Seems Too Good to be True (Diaper Dimension)

Chapter 23
Doc

WHEN I HAD worked with the medical kits earlier, I had carefully concealed a scalpel inside the padding of my diaper through a small slit I made. I hoped I wouldn’t need it, but when I saw him going for the toddler, I couldn’t help but draw the sharp blade free and leapt at him.

The guns went off at the same time as our world exploded, but I continued wrestling with him even though he was a foot taller than I was. When he tried turning his gun back towards me, I decided it was time to end this and drew the blade across his carotid artery. He continued struggling as he gasped and blood sprayed everywhere, but I hung on for dear life.

“Freeze!!!” a voice yelled at me, “Drop the weapon!”

I carefully disentangled myself from the dead weight of the man, and then showed my hands. I had tunnel vision until then, and expected to look up at a large Amazonian SWAT team member like Jonah... But instead found myself looking at a little about six inches taller than me in full black tactical combat gear. He had his face hidden behind a mask.

“Identify yourself!” He called out to me.

“Doctor Holly Nickerson,” I told him.

“Clear!” He called out, “You’re Doc?” He asked with his weapon still pointing at me. He motioned with his head around the room, “Nice work,” he said.

Just then I heard a cry, “MEDIC!!!!!!” from one of the men. Over on the ground I saw two of the members of the rescue team were suffering gunshot wounds.

“I’m a doctor, let me help one of them!” I told him.

He nodded and I grabbed the supplies that were left. I didn’t know that it mattered by then, but I gloved up anyway and got to work on one of the patients while the corpsman worked on the slightly worse case. “You know what you’re doing?” He asked me.

“I sure as hell hope so,” I told him and began working to slice away his clothing and the vest that hadn’t stopped the slightly off-center wounds. I counted three bullet wounds on my quick examination. Two were through and throughs in his side and right arm. More concerning though was another hole that was quickly filling with blood on his abdomen. I knew that was the bigger problem and focused on it. The trauma kits they gave me had some packing that I shoved into the wounds and ran a line with the universal blood they’d given me. I tossed a bag to the other medic too.

“Thanks,” he said and we were both working on stabilizing the patients. Several other Amazon doctors, including Ivy, suddenly appeared to help out.

Ivy began programming a nanite cluster and told me, “Get this to that first hole.”

I took care to maneuver it to the side of the spleen and said, “It should be there.”

“Get your hands clear,” she told me, “Activating!”

Over the next half-hour we did a procedure to save the little’s life that would have taken six or seven hours in my dimension. I couldn’t help but also think without the nanites that we would have lost him just as easily as the two-year-old the day before my eviction back home. With both of the patient's vitals stabilized they were moved to an ICU unit for recovery.

“You can’t go with them…” I heard a doctor try and tell one of the uninjured team members.

“I’m a Hellcat, I go wherever the Hell I want! Don’t stop me!”

One of the nurses, who I remembered Ivy pointing out as a real bitch the first time I’d been at the hospital, tried to block him. In no time flat I watched her laying on the ground crying with an arm bent unnaturally in an open fracture. “You idiot!” one of the nearby officers said as she tried to get an assault charge filed, “They’re Hellcats! You can’t do that kind of shit! They are protected by International Law!”

I watched another young nurse follow the men, and thought that I may have heard her giggle. It was right then that I finally felt myself losing the rush of adrenaline that had carried me through the crisis. I looked up at Ivy, “Sorry, I probably did more stupid things today than in the history of littles.”

She smiled and hugged me tightly, “I’m quite sure of that. We’ll also need to talk about your potty mouth!” She looked stern before smiling with tears streaming from her face, “but I’m also quite certain you are the bravest person I’ve ever known!” She nearly squeezed me to death before pushing me away, “That being said, if you ever do anything that stupid again…”

“Just don’t send me to daycare again…?” I suggested hopefully.

She laughed and cried simultaneously while hugging me.

I looked up then and realized that her brother Jonah was standing there. He knelt down to where I stood and held out his hand. I let him envelop mine as he said, “You are the reason we only lost a few people today. You saved a lot of lives today… Thank you!”

I felt a tear go down my eyes, “I just did what I had to.”

He patted me on the head and hugged his sister tightly. “Ivy I love you to death, take good care of your little girl, she’s more special than I think you know.”

She hugged him back, “Thanks for all you did Jonah,” she told him.

