to me, taking small nibbles of the sandwich and sipping on tiny spoonfuls of soup. My stomach was protesting angrily that it didn’t want any more. I maintained the pretense of eating until Mom dashed out the door to return to work. I answered in the affirmative when she reminded me to make sure to finish the entire meal, but once the car was out of the driveway, I poured the remaining soup down the drain and wrapped the half-eaten sandwich in a few paper towels before hiding it in the garbage. I helped myself to more pain medication on my way to the bedroom – Mom had said I could if I needed it, so long as I didn’t stray from the recommended dosage. I also needed to pee. But that wasn’t a surprise, not with how much Mom had just made me drink. This time, when I pulled my underwear down to take a seat on the toilet, there was a bit of blood and urine in the pad. I chucked the used pad in the garbage in disgust. Was I really going to have to deal with this every month for the rest of my life? <><><> An afternoon of lying in bed, eating chocolate, and reading one of my favorite books should have been relaxing, but it was anything but that. The pain meds Mom had let me take didn’t seem to be working at all. My head hurt. My side hurt. Laying down hurt. Walking hurt. Even peeing hurt. And while I wasn’t keeping count, it seemed like I was doing that a couple of times an hour. Mom was sympathetic when I texted her to complain about the pain, but the only solution she offered was that I should heat up the compress in the microwave again and bring it back with me to bed. Eventually, the discomfort of walking up and down the stairs was outweighed by my aching body, and so I eased myself cautiously down to the kitchen. My stomach churned uneasily as I stood in front of the microwave. A minute later, the churning turned into the need to vomit. The bathroom was too far away. I wouldn’t make it in time. I pulled out the garbage bin from under the kitchen sink just in time before all of the tomato soup came back out. Once I was done, it looked like I was hiding the evidence of a murder in the garbage can. When I stood at the base of the stairs a few minutes later, the compress already clutched against my side, the thought of having to walk all the way to the top felt overwhelming. I had to pause at the top of the stairs to catch my breath before continuing down the hallway to get back into bed. <><><> By the time everyone arrived home, I had relocated from the bed to the couch. I had tried playing on the Switch in bed, but I was too tired to hold up the whole device in my hands. It was much easier to just plug it into the TV and use a controller instead. I was feeling better, but that was relative to how I had felt after lunch. The nausea was gone and the pain meds seemed to be mostly doing their jobs for now – the aches and pains weren’t gone, but they were fairly reduced – but I was still very fatigued. “How are you holding up?” Grace asked as she took a seat next to me on the couch I hit the pause button on my game and answered with a long-winded explanation of the current quest I had been on, while Grace just nodded at me. “I meant about your period,” she asked once I had stopped. “Oh, it just kind of sucks.” “Yeah, that it does.” “Shit!” Dad exclaimed from the kitchen. My sister and I both turned our heads in his direction. That type of language was almost unheard of coming from Dad. “I wonder what that was about,” Grace said as she got up from the couch and walked toward the hallway. “Is everything OK, Dad?” she asked a few seconds later. I wasn’t able to hear Dad’s reply. Curiosity got the better of me, and I eased myself off the couch and followed behind my sister to the kitchen, where Mom, Dad, and Grace were standing, looking down at an opened package of chicken breasts that had splattered across the floor. Chester, our orange cat, who was sitting in the corner, was also fixated on the chicken, looking strangely pleased with himself. “This stupid cat nearly tripped me, and the package of chicken split open when I dropped it,” Dad explained to Mom. “Is there anything else I could help you put together quick?” Mom asked. “No, we’re way overdue for another run to the grocery store,” Dad said. “But that’s fine. I’ll get this cleaned up, and we can just go out to dinner tonight.” “Honey,” Mom said, her eyes moving from me to Dad. “I’m not sure that is a good idea. Maddy hasn’t been feeling well today.” “Well,” Dad said, turning toward me. “Are you feeling up for going out?” My head hurt a little as I nodded. Mom stepped forward and placed a hand on my forehead. “Your still feeling quite warm,” she said. “It’s OK to stay home when you are feeling under the weather.” “Mom, it’s not like she is contagious,” Grace interjected. Dad burst out laughing so hard he had to grab his sides. Mom glared at him until he was quiet again. “OK, you can come,” Mom relented. “I’ll go get Jackson.” Mom left to get Jackson while Dad stayed in the kitchen to clean up after the spilled chicken – shooing away Chester, who had been slowly inching toward the raw meat with a ravenous look on his face. I headed over to the front door to put on my shoes, turning around to see Grace right behind me. “Once you’ve got your shoes on, you should grab one of your small drawstring sports bags and toss a few pads and a pair of clean underwear in it,” she said. “I’m not going to need that.” “Look, just trust me on this, OK?” I did as Grace asked, glad to be getting out of the house after being stuck in bed all day. As noticeable as the pad felt, I had to remind myself that I had gone a whole week of wearing a pull-up during the soccer camp and not a single person had noticed. <><><> I stared blankly at the menu in front of me. Usually, the biggest challenge I had at restaurants was narrowing down my choices because so many of them looked appetizing. But right now, nothing seemed appealing, even my standard, go-to options for when I was feeling indecisive. We were squeezed into a booth in a corner deep inside the restaurant. Grace and I were on one side of the table, with Mom, Dad, and Jackson across from us. Everyone except Jackson was looking down at their menu – he was busy coloring with crayons on a piece of coloring paper. I rubbed my face with both of my hands. Mom had me take more medicine before we left for dinner. My body didn’t hurt like it had in the morning, but my head was in a fog. “Does anything look good?” Mom asked me. “No.” “Why don’t you just get some soup?” Mom suggested, pointing out a chicken noodle soup listed on the bottom left corner of the menu. “I guess,” I answered with a shrug. Maybe staying home would have been a better idea, after all. <><><> I excused myself to go to the bathroom once the server had taken our orders. Grace handed me my bag after I had stepped out of the booth. I had accidentally left it behind. “Just in case,” my older sister said. My face flushed, and I snatched it quickly from her hands before turning toward the restrooms. Occupied. That was the word showing near both handles of the two single-stall bathrooms. The bathrooms were buried behind a small maze of dimly lit hallways, so I was completely on my own, meaning that I didn’t have to hide the potty dance my feet were conducting. I crossed my legs and squeezed my hands between my thighs. A flush echoed from behind the closest door. I remained as still as I could. Maybe if I were lucky, they’d forget to wash their hands and hurry right on out. I was not lucky. The sink ran for twenty seconds. Then there was a brief pause followed by the unmistakable blaring of the hand dryer. My bladder felt like it was on fire. The doorknob jiggled. I jumped back into a normal stance. As I did so, I felt a small squirt of pee leave me. The door started to open. Please don’t let there be a wet spot on my shorts. A middle-aged woman stepped out into the hallway. I let go of any sense of decorum, as giving in to urgency was better than any more pee ending up in my pants. I darted past her into the bathroom, bumping into her without so much as saying “excuse me” or “sorry.” In my haste to get to the toilet, I completely forgot to even lock the door behind me. The relief of peeing in the toilet was mixed with the pain of my insides protesting against that action. My eyes lowered to the pad stuck to the inside of my shorts – blood and pee. The leak was small enough that the pad had been able to contain it fully this time. I swapped it out for a fresh one, with a bit of gratitude for my older sister’s foresight. <><><> “We were just telling your brother about our vacation plans in a couple of weeks,” Mom said as I took a seat back at the table. I had completely forgotten about the vacation, a long road trip all the way down to Florida to visit some relatives. It was to celebrate Grace’s high school graduation, and her only request for a destination was that she be able to go to a beach along the ocean. Before this morning, I would have been worried about my bladder issues continuing on the trip, but now I felt certain I would be back to normal far before then. And a break from home would be perfect for helping me to continue to move on from my pull-up and diaper desires. “Yeah, I know,” I said. At least with this next road trip, I’d have video games to kill the long hours on the car drive. “I don’t know if you remember your cousins, Timothy and Alex?” Mom asked. “I think you may have met them when we traveled for the funeral several years ago.” Yes, I remembered them all too well. It was their fault that my interest in pull-ups started in the first place. If they hadn’t left one of their nighttime pull-ups out in the open, I would never have asked about it, and that initial curiosity wouldn’t have transformed into the obsession that had led to this whole mess I was in this summer. “Yes, I remember playing with them.” “We’ll be staying at their place while we’re in Florida,” Mom said. The server arrived with our food, the timing bringing an end to the conversation about the vacation. In the years since that chance encounter with my cousins, I had occasionally daydreamed about what it would be like to meet up with them again. Mostly because of how it would have given me access to pull-ups, but also for all the questions about bedwetting that I could have asked them. I lifted a small spoonful of soup up to my lips and blew on it for a long time before finally inserting it into my mouth. I forced myself to another spoonful of soup each minute or so, despite the protestations from my stomach, though I eventually set the spoon down inside the bowl after having made little visible progress on my dinner. Mom eventually noticed that I had stopped eating, and at her coaxing, I had a few more spoonfuls before insisting that I was too full to continue. Then my bladder betrayed me. The urge to pee hadn’t registered long enough to even give me time