In-Between Chapters 34 and 35 by Sofia Hammerstein

Cameron Sylvester has grown up always hoping he'll live up to the heritage of his mother's family height. She was a ten-foot-tall Big, after all, and his father was a tall Mid, which meant it shouldn't have been a question that he would grow out of the Little category of height early on. A bright student, he's been at the top of his class in science and math throughout his academic career! Looking toward his high school graduation and towards college, he's received scholarships to attend Emerson University. it's a question of inches if he'll be left to the fate of being a Little with a limited future or manage to make a future as a short 'Betweener.' Even as a Betweener, the question remains to be seen if he can be a normal adult or if he'll be left 'In-Between.'  (A Tale from the Diaper Dimension)

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The Legal Stuff: In-Between © 2020-2026 By Sofia Hammerstein
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 

 
 

Chapter 34: Watched
 

I WOKE AND bit back a scream when I saw the white bars around my vision. A slightly closer look revealed they were only by my head and not tall enough to keep me from jumping over them.

“Where…?” I found myself breathing. “Damn, it wasn’t a dream…”

The Sun peeked through the edges of blackout curtains along the windows, keeping the room reasonably dark despite the strong early morning sunlight. I rubbed my eyes and found they were nearly matted shut from the crying last night. ‘I can’t believe I lost it…’ I sighed. I moved my hand again and discovered that a pacifier was clipped to whatever I wore. Looking down, I realized it was a footed pajama set. I could just make out its purple color in the darkness, and the bulge of the diaper beneath it reminded me I needed to do something.

I always needed to go in the morning as soon as I woke up, but not usually quite like this! I stood up and held my arms tightly around my torso, trying not to encourage my bladder’s needs for a moment before remembering the baby monitors in the room. ‘Well, and whoever else is watching Addy…’

Grimacing, I let go of the urine into the diaper. Remembering suddenly what Addy had said last night and feeling a slight urge, I decided it was probably in my best interest to get the other out of the way too.

Deciding I had to play the long game, though, and doing it, were two completely different things!

I tried just squeezing but only got a little more urine out. The years of potty training were difficult to get past, and my body was naturally clinching to keep me from messing my pants! Even when I’d ended up in diapers as a young teen, thanks to that prank, it hadn’t been my choice when to go initially. And after that was all through my system, I just waited and used the bathroom at home or before school.

I grimaced, but memories of friends from school meant I knew I really didn’t want an enema!

I remembered seeing babies and Littles squatting over the years to poop their diapers and decided to try that. I bent my knees and tried to visualize sitting down on the potty. Right about then, the urge hit me, and I managed to push out a long log of poop.

As soon as I finished, I regretted it. I wrinkled my nose but was at least pleasantly surprised I wasn’t immediately gagging from the smell. Having no desire to sit down and make the mess worse, I walked around the room, looking around. The feeling of the disgusting pile in my diaper didn’t make me feel good about that, as I could feel it smear between my thighs. Still, hopefully, Addy wouldn’t be too long in coming to find me. Toddling would have been a more apt description as I tried to keep it from smashing anymore against my body!

I curiously examined a tall dollhouse that sat in one corner. The house looked identical to what I had seen of this house so far! It couldn’t go deeper than one room three-dimensionally, but the rooms were eerily accurate. My room even had a little girl doll with pigtails sleeping on the toddler bed inside. I curiously picked her up and saw that, yes, she had a diaper on too. I saw an office for Addy on the first floor that I hadn’t been shown yet. The nursery was also present, with a baby boy fully dressed in a onesie and a realistic-looking disposable diaper on that doll. On the same floor, it looked like there was a massive playroom with toys everywhere inside it.

‘Guessing that’s my ‘playroom,” I thought to myself. On the first floor, there was a swimming pool that I hadn’t seen yet either, along with it looked like a backyard play set?

I was just about to turn and look around at some more of the room when I heard a beep, and the door opened inward towards the room. Addy stepped inside, looking like a young mother in comfortable jeans and a stretchy blouse. Her eyes landed on me even as I saw her wrinkle her nose.

“Good morning Princess,” she said way too cheerily to me. “Guess you woke up on your own this morning?”

“Guess so,” I told her.

She knew I wasn’t a morning person, “Well, we have a grouchy princess this morning? Of course, the way it smells, I know why!” She walked over to me, and I held my arms for her to pick me up.

