Tipping the Scales

Tipping the Scales, Chapter 08

"I'm sorry. It's not as if this is any more fun for me than it is for you," Melanie said.

A tear trickled from the corner of Odelia's eye into her ear.

Melanie was kneeling beside her mattress checking their equipment against the printed list she held in her hand. "Let's see... Lubricating jelly, surgical gloves, syringe, water, antiseptic wipes, drainage receptacle," she patted the pile of huge plastic bags with anti-reflux valves so that what went in wouldn't back up, "and catheter."

The two women exchanged commiserating glances and then Melanie began removing her rings. "Are you ready?" she asked.

Odelia was too miserable to speak. I'll never be ready for this, she thought as she nodded her assent.

Briskly rubbing her hands with an antiseptic wipe, Melanie said, "Spread your legs."

This was easier said than done. Odelia had to lift her belly with both hands and drape her folds of flesh about herself, just so, in order to manage it without hurting herself. When this was finally accomplished, Melanie pulled free a fresh wipe and read aloud the first step on the instruction sheet. "Clean the labia and urethral meatus using downward strokes. Avoid the anus."

She snorted and even Odelia managed a smile. All of the equipment about to be used had issued forth from that opening ordinarily to be avoided as a source of contamination.

Odelia steeled herself for the coming physical contact. It had been almost a year since her last gynecological exam, which was the last time she'd been touched there by any hands other than her own. She couldn't decide which she found more repellent; the physical sensation or its accompanying shame.

Melanie tossed the soiled wipes aside and reached for a new pair of sterile gloves. "Lubricate the catheter and locate the meatus opening, below the clitoris and above the vagina," she read. "It says you might feel a little pressure as it goes in."

Odelia held her breath as the catheter was inserted. If having it in place turned out to be as uncomfortable as getting it there, she didn't know how she would bear it.

But she simply couldn't get on and off the bedpan any more without tipping it over. She couldn't lift her hips high enough. It was all she could do to roll over often enough to avoid the formation of bed sores, so it was this or diapers.

Thank god her family was worried about the effect diapering would have on the magical ass's artifacts. Otherwise, she might find herself marinating in her own piss for hours on end, waiting to be changed. As horrifying as catheterization was, it was better than—

"OUCH!"

"Sorry. I must have started inflating the balloon before the tube was far enough into the bladder. Wait a second... There, does that hurt?"

It wasn't the most comfortable Odelia had ever been. But it was tolerable. "No, it's fine," she said.

Melanie helped her rearrange the sheets of her toga in a more modest configuration. It wasn't often that Odelia felt sorry for her sister-in-law, but the expression of misery on her face appeared heartfelt. Perhaps she wasn't simply upset on her own behalf, either, but experiencing pangs of empathy.

It wasn't likely.

But it was possible.

This was the closest the two women had ever come to sharing a bonding moment. Surprisingly, neither of them made a move to break the spell.

Melanie crossed her legs Indian-style and cocked her head to one side. "How do you think this happened? I mean... Well, I don't really know what I mean, if you know what I mean."

They laughed, but not light-heartedly. The Big Unspoken Question had finally been uttered, however inarticulately.

Twisting a corner of one of her toga sheets in her fingers, Odelia hesitantly ventured to answer. "There's obviously no biological or scientific explanation. Which doesn't leave much. In fact, it doesn't leave anything."

"And yet..."

"And yet here am, living the impossible. There is no solution, no 'how' that makes any sense whatsoever. It's not as if I haven't thought incessantly about it."

Melanie flushed and bit her lip before asking, hesitantly, "Then you don't have any sensation of having been touched by... Him? It doesn't feel like a gift from God?"

This time Odelia's laughter was unreserved, straight from the gut. She laughed so hard another cluster of tightly-rolled catheter collection bags sprayed out of her ass and unfurled themselves in a fan shape across the floor.

"If this is God's idea of a gift, the almighty all-knowing master of the universe needs to hire a personal shopper. In fact, if this has come from God, he's an asshole. A great big—strike that—THE biggest and most magical asshole of all!" She laughed even harder, the resultant blubber-quake shaking her entire body like a giant gelatin mold. "Not to mention a narcissist! If you think about it, a magical asshole giving a magical asshole to somebody else is like deciding the perfect gift is a picture of yourself."

Melanie gasped. "So you don't feel any connection to God at all, even though you're literally sitting on a miracle."

"Shouldn't a miracle make your life better in some way? Look at me! I can barely move. I'm in pain most of the time. However it looked in the beginning, this has turned out to be the opposite of a miracle—it's a curse. I'm living a nightmare."

They sat together in silence, each lost in her own thoughts for a time.

"What if..." Melanie slowly began, "What if I put you on a diet...? A liquid diet. You could still put something in your stomach, so you wouldn't be hungry all of the time, but all it would be is diet shakes." She cocked an eyebrow and smiled conspiratorially. "Jackson probably wouldn't even notice. Not for a while, anyway. And when he does... well, we'll worry about that when it happens."

"You'd do that?" Odelia felt a strange sensation steal over her. A lightness; a buoyancy... So unfamiliar was the feeling that effort was required to identify it.

Hope.