The Potty Draining Chart

Day 9

"V?"

Vanessa blinked awake, bleary eyed and thoughts still thick from dreamland. "Huh?"

"V!"

The voice came from outside her room, echoing across the hall. Vanessa sat up, wiping at her eyes to clear away sleepiness. She hadn't set her alarm–she was off work that morning and typically slept in late when she could–so the early awakening surprised her.

"Vanessa! Help!"

That, she couldn't ignore. Toppling out of bed, Vanessa scrambled to her roommate's rescue. Throwing open the door to Nicole's nursery, she saw her friend on the verge of tears. Her best friend's diaper clearly needed changing from how it drooped and the smell that saturated her room, but it didn't seem like that was the source of her distress–she was holding onto the bars of her crib like a prisoner begging for release.

"What's wrong, Nic?" Vanessa asked, walking over. "What changed?"

"I can't–" Nicole sniffed, wiping at her sniffling nose with her arm. A little snot came away, she didn't seem to notice. "I can' get da bars open, the latch is stuck. I'm trapped!"

Vanessa stepped back, reaching out and pressing the latch. The crib opened normally, side gate swinging out so Nicole could leave. "It–nothing happened," she said. "The latch works fine."

"It didn't!" Nicole snapped, her teary eyes turning a little more red. "It wouldn'–why didn' it work for me?"

"You were probably just stressed and fumbling," Vanessa said, excusing the issue for the moment. "Do you need help getting ready for work?"

"No." Nicole shook her head, looking rattled from the brief captivity. "I can' do it myself. I wan'a do it myself."

With her roommate's lisp, Vanessa wasn't sure if Nicole had really said, 'I can', or if she'd actually admitted the truth–'I can't'. Either way, she shrugged, she wasn't going to argue with Nicole while she was this flustered. "Ok. Let me know if you change your mind."

Turning, she walked out of the room, pausing to glance at the new doodle on the chart. Storm clouds, day and night. No surprise there, Nicole's potty training was long gone at this point. Below them, though, was a doodle of Nicole–sitting in a diaper, smudged and dirty, stink lines wafting off her. She was holding a square block in her hand, looking at a box with several differently-shaped holes, as though uncertain what she was supposed to do next–and to really emphasize things, a big question mark floated over her head.

Vanessa didn't try to guess what that meant. She thought she already knew.

...

Eighteen minutes.

The bus schedule worked out in such a way that, if Nicole missed her bus, she would be eighteen minutes late. It'd only ever happened once before, in the whole time she'd been employed at her job.

Or, twice now, because even changing her diaper as quickly as possible, slapping down the tapes and rushing out the door without even eating breakfast, she'd still missed her bus. Being stuck in her crib had cost her too much time, and there just wasn't a fast way to clean up a poopy diaper.

She'd made it in, though, and made it to her desk. She'd make it through another day. If anyone asked, it'd just been a rough night and she overslept, no need to explain that she'd been late because she had to change her diaper after being stuck inside her crib.

(But nobody will notice. Right?)

Nicole told herself that lie through the morning work, handling problems that'd come up overnight and generally keeping herself busy. As long as she had a job to do, she didn't need to think about what was happening to her...even if she kept making typos and had to refill her coffee three times because she kept knocking it over–at least she had that one solace, caffeine, to keep her going when it felt overwhelming.