The Product Tester

Chapter 4

Mary slept like a baby.

Which is to say, she fussed a lot, woke up half a dozen times, and kept Ethan awake for half the night. She blamed it on the pull-up; on not being able to get comfortable. In truth, she was just anxious about what came next.

Sometime around five or six in the morning, she finally managed to fall asleep, which only made it seem cruel and terrible when her fiancé shook her awake. "Hey, sweetie."

"Ugh," she mumbled, rolling over and pushing her face into her pillow. "I want to sleep for another year."

"Well, you can do that, but first we've got to get the test started. I leave for work in an hour and I thought you'd want to get in a shower before..."

"Yeah." Mary rubbed at her eyes, reaching to the nightstand for her glasses. As the covers moved, she got a whiff of something foul and wrinkled her nose. "What's that... smell... oh."

At some point after falling asleep, she'd made a mess in her pullup.

Sensing the oncoming anxiety, Ethan moved in with a preemptive hug, pulling her close to him. "Hey, don't worry. It's fine."

"Yeah, I know," she said, relaxing into his arms. "It's just... ugh. Gross."

"It won't be so bad in actual diapers. The cover isn't smell-proof, exactly, but it muffles stuff pretty well," Ethan pointed out. After a hesitant moment, he added, "That's what the lab techs told me, anyways."

Mary shrugged, slipping out of the embrace. "I'm going to get washed up."

"Sure thing. I'll get the mat set up." Ethan kissed her cheek, and they rolled out of bed.

She tried not to think about what was squelching between her legs like a small, personal mud bath when she waddled to the bathroom. It was like trying not to think about her breathing. Given more time, she could have distracted herself with something, but it was only about a ten foot walk out the bedroom door and into the bathroom.

Starting up the shower, she had to decide what to do with her mucky pullup. She didn't want to just peel it off and leave it sitting on the counter or stewing in the trash. When she'd tried that with the first diaper she'd tried on as an experiment, it had made the bathroom reek for a full day.

After a few moments of indecision, she stuck her head back through the bedroom door. "Hey, babe, got a question."

Ethan jumped, having not heard her come in. "Huh?"

"What are you going to do with the old diapers?"

Ethan blinked in surprise, then pointed to a mid-sized trash can with a sealed lid. "Diaper pail."

"Right." Mary glanced at the pail, then picked it up and carried it with her back into the bathroom.

Turning off the water, she stepped into the shower to prevent any drips, stripped out of the stinky pullup, and dropped it into the pail. "Gross. Gross."

She turned the shower back on, and got a spurt of icy water for her troubles, spraying her back and eliciting a high-pitched, "Meep!"

It warmed a second later, and she got to cleaning, using the handheld sprayer to clean up around her legs and thighs. The water going down the drain went from brown, to a light tan, to clear, and then she started with her normal shower rituals. Shampoo, soap, conditioner, shaving, and then a long rinse in the hot water.

Once she was satisfactorily clean and couldn't justify running any more hot water, she turned off the tap and got towelled off. Wrapping her hair in the towel, she put her glasses on, brushed her teeth, took her birth control, applied a layer of facial cleanser, and finally ran out of things she could think of to delay the inevitable.