to so much as ask Grace to get out of the way so I could leave the booth; I had already begun to pee. Unlike this early outside of the bathroom, it wasn’t a tiny dribble that could be contained by the pad. And like this morning, the pad proved completely useless for handling a larger accident. I could feel the warm pee soaking through my clothes, the sensation of wet cotton against my skin so much worse than that of a wet pull-up. Everyone else was too busy eating their food, and with how I was seated against the wall, no other diners would be able to see my shorts as long as we remained seated. But I wasn’t going to be safe forever. I stared down at my soup. I needed a way out. I took another sip of water. That was it. I just needed to spill it on my lap, and then no one would think that I had peed my pants. I set the glass down. Took another sip. Set the glass down. Took yet another sip. Trying and failing to work up the courage to go through with this latest crazy scheme. How was I supposed to make this realistic? I waited another minute until at last no one was looking in my direction. Then, as I reached out to grab the now half-full glass again, I let it tip in my direction, wincing as a cold waterfall cascaded from the table onto my laptop. “Maddy!” Mom said as her head jerked in my direction. I didn’t need to fake being embarrassed. My face burned. The glass had landed with a much louder clang than I had anticipated. It felt like everyone in the restaurant had turned to look at me. “Ugh, seriously, Maddy?” Grace said as she scooted a few inches to the left to avoid getting wet as well. Dad passed me the napkin dispenser, and I emptied a quarter of it over the next several minutes in an attempt to get my pants and seat somewhat dried off. The walk of shame out of the restaurant and into the parking lot was the worst. It was one thing to have wet pants around people who believed the cause was a spilled glass of water. But for anyone seeing me in the parking lot, I couldn’t help but suspect they thought I had actually peed myself. <><><> There was another small burst of warmth between my legs on the way home as another trickle of pee leaked out. I allowed myself one quick glance at my shorts. They felt wetter. But they at least didn’t look any different. Once we were home, Grace went inside to get a jacket that I could tie around my waist while walking up the driveway. That was a relief, as one of our neighbors was mowing his lawn across the street. I inspected the pad once I was alone in the bathroom. Some more blood, like before. But it was again mixed in with all of the pee from my accident. I wasn’t sure what was supposed to count as normal for a period. I didn’t have any personal frame of reference, and Grace had said that it could vary widely. There was no way I could even show them, as that would mean also providing evidence that I had been peeing myself as well. <><><> Last night, everything had been too cold when I was getting ready for bed. Tonight, everything felt too hot, even with shorts and a t-shirt on over my pull-up. But when I complained to Dad about the temperature, he answered that the air conditioning was set to seventy, like it was every single summer night. I grabbed a fan from a hallway closet and brought it to my bedroom in an attempt to cool down. Opening the windows wasn’t an option, though. The weather app on my phone said that it wasn’t supposed to get below seventy-five. My shorts came off first, followed by my shirt, and I was left with only a pull-up on beneath all of my bedding. I tossed and turned restlessly for the next several minutes, unable to find a position where my body didn’t ache. The short reprieve I had received from my symptoms around dinner had faded away, and they were back in full force. I kept waiting for the latest dosage of medicine Mom had administered to me before bed to kick in, but it never did. I tossed off the top cover, leaving only the thin bedsheet over me. Still not enough. The bedsheet was tossed aside as well. If I had only been concerned about getting pee over my sheets, the pull-up would have come off as well, but that would need to stay on for tonight. -- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com

Her parents certainly wouldn't approve of her taking medicine unsupervised, but it isn't something they would be extremely unhappy with, either. Not a doctor either, though I've done enough research to think that I've got a decently accurate list and progression of symptoms to where I intend Maddy to end up. Regardless of what medications she is taking, dehydration and not discussing her symptoms with her parents are going to be bigger factors in exacerbating her illness. That would be an embarrassing way for her to get caught, but she is going to have a harder time keeping all her symptoms hidden as they progress. Glad to be continuing the story. And yes, things are not going to be going well for Maddy in the next chapter. Thanks!

I wouldn't say that she is harming herself with the medicine; taking a dose or two of Nyquil/Dayquil as a teenager isn't unreasonable. She probably should have asked her parents, but it isn't like she is severely overdosing or taking anything too strong for the situation. I think the question for Maddy isn't so much if she sees a doctor, but how far will things progress first before that happens? It doesn't help that the accidents (and concern about them causing her to wear pull-ups) are causing her to be more secretive. That it will, the worst of it for her is that since her parents already think she is a bedwetter, they aren't thinking anything is off with her bedwetting actually starting for real. My lips are still sealed on what her diagnosis will be, but we'll get answers soon. Part three is covering days 5, 6, and 7.

The Next Seven Days - Part 2 Day 3 I woke to warm sunlight on my face after a night of dreamless sleep. A hand pressed against my shoulder, giving it several firm, but gentle, nudges. “Maddy, it’s time to get up,” Mom said. “Your tutoring is in the morning today.” I mumbled something incomprehensible and rubbed my eyes. How had I forgotten about it? I sat up and threw the sheets all the way down to my feet. What better way to start the morning than to demonstrate that the bed was dry? I looked up at Mom, who was still standing at the side of my bed, with a smile on my face. The sooner she and Dad could see that I was keeping the bed dry, the sooner I would be rid of the pull-ups in my dresser. But Mom didn’t return my smile. Her eyes had already drifted down to my midsection, widening on the way there. My hand reached the wet spot between my legs faster than my eyes did. The wet patch was still warm to the touch. Not much time had passed since I had peed during my sleep. “Madelyn,” Mom said in an exasperated tone. “Why weren’t you wearing your pull-up?” My nightgown had ridden up just enough that it was apparent from the angle Mom was looking down at me that I hadn’t been wearing any protection at all. If the bed had been dry, I felt like I could have talked my way out of the situation, but there was no good way to explain the lack of a pull-up when waking to a wet bed. “I forgot,” I mumbled, eyes still focused on the scene of the crime. How had I not even woken up? I should have woken up. At least then I could have dealt with the wet sheets like I had last night. “And did you forget last night as well?” Mom asked quietly. “I didn’t,” I insisted. “I was just tired last night.” “You need to hurry and get in the shower,” Mom said. “We’re already running late, and you need to get all your bedding in the wash before we leave.” With that last command, Mom was out the door, closing it behind her and leaving me alone with my thoughts. I took a second to survey the damage. It was just as bad as last night, perhaps even worse, since this time my bladder had waited longer before releasing. It made no sense. I had stopped taking that stupid medicine. But that had just been yesterday. Maybe it needed time to get out of my system. That was it. I would keep pressing on. It wasn’t my fault. I’d be dry at night in no time at all. I swung my legs off the mattress, twisting to avoid further touching the pee-soaked parts of it. As my feet hit the floor, I felt a sudden ache in my right side. I lifted up my nightgown, expecting to see a bruise, but while it was sensitive to the touch, my skin color was completely normal. The first few steps toward the hallway were a little uncomfortable as they brought with them additional small jolts of pain in the same location, but by the time hot water was pouring over me, I was feeling much better. After showing and dressing, I rolled my laundry up into a big bundle to carry downstairs. I had hoped that everyone but Mom would be gone for the day already. But Dad, whose turn it was to take Jackson to his summer camp, was still downstairs, as was Grace. Jackson didn’t even notice my presence. He was too busy watching a show on a tablet propped up next to his bowl of cereal. But I didn’t have the same luck with my older sister. Her eyes shifted down to the bundle in my arms and back up to my face. She knew. In the rush to get out the door, I played my part just as carefully as I had the day before. Medicine was accepted without complaint, with the pills discreetly discarded once everyone was out of sight. I really hoped that it wouldn’t take too long for my body to return to normal. <><><> The summer tutoring I was forced to undergo as a result of my poor grades wasn’t as boring as school, but that was an incredibly low bar to clear. It would have been so much less painful if the result of my end-of-year grades had been a simple grounding. Most of the lessons so far had been math-related – easily my worst subject – but that was also relative. My latest report card hadn’t come back with anything better than a C-. There were four other students in this current class. The only relief was that it wasn’t anyone that I knew, a benefit of the tutoring center being in a neighboring suburb. I think my parents had picked it mostly because it was in a location that made it easy for them to drop me off on the way to their jobs. I struggled to pay attention as we were nearing the end of a series of lessons about basic story structures in fiction, the pen in my hand absentmindedly moving back and forth on the wide-rule notebook in front of me that had only a few lines of notes from the first few minutes of the lesson, part of a half-hearted attempt to actually pay attention rather than slip off into random daydreams. I simply couldn’t bring myself to care, and with twenty minutes to go, I was already starting to count down the minutes – second by long second – until I would be done for the day. One thing that was different than school was that there weren’t any bathroom passes in use. If you had to go, you just went. But with the tutoring groups