I hoped she would at least avoid the problem in my diaper, but to my dismay, her strong hand held me up by the middle of my filled diaper. I could feel the log smush and ooze around inside. I winced and wanted to tell her to stop, but it was too late. She saw my face, “Oh, don’t worry about that poopy little bottom! Mommy knows all about how to take care of opening a present like that!”

She laid me down on the changing table, and I cringed as I felt the poop smear even more inside the diaper. I sat as still as I could as she unzipped the sleeper I was wearing from the collar down to my right foot. I let her pull it from my body one part at a time and sat it in a laundry basket beside the table. She used the chest strap to ensure I wouldn’t ‘fall off’ the table then and got to work on the diaper.

“Woo,” she exclaimed, “what a stinky wittle baby girl!” She pulled one tape free, then the other, and then opened up ‘her present.’ “Mommy can’t wait to be able to potty-train her little girl! Such a stinky little thing!”

She lifted my legs off the table with one hand and used the other to wipe away most of the mess with the old diaper. Too many wipes were used to clean off the rest of the muck before she wrapped the gross poop and wipes inside the used diaper and dropped it into a nearby disposal. “Going to have to get in the habit of putting a new diaper under you sooner,” she said as much to herself as to me.

‘Why?’ I wondered. ‘I can still control myself…?’

She let my body rest back down on a fresh diaper and quickly rubbed some lotion on me before taping the diaper shut. She looked down at a wristwatch and said, “Let’s get you dressed, and we’ll get to your appointments this morning.”

“Appointments?”

“I made a special one for you with your request,” she told me as she sat me down on my feet and walked towards the closet.

With everything I had gone through yesterday, I’d almost forgotten about that one…

I watched as she dug through the closet and came up with a yellow top that flared like a short dress and a pair of blue leggings. “Arms up like a pretty ballerina!” She told me as she knelt down and quickly threaded my arms through the shirt holes. It felt weird the way it flared out, but I noted it barely hung past the tapes of my diaper. She pushed me gently onto my back and began bunching up the legs of the blue leggings. I grimaced as I noticed the butt of them was covered in rows of ruffled material!

“Awww!” She cooed, “You look so sweet I could eat you up!” She started tickling me then, and I was forced to giggle for a moment before she leaned down and hefted me back onto her hip while shouldering a diaper bag I hadn’t noticed. “Let’s do your hair in your chair downstairs, then we’ll get going.”

I had been silent throughout all this, not feeling up to conversation. I was still blushing bright red with embarrassment as Addison carried me into the smaller family dining area and saw another tall woman standing beside the table with a newspaper. “Well, so this is the princess?” The woman said with a smile.

“Yes, Mindy, this is little Cammie!” She said with a coo as she bounced me up and down. “Cammie, this is Miss Mindy; she’s our housekeeper and cook.”

The tall woman was a couple feet shorter than Addison, so I almost looked down at her from my position on Addison’s hip. “Aww… she’s adorable!”

“Isn’t she, though?” Addison said as she bounced me up and down. “Just the cutest wittle princess!” She squeezed me tightly.

“Definitely!” Mindy smiled at us both. “I knew you would make a great mommy someday, Miss Harris.” I looked at the woman with her slightly graying brown hair. She was probably only a dozen years older than us, but she had a very motherly look to her plumper frame. “She’s a shy one, huh?”

“She is, but that’s okay. Cammie is just Mommy’s wittle baby, huh?” Addison bounced me up and down and sat me on the highchair seat. “She’s also probably more than a bit nervous about today. She’s losing her precious wittle peepee today, huh?”

I glared at her, wondering where the caring Addison had disappeared from last night!

“She’ll be so much happier being one of us, though,” Mindy said with a smile.

“Yep! Just need to brush her hair quickly, and then we’ll get going.”

“She need her baba, or something?”

“No, they told me nothing past bedtime if we could help it.”

“Oh, well, how about her paci?” She smiled at me.

“There’s one in her bag,” she told her.

“Just one, Miss Harris?” She asked as she began rummaging and tutting, “This won’t do! You need a good five of these in here. You never know when she’ll be playing and drop it, but need it to soothe her for a skinned knee or just because she’s hungry.”