“I really didn’t do anything. It was Little Miss Action Hero here and that insane little anti-terror squad. I didn’t understand why we were waiting, but now I know. The Hellcats are a legend in the Special Forces at this point. There’s not another unit that has the accuracy, speed, and tenacity to do something like that with no civilian losses. I know we couldn’t have made it in as cleanly just due to our needing bigger entry holes. Plus none of the terrorists expected to aim at their own height!”

“Well, thank you anyway,” I told him.

“You’re welcome Holly,” he said simply. “Ivy you had better bring her to Sunday dinner this weekend or Mom is going to kill all of us.”

Ivy sighed, “Yeah… we’ll be there.” She gave him another hug and then held her hand out, “Well Doc, shall we go borrow a staff shower here and get you cleaned up before we go home?”

I nodded and wondered at her not picking me up until I looked more at my body. I looked like I had been the one killed… ‘Good thing they have infectious diseases like STDs well under control here…’ I thought to myself. I walked beside her down the hallway and up a few levels. ‘Restricted Access Staff Only,’ was on the door that she swiped us through.

A few nurses gasped as we passed them, and one rushed over and asked, “Doctor Nickerson, what happened to her? Why isn’t she down in the ER getting checked out?”

She stepped in front of me, “Hi Kat… She’s fine, it’s not her blood. Doctor Nickerson here just saved a bunch of lives today, we’re just coming in here to get her cleaned up… you don’t happen to have a spare diaper and maybe some scrubs she can change into?”

I looked around her at the face of the nurse who was confused, “I can see if pediatrics has any scrubs her size… I can grab a gown or a onesie for certain?”

“We’d prefer scrubs, but otherwise what you can find works, we’re going to use the showers to get her cleaned up.”

“I’ll be there shortly,” she said.

IVY LOOKED DOWN at Holly who was aggressively ripping off her blood-soaked onesie. She used a pair of gloves to take it from her and put it in a hazardous disposal bin. Her shoes and socks soon followed, then finally the very well used diaper was removed and she wiped her bottom clean. “You’re getting a bit of a rash here Holly,” she told her.

Holly shrugged and told her, “Not surprised… my butt’s been covered in pee and poop all day long…”

‘I might have some cream in the office… may have to raid a nurse’s station,’ she thought before saying, “We’ll get some rash cream on it as soon as we can,” and turned on the faucet of the shower head far above Holly’s head.

Holly stepped into the shower and blood began peeling and making a gruesome pool on the tiled floor. She had been scrubbing herself for several minutes when Kat made it back out of breath. She whispered to Ivy, “Did she seriously perform two surgeries today? And, really take on the lead terrorist on her own?”

“Yes…” she told her, “How…?”

“She’s a good surgeon,” she told her back. “I took an important part of her life away when I adopted her,” she told her quietly. “What did you bring?”

“Oh, here is a diaper. They only had some toddler and newborn in her size. Since she’s walking, I brought the toddler… Here’s some soap, a couple surgical sponges, wipes, rash cream, and the smallest set of scrubs I’ve ever seen in my life… I didn’t know we even had that size!”

“I’m surprised we did,” Ivy told her as she looked at the purple scrubs that looked like they would only be half a size too big on Holly.

“Apparently, we keep them on hand for when a little comes in with their wife for labor…?” she shook her head, “Let me know if you need anything else. Everywhere I just went had everyone proclaiming her the most amazing hero they know of…”

Ivy gave a small smile at that, “That she is!”

“Is it… Is it true about Bob?” Kat asked her.

“Unfortunately, yes… they killed all of the daycare workers, Bob, and then his little girl.”

Kat gasped, “What about the terrorists?”

“All died in the rescue,” she told her.

“Make sure you get her some counseling,” she told her in a whisper again.

Ivy nodded, “Definitely.”

She nodded towards the shower, “I need to give her this.”

“I’ll see you soon,” Kat told her and left.

She opened the curtain and said, “Holly, here is some soap and a surgical sponge set… are you able to get yourself clean of everything?” she asked her.

A nod was her only answer as Holly took the items and turned to scrub every inch of her body she could reach.

I COULDN’T FOCUS from the moment the water turned on. It startled me when Ivy handed me the soap and the sponge. I found myself on autopilot as I scrubbed all of the blood off of me. I was glad as I did so that I didn’t find any open wounds for myself to have been infected easily through. ‘I’ll have to request a blood screening to make sure I don’t have anything…’

My eyes wouldn’t focus as I was on autopilot scrubbing myself. The fact that I had saved multiple lives was offset by my memory of killing a man... ‘I don’t even know his name…’ I thought as I kept scrubbing… and scrubbing…

“Here, I think you got everything but your back,” Ivy suddenly broke through my mind.

