An hour later, Erin was not home.
Good plans always go to waste, she thought. Admittedly, “go to the bathroom when I get home” wasn’t exactly a radical and exciting plan. Still, as the pressure in her bowels grew, she began to get worried that she wouldn’t be able to follow it.
Home was a fifteen minute drive away from where she currently was, or rather, it would be fifteen minutes away, if the sea of brake lights in front of the car she was riding in had had the good sense to be moving forward. Instead, they’d been barely moving for the last forty-five minutes, eliciting some colorful language from her uncle, followed by apologies and requests not to tell Erin’s aunt.
She was trying to be subtle about her looming issue, attempting to keep herself in control with a minimum of fuss. Not that it would have mattered if Martin or Hailey knew she had to go to the bathroom; normally, she’d be worried about them having to make a stop just for her, but in the current situation, there wasn’t much they’d be able to do to help her anyway.
Even as Erin tried to keep her need to go to the bathroom a secret, Hailey was able to discern from a few subtle shifts in Erin’s position that Erin was uncomfortable. She initially assumed that Erin’s nausea was getting stronger. “Erin, are you okay?”
Well, really no point in hiding it any longer, decided Erin. “I need to use the bathroom,” she admitted.
“And I’m assuming that with this traffic, you don’t think you’ll be able to hold until we get home?” asked Martin.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much the situation I’m in,” said Erin.
“Well, I hate to suggest this… but you are still wearing a diaper, right?”
“Yeah, but…”
“But nothing. If you need to wet your diaper, I won’t think any less of you. This traffic is hardly your fault.”
“But it’s not wetting that I need to do!”
Martin and Hailey both quickly realized what she meant.
“Oh,” replied Martin, clearly not expecting that kind of accident. “Well, the same thing applies. If you need to go in your diaper, either way, that’s what it’s there for… and you can get cleaned up as soon as we get home, if that’s any consolation.”
“I guess,” replied Erin. It was obvious to the others that she didn’t want to use her diaper for that purpose.
Hailey briefly considered pretending that she had to go to the bathroom as well, as an excuse to be allowed to use her diaper. She quickly rejected the idea. First, it seemed like using the diaper on purpose would be in poor taste considering Erin’s current situation. Erin would probably say she didn’t mind, but Hailey didn’t think it was a good idea. Second, although she was sure her father would give her permission to use her diaper if she needed to, she couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t something an adult would do. It had only been an hour and a half or so since she’d used a toilet, and she knew that she should be expected to hold it much longer than that. And it was true; she didn’t really have to pee right now. She was sure she could get some out if she wanted to, but it would be a very weak accident, and certainly not worth the hit to her adulthood that she was convinced it would cause.
Of course, she might be able to get away with wetting herself without asking for permission, but that was risky if she got caught. No, if she wet this diaper, it would have to be a true accident, and they’d have to be stuck in traffic for at least another couple hours before that would be the case.
Erin continued to sit in silence, trying to fight off the inevitable. She got a glimmer of hope a few minutes later as the line of cars in front of her began to creep forward, but they were still going much too slow to do any real good.
Erin finally lost the battle, and she was overcome with a sudden fear as the contents of her bowels began to spread through her diaper.