✅ My Sister's Problem

15. No Hurry

I woke up and stretched, noticing the pressure in my bladder right away. I didn't need to check if I'd wet myself in my sleep; I was even more sure than usual that I was dry. But complying with my little sister's demands, drinking a bottle of lemonade before bed, had certainly made a difference.

Could I use the bathroom before my sister woke, or would that just make her angry? I thought about it, and checked my phone. My sleep quality was showing 72% overall; pretty good for a couple of hours until I'd been woken by the call of nature, and then slowly getting worse, with more and longer periods of alpha sleep as I struggled to get my nerves under control. But that wasn't really what I was looking for. I tapped on the device selector, and chose Lindy's watch. Her sleep quality was over 90%, which was as high as I'd ever seen it. She'd gone to bed quite late, but every green block on the graph had been longer than usual and of higher quality, whatever that meant. Somehow she'd slept more deeply than ever for almost the entire night.

The problem with that was that she was in an alpha state right now, which meant that flushing the toilet might wake her, and she'd know that I'd forgotten her instructions from last night. If I didn't want that picture to be shared with all of my friends, I needed to play along. Hopefully she would forget her plan, or be too distracted to pay attention to me this morning thanks to my efforts with a bowl of warm water before going to bed myself. But I knew I couldn't count on that, and I had to assume that she would still expect me to follow her commands.

I still had a little homework left; some random essay about ways to stop an identity matrix being stolen, so I decided to take a shot at that before my sister woke up. It wasn't really hard, but it was pretty dull. I might have finished it before school if I wasn't constantly looking at the sleep tracker on my phone, wondering if I dared use the bathroom. I had to pee; I couldn't hold it much longer. But I couldn't risk her sending that photo to Harper. She was friends with both me and Lindy, halfway between our ages, and she would never miss an opportunity to embarrass someone. What was I supposed to do?

After half an hour of squirming, while Lindy's state changed occasionally between alpha and beta with only occasional moments of wakefulness, I knew that I'd waited long enough. If we got up right now, we'd be rushing to get breakfast and set off for school. There was no time for her to try to embarrass me, or to make any more unreasonable demands. But at the same time, if she heard me flush the toilet, there would be no time to give an explanation. If I risked it, she would just send the photo before I could even explain what I'd been thinking.

I couldn't believe it. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place here. I didn't want to call for her attention in case she'd forgotten. I didn't want to intrude in her room when she was waking up wet, because she'd only be more angry. But I couldn't use the bathroom without clearing it with her first. It was crazy having to obey my little sister like this, and when she overslept it could turn into a real problem. She wanted to be taken seriously and not treated like a child, but she wasn't organised enough to look after herself.

My thoughts orbited the obvious for a couple of minutes, but I knew there was only one option left. I didn't want to remind Lindy of what she'd said the night before, but I couldn't openly defy her, so there was only one option left. I took a deep breath, and closed my eyes. I still couldn't believe that I was going to do this, but I knew there was no other option. I tried to imagine that I was in the bathroom, and that everything was completely normal. But I just couldn't see it; I knew that this was so weird. I visualised myself getting up and walking over there. Pushing the curtain aside, moving carefully as I stepped over whatever she'd left in the doorway today. Closing the bathroom door, and hooking the little chain that hung from it onto the hook on the doorframe. I could see myself in my mind, so clearly. Sitting down, my bladder practically bursting – and by now that part was really easy to imagine. And then with the comfortingly normal scenes in my mind, I could finally persuade my body to let go.