Chapter 9

One of the first things I noticed when I woke up was how bright my bedroom was, which made a lot of sense when I looked at the clock and realized I had slept in until almost 11am. I sat up in bed and stretched, my joints popping as I did. My body may have felt stiff from its extended repose, but I felt refreshed and ready to leap out of bed. So I did.

I made my way downstairs and headed into the kitchen at the behest of my rumbling stomach. I poured myself a bowl of cereal and a sippy cup full of iced tea and made my way into the living room, pushing my dishes from the night before aside to place my new dishes in their place. Before long, I was shoveling cereal into my mouth while I watched the end of the movie I had drifted off to sleep watching the night before.

The credits had barely begun to roll when the doorbell rang, causing me to leap up from the couch, suddenly incredibly aware of the fact that I was still wearing my pull-up from the night before: soaked, of course. I stood there for a moment, trying to decide if I should just answer the door or if I should try to ditch my pull-up in the bathroom first, but when the doorbell rang a second time, I dashed over to the door and pulled it open without even checking the peephole. Sabrina stood on the other side of the screen door in a white, floral print sundress with a large purse slung over one shoulder. She waved shyly.

“Sabrina!” I exclaimed, open the screen door and beckoning her inside, “What’s brought you this way?”

“Madison is out working on some of the rental properties,” she began explaining as she stepped inside, “and well I guess I got bored and was hoping you wanted some company.”

“I’d love some!” I said, realizing only after the fact how true it was. “I’ve just been watching a movie this morning; do you want to pick something to watch together?”

Sabrina nodded vigorously, “I’d love that!” She began to move towards the living room couch and I followed her…then stopped, suddenly conscious of how loud the rustling of my pull-up under my pajama pants seemed. “What’s wrong? Everything okay?” Sabrina asked when she noticed I wasn’t following.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry, I just…let me know go change out of my pajamas, okay?” I barely finished my sentence before I was running up the stairs. Closing the bedroom door behind me, I leaned against it and took a deep breath to steady myself. I honestly wasn’t sure whether I was more mortified by the fact that Sabrina may have noticed that I was wearing a very sodden pull-up or the fact that I had been wearing it all morning without giving it a single thought. What was wrong with me lately? It was bad enough that I had started wetting the bed again and having accidents during the day, but I felt like I was becoming increasingly scatterbrained.

Wait, started wetting the bed? That didn’t seem to make sense. I had always wet the bed, hadn’t I? Yes, I was quite certain that I had always been a bedwetter, as embarrassing as that sometimes was. The daytime accidents were new though, right? I couldn’t remember ever having accidents as an adult, but…no, I was fairly certain that I had always had bladder controls problems, so why couldn’t I think of a single accident I had before this week? Something was wrong, my head was starting to hurt, a growing ache starting at the center of my forehead and radiating outward. My mind started to get fuzzy; I couldn’t keep a train of thought going through the pain. What had I been thinking about?

A knock at the door suddenly cleared my head and cast the pain away.

“Claire?” Sabrina’s voice came through the door tentatively, “you okay?”

“Y-yeah,” I stuttered shakily. What had I come in here to do? “I’ll be out in just a minute!” I remembered coming upstairs, but not why. Sabrina had arrived and then I came upstairs to…change! Right, to change out of pajamas!

I heard Sabrina’s steps receding down the hallway towards the stairs and I went into the bathroom adjoined to the bedroom where I discarded my pajamas on the floor and my wet pull-up in the trash. I looked around for a box of baby wipes but couldn’t find them. Had I run out? It didn’t matter; I used a warm wash cloth instead and then headed back to the bedroom to find some clothes. I put on a loose, black shirt, a pink skirt that came halfway down her thighs, and a clean pair of panties, pastel yellow with butterflies all over them.

When I returned to the living room, my cheeks immediately flushed with embarrassment when I realized I saw I still had two sippy cups sitting on the coffee table. There were also some dirty dishes, but those were nowhere near as embarrassing as the sippy cups. Why was I using sippy cups anyway? I ran over to the table, almost tripping over my feet, and grabbed the sippy cups, putting them behind my back as if keeping Sabrina from looking at them would somehow erase the fact that she had already seen them. “Sorry, I, uh…” I stammered, trying to think of an explanation for why I had been drinking from sippy cups.

“Let me help you clean up!” She interjected, jumping off the couch and grabbing the plate and bowl still left behind. I stood there slight bewildered as she quickly walked out of the room. I followed her into the kitchen to see she had already deposited the dishes in the sink and was pulling another sippy cup out of the cupboard. “Do you have any of that tea made?” She asked as she moved to the fridge. “I’d absolutely love some of—oh! There it is do you mind if I help myself I can pour you a glass while I’m at if you’d like it’s such a hot day out some iced tea is perfect don’t you think?” She made good on her offer and reached back in the cupboard to produce another sippy cup (somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered if there had always been that many sippy cups in there) and I placed my used ones in the sink as she poured.

“I know some people think using sippy cups is kind of silly,” Sabrina rambled on while she was pouring, “but I think they are a great idea because like you can drink in any position and don’t have to worry about spilling and just try to do that with a regular cup while laying down to watch a movie!” She held out the other cup to me as she took a big drink from her own. “Don’t you think?”

“Y-yeah,” I said with a weak smile, taking the cup from her.

“Come on!” She grabbed my free hand and pulled me into the living room, “Let’s go watch the movie!”