Chapter XVI

The first thing I did when I got home was change my clothes. I took off the onesie - with much difficulty - and buried it in the back of my dresser. Then I ripped off the tapes of the huge diaper and... I was about to throw it away when I decided to take a closer look. It was weird. Big, but... well designed, sort of? I had worn an adult diaper once before, at the hospital, and it was nothing like this. I shook my head and balled the diaper up, throwing it in the trash can. Then I drew myself a bath, because Sam wasn't here and I wanted some alone time.

I turned off the lights, lit a candle, and settled into the bubbles. But I couldn't relax. The whole day played in my head on repeat. I felt sick to my stomach. What if Cora hadn't been there? What if it was Mr. Gladstone instead? I thought about the accident I had in my office a few weeks back. Cora saved me then, too. I felt like... like when we were together, it was the only time I wasn't terrified of something.

That night, I had fitful dreams. Wetting the bed. Sam finding out. Her telling Mr. Gladstone how I'd ruined the good sheets. He pulled me over his lap. I woke up in tears, trying to catch my breath. My chest was on fire, but... but the bed was dry.

"Oh my god Nat, are you okay?" Sam had been putting Natalie's clothes away in her walk-in-closet when she'd heard the violent awakening, and by the time she'd made it from one side of the bedroom to the other, Natalie was in a heaving mess of sobbing tears. "Natalie? Nat? It's me, it's Sam."

"I'm fine," I muttered, burying my face in my knees. But I wasn't fine. I felt like I was falling apart. Everything around me was crumbling and one thought kept jumping to another. Like an endless, agonizing stream of worries. I rubbed my tears away, but there was no use. I couldn't stop crying. Was this a panic attack? Was this what they were like?

Cautiously, Sam tried to sit on the edge of the bed, but that only led to a more fevered panicked response from Natalie, so she put two and two together and decided to stay standing. "Alright alright, hey now, hey, I'm not going to invade your island. Natalie, you're safe, it's cool, uh... it's just a bad dream, right? A bad dream?"

I looked up at Sam through bleary tears and nodded my head. Just a bad dream. But how far away from reality was it? I'd wet myself at work. I'd wet myself in the store. And I knew there were extenuating circumstances! I had to stay in my office that day. I had to stay quiet with Cora. But what adult does that?! I was so hopeless. So pathetic. I just wanted Cora to make it all better, like she did those other times...

"It's only 4:15 in the morning, if you wanna we could....sneak downstairs and put you on the couch with an episode of Shortcake and I'll make you that oatmeal you like, with chocolate chips?" It should have been strange, really, how Sam had slipped so easily into a role of service.

I sniffled and nodded my head. Maybe some food would help calm me down. Sam carefully helped me out of bed, by the hand, and led the way down the stairs. I was still crying when she set me down on the sofa, but the pain in my chest was starting to settle. She put Netflix on a low volume, then disappeared into the kitchen. I sunk into the sofa and tried to focus on something other than my ruminating thoughts.

Nobody else was awake. Well, that was wrong to say - most of the help were busy preparing the morning for the Gladstones - but it was all too easy to think of them as functions of the household and less as 'people', as awful as that sounded. Even Sam, when she came back into the living room with the bowl of chocolate chip oatmeal, waited to be noticed rather than interrupt the show.

"How are you feeling?" Sam asked, putting the bowl in my hands. I nodded quietly and rubbed my eyes. The TV was helping a lot. The nightmare had almost left my memory altogether. I took a bite of the oatmeal with a small, fake smile.

"Wanna talk about your nightmare? Or... do you want me to leave you alone?" Sam was usually a pretty 'hands on fixing' kind of friend, but to be fair she'd never seen her best friend this fried.

I shrugged my shoulders and looked down at my bowl of oatmeal. Sam sighed and took a seat beside me. "Is this about... um..." There was no way Sam knew what this was about. "...your accidents?" I blinked and turned to Sam with wide eyes. "What?" "I... I mean, I saw those new underwear, and..." ...the training pants. My stomach dropped and I filled up with shame. "It's... it's not like that..."

"It's alright if it is, Nat." No justification, no argument - just an absolute. It's alright if it's about her having accidents. Did her best friend’s bathroom issues change how Sam saw her? Not at all.

"It's not! I'm in trouble at work, and..." And what? How was I supposed to explain that my boss pulled me over his lap and spanked me every morning? But I didn't have the opportunity to explain myself. "Nat, I know about your dress at work. Remember? And the dress from yesterday..." Of course, Sam did my laundry. My cheeks caught fire. "I..."

"It's probably just stress.” Another casual response, and then something classic Sam. "You can't really keep secrets from your personal maid, Nat." She cracked a cute smile. "Does that make me your chambermaid? That's a pretty cool title."

"I think that's a sex thing," I said with no real inflection. What Sam said was probably true. Stress. I had never been more stressed than the past few weeks. It had been nearly a month since I started living here, and I still felt like everything I did was wrong. Then I remembered what Cora said; she would take care of me. That memory brought some relief. "I don't know what to do..."

"It'll probably pass on its own. Like that whole toilet-training thing is a one-way street, right? Unless you like have a car accident or something." Sometimes Sam was a pretty good friend, sometimes she mused completely off the point. "Anyway, what are you stressed about?"

"What am I not stressed about?" But it sounded like Sam was asking a serious question. Maybe now was a good time to get into it... "I'm constantly afraid of losing my job. Like, what if I do? I can't find any other work in this town. We can't keep living here, which means I have to move out. You'll get fired. So much rides on me just... keeping this position. And I feel like... like I always screw everything up. Like it's inevitable..."

"What do you think you screwed up? So you wet your pants a few times? Just get some Depends, it's not a big deal." Not that she needed them - those training pants were plenty thick. "Do they seem like the kinds of people who'd fire you for something so asinine? They're pretty good people."

"Well I lost Mr. Gladstone like eight and a half thousand dollars this week," I muttered, crossing my arms over my chest. "I thought he'd fire me on the spot, but... I dunno. Maybe you're right. They are such nice people... even if Mr. Gladstone is sort of scary sometimes."

"He's pretty stern, but I don't think he's scary.” Sam looked over her shoulder at the doors to the living room and decided to risk sitting on the sofa with her friend. Risk, because she wasn't supposed to fraternize on work hours. "Anyway you should talk to them both about your stress.”

"I don't want to make things worse," I sighed. "He's my boss, you know? If he thought I wasn't able to do my job, I'd get fired. And..." "Or he might put less pressure on you and start putting it on someone else." "And then that person would get my job." "Jeeze, you are anxious, huh?" I pouted.

"Look, just keep your head down, do well in your job, and let your work speak for itself? Be good." Sam noticed her friend tense up and she clarified quickly. "At your job, I mean."

"Thanks," I muttered, and took another bite of my oatmeal. Maybe Sam was right. Maybe I was getting upset over nothing. But I couldn't help it. All afternoon, I thought about the accident at the store. All evening, I thought about the mistake I made at work. All night, I tossed and turned in bed, anxious for the new week.