Nick and Molly - Chapter 1 - Story by Tinker Kinkers
“Sweetie… sweetie, hey. It happened again.”
Nick woke with a start to the feeling of Molly’s soft hand rubbing his shoulder. Before she said another word, he already knew. The bed was cold and wet beneath him, and his boxer briefs clung to his skin like a cheap bathing suit after a swim. The waterproof sheet they’d added a few weeks ago had trapped a puddle in the dip beneath his hip. In spite of its terry-cloth top, it couldn’t absorb everything.
Nick grumbled, frustrated and ashamed. It had happened enough times in the last three weeks that he’d almost lost count.
“Why don’t you go get cleaned up, and I’ll strip the bed, honey,” Molly said sweetly, her voice still groggy with sleep.
Nick nodded, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He tossed his legs over the side of the bed and half-stumbled toward the bathroom. The cold, wet boxers clung and chafed as he walked, reminding him of too many similar walks of shame in recent weeks.
The hot shower was a welcome reprieve, but it did little to wash away the feeling in the pit of his stomach when he heard Molly’s voice on the phone out in the bedroom. He couldn’t make out the conversation, but he could tell her tone was quick and formal: the same tone she used when they had a disagreement. Strong, collected, and firm, while somehow still kind and considerate.
The feeling in his chest deepened as he wondered about the purpose of the call. As he turned off the shower, he caught the last few words.
“Okay, we’ll be there at 12:30. Thank you.”
He heard the door open to their shared bathroom and turned around to see Molly still in her pajamas from the night before: a tight tank top and pastel green panties. Her figure was perfect, and Nick found himself staring without even realizing it.
“Nick, can I talk to you for a second? Hey, I’m up here, sweetie.” She smiled, trying to bring some levity to the situation. She knew she was attractive and actually appreciated being admired by her husband, but the comment only seemed to embarrass Nick a little more. “This has been happening for almost a month now, and I’m worried about you. I just got off the phone with your doctor’s office. I made an appointment for early this afternoon. I really think we need to talk to him, just to make sure everything’s okay.”
“Umm, yeah,” Nick mumbled. “I guess that’s probably a good idea. I think it’s just stress from work lately, babe. You know I’ve been pretty stressed out. I’ve got a lot of projects due at the end of the month, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get everything done. I really think I have a good shot at that promotion if I do well, though.”
Molly looked at him with a compassionate smile, but her eyes betrayed that she didn’t fully believe him. It was true in part. He was somewhat worried about work, but what was really stressing him out was this problem itself. Sure, it had taken him quite a bit longer to keep his bed dry than most of his childhood friends. He’d avoided sleepovers like the plague, at least until he was in his mid-teens. And even though the problem had come back in college, he’d chalked that up to partying too often.
But the thought of being a bedwetter again as a newlywed in his early twenties was enough to give him visceral anxiety.
Molly could see him shuffling and avoiding eye contact as he dried himself off. As he finished wrapping the towel around his waist, she walked closer, putting her hands on either side of his face and gently bringing his eyes up to meet hers.
“Sweetie, I love you, and I’m worried about you. Let’s just go see Dr. Brock today and have him run a few tests, just to be sure. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It’s not your fault. I love you. I’m here for you, sweetie.”
Nick’s eyes welled slightly. He wasn’t sure why he was suddenly so full of emotion, but before he could process it, Molly pulled him into her embrace and held him tight. His feelings swelled again as a few tears fell onto her tank top.
“I love you too, Molly. So, so much. Thank you, babe.”
Sitting in the exam room under the too-bright fluorescent light, Nick fidgeted with his phone. He pulled it out to check the time, put it back, then pulled it out again every time he heard motion in the hallway. He wasn’t sure why he was so nervous. He wasn’t worried about something being physically wrong. He was in great health, exercised regularly, ate well, and took vitamins.
As his mind raced, he tried to force away memories of being at the grocery store with his mom while she placed a large box of pull-ups on the checkout counter. There had been no young children with them that the clerk could assume they were for. He tried to forget about the times his babysitter, who was ostensibly not much older than him at the time, would remind him to get his “diaper” on before bed.
The “D” word alone made him flush with embarrassment.
Molly could see him lost in thought.
“Sweetie, it’s okay. Really…” she said, holding out her hand.