“Huh?” I asked as she grabbed the sponge from me and gently turned me around. She scrubbed at my back for a moment and turned off the water.

She wrapped me in a towel and picked me up in time for me to break down in tears.

“I didn’t want to…”

IVY FELT HER heart break as it was clear that the events had fully hit Holly. She would have gladly killed that man herself if she had the chance, but she knew she too would have been impacted. Here was her poor little girl… No little woman, she admitted - who had to kill when all she wanted in life was to save people. She hugged her tightly and kept her wrapped in the towel until she cried herself to sleep.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to her as she laid her down and dressed her in the diaper and the scrubs. Carrying her out of the room dead asleep, nurses and doctors alike gave the pair a nod. She had no idea what was going to come in the future, but she knew that Holly would forever be respected at this hospital.

Everyone seemed to respect that she was sleeping and didn’t approach the pair, but she could tell that things had changed for Holly with the looks in everyone’s eyes. She wasn’t sure what was going to be the hardest thing to deal with to move on. ‘First thing once I get home is to take this soaked bra off and pump out the milk that I should have removed hours ago…’ she thought to herself as she carefully strapped Holly into her car seat.

As she drove home, the magnitude of the day began hitting her as hard as it hit Holly. Seeing her mom’s car in the driveway didn’t completely surprise her as she drove up. ‘Mom is probably going to give me an earful for not calling…’ she sighed. ‘When the hell would I have done that?’

She backed into the garage around her Mom’s car, and then walked around to Holly’s side of the car. The poor girl was still out cold, but that didn’t really surprise her much. Her own body was threatening to shut down due to the adrenaline she’d used, and Holly had a much smaller body in way more intense situation! As she opened the door to the house her mom looked at her expectantly.

“Mom, let me put her down in her crib first and then we can talk,” she told her.

The hug was impossible to dodge just then as she held onto her, “I love you so much sweetie… I’m so glad that you and Holly are alright!”

“I love you too Mom,” she told her. “Holly’s out cold though, let me get her to her crib. I’ll be back in a moment,” she told her.

“Of course,” she told her.

Ivy sighed as she opened up the nursery and took in the innocent sight of a room fit for a baby princess. It suddenly seemed wrong to her as she truly realized for the first time that Holly wasn’t just a misguided little that needed to be cared for like a baby. ‘I don’t think I can do anything else though…’ she thought morosely as she checked her diaper. It was dry as a bone, ‘I doubt she’s had anything to drink all day…’

She debated about trying to see if she could get her to nurse in her sleep for a moment when Holly stirred.

I LOOKED AROUND the room and saw I was being held by Ivy in the nursery at home. I hoped for a moment that the day had been some massive nightmare, but looking down at my body clothed in scrubs I knew it wasn’t. I felt tears come out of my eyes then and looked up at Ivy who likewise had her own tears showing right then too.

“You awake now?” she asked me.

I shrugged, “I guess… I’m still pretty sleepy. Adrenaline crash,” I told her.

“I’m not surprised, I’m dealing with my own right now. You want something to eat?” she asked me.

There was a… catch in her voice right then and I wondered what that was about.

I wasn’t really hungry, but I was thirsty. I saw that her bra was soaked and decided that I could help her and drunkenly land myself back to sleep where I could maybe forget about the last few hours.

“Just your milk?” I said quietly.

She looked surprised and I saw even more tears coming from her eyes, “Okay, we can do that.”

She sat me down on the ground for a second and pulled her scrub top off to reveal the bra that had massive areas around both nipples discolored from dried milk. She pulled it free and flung it on the ground before using a baby wipe to clean herself off of crusty milk residue. Once that was done, she bent down and picked me up, before sitting down in the rocking chair.

I was so thirsty - and so desperate to be asleep again that I practically leaped to her nipple and began sucking. Feeling the warmth of her breast, her teat on my tongue, and her heartbeat lulled me into a sense of comfort that I had not even dreamed possible a few hours before. Thoughts of everything faded away as the milk did its job and knocked me out.

IVY SAT THERE holding Holly for several minutes after she passed out from the milk just staring at her nursing in her sleep. It lacked the urgency of the first moments Holly had latched onto her, and she had wondered what had brought that on. ‘She’s never been that… enthusiastic before?’ she thought to herself. She managed to get her to latch onto her second breast before she went to sleep. She’d slowed to not really sucking anymore though, and there was still some milk she needed to get out. She sighed knowing that Holly definitely wouldn’t be waking up to finish the job anytime soon.