a fraction of the size of my typical middle school classroom, there was actually less leeway for abusing the system to try and skip out on lessons. For once, when my bladder started aching, I wasn’t annoyed at the sudden need to pee. I wouldn’t have lied about needing to use the bathroom to get myself a break from the lesson, but I had no qualms about using a legitimate need to urinate as an excuse to get away for a few minutes. Once out in the hallway, I didn’t rush to the bathrooms, shifting instead to a more leisurely pace. I followed up the bathroom visit with a long pause at the drinking fountain, more to delay my return than to quench my thirst. “I’m not giving out any homework to do before you’re back later this week,” the tutor said upon my return, “but I want you to spend some time thinking about some of your favorite stories, whether that’s books, movies, TV shows, or even comics.” I stared blankly at the nearly empty notebook in front of me. This wasn’t fair. I had been promised there would be no homework, and no matter what the tutor said, this sounded an awful lot like homework. I attempted to block out the noise, determined that I wasn’t going to spend a single second thinking about these lessons once I was out of the classroom, when a familiar phrase pierced through my mental wall – Fan Fiction – and I suddenly sat upright in my seat. “We’re going to start doing some writing for our next lesson, and we’re going to start by having you write short stories set in the same world as your favorite stories.” I bit my lower lip, begging my cheeks not to turn red from embarrassment, as a series of images of the types of stories I had read this weekend passed through my mind. “One of the most challenging parts of a story is coming up with your own world and setting to put it in,” the tutor said. “The benefit of fan fiction is you can focus on the technical parts of writing fictional prose without having to worry about all of the worldbuilding just yet.” I didn’t know if I was ready to return to the world of Harry Potter just yet. But what was I supposed to write about then? I couldn’t recall the last time I had read – and finished – a non-Harry Potter book. I had tried several. I had never been able to get into that series about the kids of the Greek gods, which had initially seemed promising, and I had only been able to get a few chapters into The Chronicles of Narnia before putting it down in annoyance. Well, maybe I could. I couldn’t let all this stuff about diapers keep me away forever. There had been a handful of non-diaper-related Harry Potter stories on the fan fiction site I had visited that could be worth exploring. And an academic excuse might just be enough to win Dad over to letting me read them. <><><> My stomach churned uneasily as I took a seat at the dinner table. The chair grated against the floor as I pushed it back as far as I could from the table while still being able to reach my plate. It wasn’t so much that I felt like I was going to throw up as the smell of lasagna was somehow making me feel queasy. I started with a large sip of water before catching myself and hastily setting the glass back down on the table, nearly tipping it over in the process. I needed to keep my liquids to a minimum if I wanted to give myself the best chance possible for my bedwetting to stop now that I was no longer taking those pills. I managed to get about half of the serving of lasagna down before I simply couldn’t make myself take another bite. My parents weren’t convinced when I told them I was done with dinner, but they also didn’t force me to eat anything more; they sent me to the kitchen to package up the leftovers just in case I got hungry again later tonight. The need to pee hit me in the worst way right after I closed the refrigerator door. Jackson was headed in my direction from the other end of the hallway, equidistant from the bathroom. Then he sped up, and before I could realize that I had become a contestant in the race to get to the bathroom first, my younger brother had already won it as the bathroom door slammed shut. Ugh. I continued my march forward, past the bathroom and toward the kitchen. I wasn’t going to let myself appear that visibly desperate. Besides. He was a boy. He’d be out in no time at all. I cringed at the thought that he probably wouldn’t even wash his hands after. I lingered in the kitchen for almost a minute, swaying back and forth ever so slightly on the balls of my feet until I was confident that the bathroom would be empty once I returned. The bathroom door remained shut on my arrival. Oh. He was doing that. My bladder tensed. I didn’t have time to wait that long if he was instead doing number two. Surely the upstairs bathroom was free. It was not. I arrived upstairs to find another door blocking my path. Two bathrooms were usually plenty for a household of five. I couldn’t recall a time when I had been blocked from going when I was in desperate need of doing so. I stared at the closed bathroom door for a moment. Maybe it wasn’t occupied after all. That wasn’t common. But it happened sometimes. I tentatively rapped my knuckles on the door three times in rapid succession. “Occupied,” came the reply from my older sister. My feet shuffled into a crossed position all of their own accord. Time was running out. Run downstairs and check that bathroom again? No chance. What if Jackson was still using it? My life would be so over if I wet my pants downstairs. My squirming intensified as I slid a hand between my legs and squeezed tightly. The question was no longer whether I would wet my pants, but where I was going to be when it happened. I had to get out of the hallway. No way was I going to leave a puddle for my older sister to step in when she finally got out of the bathroom. Going downstairs had already been ruled out. Cleaning up an accident on my carpeted bedroom floor would be next to impossible. The answer that hit me suddenly was as disturbingly obvious as it was humiliating. But with my desperation increasing exponentially, it was the only thing I could think of. There was something in my drawer that could help. The humiliation of putting on a pull-up after having sworn them off was less than the potential humiliation of having a family member discover that I had peed all over the floor in the middle of the day. In a split second, I was in front of my dresser, hand rushing forward to grasp the handle of the drawer. I told myself I wasn’t going to open it again to do the thing I had promised myself that I was never going to do again. Shorts and underwear dropped to the floor. On went the pull-up. Then shorts on top of it. I heard the toilet flush as I stood with my legs crossed together. Maybe I could avoid having an accident after all. I took a step toward the door only to hear a loud crinkle. No. I couldn’t leave just yet. I had to wait for the coast to clear. I listened to the water running in the sink. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Why did Grace have to be so thorough with washing her hands? Another five seconds and the water was off. By now, I was swaying back and forth like a flag caught in a hurricane. The bathroom door creaked open a few seconds later. “All yours, Maddy,” Grace called out. I didn’t move a muscle. No way was I stepping out into the hallway before I could be certain that Grace was gone. I couldn’t have her knowing I was wearing a pull-up, and I had no doubt that she would notice. But Grace’s footsteps didn’t make their way in my direction, which would have had her heading to her bedroom. Instead, they faded away until a silence arrived that told me she was at least halfway down the stairs. I didn’t have a moment to spare. I dashed out into the hallway and into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. I stood in front of the toilet with my back to it. My hands grabbed the stretchy elastic of my shorts, pulling them below my waist and then releasing to let them tumble down to land in a heap by my feet. The pull-up was next, but the instant my fingers came into contact with the waistband, my bladder gave way. I needed to go so very badly. There was no way the pull-up would avoid leaking. The stream stopped after only a couple of seconds. But the pressure in my abdomen didn’t let up. My body ping-ponged back and forth a half-dozen times between peeing and pausing in the preceding thirty seconds as I emptied my bladder in short but strong spurts until the tension in my inside was gone. At least a leak at this point would be easy to clean up off the tile floor. But the pull-up actually hadn’t leaked. Not that it would have mattered at this point. I ripped the wet pull-up off. It wasn’t my fault. I would have made it to the toilet on time with plenty to spare had Jackson not rushed ahead of me. And if my parents had just bought a house with an adequate number of bathrooms, it wouldn’t have been a problem for Grace to be occupying the second one. <><><> Discarding the wet pull-up had not been an easy task, but I hadn’t dared let it stay in its hiding spot, lest anyone notice the smell. The soaked disposable undergarment was still warm as I rolled it into a ball and hid it under my shorts as I dashed back to my bedroom. The same trick that had worked for getting rid of the diaper the other day also worked for the pull-up, as I tossed it with the remainder of the trash from the small, barely half-full garbage can in my bedroom. I returned to my bedroom completely bored. I needed something – anything – to distract myself. Then I remembered the homework assignment from earlier today. I couldn’t believe that I was actually considering doing homework of my own free will. In the summer, no less. I would just look at the normal fan fiction stories. Not ones about diapers or pull-ups or bedwetting. Nothing that would tempt me to stray from the course I had set for myself this week. But first, I needed some examples. Perhaps Dad would let me have access to that fan fiction site if I explained that it was for educational purposes. I found Dad in his usual post-dinner location – leaning back on his recliner in the living room, typing away on his laptop. Grace was in the room as well, sitting on the couch, watching something on her phone. She hadn’t gone to seclude herself upstairs for a night of working on one of her many art projects. I picked away at a long fingernail on my left hand as I tried to figure out what to say. “Hey, Dad?” I asked tepidly. No response from him. Though, of course, Grace looked up from her phone at me for a half-second. I raised my voice slightly. “Dad? I have a question for you.” The second attempt got his attention, and he looked up from his laptop. “What’s your question?” I launched into a long, meandering explanation of the homework assignment. “… and that is why I want to be able to go on the fan fiction site,” I said a minute later. “I can learn from how