My eyes opened as she grabbed the first one in the bag and placed it into my mouth. Unfortunately, it was a locking one, and Mindy had no qualms with twisting it once, “Well, I guess she won’t be dropping that one, Miss Harris, but I’d better go get you a few more pacis and babas for her. Trust me when I say you always want to be prepared for your baby girl. You did at least pack enough diapees and spare clothes in here…”

The damn thing wasn’t too inflated, but it still sucked to have it expand larger than my regular teeth opening.

Addison had just grabbed a brush and did a couple quick strokes until she was out of sight. “Sorry about that,” she whispered in my hair. Her hand reached in front of my mouth and loosened the pacifier. “Keep it in your mouth…”

I nodded in relief and winced occasionally when she found a snag in my hair. I usually took great care of it, but the last day wasn’t exactly in my control!

I was zoned out enough that I almost jumped when Mindy reappeared. She used a clear Ziploc bag to add in a handful of more pacifiers and plunked in two baby bottles of water. “I know you said she can’t have anything yet, but after her surgery, I’m sure she’ll want her bottle.”

“Thanks, Mindy,” Addison said as she pulled at my hair in the back. At first, I wasn’t sure what she was doing.

“That braid is going to be really pretty, Miss Harris.”

“Thanks,” Addison said, “I had lots of practice on my baby sister growing up.”

“You should have her over here sometime!”

Addison nodded, “She’s supposed to visit her new niece this weekend.”

“I hope to see her then! What do you need from me today?”

“Just the normal Mindy, and could you have a good dinner for us in the oven? Something not too heavy since I’m sure she’ll be a bit out of it from the anesthesia.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to feed her a jar tonight?”

I felt a last tug on my hair as Addison told her, “Mindy, I want to assure you that Cammie here is mostly a big girl. In fact, that was her choice – she could be a little baby boy eating out of jars or be a big girl. She chose to be a big girl instead, so we won’t feed her baby food unless she’s a really bad girl who needs to go back further.”

“You sure about that, Miss Harris?”

“Yes,” Addison said, coming around and undoing the harness on the seat. “I’ve known Cammie here for a long time and very well, and I don’t believe we’ll be getting to that point, will we?” She pulled up my chin lightly with her finger to look into my eyes.

“No, Mommy,” I told her nervously.

She kissed me on the forehead, picked me up out of the highchair, and placed me on her hip. She reached down and grabbed the diaper bag, and said, “Thanks for everything, Mindy; we’ll see you this afternoon or tomorrow morning, depending on when we get back.”

“Good luck Princess,” the woman cooed at me.

I sighed in relief when the heavy garage door shut behind us on the way to her SUV. She opened the door, sat me in the car seat, and buckled me in. As soon as she was at the driver’s door, I pulled the damn pacifier out of my mouth.

“Sorry about her,” Addison said. “My mom hired her last year to help me care for the house.”

“When is she there?”

“Usually in the mornings until early afternoon – I’m usually at work. You won’t see Mindy but for the mornings probably since you’ll be at daycare…”

“Daycare?!?”

“Once I finish maternity leave, yeah, you’ll have to go to daycare or preschool. I’ll let you pick, I guess…”

“Neither?” I said, annoyed.

It was silent for the next forty-five minutes while she navigated back to the city and stopped outside a building that said Jameson and Associates Fertility Clinic. I felt red at the thought of what I was doing there and why I was doing it…

“Come on, let’s get that sample for you…”

She carried me inside and went to a receptionist’s desk. “Hi, May I help you?”

“Yes, I have an appointment for Cameron here,” she said with a smile.

I knew it was probably possible to easily tell I was a man underneath the clothes she had me in, but her flat-out saying it sucked the air out of my lungs. “Last name?”

“Harris.” She said, “Though I want it stored under his original name, Cameron Sylvester, and her adopted name, Camille Harris.”

“Certainly,” she said. “We can cross-list it, though I will say that it doesn’t usually matter once a cute baby girl like her is adopted!”

Addison squeezed my back a bit tighter then to hug me, “Probably not, but we’re going to go get her properly plumbed right after this, so I promised to save her a sample if she didn’t scream her head off all day.”

“That’s mighty nice of you,” she said, finishing entering some data on her computer screen. “You already completed all of the rest of the information online. Someone will be back for you shortly.”