She felt Holly’s diaper, and found it was just a little bit damp. Normally she wouldn’t change her yet and risk waking her up, but with the bad diaper rash she had, she knew she couldn’t leave her in a wet diaper any longer than necessary. She laid her gently on the changing table and pulled her top and bottoms off as gently as she could. The top got caught slightly on her tangled hair for a moment, but miraculously Holly stayed asleep as she exposed her diaper. Gently she opened it, wiped her, placed a new diaper on her, and then dressed her in a light footless sleeper before laying her in the crib. Holly never showed any signs of waking up the whole time. Ivy skipped putting her soaked bra back on and pulled her scrub top on without it. She walked to the living room where her mom had sat down. “Dad’s not here, right?”

“No, he stayed home to do some work around the house,” she told her with a smile.

“Okay… I need to pump some milk and then I really need a shower before we talk.”

“That’s fine sweetie, but I thought maybe Holly would have nursed you dry?”

“She only made it through part of my second breast…” she sighed.

Walking to the kitchen she gathered her pump and hooked herself up. The pump was soon working and she couldn’t help but think, ‘It’s so much better when Holly nurses…’

Her mom walked over to the table and sat down next to her, “Penny for your thoughts?”

“Oh… I was just thinking…”

“Thinking what?”

She sighed, “It feels so much better when Holly does this.”

Her mom nodded, “I always preferred you all over the pump too… Well, at least until you started biting when your teeth came in... You were the worst one on that.”

Ivy blushed, “Sorry, glad Holly has never done that.”

“It would be karma though, huh?” her mom said with a smile.

They sat there quietly for a bit until she could tell it was okay to call it good and cleaned up without saying anything else. “I’m going to take that shower Mom,” she told her as she walked to her bedroom.

“Okay dear, I’ll work on making some dinner for you two.”

“I don’t know…”

“At some point Holly is going to wake-up and she’ll be genuinely starving. You just worry about yourself right now, I’ll worry about you and my grand-baby,” she told her.

“But…”

“This is the part where you say ‘Yes, Mommy,’” she told her.

Ivy sighed, “Yes, Mommy.”

She did appreciate that her mother cared about how they were doing. The shower wasn’t long, as she couldn’t help but want to frequently check in on Holly. By the time she was out, had put on a comfortable stretchy top and yoga pants, she was convinced that Holly might have already woken up or something. However, when she checked in on the monitor in the nursery, she could tell that she was still soundly asleep in exactly the place she left her.

She sighed with relief as she walked out to the kitchen. Her mom had just put a casserole dish in the oven as she sat down. “What did you make?”

“Just a simple chicken pasta bake, it’ll be ready in about thirty-minutes,” she told her.

“Thank you… you didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I did, you’ve both just had a completely traumatic experience today from what little your brother told me.”

Ivy nodded slowly, “Mom… I…” And with that she devolved into tears and her own Mommy wrapped her in a tight hug as all of the emotional insanity of the day came out at once.

I SLEPT FOR a long while before I stirred. My room had blackout curtains so I couldn’t tell if it was still day or not outside, since the butterflies glowed either way. As I sat up, I could tell that I had been changed at some point into a sleeper… and I assumed a dry diaper. The one I had on didn’t seem to be wet, so I wondered ‘how recently?’ I stood up in my crib and stretched. I looked at the LittleProtect watch on my wrist and saw that it was about three hours after I last remembered looking at the time.

I looked around the room and the dichotomy of the odd day hit me like a ton of bricks. ‘I just performed two emergency surgeries, killed the leader of a terrorist group… and yet I’m still sleeping in a damn baby crib!’ I was feeling annoyed as the door swung open. It wasn’t Ivy like I expected, instead it was her mom who came over and quietly said. “Mommy is sleeping right now; I came to help you two out tonight. You hungry?”

My stomach chose that moment to grumble so I nodded, “I could eat…” I said nervously knowing how she always seemed one step from the crazy babying amazon type.

She picked me up and felt my diaper, “Doesn’t feel very wet at all. Your mommy said you had a bit of a rash though, so let’s go ahead and change you to be safe?”

I just nodded and went limp as she pulled open some crotch snaps that this particular sleeper had. The diaper was nearly dry, but I could see a bit of brown on the wipe as she did my butt. ‘Damn amazon breast milk…’ I griped. ‘Yet you went straight for the boob juice when you had the chance earlier!’ I shook my head.