other people do it.” “I just don’t think that is a good idea,” Dad said right away. That was so not fair. He hadn’t even taken time to think it over. “But why?” “It’s not just kids that write fan fiction,” Dad said. “Adults do as well, and that type of content isn’t age-appropriate, and there isn’t a way to filter it out.” “But.” “No buts,” Dad said, looking back down at his laptop. “You can write whatever stories you want without that.” I knew better than to press any further. It wasn’t fair. Life would be so much easier if my parents weren’t so strict about the internet. I retreated from the living room, my pace slowing as I neared the kitchen. My mouth was a tad dry. Something to drink would be nice. But I caught myself as I took one step toward the cupboard to grab a glass. I’d only been off those stupid pills for a couple of days, how? It would be better if I didn’t have anything to drink. Pleased with the willpower I had exerted, I returned to my bedroom, determined to find something to keep myself distracted until it was time for bed. A few minutes later, I was at my desk looking blankly at the hand-me-down laptop I had gotten a couple of years ago from Grace, which I typically didn’t have much use for. After a few clicks, I had a blank page in front of me, the mouse cursor blinking rather aggressively. Suddenly, all the ideas that had been swirling around in my head felt like a bunch of mush. Thinking about writing had been so much easier than actually sitting down and doing it. <><><> Two hours – and about five hundred words – later, I had a garbled beginning of a story on the page. I had no idea if I had done anything right. I had tried to follow the same format as some of the stories I had read on Emma’s phone during the sleepover. If and when we had another one, perhaps I would get another chance. I nearly jumped up from the desk when my door creaked open. “Knock, knock,” mom said. It would have been a lot more helpful if she had said that before opening the door. At least my laptop screen wasn’t in view. The idea of someone reading what I had written was mortifying. “What?” “You should be getting ready for bed soon,” Mom said. “And don’t forget to put your nighttime underwear on.” “Mom,” I hissed quietly in response. “It’s fine,” Mom said. “Jackson is asleep, and Grace is still downstairs.” It didn’t matter that I had wet the bed last night. Or the night before. Or the night before that. This night, I knew it was going to be different. I had been off the ADHD pills for a few days now. And, I had actually followed my parents’ instructions for once about not drinking anything after dinner. That was probably the first thing the doctors had mentioned when I had begun my fake bedwetting earlier this summer. That would have to work, then, right? I couldn’t have to pee at night if there wasn’t anything remaining inside to come out. Besides, I had gone to the toilet like five times already since dinner. Another wet bed was simply unimaginable at this point. I tried to write for a few more minutes, but I couldn’t think of anything else. I blamed Mom’s interruption for getting me off track. I didn’t do as Mom had asked. I did get up to brush my teeth, but when I returned to the bathroom, it was only to put pajama shorts over my regular underwear. The pull-ups remained out of sight in the top drawer. I struggled to find a comfortable position after getting into bed, tossing and turning several times before winding up on my stomach. My dry mouth was still a nuisance. Brushing my teeth had only seemed to make things worse, but a parched tongue wasn’t the only thing keeping me from falling asleep. I wanted to sleep on my right side, but couldn’t, as it ached every time I tried to lie down on it. And the headache I had battled last night seemed to have returned even stronger. My bedroom was completely dark. I had shut the door, both to block out light coming from the far end of the hallway and to avoid having the cat sleep on my bed. I closed my eyes the second the door inched open suddenly. I wondered if it was Mom who was checking on me. Her soft voice confirmed that theory a second later. “Maddy, are you asleep already?” I remained as still as I could, completely motionless under the sheets. Even though I was facing the wall, I still shut my eyes as tight as I could. What did Mom want now? Her footsteps traveled across the room, growing louder until she reached the foot of my bed. A hand pressed against my shoulder and rubbed it gently. “Maddy, are you awake? I just want to make sure you are completely ready for bed.” I gave no response. Her hand left my shoulder. And it sounded like she had started to walk away. Good. I was in the clear now. Then her hand patted my bottom. I was so startled that I rolled over to face her. “What, Mom? I’m trying to sleep.” “Madelyn,” she said, stretching out my name just enough for me to tell that something was off. “You aren’t wearing your pull-up.” I would have lied had that been phrased as a question rather than a statement, which instead left me speechless. “I forgot,” I mumbled. “Like you forgot last night?” Mom asked. “Or are you choosing not to wear them on purpose?” I tried to answer that I had just been distracted, but the words got stuck in my throat and came out as a garbled mess. “If you think the nighttime underwear isn’t working well enough for you, we can get something better,” Mom said. “I talked with your doctor, and there are other products we could use.” A week ago, that offer would have been both terrifying and exciting. Now it was just terrifying. But it also didn’t matter. I was going to be dry in the morning anyway. I had no idea what I was supposed to say. In all my plans for the week, I hadn’t remotely considered that this was a conversation that would ever occur. Mom eventually filled the silence. “Why don’t you go ahead and get changed back into a pull-up. Don’t worry about leaks. If they continue, we can find something else to try.” All I could do was nod as Mom left the room, turning on the light before she shut the door. This time, I did as Mom asked. That didn’t make me feel any better when I opened the top drawer and picked out a pull-up to put on. I’d sworn them off on Sunday morning. And this was now the second time since then that I’d had no choice but to put on one. “I’m not a baby,” I muttered to myself. The pull-up crinkled beneath my pajamas as the bed crinkled beneath me. Day 4 The pull-up had a single job to do, and it hadn’t even managed to do it. The wet patch on my bed was smaller than it had been the past two nights, but that would be like saying that getting a half-lump of coal for Christmas would somehow be more meaningful than receiving a whole one. I pulled the sheets closer as a shiver ran through me, only to notice that they weren’t just damp down where the accident had occurred by my waist. My pajama shirt and sheets were cold and clammy with sweat. I shifted over a foot to the left onto a dryer portion of the bed; rolling over still would have been too painful for my still-aching right side. The only thing I had going for me was that I had at least woken up before Mom had come in to check on me. Still, I found myself unable to get out of bed. Leaving meant dealing with the problem. And dealing with the problem meant having Mom and Dad – and probably Grace, for that matter – find out what happened again. This made no sense. This situation was more confusing than any algebra equation I’d been forced to try to solve in school. I had stopped taking the pills. I hadn’t even drunk any water since the small amount I had during dinner. And I had not only wet the bed, but completely soaked through the pull-up as well. This was four nights in a row. The amount of excuses needed to cover for what was happening was growing into an awfully long list. I tried to tell myself that things would be better in one more day, but that was a lie I couldn’t even get myself to believe. So much for my seven-day plan. I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed. I ended up lying in bed for another fifteen minutes until Mom opened my door, this time at least knocking a few seconds before she entered my bedroom. I feigned sleep until I felt her hand on my shoulder. “Madelyn,” Mom said in exasperation as she pulled back the sheets. “Did you change before bed like I asked?” “Yes,” I said in an annoyed tone, as I tugged my shorts down slightly to reveal the top of the pull-ups. “Huh,” mom said, pausing for a moment. She seemed less upset now that she realized I hadn’t skipped out on the pull-ups again. “And you’re sure you didn’t have anything to drink after dinner.” “Yes,” I insisted. “I didn’t have a single drop.” “Why don’t you just hop in the shower, and I’ll take care of getting everything in the wash?” I waited for a moment without saying anything further. Couldn’t Mom give me some privacy? But she remained standing by my bed. “Mom,” I groaned. “Right,” she said, stepping away from the bed and toward the hallway. “I’ll be back in a second to clean up.” <><><> I ripped the pull-up off the second the bathroom door was behind me, and then winced at the noise it had made as I belatedly realized Grace, who was doing her hair in front of the mirror on the other side of the door, would have no doubt heard that recognizable sound. The hot shower did little to improve my mood, though it did make some of the achiness I had been feeling go away. It was all I could do to keep from banging my head against the shower wall. I was doing everything right, wasn’t I? I was limiting my fluids, I was using the toilet before going to bed, and I had stopped with the ADHD pills. I could still manage to drink less, as miserable as that was going to make me. But there had to be something better. But that didn’t feel sufficient, not in the light of how my pull-up had been soaked through this morning. But that was all I could think of, so I took only a slight sip of orange juice before ever-so-carefully pouring the rest down the drain so that my parents wouldn’t suspect anything. I disposed of my ADHD pills with the same ease, glad that at least something was going right this morning. As soon as everyone else was off to work – or in the case of my little brother, to summer camp – I had the whole house to myself. There were no therapy appointments or tutoring sessions today, and Grace was off at work again until dinner. I tried to do some more writing in the morning, but gave up after half an hour of staring blankly at the screen, having only managed to type a single sentence that I promptly deleted. It didn’t help that my parched mouth was proving to be a large distraction. The sip of orange juice was far less than I normally had to drink in the morning, and my mouth was protesting loudly. I didn’t know why I was finding writing so difficult. I had a million different ideas for a Harry Potter fan fiction story running