Nick reached out from the exam table to meet hers.
“It’s gonna be fine. You don’t need to be embarrassed.”
“Thanks, love. I just, I don’t know,” he said, studying the laces on his shoes. “I had this problem as a kid, and I guess it’s kinda hard for me to talk about. I think…”
He was interrupted by a knock at the exam room door as a young nurse walked in. Nick immediately turned red. He had been rehearsing in his head how he would explain to Dr. Brock, whom he was comfortable with and had been seeing for years, what was happening. He had planned to use words like “urinary,” “nocturnal,” and “void” to give a pretense of mature understanding of the problem, intentionally avoiding any word that could sound juvenile.
But upon seeing a young and attractive nurse, Nick felt his entire script jettison itself from the cranial docking station.
“Hi, I’m Katie! I’m one of the nurses here.” Her bubbly voice and kind smile brought a warm energy to the room.
Molly responded before Nick could say anything, greeting Katie with a handshake.
Of course. I don’t know why I didn’t think about having to explain all this to a nurse before seeing Dr. Brock.
“Hi, Katie. I’m Molly. Nice to meet you.” Molly had always been an extrovert and great with people.
“And you must be Nick,” Katie said, reaching out with a soft handshake. “So what brings you in to see Dr. Brock today?”
Katie sat on the swivel stool in front of him, clipboard in hand, eye contact unyielding. She was waiting for the confession.
I’m a bedwetter. I pee myself every night. I don’t know why.
Ooof. Nick, snap out of it.
“I, um, have been, uhh…” Nick desperately tried to remember any of the vocabulary he’d practiced. He hadn’t anticipated having to explain all this to anyone other than Dr. Brock. “At nighttime, I’ve been having… accidents.”
Yeah. Accidents. That’s not so bad to say. That’s a mature word.
He looked to Molly, finding compassion in her eyes and realizing her hand was now on his knee.
“Okay, what do you mean?” Katie asked. “Like wetting the bed?”
Nick forced himself to nod, even though he couldn’t bear to make eye contact.
“And how long has this been happening?”
Nick finally mustered the courage to raise his eyes slightly, but thankfully, Katie had her face pointed at her clipboard and was taking notes. He was sure that if she looked at him, he’d melt into a shapeless puddle right there on the exam table. He still fidgeted with his phone inside his pocket, tracing the outline of the case with his finger and wishing for the whole visit to be over quickly.
He felt Molly squeeze his hand, snapping him slightly out of his trance before he could respond.
“Almost a month now,” she said. “It seems to happen about three or four nights a week. We’ve tried limiting his fluid intake before bed, avoiding alcohol, avoiding caffeine, and using a waterproof sheet for the mattress. We keep thinking it’s stress-related, but we just wanted to make sure there’s not something else going on.”
Thank god, Nick thought, his anxiety now high enough to bring small drops of sweat to his forehead.
“Okay, got that. Have you been sick at all, Nick? Any other changes in your medical history?” Katie asked, finally looking up from her furious note-taking.
Nick shook his head and rubbed his chin.
“Nothing I can think of, really…”
He shifted on the exam table.
“I think I’ve got what I need, then. I’ll pass these notes to Dr. Brock. Anything else going on that you guys wanted to talk to the doctor about?”
Her smile was bland but reassuring, as if she’d just been told the weather was great or that the office had ordered lunch from her favorite takeout place. Nick was just another patient. Not weird, or different, or remarkable in any way from the many other patients she was seeing that day.
Nick pulled his left hand out of his pocket and placed it on top of Molly’s, which was still gently holding his right. He felt himself breathing again as his anxiety started to fade.
“No, I think that’s mostly it.” Finding his voice again, Nick felt himself coming back into his body.
Katie and Molly exchanged pleasantries as Katie exited. Before the door fully closed, Dr. Brock pushed it back open, holding the clipboard the nurse had just handed him.
“Hey, Nick. Hi, Molly. Good to see you both again,” Dr. Brock said, extending a hand to each of them. “Give me a second to look over your chart here, Nick.”
Dr. Brock brought an immediate calm to the room, like a warm blanket thrown over you right before drifting off to sleep. Nick wondered if he brought that feeling everywhere he went. He was the kind of person you just felt safe around.