Addison carried me to a seat. I looked around at several couples sitting around, obviously waiting for appointments to help deal with fertilization issues. ‘I’m probably the only one about to become infertile…’ I sighed. Fortunately, we didn’t wait long before a nurse returned and showed us to a room.

“Okay, not much to this, Mommy?” she said to Addison.

“Yes, I just adopted her yesterday. We’re just collecting a sample before we go get her corrected.”

‘Corrected?!?’ I wanted to scream but sucked on the pacifier that had somehow found its way back into my mouth.

“Okay, there’s two ways to do this with a Little one like Cammie here. You can either have her do it into a cup, like an adult, or we can use this special milking machine that Bremmer Industries has created.”

I looked over at the machine and gasped. It looked like a horror movie torture device had mated with a cow milking rig.

“I think we can manage with just the cup,” she said, looking at my face.

“Very good! I’ll leave here; you want to get as much as possible inside. Normally I would say go ahead and come back, but it sounds like that won’t be an option. We should get enough from one sample, though, to make a few attempts in the future.”

“Thanks,” Addison said as she took the small cup from her. There was a table sitting there that she sat me on and pulled the leggings and top off from me. “Still dry, huh?”

“I haven’t drunk anything,” I reminded her.

“Stay here for a moment,” she told me. “Don’t move.” I watched as she took the diaper bag and sat it outside the door.

She came back without any jewelry on for some reason, pushed me down on my back, and undid the diaper tapes, “I’m really sorry about this, Cameron; I didn’t want to do this…”

I looked up at her in surprise, as that really sounded even more like the old Addy than I heard last night.

“Then why…?”

“My mom has everyone, the judge, the police, and half the state government, in her pocket. She’s set it up to where they’re monitoring at home, and I’m pretty sure that your diaper bag and my phone are listening devices too. I don’t think I can do anything to get you out of this… she was originally going to make me do this, but then I convinced her to let me back out. But when I saw it was either I take you, or you go to an orphanage… I’m sorry, I couldn’t let you get lost like that,” She told me with tears streaming down her face. “My mom was going to completely regress you to being an infant boy, complete with shrinking you right away, but I talked her into this girl option… It’s the only way…”

I sighed, “Get this diaper off of me and let me save something here… maybe someday you can emancipate me. She’s gotta die someday…”

She looked horrified at me for that but got to work on the diaper. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything for several minutes alone, so she began helping me. We left there with a sample stored, but I didn’t want to go to the next destination even as I felt mortified by the first!
 
 

Chapter 35: Menus
 

BETWEEN MY LEGAL cases, my time growing up below the mark, and Beth’s and Meg’s stories, I knew all about the adoption clinics, hospitals, and other options Bigs had to ‘customize’ their enslaved babies. I was surprised we were at the University Hospital at Emerson right then, though.

‘I thought they stopped doing procedures like this…’ I thought to myself. Between the incident with Stacy and that daycare terrorist incident, I thought this was over - at least in Greenville…

I did some background research when we had to change the case venue. As far as I could tell, the administration for the University Hospitals was still against forcing unnecessary and unwanted procedures… Doctor Ivy Nickerson had vehemently spoken about them on the public record multiple times! Apparently, that didn’t extend to forceful gender changes?

Addison appeared a moment later with the diaper bag over her shoulder and unbuckled me from the seat. She held a pacifier in her hands with a clip that she attached to my top and pushed the nipple into my mouth. “It’s just a regular baby one,” she assured me.

I glared at her and resisted the urge to say something I would regret - especially with where we were.

She placed me on her hip and carried me towards the hospital, only two blocks from the chemistry lab we had met. ‘Grandma was right…’ I thought a bit sourly.

Even knowing that Addison was in a forced situation here didn’t improve things. I was still about to have an unwanted surgery to completely change the body I’d been born with! She approached a receptionist desk that was about thirty steps inside the entrance. She placed me on my butt at the counter but kept an arm around me as she said “Hi” to the receptionist.

“Oh my, those leggings are sooo cute!!!” the receptionist said.

“I know, right? I love the ruffles! They actually call the line RuffleButts!”

The woman and Addison had a good laugh at that while I became more agitated. How could Addison claim to be forced into this if she was having this good of a time?!?

I bit my tongue, though, as Addison said, “Miss Cammie has an appointment this morning - Camille Harris.”

I jolted again at the name, “I see her right here... Okay, here’s a tablet. I need you to complete the information about your baby girl here. Just bring it up when you’re done, and we’ll get someone to get you.”