around in my head, but as great as they seemed inside my brain, they felt so very stupid once they were written down. Instead, I allowed myself a few small sips of water before grabbing a Harry Potter book – the one I had thrown on the floor in disgust a couple of days ago – and returning to the bed. I forced myself to read for the next couple of hours – it was that or pace up and down the stairs – but even that familiar comfort kept getting interrupted by visions of the diapered version I had read a few days before. Giving in would be so easy. The pull-ups were right there, only a few feet away in the dressers. I would have hours to wear them uninterrupted. I closed my eyes and bit my lip – nearly to the point of drawing blood – forcing myself to remember how I had felt during the sleepover. That could never, ever happen again. I just had to hold out until the pull-ups were gone. Everything would be easier afterward. That was the problem. I needed to remove myself from their influence. I grabbed the book – and the next one in the series, just in case – and trudged downstairs, putting as much distance as I could between myself and potential temptation. <><><> I tossed the controller gently onto the carpet and lay on my back on the couch. It was barely an hour after lunchtime. Why was I so tired? It wasn’t like I had done anything today. I had stared at a blank text document on a computer screen for a little bit, and then I had stared at a bunch of pages full of words for a few hours before eating leftovers for lunch. That, and I used the toilet more times than I would have expected, given how little I had to drink. The only thing I hadn’t done was my chores, and I didn’t feel all that inclined to do them. Do my chores or close my eyes for a few seconds. The latter was the far more appealing option. I pulled my feet up to the far side of the couch and settled in. Just a few seconds. Then I would get up. For some reason, I never dreamed during naps. I fell asleep instantaneously. I woke up the same way a couple of hours later, springing to an upright position. Something didn’t feel right between my legs. I patted my shorts, then jerked a damp hand away. I glanced down. My shorts were unmistakably soaked through with pee. I tapped my phone. The clock on the lock screen told me my parents could be home in as little as fifteen minutes. There was no time to lose. No time to even begin to try to contemplate what had just taken place. Wet clothes were stripped off and buried at the bottom of the laundry hamper. I patted myself dry with toilet paper before putting on clean clothes. A mass of paper towels, stain remover, and air freshener was retrieved. Five minutes later, I was confident that no trace of my couch-wetting accident remained. No sooner had I put away the cleaning supplies and discarded the used paper towels than the front door opened. <><><> My dad didn’t notice the accident on the couch. But he did notice that my chores hadn’t been completed. I wished it had been Mom who had come home first. She would have just given me a brief look of disapproval before sending me off to do the chores. Instead, I got a ten-minute-long lecture from Dad about how I needed to be more responsible if I was going to be having the house to myself all day long. The worst of it was that he just kept repeating himself after a while. I stared at his chin as he talked, not quite looking him all the way in the eye. <><><> The cat litter was particularly gross today. It apparently takes cats more than one brain cell to remember to cover up their messes in the litter box. I retreated from the smell, returning only after I had plugged both of my nostrils with toilet paper. That gave me enough courage to approach the litter box. With the litter scoop in one hand and a plastic bag in the other, I squatted down next to it. Then I started peeing. The warm liquid raced through my shorts, creating a yellow waterfall that splashed on the concrete floor between my feet. I found myself frozen, unable to move, only able to stare down in horror at how my body had betrayed me yet again. My mind raced for ideas on how to quickly clean up the mess before I settled on the obvious solution. I poured out a small pile of clean litter onto the puddle of urine, waited half a minute for everything to get soaked up, and then scooped it all into the bag before finishing my chore for real. <><><> I paced back and forth in my room at a speed that had me working up a small sweat. I had tossed out the litter and made it to my room with my dad being completely oblivious to the accident. My wet clothes were buried at the bottom of the hamper. I’d deal with them tomorrow. But having changed into dry underwear and shorts did nothing to resolve my problems. None of this made any sense. The nighttime accidents were bad, but at least I could try to reason with both why they were happening and take steps to prevent them. But there was no explanation for wetting my pants in broad daylight, and without an explanation, I didn’t have any direction for how to stop it from happening again. I paused in the middle of the bedroom. There was a sudden queasiness in my stomach. I instinctively grabbed the garbage bin beneath my desk without a moment to spare as the contents of my lunch came hurling out. The vomiting only lasted a few seconds, but the aftertaste in my mouth was indescribably disgusting. I raced to the bathroom sink, where I splashed water into my mouth with cupped hands, spitting it out until the last remnant of that awful taste was gone. I was sorely tempted to drink some water after I had finished rinsing out my mouth, but I ignored that urge. There was no scenario where I could wake up tomorrow morning in a wet pull-up. I would allow myself the smallest amount to drink during dinner, but nothing else for the rest of today. I started to laugh. I was just sick. That was all. Everything would be fine once I got whatever I was dealing with out of my system. I opened the medicine cabinet, scanning the contents, looking for something that might address my latest symptoms. My parents always joked that they knew I was truly sick when I would willingly drink my medicine without complaint. I grabbed a bottle of the strongest stuff, measured out the dark green syrup carefully, then poured out a little extra, just for good measure. It somehow tasted even worse than the vomit, but I gulped it down anyway in a single shot. <><><> It was all I could do to leave the dinner table gracefully mid-meal. I eased the chair back slowly as I excused myself from the table. I took calm, measured steps until I was out of sight. And then I ran to the bathroom like my life depended on it, because it most certainly did. The bad news was that I didn’t make it to the toilet on time. The good news was that I hadn’t had hardly anything to drink since lunch and had already peed a lot – both in and not in the toilet – so I had only leaked enough to leave a quarter-sized wet patch on my black shorts. I examined the wet spot on my shorts closely as I sat on the toilet, wincing as my bladder let out a few additional warm spurts of pee into the toilet, debating whether or not my parents or siblings would be able to notice. I dabbed at my shorts with toilet paper for the next two minutes until I was certain that nearly all the evidence of this latest mishap was gone. It hadn’t been more than thirty minutes since I had taken the medicine after vomiting in my bedroom garbage can. It was fine. It took time for those things to work. I was confident I would be feeling better tomorrow. <><><> This time, I put my pull-up on before bed without needing to be asked. I knew Mom would check, and this option was slightly less embarrassing than the alternative of having to be told to put it on later. I was feeling quite cold as I was changing into my pajamas, like Dad had somehow set the thermostat much lower. I was practically shivering as I stood in front of the dresser with nothing on but the pull-up. I rummaged through my closet, pulling out pajamas normally reserved for winter months. Fuzzy pants and a matching, long-sleeved pajama shirt. My suspicions were proven correct a few minutes later when I was standing in front of the sink with a toothbrush in my mouth. Mom peeked her head in from the hallway, gave my bottom the slightest of pats, and then walked out before I had the chance to even react. At least the pull-up was covered up much better than the previous nights, and she didn’t say anything about my pajamas. I rolled my eyes once I was sure Mom was out of sight. I would show her. My pull-up would be dry in the morning. I had been extra careful tonight. I wasn’t feeling hungry, so I hadn’t eaten much, and I had made sure to do a much better job of limiting my fluids. I had even turned down ice cream later in the evening when my parents offered it for dessert. And I had peed so many times today already. Even now, despite my parched mouth, I refused to take even the smallest sip of water. I hoped the medicine would kick in soon. Besides a stomach that was still queasy, my head was starting to ache again, my legs and knees felt stiff, and that on-and-off again aching in my side had returned. After forcing a tiny bit of pee out in the toilet, I helped myself to another half-dose of the same medicine as before. The instructions were to wait six hours between doses, but I didn’t care. I crawled into bed a few minutes later with two extra blankets pulled on top of me in an attempt to stop the shivering. Hopefully, Dad would fix the thermostat before he went to bed. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com

We'll get more info on her symptoms in the next two chapters, but it is interesting that the first reaction many people have to having accidents is to limit fluids, and that limiting fluids too much actually causes more problems, not less. The one thing going for Maddy is at least she hasn't been on them for very long. I do promise that we will see Hannah again, though it is going to be some time still before that happens. Thanks!

Thanks! Yes, it is quite the role reversal for her. It's a fun switch from wanting pull-ups and not getting them to having them and not wanting them. We'll get answers to a lot of those questions in the next several chapters, and I promise the wait will not be long for them. I think it is important to remember that Maddy is only 13, an age where being simultaneously smart and stupid is to be expected. As for her accidents, I promise we will get a concrete answer to what is going on with her very soon -- my lips are sealed on that until then. And yes, that is a good continuity catch. I'll update the chapter to fix that. I would say I made decent progress on most of my resolutions, but I also like to keep them more abstract than actual, hard measurable goals. I think getting this story finished is a pretty reasonable one, though.