She had me dressed in a new diaper and back in the sleeper before carrying me to the high chair in the kitchen and placing a bib around my neck. “Give me a few minutes, I’ll have to heat yours with the microwave. You slept way past dinner,” she told me.

I nodded, “It was a long day,” I told her.

She nodded, “That’s what your Uncle Jonah said… He called and told me I needed to get over here. He only told me a little bit, but not everything. The news claims a bunch of pretty crazy things happened?” She placed one of my plates of food down on the trail filled with more pasta than I could ever eat. “Here, your mommy said you’d be able to feed yourself with a fork.”

I stared at her in surprise and took the opportunity. I used the small fork I’d been given to stab the largest rigatoni noodle that could possibly exist and put it into my mouth. The pasta had an Alfredo sauce on it, and it was really good! “I guess that’s one way of putting it… what did the news say?”

“Well, they said that a group of littles had found some guns and decided to bring them to daycare to play with, thinking they were just toys?”

I groaned, “So nothing about them being a terrorist cell?”

“What?!?” She asked. “Surely you’re kidding. They were just littles who got some things they shouldn’t?”

“Before I correct that idiocy, what else did they say?”

“Well… one thing… they mentioned a little girl that everyone was calling ‘Doc’ managed to save the life of one of the babies in there?”

I nodded, “Well that part is true… what else did they say?”

“Well… they claimed that a mythical special forces unit, made up entirely of littles, was the group to make the rescue?”

“The Hellcats I think they called them,” I nodded. “That part’s true.”

“They mentioned that same little helped patch up one of those who was injured…”

“Also, true,” I told her. “So, did they mention the body count?”

“Body count? They didn’t say that anyone died?”

I sighed, “You want to hear the true account?”

“You’re not just going to make up some big fairytale?”

I snorted and shook my head, “Believe me, if I were making up stuff, I would never come close to the reality of today.” I took another bite of the large pasta and chewed it before taking a drink from the baby bottle of juice she had sat on the tray.

“Go ahead then?” She asked. “Ivy… I mean your mommy couldn’t talk about it…”

“Things were going mostly okay this morning until all of the sudden two of the littles in the nursery pulled out some automatic weapons. They shot the three nannies that ran the room in the head, and then ten more of them came inside the room from somewhere. They had apparently run through and shot up the other nannies in the daycare on their way in.”

“You’re…”

“Not kidding, it happened. Ask Jonah if you don’t believe me after this…” I shook my head, “I checked on all three of them really quick to make sure there wasn’t anything I could do for them before joining the hostages in a corner. After a while the masked leader had me examine this little that they had broken in for.”

“Was she shot or something?”

I shook my head and took another quick bite of food, “No, she wasn’t responding to any of them, and had been in the newborn room...  He wanted to know what had been done to her.”

“And…?”

I looked at her curiously and decided to hell with it, I’d be honest about what I felt. “Someone had butchered the poor girl and sliced up her Achilles tendon, along with another set on her biceps to keep her from being able to walk or crawl. They pulled all of her teeth out and performed what I guessed was a hysterectomy. They’d also performed a mastectomy badly as well.”

“Badly?”

“Most of the time surgery like that shouldn’t leave scars in this dimension… They had to have intended to leave scars…” I shook my head, “That’s really the only explanation for the massive scars I saw. I examined her and couldn’t get any signs of mental awareness out of her. I told them that if I had the girl as a patient back home, I’d diagnose it as a Persistent Vegetative State… He became beyond upset and I was worried he’d attack me for a second, before the police tried a first run at getting inside. The twelve of them pushed back and held them from coming in, but in the process a little two-year-old amazon girl was shot.”

“They shot a baby?” She said in horror.

“I’m not sure which side shot her, but yeah… I immediately began trying to stabilize her with what little I had in the nursery. Jonah and Ivy helped me out on the outside by getting me a few trauma kits and a stretcher for her. It was touch and go, but I was able to dig the bullet out and use the nanite kit they’d given me to get her back together.”

“By yourself?!?”

“I know you all have this blind spot to our height, but I really was a very good surgeon back home! Ivy was kind enough to let me study everything here to where I feel like I know more than when I left home even.”

“Sorry… continue?” She asked.

I took a few more bites of food to make her wait and fill my stomach some more. “After that they were negotiating and I pushed for them to let the baby go so they could care for her better outside. I pointed out that she wasn’t much use as a hostage anyway then… So, they made a trade for the CEO of the hospital who was the person responsible for the damaged little in the end…”

“That must be the guy they say was accidentally shot?”

