Emma: Seventh Grade

Chapter 27: Aftermath

When Emma woke up, she was lying flat on her back in her hospital bed, with the head slightly elevated. Her mind was so foggy she felt like she had been drugged. She felt like the room was spinning and her head hurt terribly. She had a new IV in her left forearm, but there was no feeding tube. The room was completely dark, except for the stream of light that was flooding through her slightly open door. Carmen was sitting in a chair close to her bed, playing a game on her phone.

Emma had the intense urge to pee, and if she didn't get up now, she felt like she was going to wet the bed. She tried to sit up, but she realized that her wrists were tied down. "Can you untie me?" Emma called out to Carmen.

Carmen glanced up from her phone. "No, unfortunately I can't do that," she replied. "Its the doctor's orders that you stay in restraints. You're too much of a danger to yourself right now."

Emma panicked. She felt like she couldn't hold her pee much longer. She didn't want to stay tied down forever. Was it even ethical of them to do this to her? She pulled at the restraints as hard as she could, but with no avail. "Please let me out!" Emma begged. "I promise I won't do anything stupid! I just need to use the bathroom!" She kicked the blankets off her legs and continued to yank at the restraints. Her breathing grew faster as she became more agitated.

"I'm sorry, dear," Carmen said, "but I have strict orders not to take those restraints off. But if you want, I can get you a bedpan to pee in."

Emma was appalled. No matter how bad she had to go, she was not peeing in a bedpan. She would rather hold it until her bladder burst. "I can wait," she grumbled. She lay there and glared at the wall in front of her. She felt completely helpless with her hands tied down to the bed. "Do you guys not trust me??" she cried, turning her head towards Carmen with tears in her eyes. "I told you I wouldn't do anything stupid if I was untied!"

"Well, that's up to the doctor," Carmen replied calmly. "I guess he doesn't want you to have another episode of running into the hallways screaming like you did earlier."

"But I told you I wasn't going to do that anymore!" Emma sobbed. She was getting more anxious by the minute; she hated the feeling of being tied up like this. "Please please untie me!!" she begged desperately with tears rolling down her cheeks.

"You need to take a breath and calm down first," Carmen told Emma as she discreetly pushed the call light. "Then, we'll see about untying you."

Emma tried to take a few deep breaths in and out, but she was still upset and crying over being tied up. She barely noticed as another nurse poked her head in the door and handed a syringe to Carmen. Then, Carmen got up from her seat, walked towards Emma's bed, and pushed the syringe into Emma's IV.

"What's that for?" Emma asked, sniffling. She glanced down toward her IV where Carmen was giving her the medicine. 

"It's your Ativan," Carmen answered, detaching the empty syringe and throwing it away.

Sure enough, after several minutes passed, Emma began to calm down, in spite of being tied down to her bed. But she still had to pee very badly. She squeezed her scrawny legs together in an attempt to hold it as long as she could and kept wiggling around in order to find a comfortable position with her full bladder.

Carmen looked up from her phone and saw Emma squirming around in her bed. "Do you have to go potty, Emma?" she asked. 

Emma felt embarrassed. "Yes," she answered, purposefully avoiding eye contact with Carmen. "But I'm not going in the bedpan."

"Well, we can't let you get up right now," Carmen replied, standing her ground. "So its either that, or we put a diaper on you and let you pee in that."

This made Emma's mind flash back to when she was younger and she had bed-wetting problems. Her mom made her wear diapers at night so she wouldn't have to wash Emma's bed every single day, and Emma hated it. Once when her friends slept over at her house, they found out that she was wearing a diaper during a game of Truth or Dare. After that, they teased her about it for months. It was the most embarrassing moment of Emma's childhood, and ever since then, she refused to tell anyone else her secret. "Fine," she agreed reluctantly with a scowl on her face. "I'll use the bedpan."

Carmen walked over to the bathroom and disappeared for a moment. When she came back, she was holding a large, silver bedpan. "Alright Emma," she stated. "You're gonna have to lift your butt up nice and high for me."

Emma was dreading the bedpan very much. But she obeyed and lifted up her butt, digging her heels in the mattress for support. As Carmen slid the bedpan under, Emma felt the chill of cold metal on her bare skin. She already knew this wasn't going to go well at all.

"Okay you can sit down and go," Carmen said.

Emma put her full weight on the bedpan. It was extremely uncomfortable and cut into her lower back. She shifted her body around in an attempt to get comfortable, but only ended up making the pain worse. Not to mention, Carmen was standing at the side of her bed, watching her.

"Can you please go out for a minute?" Emma asked. No matter how bad she had to go, she couldn't pee when someone was watching her.

"Sorry, I can't do that," Carmen answered. "We need to make sure you don't hurt yourself."

"But I can't! I'm tied up and you won't untie me!" Emma whined. She was growing increasingly frustrated with the way she was being treated. The hospital staff was treating her like she was the most dangerous criminal in the world. She felt silly and embarrassed about her mental breakdown earlier and she had promised it wouldn't happen again. Why didn't anyone trust her?

Finally, Emma was able to force herself to pee in the bedpan. "I'm done," she informed Carmen. Carmen then proceeded to pull the bedpan out as Emma lifted up her butt and then helped Emma wipe her bottom with a wet wipe. It was extremely humiliating to Emma but there was nothing she could do about it as long as she was strapped down to the bed.

When Carmen finished cleaning Emma up, she pulled her gown down over her thin body and covered her up with her blankets. "Now go back to sleep," she told Emma.

Emma's eyelids grew heavy as she stared at the wall in front of her. The Ativan she was getting for anxiety sure did make her sleepy. Usually Emma had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep during the night, but with the Ativan, she slept so much better than she had ever had before. Unable to fight it any longer, Emma drifted off to dreamland for the remainder of the night.