“Thanks,” Addison said, picking me back up and grabbing the tablet awkwardly in her other hand. She walked a short distance to an open chair and sat down with me in her lap. It began with the standard request for medical information. Given we had dated for nearly four years, I wasn’t surprised she had most of the data still memorized. She was about to skip past allergies, “I have an allergy,” I told her around the pacifier.

“Oh, what is that?”

I explained the drug we’d tried to help with growing back my body hair caused a massive rash instead. “Just lucky that didn’t work, huh?” She said with a squeeze of my body. “I’d hate to have that taken care of today too!”

I glared at her for that, but she kept going through the screens. She asked me for my family history information; cancer especially sucked to put down as it reminded me of my lost grandparents. ‘At least Dad didn’t live to see this…’ I thought darkly. ‘I’m pretty sure Grandma Suzy would have hopped right on board with these leggings that she’s so proud of…’

Eventually, I noticed her come to screens that read ‘Procedure Preferences.’

“Finally, what we’re here for!” she said with too much glee for my tastes.

I felt my stomach twist as I realized this screen was essentially a menu board of options to have changes made. The gender option was one of the first changes a mommy like her could make. Incontinence was the very next set of options, and cruelly a Big could select either urinary, bowel, or both for their Little. Teeth removal was another choice that she could go for with the click of a radial button, and I could have no breasts or big breasts, apparently. I cringed when I saw that even things like my fingernails could be altered, as the list went on and on and on! I noted that there was a height reduction setting that could also quickly reduce me to a more manageable infant height if she wanted to.

“Letting your baby girl see what Mommy has to choose from?” A woman nearby asked with her own tablet.

Addison patted my head, “She already knows what I’m choosing, but I thought I’d let her see how much further we can take things down the road.”

“The greatest thing is that once you have this done, you don’t have to come back here to make changes. Your pediatrician should be able to activate any additional changes you want,” she told her.

“Oh?” Addison said, “I didn’t know that. Can just anyone make changes?”

“Only if they have Mommy’s permission with her password.”

“That’s good, at least,” she told her.

While she was talking to the woman, I noticed changes could be made to my circadian rhythm, my motor skills, and even my sex drive…

I debated filling it out for her with her attention diverted, but I just sat patiently and sucked on the damn silicone nipple in my mouth. The annoying thing was that it really felt kind of good to have it there… I’d developed a habit of sucking on pen caps a lot of times since law school, and this was really just the original version of that habit! Dad had told me I wouldn’t stop using mine until first grade. Since I should have been a Big, they hadn’t taken it away from me before I was four, and then Mom dying meant Dad didn’t have the heart to take it from me...

Eventually, they tired of talking, and Addison got back to work. To my relief, she put pretty much everything in states that they would be left alone, except for my gender and my hair color. She selected red for the hair color and must have heard me sigh. “What? If I have to have a daughter, I want her to look like she’s mine!” she whispered.

I sighed and clung to her as she gathered me in her arms and turned in the tablet. The receptionist scanned through it quickly, “Umm… She hasn’t been officially adopted by you yet?”

“Well, I thought she had since the judge ordered it yesterday? Their offices are the ones who set this appointment up?”

“Oh, but no chip yet?”

“Umm… no, no chip yet.”

“You’ll need to take care of that at the same time, then. We’re not allowed to do the nanite treatments on unadopted Littles.” She paused and smiled, “Or big Littles in this case!”

I turned my head into her neck then and just closed my eyes. I couldn’t take any more of that woman!

“The nurse can take care of the registration paperwork and her chip while she’s out for the procedure, or they can do it before while she’s still awake. Which do you prefer?”

“Let’s do it during. I don’t see any reason to make my baby girl feel pain if she doesn’t have to.”

“Wish half of these mom’s felt that way,” the receptionist said, apparently agreeing. “More screaming than I care to listen to sometimes! It should just be a few more minutes,” she told her.

Addison carried me back to the chairs, and I nervously began to shake. With this treatment, I would never be my father’s son again… never be the man who asked Beth to marry him… my career was probably already over, but this would be the final straw since all of my degrees and qualifications would be listed under the name of a dead man. That day Camille Harris was going to be born, and Cameron would legally die.

I bit down hard on the nipple of the pacifier in an attempt to center myself in any way.