I shook my head, “Nothing accidental there - and he definitely wasn’t shot. Once they learned of just how far the guy had gone with the poor girl, he was stabbed in the heart… Well, that’s after he had his same ligaments cut, and some of his skin peeled off,” I shuddered at the thought of it.

Ivy’s mom looked at me in horror then, “Please tell me…” she shook her head. “Never mind, you warned me in advance this would be too big of a tale to make up… So, how’d you make it out?”

“Well after that he shot the girl that they’d come for. He told me he did it to put her out of her misery. Then he really started pushing it with the negotiator again… I figured out that it was Jonah actually.” Talk about family connections! “He threatened to start killing genuine babies in twenty minutes. I distracted him a little bit by asking about the girl, and who was she? Turned out she used to be the leader of their faction until she was captured. Apparently, they had a pact that if this kind of thing ever happened to them, they would make sure they were never stuck living like that. He actually offered to include me in the pact…”

Her face blanched at that, “What did you say?”

“I politely declined…” I shook my head, “I like living! When we were done talking, I watched him moving to kill his first toddler hostage not far from me. That was when I did the dumbest thing of the day and leaped on him to try and stop him.”

“He had a gun?!?”

“Yep - like I said… dumb. I had hidden a scalpel in my diaper though and ended… end…” I hiccoughed from nerves and emotions coming back. “Ended up having to use it on him. I severed his carotid artery and held on until he was dead, while all hell broke loose around me with the rescue team of littles breaching.”

“You… killed him…?”

I nodded, “I had to… I couldn’t let an innocent baby die!” I felt tears going down my face then. “I’ve lost patients on the operating table before… but nothing prepared me to feel his life leaving him from a wound I made intentionally…” I choked back a full sob. I shook my tears back though then… “I was ordered to drop the knife and they held their guns on me until I identified myself. A few moments later I was working on one of the two members of their team who had beeb shot, while their corpsman worked on the other.”

“You saved another life?”

“Well for that one I had help. There were a number of doctors including Ivy that showed up to pitch in…” I told her.

“Don’t let her fool you Mom,” I heard Ivy and jolted in surprise. “This little girl is one of the best surgeons I’ve ever seen, and she is the reason two people are alive medically today. And, probably a lot more by her fearless actions. She’s an amazing real heroine…” she told me as she came and kissed my head and hugged me.

“You’re supposed to be asleep?” I suggested.

“So, are you?”

I shrugged at that and took a few more bites of my food that was getting colder. “Is there a chance you could heat this up again?”

“Sure,” Ivy said and took the plate from me. It was steaming when she returned it a few minutes later.

I munched on the rest of it while the two of them talked a little until I was full. As much as I hadn’t eaten much real food that day, I still left a lot on the plate.

I burped and said, “Excuse me…”

“She is so much more polite than Katies kids…” Ivy’s mom told her.

I blushed but said, “Thanks…”

At that point she stood up and came for my plate, “I’ll do the dishes here if you want to get Holly cleaned up?”

I looked at my hands and face, wondering what there was to clean up, but just sat patiently while Ivy unstrapped me and wiped my hands with a wipe anyway and removed the bib I was wearing. She returned to her seat at the table with me in her lap. The warmth of her body was surprisingly reassuring and I leaned back into her shoulder and watched her mom do the dishes.

The bottle of juice I hadn’t quite finished was presented to me, “I’m guessing you’re still pretty dehydrated, drink this.” Ivy told me.

I nodded, “Probably…” I nursed it dry and commented, “I’m going to feel like I have a hangover when I wake up tomorrow at this rate…”

Her mom looked scandalized by my comment, “How do you even know what a hangover is?”

“Umm… Because I’m really an adult? And in my dimension from the age of twenty-one I could legally drink?” I giggled thinking back, “And I definitely had one the day I came here!”

“Oh…?” Ivy asked, ignoring her mom’s face. “You did?”

“Well… In case this was really how things went… I figured I might as well go out with a bang?”

Ivy nodded, “I don’t drink, but I could see it…”

“I didn’t really normally either, but in that case, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Well… I got those dishes done for you Ivy… You should have enough leftovers for at least lunch tomorrow. I’m going to go ahead and get home and make sure your dad hasn’t destroyed the house.”

Ivy stood up then and placed me on her hip. She walked over to her mom where she was gathering her purse, “Thanks Mom for coming and looking after us.”

“You’re my baby, it’s just what you do,” she said with a smile.