One (of my almost certainly way too many) New Year's resolutions is to get this story wrapped up by the end of 2026. I've split the latest chapter into three parts. The next two will be up within a week or so. Chapter 49 - The Next Seven Days (Part 1) DAY 1 Mom didn’t mention anything about my bedwetting mishaps on the short drive home. The aftermath of the storm was evident throughout the neighborhood. Broken branches and leaves were scattered everywhere, and there were a couple more trees that had fallen over, including one in the middle of the road that some men were using a chainsaw to slice up as Mom carefully maneuvered the minivan around it. I covered my ears to block out the grating sound from the machines as the minivan slowed to a crawl until we were clear of them. By the time I had finally gotten my phone charged after the breakup with Hannah, there had been a half-dozen missed messages from my parents, but none of them were too urgent, as they had been in close contact with Emma’s parents regarding last night’s storm. They had made it through the night without any issues, getting down to the basement when the tornado warning came through on everyone’s phones. I had stormed out of Emma’s bedroom with my uncharged phone the moment after declaring that my friendship with Hannah was over, leaving Hannah behind to put her travel diaper on as I retreated downstairs to the game room to retrieve a phone charger from my backpack. Her parents were in a hurry to get on the road, so thankfully, I was able to avoid having to say goodbye before she left. The hour afterward until Mom arrived to take me home had been almost unbearable. Emma and Angie had eventually found their way downstairs as well. There was some small talk made about the storm, followed by a lot of time staring at our phones, with the only ambiance being the sounds from the videos my friends were watching. Not a word was said about the bedwetting incident. I shot up from the couch and grabbed my backpack immediately at the sound of the doorbell ringing, speed-walking out of the room without so much as a goodbye. Now, I sat in the front passenger seat with my hands clenched tight as I surveyed the mild carnage outside. What did Mom know? Did she know about the uncontained bedwetting incident? Did she know that I had spent the second half of the night wearing one of Hannah’s diapers? Did she know that all my friends now thought of me as a bedwetter? Perhaps Mom didn’t know. Maybe Emma’s mom hadn’t found my bedwetting to be anything worth mentioning to my parents, as she had already been forewarned about it. That would be the best scenario. I stuck fingers out from my closed hands one by one as I counted upward, as I calculated how many nights it would take until I could convince Mom that I could go to bed without pull-ups, and the remaining ones could be removed from my dresser. Seven days. One week. A nice even – well, not technically even – number. Maybe I’d let the first two nights pass without saying anything. Excitedly inform my parents of three consecutive dry nights on the third morning. But no hints about moving on from pull-ups just yet. Best if my parents came to that conclusion on their own. Though if five straight nights passed without them bringing up that option, I’d have to be forward with my hints about the topic of returning to regular underwear at night. When we pulled into our driveway, I was thankful to see that we hadn’t experienced any downed trees. I guess what was said about the tornado – apparently only an F1 – having been much closer to Emma’s house had been true. I grabbed my backpack and eased myself out of the car. My bottom felt a bit weird, though this time it was more to do with what wasn’t covering it than what was, as I had been forced to go commando underneath my shorts for a lack of clean underwear this morning. The old minivan Grace drove was absent from the driveway again. No surprise there. Dad’s car was also nowhere to be found. Another bright spot. That meant my little brother Jackson had gone with him, as he was far too young to stay home alone, even for ten or fifteen minutes. I practically had a spring in my step as I stepped through the front door after Mom unlocked it for me. This was going to be a perfectly normal day. I would read my Harry Potter books, play video games on my Switch, and wear regular underwear and use the toilet as a teen girl actually should. I was done with diapers. Soon, I would be done with pull-ups. For good. I knew what I needed to do. I had a plan. Just stick to it, and everything would be back to normal. “Hold up, Madelyn, there is something I need to ask you.” I froze in my tracks just inside the doorway, clutching my backpack strap firmly in my right hand. Madelyn. My full name was never used on accident. “Did you remember to wear your nighttime underwear last night?” Mom asked as she strolled up beside me. What to say? There was a lot left unspoken in Mom’s question. This wasn’t random. What exactly had she been told? I had two choices, each bringing its own complications. I could lie and claim that I had worn the pull-ups. But how would Mom react if she thought they had leaked? On the other hand, telling her that I hadn’t worn them might make her more vigilant in checking to see if I had them on while I was sleeping, and I intended to never put on a pull-up ever again. “Yes, I wore them to bed,” I lied, making sure not to turn in her direction. “I was texting with Emma’s mom last night. She told me what happened. It sounds like you had quite a bit of pop to drink at dinner.” It was hard to avoid breathing a sigh of relief, but I managed to do so. I could take the heat over having too much to drink. That was easy. The bedwetting would stop starting tonight, and having my parents think that I was becoming better about managing my liquids could be an easy excuse for the sudden change of behavior. “It was only one extra cup,” I complained. It would still be best to protest. If only to keep up appearances. “Maddy, you know better than that. We’ve already talked about this. You have to be careful with how much you are drinking in the evening.” “I was thirsty. And usually we stay up until midnight anyway, so I didn’t think I was actually drinking it that close to going to bed?” “Was everyone too tired to stay up late?” Mom asked. “No, we all had to go to bed early since Hannah’s normal bedtime was at nine. I didn’t know until then.” “I see,” Mom said. “You really need to be more careful, especially when you are sleeping at someone else’s house. Maybe we should put sleepovers on hold for a bit.” I bit my lip. I liked sleepovers. I had fought hard to keep them even while maintaining my fake bedwetting. But the idea of facing Emma and Angie so soon was also unpleasant. I had to be able to spend the night wearing underwear on our next sleepover. I would make sure my pajamas left no doubt that there wasn’t any protective padding on my posterior. A little break wouldn’t hurt. Give myself some time to fake my recovery. I knew I wasn’t going to escape all the teasing. But I could dampen it quite a bit by demonstrating once and for all that I wasn’t a baby like Hannah. “I guess.” “I’m sure that leak was just a one-off,” Mom said. “But if it continues, we can talk about what can be done to handle it.” <><><> I marched upstairs toward my bedroom alone. I had been anxious about the conversation with Mom. But it was over. And nothing had been divulged that would throw off my plan to be rid of my pull-ups once and for all. It had been wishful thinking to hope that the topic wouldn’t come up. After all, Mom had told Emma’s parents about my bedwetting. I still wasn’t happy that Mom had divulged that information, but I wasn’t about to confront her about that. I could already hear her response, that it was a good thing my friend’s parents had been aware, given how there had been a leak. And that probably had saved the embarrassment of needing to explain things more than I would have been able to last night. I tossed my backpack on my bed. Mom had made me take my ADHD meds after the conversation about my bedwetting had concluded. That had been followed by instructions that I was to take care of my laundry right away, as she and Grace were going to need to do theirs later in the day. I examined the overflowing laundry hamper. There was no disputing that it was in immediate need of attention. A sudden aching sensation in my abdomen. I needed to pee fairly badly. I hadn’t even noticed until I was in my bedroom. A minute later, I was finished emptying my bladder into the toilet. Not a lot, but the stream of urine – that had lasted for about five seconds – was still more than nothing. I remained on the toilet for another minute. The discomfort in my bladder seemed to signify that there was more that needed to come out, but that proved to be a lie. I used a couple of sheets of toilet paper to wipe myself clean. There. Not a baby. My hands trembled as I pulled my underwear back into place. How could I have wanted to wear anything other than this? <><><> I unzipped the main section of the backpack until it was open as far as possible, and then flipped it upside down over my bed, shaking it firmly until all the contents had spilled out. At the top of the pile of dirty clothes, power cords, and toiletries was a large white diaper, the one I had taken from Hannah’s suitcase last night. I had been absolutely thrilled to put the diaper in my backpack last night. I figured it was a well-deserved reward for the stresses of having to put up with attending a sleepover with Hannah. I examined the diaper for a moment. It was so incredibly thick. Thick enough to wear and wet for hours without any worries about leaks. Memories returned of how the padding had felt when it had been wrapped around me. No. Stop. I couldn’t allow myself to be tempted. I would not allow myself to be tempted. I grabbed the diaper as fast as I could and tucked it back inside the backpack. I then turned immediately to face the open bedroom door, peering out toward the hallway. No one in sight. Of course. The house was basically empty. And Mom was never quiet when she trod up the stairs. How could I have forgotten about the diaper? That answer to that question was obvious. There had been plenty to distract me. But still. I was fortunate to have emptied the backpack now. There was so much that could have gone wrong had I done it at a different time. After closing the bedroom door, my gaze returned to the diaper. I wasn’t concerned about anyone else finding the diaper. I had managed to keep the previous one hidden without any issues. I was more concerned that its presence would cause me to forget all I had gone through last night and the moment of clarity I had arrived at this morning. I looked at the tiny trash bin under my desk. If I had been asked under different circumstances, I would have described it as half-empty. But today it was half-full. Grace, Dad, and Jackson were gone. Mom was somewhere else in the house doing who knows what. Empty the trash. Toss out the diaper. Avoid any risk of backsliding. Mom and Dad saved all the plastic bags from shopping trips to be used for emptying cat litter or small garbage bins. I grabbed one from downstairs, sifting through the bags until I found the right one. It had to be opaque. It couldn’t be something white or otherwise easily seen through, not without risking the diaper becoming visible. I didn’t catch a glimpse of Mom on my way back to my bedroom with three plastic bags in hand. I examined the triple-bagged diaper a few minutes later. Three layers of opaque plastic and garbage left it completely hidden. I passed by Mom on the way to toss the bag in the garage garbage bin, casually shifting it from my right hand to my left to keep it as out of sight as possible, but the only response from Mom was a brief compliment on how I was doing a better job remembering to do my chores. As I lifted the nearly full garbage bin, I remembered that this wouldn’t be the only diaper deposited in there. I left the well-wrapped diaper on top of a pile of garbage bags and closed the lid. Garbage pickup was tomorrow. Just a few hours, and it would be gone forever. <><><> I was in desperate need of a distraction a few hours later. Grace had arrived home by lunchtime, having just worked a morning shift. And Dad had returned with Jackson from running errands at a few hardware stores. I