Bella's Accidents

An Inadvertent Impact

Although she was still wetting the bed nearly every night, Bella was happier by an order of magnitude than she had been since her incontinence had first materialized, and indeed may even have been happier than at any time before that point. Her confidence, although still heavily damaged by having to don a diaper under her pajamas each night as well as by the residual embarrassment of her several waking accidents in public, had begun gradually, and with Claire's help, to return.

On the Thursday of the fourth of six weeks of Bella's day camp, an hour or so after lunch, Bella and the other campers in her particular cohort – thirteen in total, consisting of about an even mixture of incoming high school freshmen such as herself, incoming eighth graders, and incoming seventh graders – were scheduled for a ninety minute session of volleyball. After warming up for several minutes by passing the ball alternately overhand and underhand in a large circle, they divided into four teams spread across two adjacent courts and began to play.

Bella had never been all that competitive and had therefore never played sports on a school or club team, but she was naturally athletic and well-coordinated and enjoyed the physical exertion of activities like volleyball and soccer, despite not caring overmuch whether her team won or lost. She naturally tried her best to play intelligently and for the benefit of the team, but that habit was born more out of regard for the ambitions of the more competitive girls on her side of the court or field than out of a genuine desire to win for her own sake.

That Thursday afternoon, she found herself on a capable and well-constituted squad, and they easily won their first two sets against two of the opposing three teams of girls. Bella, like most of her fellow campers, was dressed in tennis shoes and warm-weather athletic apparel (short, breathable, navy blue exercise shorts and a pink and white athletic tee in Bella's case), but even so, she was sweating heavily from the heat of the day and the intensity of the games. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail to keep it out of the way, and Bella found herself wishing that she had worn a baseball cap or something to keep the sun out of her eyes.

Bella put on sunscreen every morning before she left for camp and did so again at lunch, more or less because her mom insisted, but counted herself lucky that her swart, olive skin prevented her from burning quite as easily as many of her compatriots. At least I don't have to bathe myself in sunblock every forty-five minutes in order to keep from turning into a big, puffy tomato like a lot of these girls seemingly do, Bella thought gratefully as she observed a girl on her team reapplying a truly staggering amount of the thick, white substance to her face and arms during the break before their third and final set.

This final set of games proved tougher and more closely contested than their previous two, as their opponents were, on average, taller and more athletic than the girls on the other two teams had been. Bella dove for several balls, making several fairly improbable saves and receiving scrapes and bruises on her knees, elbows, and along the bottoms of her arms in return. The score was very tight, and although she herself didn't much care which way the result ultimately went, she could still sense the tension emanating from both sides of the court.

A girl on the opposing side threw down a lethal serve, and Bella dove forward to return it, unaware of the fact that a teammate immediately to her right had done the same. Too late, she saw her teammate careening toward her out of the corner of her eye, and a quarter-second later Bella's temple collided sickeningly with the girl's shoulder, followed by a blinding white flash, then darkness...

Bella awoke less than a minute later, lying dazed on her back and looking up in confusion at the faces of a semicircle of concerned fellow campers and the much larger, nearer face of the camp fitness instructor – a tall, reedy, and flamboyantly gay former college athlete in his early forties – who had happened to be nearby and witnessed the collision.