“What’s wrong?” Addison started to ask. “Dumb question,” she said.

Instead of prodding, she squeezed me tighter, placing my head against her neck and squeezing me tight. She rubbed my back softly and sat silently while I shook like a scared animal.

“Camille Harris?” A loud voice called.

“Here,” Addison said in a softer reply, standing up.

“Mommy?” The voice asked.

“Yes,” she answered tentatively.

“Let’s get her back and set up for her procedure. You’ll be able to stay with her the whole time today.”

“Good, she’s terrified, honestly.”

“Aww, it’s okay, Sweetie, we do this all the time, and we’ll get you all taken care of and better in no time!” The nurse cooed.

That did not make my anxiety any better!

I could almost feel the drop of her footsteps seemingly increase as she followed whoever came for us to take us back. Eventually, I heard, “Go ahead and get her dressed in this gown. You can leave her diaper on her, but everything else needs to come off.”

“Okay,” Addison said.

“Someone will be here shortly to finish taking her vitals before we start.”

“Thanks…” Addison said.

I had my eyes still closed as she sat me down. “Come on, Cam, open those eyes up for me?”

I shook my head, “I can’t…”

She sighed, and I hoped she knew just how unhappy I was with this forced fate of mine. Addison might not be the one ultimately behind all of this, but I considered her a partner in what was about to be done to me!

“Come on, Cameron, look at me,” she said.

At the sound of my real name, I looked up at her. “I really am sorry about this. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t be going through with this, but this is happening by Judge Taney’s order.”

I shrugged, “You could have driven me somewhere else?”

“Like where?”

“Back to New Haven?”

She shook her head, “I would have been arrested, and my mom would have gotten the court to let her have custody of you. I don’t think you really want to be with Matty, do you?”

I grimaced; the last time I’d seen the diapered Little, things were not going well.

Tears went down my face, “There has to be another way…”

She shook her head, “This was your best chance, Cameron.” She wiped her eyes with a little bit of mascara running, “Come on, let’s get you in this hospital gown.”

I was pretty much a limp doll as she pulled the top off over my head and then my shoes and leggings off of my legs. The gown wasn’t as sterile-looking as an adult gown, instead having bright pictures of animals spread about on top of the pink base color. Of course, it didn’t cover the diaper well, and I found myself shivering with the cool temperatures of the room we were in. Rather than leave me in the small hospital bed with its low rails, she cradled me in her arms, dug in the diaper bag for a second, and wrapped a light purple blanket with yellow stars around me before sitting in a chair by the wall.

In all of the time we had dated, I had always felt smaller than Addison, but I’d never felt more infantile than that moment. She squeezed me tightly as she held me to her body for several minutes with no one there.

A curtain suddenly yanked open, drawing my attention to a nurse standing there.

“Ms. Harris and Camille?”

“That’s us. This is Cammie,” she told her.

“What’s Cammie’s birthday?”

Addison answered about my birthday in early September eerily quickly.

“We need to go ahead and get her vitals. Can you come with me? You can leave her diaper bag there unless she needs a change.”

I felt Addison’s intrusive hand then, “Nope, all dry. We followed directions and haven’t had anything to drink. Poor thing is probably really thirsty.”

‘I am, thank you for reminding me…’ I wanted to say, instead biting down harder on the damn nipple stuck inside my mouth. I should have spit it out by then, but I knew too many cases of Littles being caught on camera demonstrating their Maturosis with ‘misbehavior’ in situations like this. Meg and Stacy had told me about when they had been taken to the adoption centers, and I had no desire to screw up with anything.

‘I’m still hoping that David and Kendra find a way to come through for me,’ I thought, ‘But it looks like I’m going to have this done before any chance there…’

We were soon in a little alcove where the nurse had her stand me on a scale. “Let’s see, one-hundred-and-thirty-five pounds… Let’s get your height, sweetie; just step back against here…”

I followed her directions in the embarrassing hospital gown, knowing full well that my diaper might as well be fully on display while thinking, ‘When did I lose so much weight?’

“Seventy-seven-and-a-half inches, it looks like… does she need the half-inch Mommy?”

“Yes, give her the half-inch,” Addison said.

‘Inches,’ I couldn’t help but think. ‘We weren’t as far apart as we once thought, were we, Beth?’ I thought sadly.