Ivy gave her a hug with the arm that wasn’t supporting me. “I love you Mom.”

“Love you too,” she told her and then gave a peck on my forehead. “And I love this little grandbaby too! Be a good girl for your Mommy!”

We watched as she gathered her purse and walked out the front door with Ivy locking it behind her. She carried me to the large couch in the living room and sat me down next to her, “Can we talk?” she asked.

“About?”

“About you? About whatever it is I’m going to do with you?”

“I thought you’d decided that before I even came to your world,” I told her tepidly.

“I had…”

“Had…?”

“I could have picked another little you know?” She wiped a tear from her eye, “I told my adoption agent on this side I wanted a little girl. The one from your side was insistent though that I would love you to death. The idea of a little doctor was astonishing to me and she managed to convince me you were the one.”

I nodded, keeping my face passive. ‘Where is she going with this?’

“From the time I first saw the video of you performing surgery I fell in love with you. You were doing things in really outdated techniques there, but you were clearly incredibly skilled! Your calm and collective manner in the theater was amazing to me… and I almost decided you needed to stay there then…”

“So, what changed…?”

“I couldn’t help wanting you still… and you were willing to come.”

I nodded, “Not one of my brightest moments looking back.” She looked hurt at that. “Look… I forgive you for that part, I honestly have gotten some good out of it. No worries about finding a job or a new place to live… I just hate that I can’t do what I love here.”

She nodded, “I hate that too.” She leaned over and squeezed me in a hug, “I’m so proud of you for today. The way you saved that baby’s life! And then saving that other man too!”

“Well, I wasn’t alone on the man…”

“He would have died if treatment had been delayed even one more minute - you know that!”

“Maybe…” I said. “All I could think of earlier was that I was glad I didn’t lose that little girl…” I looked up at her, “The day I lost my apartment back home was the day after I had lost a girl on the table…”

“Bad?”

I nodded, “Car accident… We worked on her for like fourteen hours… I thought we had her stabilized multiple times only for another problem to come up. She had multiple places she was bleeding internally and we just couldn’t find them all.”

“I know the feeling,” she told me. “I’ve lost patients too…”

“It sucks…” I told her. “Days like today are always nice though.”

“They are,” she told me. “Except the whole terrorist part…”

I shuddered at that, “That…” I wiped tears from my face, “That part sucked…”

“Are you going to be okay?” She asked me.

I shook my head, “Not overnight, no.” I told her honestly. “I assume I’ll have nightmares for a long time about the whole thing… especially from when I… when I… when I killed him.”

She picked me up then and cuddled me as I quietly cried. “Even in your world it would have been okay to cry about this,” she told me and hugged me.

I nodded.

After a long while she asked, “So are you feeling tired right now?”

I shrugged, “I… I don’t know… not really?”

“Me neither,” she said. “Want to watch a movie or something?”

I shrugged, “I guess…?”

“Go watch one of yours?” she suggested.

I thought for a second, “You know… there’s one you might appreciate…” I hesitated, “And… we can watch it until we fall asleep because it’s a long trilogy…”

“Oh…?”

“You bring the popcorn?” I suggested.

“After a change?” she countered.

I made a face and realized that once again the damn diaper was wet. “That first I guess…”

She carried me to the nursery and changed me. “You want something else to wear?”

I shook my head, “This is pretty comfy actually,” I admitted about the sleeper.

She sat me down on the floor while she worked on popcorn and filled some drinks up. I watched her leave the room for a moment before coming back with a gigantic fuzzy blanket that was covered in the picture of a children’s show cartoon character from this dimension. I noted it looked older and asked, “Is that your special blankie?”

She blushed, “Maybe?”

I giggled at her, “Maybe, huh?”

“I’ve had it since I was in college…”

“And they didn’t give you a hard time…?”

“My roommate was just as bad…” she tried to excuse herself as she gathered everything and walked to the back door. She opened it up and led me out back to the playhouse. The night sky was dark and I could just see some stars peeking out even through the city lights. It was a quick trip to the playhouse where she opened up the Amazon sized door and motioned me inside.

I went to the TV and worked to find the cases I was looking for, and cued up the first Lord of the Rings movie.

“I thought you told me you don’t have littles in your dimension?” She asked confused.

I smiled at her, “This is fantasy… and they’re Hobbits…”

Somehow the surreal fantasy was truly a great way to deal with the day as the night wore on. The violence made my stomach cringe in light of the day, but there was something comforting in Tolkien’s tale. My favorite quote of it especially gave me hope.