retreated upstairs after a quick lunch. Grace and Jackson didn’t know my shame. But Mom knew, and, by extension, that meant Dad knew as well. I pulled the first book of the Harry Potter series from the bookshelf and hopped back onto my bed. And of course, the bed crinkled loudly. I let out a long sigh. I didn’t think this was a reminder that I was easily going to be rid of. I opened the book. At this point, if I had wanted to, I could probably have recited the first chapter from memory. But even then, it felt better to see the words below me on the page. But as I flipped past pages worn from heavy use, I couldn’t help but be reminded of what I had read just the night before on Emma’s phone, the story set in an alternate reality where Hermione arrived at Hogwarts as a bedwetter. A concept that had left me enthralled last night disgusted me now. I could feel the swollen diaper I’d woken up to this morning, the stickiness of the leftover urine on my skin before I washed myself clean. That’s what my obsession had done to me. I couldn’t even read my favorite book without feeling gross. I slammed the paperback book shut and tossed it angrily to the floor like a Frisbee. I rolled off the bed. It crinkled beneath me one last time. <><><> My phone remained silent. No messages had arrived yet from Emma and Angie. After stomping out of my bedroom – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone left on the floor — I got pressed into assisting Dad and Jackson with yardwork. No trees had fallen in our backyard, but there were plenty of sticks – big and small – scattered about that all needed to be picked up before Dad could mow the lawn. I stretched my arm back and rubbed my neck in annoyance. The sun was bearing down hot, as the departing thunderstorm had left no clouds behind in its wake. Mom had insisted on sunscreen, and I had winced, wiggled, and squirmed uncomfortably as she lathered it thick on all the parts that were hard for me to reach. “It’s not fair,” I muttered as I walked past Dad toward a cluster of broken branches on the ground. “Why isn’t Grace out here, too?” “Your sister already worked for six hours this morning,” he said. “She’s more than entitled to a break.” I rolled my eyes once I was sure Dad wouldn’t notice. But as I continued to pick up sticks and deposit them into the yard bin, I had to begrudgingly admit that being busy helped keep my mind from wandering, at least for a short bit, and certainly better than my attempt at reading had gone. At least until I suddenly needed to pee really badly, the kind of feeling that makes it clear that were I to ignore it, it would be at my own peril. I only had a couple of sticks in my hand at the moment, but I started to walk toward the yard bin on the patio near the back door. The decision was automatic; no need for an internal debate over whether I could just hold it for another fifteen minutes until cleanup was complete. “You can’t leave. We’re not done yet,” Jackson complained as I speed walked past him. “I’ll be right back,” I said, spitting the words out at the same fast pace as my footsteps. I abandoned all dignity and sprinted the last ten steps to the back door. Once inside, I nearly bumped into Mom as I rounded the hallway corner toward the bathroom on the main floor. “Maddy, watch where you are going,” she scolded as I made another turn toward the closest bathroom. I was nearly out of breath by the time my bare skin came into contact with the cold toilet seat. I wince a little as I started to pee into the toilet; it felt as though I needed to use extra effort to get the stream started. I hurried to wipe myself clean before standing up from the toilet. I didn’t want to be accused of slacking, but I noticed something was wrong when I pulled my underwear back up. The cotton hugging my skin felt slightly damp. After tugging the underwear back down to my knees, I shifted my gaze toward my feet. There was a sizable damp patch on the center of my underwear. My head ached as the gears sped up inside my brain. I hadn’t wet myself. That couldn’t be it. It was hot out. Probably just sweat. There was nothing to worry about. There was nothing visibly wrong with my black shorts. I ran my hands along the inside. The shorts, at least, were completely dry as far as I could tell. I took one last look at my underwear before pulling it up. No one but me knew. No one but me would ever know. I snuck upstairs to change into a new pair of underwear. <><><> The bed crinkled softly beneath me as I lay down for the night. Even when going to bed without a pull-up, I couldn’t escape being reminded of my current predicament. One week till the pull-ups were gone. I hoped that the plastic protective mattress would soon follow. I had even half-way obeyed my parents’ prohibition on liquids close to bedtime. Unlike past weeks, when I had intentionally hydrated so as to fill my bladder up to be able to intentionally wet the bed, I had limited my extra consumption of water to a few discreet sips here and there when I was sure no one was watching. What a difference a day made. Last night I went to sleep dreaming of diapers. Tonight I went to sleep planning on how to get them out of my life forever. As sleep gradually overtook me, I pondered the possibility of dropping a subtle hint about having had a dry night to my parents tomorrow morning. DAY 2 I spent the night tossing and turning as my mind meandered through several increasingly bizarre dreams, the kinds where one knows that it is a dream, but is powerless to do anything but get carried along by the machinations of the sleeping mind. I was back on the soccer field with Emma and Angie. We were playing in a match in a massive stadium, but instead of kicking around a soccer ball, we were kicking around a bright, orange inflatable pumpkin. Next, I dreamt that I was wandering around by myself in the library, certain that there was an eighth book in the Harry Potter series that I could find somewhere on the shelves, but having my search constantly thwarted when I kept finding silly knockoffs instead. I kept wandering through each section until at last I stumbled upon a children’s story time. A couple of preschoolers were seated on the floor in a half circle, all facing a librarian, who was holding the picture book she was reading to them. Sitting among the preschoolers was Hannah. I would have recognized her trademark noise-cancelling earmuffs anywhere, but it was the sight of her white adult diaper – completely uncovered – that let me know it was her. Hannah tilted her head back to face me, plucking a pacifier from her mouth while shrugging her shoulders. “Sometimes it is easier to pretend to be a baby.” No one else seemed perturbed by the presence of an unpotty-trained teenage girl, a contradiction only somewhat soothed by a vague sense that I had yet to return to the waking world. The third dream was the strangest of them all. At first, I felt as though I had entered a time machine and traveled back to my toddler days. The room I was in did have some semblance to the backgrounds of old picture albums my parents would occasionally bring out. But then again, there were only so many different ways a nursery could get set up. Pastel pink walls. Strips of wallpaper with repeating images of cuddly forest critters. A large plush rug stretched across a wood floor. There were the obvious furnishings, a crib alongside one wall, a changing table on the wall opposite it, with a diaper bin to its side. A large, thickly cushioned rocking chair sat in one corner. Scattered about me were all manner of childhood implements. A half-empty bottle filled with what looked like milk, plastic rattles, a handful of baby dolls, wood building blocks, and other assorted toys. The idea that this was just a dream of mine in my childhood fell apart when I turned toward the door, which had a full-length mirror hanging on it. What stared back at me wasn’t the image of my early childhood days that I’d seen in family photos, but normal-sized teenage me, all dressed up like a baby. Hair braided into pigtails. Pacifier in my mouth. Bib hung around my neck. A bright-colored t-shirt emblazoned with puppies from a popular kids' show. My eyes drifted further down along the reflection, and my mouth gaped open at the sight of what I was wearing around my waist, causing the pacifier to tumble out onto the floor. I was wearing a diaper. It didn’t look like the diapers that Hannah wore. It was like someone had taken a baby diaper and just sized it up until it was big enough to comfortably fit a teenage girl. I also needed to pee. Like really bad. I stood up from the floor, intent on finding a bathroom, only now noticing that I still didn’t dwarf the furnishings, as I should have had they been baby-sized. There was no doubt that teenage me would have fit easily on the changing table or in the crib. I placed my hand on the doorknob. If this room were a recreation of my childhood, I would know my way to the bathroom once I entered the hallway. But wait. That was silly. I was wearing a nice, big, poofy diaper. Babies don’t go potty in the toilet. Babies go potty in their diapers. I let my bladder relax, and a stream of warm spread out beneath me as I awoke to wet pajamas and bedding. Unlike in my dream, there was no absorbent padding wedged between my legs to take care of the sudden flow of urine. That was instead a task for my sheets, which were not well-suited for the challenge. I clenched my legs together, but that somehow only seemed to make matters worse. My bladder had a mind of its own, and there was no stopping it. The radius of the ensuing puddle was gigantic. This had still been a dream. Just another layer of it. Like that movie, Dad had been so excited to show us earlier this summer. I closed my eyes. I grit my teeth as I pinched both of my cheeks as hard as I could. I opened my eyes. The puddle was still there, barely visible, the slim rays of moonlight tracing their way through half-opened window blinds were unfortunately enough for me to know that what I was seeing was real. I found myself unable to move for the next minute. Once was a fluke. What did twice mean? Blame had to be reassigned. Because it wasn’t my fault. It couldn’t be my fault. I was not a baby. There had been no thunderstorms or tornadoes tonight. I hadn’t overdosed on pop before heading off to sleep. Where did the fault lie? What had changed prior to the actual accidents starting? I stared upward at the ceiling as I racked my brain, trying to come up with what was different. Why had I suddenly wet the bed two nights in a row shortly after coming back from camp? That was it. Coming back home from camp. Those stupid pills that were supposed to make my brain work better or something. It was so obvious I almost laughed. Then I did laugh for real, a quiet chuckle that I muffled by holding a pillow up to my face lest I wake my parents. Then my heart sank. Like my parents would believe the pills were the problem. They thought my bedwetting had begun well before that new medication had been prescribed. How would I be able to get them to at least pause that medication? New plan. Secretly stop taking the pills. Stay dry for a week, starting tomorrow morning. I would need to figure out a way past that point to get off that medication, but I’d cross that bridge while wearing underwear. I rolled all of my bedding and wet pajamas into a massive bundle that I could barely hold in my arms. The accident had been large; that silly dream about wearing a diaper and pretending to be a baby had left my bladder overconfident when it had come time to release, and nothing on my bed aside from the pillows had stayed dry. I examined the thin crack underneath Grace’s door as I exited the bedroom. I couldn’t detect any light coming up. But that wasn’t always a good sign that my older sister was asleep. She often liked to stay up late in the dark, working on one graphic design project or another. The hard part was the walk down the hallway, but I made it to the top of the stairs without anyone getting out of bed and spotting me. The rest was easy; it was just a repeat of the routine I had gone through in the early stages of my fake bedwetting attempt. I’d leave it in the washing machine overnight, and then put it over to the dryer later in the morning when I had the house to myself. I did have tutoring later in the day, but Dad would swing by from work to take me over there after lunch. <><><> My