“Looking at her weight, it looks like she needs to put a few pounds on?”

“She said she was losing some weight in the last couple of years. But you’re right; she took it a little too far.”

“She should be about one-eighty-five, according to the charts. I would keep a close eye on it; usually, once a cute baby girl like this is adopted, the weight goes back to healthy numbers with a good mommy keeping track and feeding her better.”

“Well, I’ll definitely be trying,” she told her.

I was picked back up by Addison, feeling like a total bystander in my own body. I had no control left over myself now, and after the blood pressure cuff was removed, I knew I was another step closer to my new fate.

“Mommy, we need to get her temperature; which way would you prefer?”

“Temporally, please?”

“We can do that,” she agreed. “Most of our new mommies prefer to be extra sure of accuracy, though, with a rectal number?”

I felt my stomach clench; it was probably inevitable that I would have a thermometer stuck up my ass. Meg and Stacy had mentioned it happened way too often to them!

“I’m certain you’ll be more than close enough with the temporal reading.”

I kept my eyes shut then as the woman pressed something against my head and took a reading, “Looks normal, and that’s the last thing that we need to do here. You can keep her in your lap until the anesthesiologist gets here. Doctor Lindquist will perform the procedure once he has her all hooked up. It only takes about a half-hour to complete then.”

“Thanks,” Addison said softly as she left. She had sat back down with me in the chair, rewrapping me with the blanket as soon as my weight had been taken. “We’ll have to get some weight back on you, sweetie. I thought it was odd I could see your rib-bones yesterday, but I didn’t realize how much underweight you had gotten.”

“Neither did I,” I told her softly around the pacifier.

I hadn’t weighed myself probably since Mr. Fehler appeared. ‘I really didn’t eat much then,’ I admitted. Since knowing Beth’s fate, I just worked and worked, skipping a lot of meals… Not really sleeping much, either...

“We’ll need to get some pounds back on you no matter what happens,” she told me.

I looked up at her, wondering what that meant…

A few minutes later, the curtain opened again, and a nurse was bringing in some equipment and an IV stand. “Hi, I’m Doctor Kestner; I’ll be Cammie’s anesthesiologist,” he said, extending a hand to Addison. “Let’s get her down on this bed, and we’ll start getting her hooked up.”

I felt my heart rate race as they pulled up the gown and began sticking heartrate monitor stickers down everywhere. A few minutes later, I felt tears going down my face as an IV port was poked into my arm. “Okay, Mommy, you want to tell her goodnight? She can keep her paci in her mouth until we start the nanites. Doctor Lindquist will administer them, and then we’ll get her back awake in no time!”

I looked up at Addison, seeing tears going down her face too. If I was stuck with her for the rest of my life as a daughter, I had to hope she would at least take care of me… I had to believe she really didn’t want this for me and hoped she would at least be better than someone like her mom.

“Cammie? Do you know your numbers?”

I glared at him but nodded, “Yes,” I said around the pacifier.

“I figured you were a smart little girl! Can you count backward out loud for me from one hundred?”

I sighed but nodded.

“One hundred,” I said.

‘Growing up, we found ourselves to be like,
two peas in a pod. Together we grew’

“Ninety-Nine,” I said, still lucidly.

‘to find that life was not to be alike.
Inches, mere inches kept us from a view.’

“Ninety-Eight,” I could feel things kicking in.

‘A dream to grow, a dream to be together.
Inches, just inches, sent our paths askew.’

“Ninety-Seven,” I knew it was about over; my fate was sealed.

‘May this be a token and a tether,
For our memories of love, in inches.’

“Ninety…”

‘I love you, Beth!’ I thought wearily.

I just heard a voice screaming, “WAAIII,” before it all went dark.

 
 

Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment if you did so and press the Kudos button! I should be posting a few times a week until this is fully posted here on BC. The full novel is complete (65 chapters plus Epilogue) and published on Amazon if you wish to be impatient though!

All of my published works have AI read audiobooks available for them. I’ve spent some time tweaking pronunciations, and they’re pretty good when you can’t afford thousands to pay for audiobook creation! They’re a $1.99 addon to the $5.99 price on Kindle. If you’ve already purchase the book it should come up as only $1.99. They’re also available on Audible directly, but that’s $9.99 versus the cheaper price! https://www.amazon.com/author/babysofia