“Nick, I remember you mentioning this happening years back, but you were in college at the time, right?” Dr. Brock was still looking over the chart, flipping back to previous visits.
Nick was thankful that he hadn’t used any of the triggering words Nick himself had been trying to avoid.
“Yeah. I thought I was just drinking too much, though. It seemed to happen after I would go out with friends.”
Molly sent him a concerned glance. He knew this was new information to her. But it was mostly true, although he never drank to excess, even in college, and rarely had more than two drinks in an evening. He wondered now if he was fabricating the correlation, since he had gone out almost every night during that time.
It was also around then that he met Molly, who didn’t drink in college, worked out before class every day, and was always in bed by 9 p.m. Without even being conscious of the lifestyle change, Nick started to follow suit in hopes of winning her affection, even in spite of her being a senior and him being a sophomore. He couldn’t remember exactly when he’d stopped waking up in a wet dorm-room bed, but he knew Molly never knew anything about it when they started dating.
Molly subtly shifted her posture to face Dr. Brock.
“He’s been really stressed about work recently,” Molly said, her hand gripping Nick’s a little tighter. “We’re trying to save up to buy a house, and he’s put in for a promotion. He’s been working so hard. I was wondering if it could be stress-related, but we wanted your opinion regardless.”
The concern in Molly’s voice was genuine and caring. Dr. Brock heard it and responded in turn.
“Well, I think we should run a few tests: urine, bloodwork, the usual things. I’ll probably put in a referral to a specialist too, just to be thorough. But if the tests come back clear, stress or anxiety could definitely be part of the picture.”
Nick nodded, trying to look like he was taking the information calmly.
“In the meantime,” the doctor continued, “you might want to consider wearing some protection at night. Just until we get a better sense of what’s going on.”
He could already see it: a diaper under his pajama pants, in bed next to his beautiful wife. Molly pretending it was fine. Molly slowly getting disgusted. Molly telling her sister. Molly leaving him.
“Thank you so much, Dr. Brock!” Molly’s happiness startled Nick out of his little trance. “Do you have any professional recommendations on what kind of protection we should look for?”
Nick could hear the excitement in her voice, noticeable only to him as her husband, and it confused him.
What the heck is she doing? Why would she be excited about something like this? Can we just leave already? Today has been embarrassing enough.
“There are a lot of options out there, actually,” Dr. Brock said. “This is a lot more common than you’d think. It’s just that no one talks about it. The quickest option is to go by your pharmacy and pick up something there. I wouldn’t recommend the bed pads, because that’s not much different than just waking up in a wet bed. They have overnight briefs there. Look for the high-capacity ones. You might have some luck with those, but the best products are online, as with most things these days.”
“There are also various support groups online, which might be helpful. Speaking of, Nick, do you have a therapist you see regularly? That might be another avenue of treatment to look into, especially if all the tests come back normal, like I’m thinking they will.”
“Oh, um…” Nick was caught off guard, still trying to process the conversation his wife was having with his doctor.
Surely she can’t actually be excited about her husband having to wear a diaper to bed every night.
“Yeah, uh, I haven’t talked to her in a while, but I guess that’s a good idea. I’ll make an appointment. Thank you, Dr. Brock.”
Nick awkwardly raised the urine sample cup out of reflex as the doctor gracefully backed out of the room. Molly chuckled softly to herself. Nick’s visible embarrassment reminded her why she fell in love with him in the first place. In spite of his conventional good looks, he was still slightly insecure, but also self-aware. Intelligent, witty, funny, but not at all pretentious or overly self-assured. It was his kind tenderness and authenticity that really made him unique.
Seeing him get flustered over something as insignificant as peeing the bed only made her want to hold him close.
“Ha! You are something else, Nick,” Molly said, still chuckling slightly. “Chill out, honey. This really isn’t a big deal. Why are you so nervous? You look like a kid who just got caught stealing candy.”
She stood up with her hand still in his and smiled warmly at him.
“C’mon. Go do your thing with the cup, and I’ll meet you out front. Let’s go get some tacos, then we can go diaper shopping for you!”
Nick frowned. Molly’s playful laugh reassured him, as did the soft kiss on his cheek, even in spite of her use of the “D” word. While he wasn’t all too thrilled with her plan of “diaper shopping,” he at least knew she wasn’t grossed out, as he’d expected.
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