Frodo said, “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”

Gandalf replied, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

That night I stayed awake until the White Ship set sail for the West.

IVY LOOKED DOWN at Holly and couldn’t help but think, ‘That was actually really good…’ She was surprised that both were still awake after the nearly twelve hours of the trilogy… She’d had to go to the bathroom and changed Ivy out of one poopie diaper. She was definitely wet now, having been given a never-ending amount of Plapple juice in bottles to try and rehydrate her. Actually, she noticed that she was leaking quite a bit. ‘Oops…’ she thought, realizing she was wet too.

“Come on you, let’s get you changed…” she told her.

“Yeah… I leaked…” Holly told her.

“Yep, but it’ll wash,” she told her while squeezing her reassuringly. She stood Holly up on her feet and was surprised that she was still standing without much fatigue showing. Gathering the blanket, she put the empty baby bottle and her own cup inside the popcorn tub, before opening up the door to leave her playhouse. They wordlessly walked to the kitchen where she deposited the items in the sink to deal with in the morning. Then she led Holly to her nursery.

“Let’s get you changed and then see if we can’t both get some sleep…” she told her as she picked her up.

She unzipped her from the sleeper and pulled her free of the garment that had a noticeable set of wet crescents around the legs. The tabs of the diaper made an audible ‘scrich’ sound as she pulled them open. Ivy grabbed Holly’s ankles with one hand and pulled her butt from the soaked diaper. She took the moment to grab a baby wipe and wiped her clean of all of the pee and a little bit of poo from her bum. Opening a new diaper up she sat Ivy’s butt on top of it and wrapped the old one in a ball to put in the diaper disposal.

‘Definitely need some more rash cream on her… oops…’ she thought. Her bottom wasn’t redder, but she shouldn’t have left her in a wet diaper that long again. ‘I wonder if I can get her to wander around naked for a while tomorrow…’ She shook her head, ‘I wouldn’t want to… I need to…’ she sighed and finished up the job of putting more rash cream on and then rubbed it gently all over her bottom and a little on the other red spots on her front. She closed the diaper and then dressed her in another sleeper.

“Would you like to nurse for a bit?”

Holly looked up at her and sighed, “You know I really don’t mind that part of it. I don’t like that I lost my potty training because of it…” she wriggled for a moment upright in her arms, “It’s comforting though, and whatever hormones your body produces in it makes me feel good. The dopamine or whatever it causes to release… I like that part…”

Ivy squeezed her, “If we stopped you might regain your control…”

Holly shook her head, “As long as I’m living with you though you’ll continue to produce your milk. It’s not worth you being miserable… or breaking my addiction with it at this point. Besides from what I can tell from the research it’s about a fifty-fifty shot at regaining control after eight weeks.”

Ivy felt even guiltier, “If you change your mind, I’ll do everything I can to potty train you.”

Holly sighed, “Just pull your boob out already?”

She smirked at that, “So all I am to you is a set of walking boobs?”

“Well… if the bra fits,” Holly stuck her tongue out at her afterwards.

She couldn’t resist tickling her for a second and sat down in the rocking chair. Ivy pulled the top of her pajama set she was wearing down and helped Holly latch onto her. It was a pleasant sensation for Ivy as Holly sucked the milk out of her breast. Too pleasant… she was just as addicted to the sensation as Holly was from the milk.

‘I can’t keep her as a baby though,’ she thought to herself. ‘Sending her back to that daycare is definitely not an option now… I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do…’

She burped Holly gently before switching her to her other breast. Ivy noted that while Holly was a little more flexible and relaxed from earlier, she was still really tense as she nursed the other breast. There was no sign of her going to sleep as she drained her right breast. She burped her and wiped her breasts with a wipe, noting the wide-open eyes still.

Thinking for a second, “How about you sleep with Mommy tonight?”

Holly looked at her and said, “That…” she could see her think for a second, the wheels turning behind her eyes, “That sounds good actually…”

Ivy carried her to her bedroom and left her on the bed while she went to the bathroom and pulled her hair back. Holly stared at her the whole time, really only moving to by one of her pillows and leaning on it. Done brushing her teeth she pulled the covers back and cuddled Holly to her.

“I love you,” Holly suddenly told her.

She was shocked and felt tears stream down her face as she squeezed her small body even closer to hers. “I love you too Holly Bear,” she replied.

Eventually both fell asleep wondering what the new day would bring. No matter what both knew their worlds had changed.

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This book has one more chapter and an epilogue remaining. Thank you so much for reading! Please let me know what you think with a comment!