bed was dry when morning officially arrived. I shut my bedroom door behind me before going downstairs. I didn’t want anyone to get a glimpse inside and notice the bedding had been swapped out. As long as I could keep my midnight laundry run a secret, I figured I could get away with claiming that this had been the first dry night, which of course would be followed by many more once I was no longer taking the ADHD pills. Everyone but Grace was already in the kitchen by the time I got downstairs after hopping in the shower. “Good morning,” Mom said after taking a brief glance up at me from her phone. “I moved your wet laundry to the dryer and got it started.” My heart rate sped up. Well, there went that plan. Jackson, who was busy with his nearly empty bowl of cereal, wouldn’t pick up on what Mom said. But if my older sister was in earshot, she – as a former bedwetter – would guess right away what had happened. I looked around for Grace. Even though she was a night owl, it wasn’t like her to sleep in longer than I did. She seemed to be out of earshot. At least something was going my way. “Where’s Grace?” I asked. “She’s off at work already,” Dad answered. I sat down at the table with a thump after making myself a piece of toast at Mom’s insistence that I at least eat something. I didn’t get why my older sister was so obsessed with work. I couldn’t imagine waiting on tables for eight straight hours, or doing any kind of work for that long, for that matter. Jackson was out of the kitchen a few minutes later, along with Dad. “You did wear it last night, right?” Mom asked from across the kitchen table once Jackson was out of sight. Great. Another lecture. Another reason I would be glad to put this stupid bedwetting nonsense behind me. “Yes, I did,” I replied. “Have there been other times you’ve had to get up in the middle of the night to change your bedding because of leaks?” Mom asked. “No, just this time,” I said. “And last night at the sleepover,” Mom added. “Just because you have your bedtime underwear to wear doesn’t mean you don’t still have to be careful with how much you are drinking in the evening.” “Yes, Mom. I will.” “Oh, I almost forgot,” Mom said. “I need to get your medicine before I leave for work.” I nibbled slowly on the remainder of my toast as Mom got up from the kitchen table to fetch the pills. By this point, the administration of my medication was unsupervised outside of Mom or Dad retrieving my dose from the medicine cabinet for me in the morning. Once she was back, Mom handed me the pills along with a half-glass of water, and then went to put the dishes from her breakfast in the sink. With Mom’s back turned, I slid the pill into my pocket and then quickly chugged a few large sips of water as if I were washing the pill down like normal. A few minutes later, I was in the bathroom, flushing the pills down the toilet. Mission accomplished. <><><> It annoyed me to no end that the therapy sessions continued despite being diagnosed with ADHD and given those pills to take every morning. I mean, yes, I was now deciding to skip the pills. But neither my parents nor the therapist knew that, and I certainly wasn’t telling. I took a seat on the couch at the start of the session with a bit of annoyance. This was going to be another long forty-five minutes. Dad had picked me up to bring me to the appointment shortly after lunch, and would take me home again before returning to work. The therapist asked me about my weekend. I had to decide in a split second whether Mom and Dad would have mentioned the incident at the sleepover. I decided just to tell her that it had been good and leave it at that. While my bedwetting had been a topic when these appointments had begun over the summer, things had shifted much more toward school, my grades, and all these weird assessment quizzes that made no sense at all. My answer about the weekend went unchallenged, though I wasn’t able to avoid follow-ups, which I answered as directly and briefly as possible. The discussion focused more on the storm, and there weren’t any questions about my bedwetting. But that only took a few minutes. Next, it was time for yet another one of those stupid assessments. This time it was a game, a Harry Potter quiz to be exact. Only these weren’t ever actually games, which always left me confused about how my answers to the questions were being interpreted. If I hadn’t stumbled across the fan fiction story on Emma’s phone at the sleepover, I wouldn’t have minded the topic as much. The process was the same as all the other games we had played. The therapist would ask me questions, jot things down on paper, ask me follow-ups, then jot even more things down on paper as I sat awkwardly on the couch across from her with one leg tucked underneath me, beginning to get numb. “Are you all set?” she asked. I glanced over at the clock on the wall. Thirty minutes remained for this forty-minute session. Then I nodded affirmatively. The questions began. I would have liked it a lot better if it had been like an actual trivia quiz, but it was all about nonsense, like asking about what I would have done if I had been in certain characters’ places at various points in the story. I shifted my position on the couch ever so slightly. I needed to pee, but it wasn’t so bad as to need to leave the room right away. I hadn’t ever gone to the bathroom before at this office, but there was one that I had passed in the hallway on my way in. “Can I go to the bathroom?” I interjected, cutting off the therapist in the middle of one of her way too many questions. “We only have five minutes left. Can you wait until we are done?” My bladder informed me that “Yes” was not a truthful answer to that question. “No,” I said in a timid squeak as my voice cracked. A second later, I was out the door. Another thirty seconds later, I was safely on the toilet. <><><> The first thing I did once I was back in the car with dad was ask him when I would finally get to stop seeing the therapist. “We’ll just have to wait and see,” was his cryptic response. Dad dropped me off at home before heading back to the office, leaving instructions that I eat healthy leftovers from the fridge and not just graze on snacks all afternoon. Summer break had never felt so boring. I hadn’t realized until now just how much of my time had been spent obsessing over pull-ups and diapers. Now that I wasn’t doing that – and everything Harry Potter related was still not all that appealing – I wasn’t sure at all what to do with myself. I did comply with Dad’s request – though I did pick out the peas from the casserole and toss them in the garbage. But lunch proved to be a meager distraction. I didn’t have any other games for the Switch yet, so that was out of the question as well. Instead, I found myself wandering back upstairs, looking to see where the cat was taking a nap. But that didn’t work. Going to my bedroom reminded me of the pull-ups hidden in the dresser, the creaking steps in the hallway of the times I had snuck across it in urine-soaked pajamas. And anyway, the cat wasn’t to be found. Grace and my parents both kept their bedroom doors closed, so he wasn’t in there. The orange cat was nowhere to be seen in my room. I even checked quickly under my younger brother’s bed, and he wasn’t there either. My search continued unsuccessfully on the main floor. Not under the couch. Not in his cat bed in the corner of the living room. Not curled up in one of the bathroom sinks. Down once more to the basement. I found myself unable to enter the laundry room, the memory of what I had done in there earlier this summer too vivid and raw. I had sat on the chair, holding in my bladder as it screamed at me to be released. Only, now it wasn’t just a memory; I did, in fact, need to pee extremely badly. I leapt up the stairs, going up two steps at a time. Then, of course, I found the cat. The stupid creature had decided that this was the perfect time to run down stairs – how on earth had I not noticed him earlier? I was near the top of the stairs as he darted past me. I shifted course just slightly, but it was enough for my foot to slip, and instead of clearing the last step safely, my foot caught on it and I tumbled onto the kitchen floor. My knee ached really badly. But my bladder was suddenly calm. That was not a good trade. The result was a large puddle of pee on the kitchen floor. Suddenly out of breath, I lay still on the floor for about a minute before slowly easing myself up. I cleaned up the mess at a frenetic pace, even though I still had hours to go before anyone else was supposed to be home. Urine-soaked clothes were tossed in the washing machine. Floor scrubbed perfectly clean. It wasn’t my fault. It wouldn’t have happened if not for that stupid cat. <><><> The first sign that the reins were tightening on my evening liquid consumption came at the dinner table. My glass of water was technically full, but it had been filled nearly to the top with ice before Mom had filled it from a pitcher of filtered water. A quick look around the table told me that my glass had way more ice in it than anyone else’s. That was half a glass at best. The ice wouldn’t be close to finishing melting before I was finished eating my dinner. And of course, these restrictions just had to be in place on a night when Mom had made a chicken and pepper stir fry that was spicier than I would have liked. I rationed the water as best I could through the meal, my hand left wet from condensation after each time I set the glass back down on the dining room table. The next sign wasn’t subtle at all. I had gone to the kitchen an hour after dinner, intent on just getting myself a small drink as my mouth was beginning to feel parched. The air conditioning wasn’t on nearly as much as I thought it should be at this point in the summer. I had just finished filling the glass about two-thirds of the way full when Mom entered the kitchen. “Maddy, that’s a bit too much for this later in the evening. Can you pour some of it out into the sink?” I tipped the cup over slightly for a second. It was about half-full. “Madelyn, that’s still too much. A quarter-glass is enough for now.” I complied with the request, then downed the water in a single large gulp. During the beginning of my fake bedwetting, I had flouted my parents' liquid restrictions by keeping a secret bottle of water filled in my room. Most of that had been to make it easier for me to wet the bed at night, but it also had been partly due to the fact that not drinking anything after dinner left my mouth parched. Doing that again was awfully tempting, but I didn’t want to risk it. The fastest way to get rid of my pull-ups was to have my parents think that I was complying, and that was finally producing results. But the reminders didn’t stop there. It was still an hour before my normal bedtime, but I was already struggling to keep my eyes open. After the third loud yawn, I got up from the couch, feeling a brief, sharp sting in my head as I did so. My trip up to the second floor was at a more leisurely pace than my normal two-stairs-at-a-time sprint. My legs ached a little – probably from the fall earlier – and my head still didn’t feel great either. Mom was coming down the stairs as I was making my way up to my bedroom. “Don’t forget to use the toilet before you go to bed,” she said. I did as Mom instructed, even though for once today I didn’t have a strong feeling of needing to go. Afterward, before I got started on brushing my teeth, I cupped my hands under the bathroom sink and splashed a cold, if not particularly pleasant taste-wise bit of water into my mouth. Just a little. There was no way I’d be able to fall asleep as parched as I was at the moment. My head still ached, though not nearly as badly as when I had stood up from the couch a few minutes ago. It felt better after I dabbed at my forehead with a cold, damp washcloth. After getting undressed, I opened the top drawer of my dresser to an unwelcome sight – all of my generic brand bedwetting pull-ups. Yet another reminder I was forced to look at every time I got dressed. I didn’t want to look at them anymore. I took all of my underwear and socks and removed them from the top drawer, shoving them into the one below it that typically was reserved for my t-shirts. They barely fit, but at least I wouldn’t have to look at the pull-ups ever again, except perhaps when it came time to toss the pull-ups away for good a week from now.