Daily Writing Challenge

F-28

Papa is still in the hospital. There has been no word on him getting out. They have to replace both stents with larger ones to hopefully that will help drain the infection. They would not send him home if he was still septic, would they? Anyway if the larger stents do not work they will have to do some kind of surgery. I figure it will be at least a few more days in the hospital, and they will probably want to put him in a nursing facility afterwards. I ordered a long surge protector with eight outlets and a couple of lights for Nathan's room. It looks like he will be moving in sooner rather than later. I am not ready for that. Really not ready. We sometimes clash like oil and water. He is stubborn, and smart, I am stubborn and smart. We both think we are right. He does not feel like he has to listen to me. But he is going to this time. It is my damn house he is moving in rent free. I will be feeding him, he better respect that. He really doesn't have anywhere else to go. His mother is on housing and she can not have him with out risking losing that. My Brother and sister in law have four people already living in a two bedroom house. And they can not afford a drain on their resources when they have a kid to support. We are on a fixed income and we can not really afford a drain on our resources but we can not tell him to live on the street either. I wish someone else would step up. Honestly that just is not going to happen. I am also worried that we are not going to have the safety net of Papa helping us out if we need it. He has covered potential overdrafts when we have had issues. We pay him back but... I am just worried. We are going to have to make some changes.

Damn am I stressed. I need to stop thinking about that stuff. It is just going to put me into a panic attack. Let alone the crushing grief of losing Papa or him having to permanently live in a nursing facility. We just can not take him in too, even if he would help out financially. I do not have the mental health or physical strength to care for him properly no matter how much I want to. I did it with my mom and failed miserably only managing to take care of her for two days before she ended up back in the ER and then back in Madonna. I still feel like a failure I can not fail him in the same way. That would be worse than losing him is going to be and I really do not need that on top of losing him.

I wrote a story a couple of days ago I need to copy to its own item so I can submit it to the bradbury challenge. It is almost time for the next week's entry. I want to try to write something for the daily flash fiction challenge today too, but that may mean that this entry goes really long. I think I only need seven hundred and seventy five words for today and I am at five hundred eighty two. It is okay to go over word count but that is going to put me massively over word count and I don't even know if I would even like the story. The last two prompts I have tried fizzled out before I had stories. But then again I really did not feel like writing last night. Too much stuff going down for me to really focus. My damn cat peeked over the top of the screen and moved me to a different page and I lost about sixty words thank god for the auto save feature. I am at six hundred ninety one words now. I would be farther but, Mittens. She is just too curious for anybody's good. The litlle munchkin is cute but troublesome. Today is the last day of the challenge and need seven hundred words and at seven hundred thirty four words I only need another fifty. So if I am going to I need to hit the Daily flash fiction challenge now rather than later.

Daily flash fiction Prompt for 2/28/26

Write a story that includes the line: "I think we're going the wrong way."



"I think we're going the wrong way," I said softly. To get him to ask for directions rather than blindly following his phone, I needed to proceed carefully.

"This is what the phone is telling me to do."

"Did you put the address in correctly?" He glared at me for a fraction of a second. He was red in the face. I smiled at him and nodded. Okay, so maybe Google Maps is off. Still, this does not look like the correct route."

"What do you want me to do? This is where it said to go!" He slammed on the brakes and hit the steering wheel. "I do not know what else I can do."

"We could ask for directions from a local."

He gestured out at the dirt road we were on. "Point one out!"

"Perhaps we should go back to the highway. There was a gas station there."

He grimaced and then began to turn around. All went fine until he overshot into the ditch on the side of the road. He fought with it for fifteen minutes, and then began hitting his head on the steering wheel.

"Should I call roadside assistance?"

"Where do you tell them we are?"

"Good point. Well, perhaps I should call the B&B and let them know we are going to be a little late, but we still want our reservation."

"Why not?"

I called, and they asked where we were stuck. I told them we were somewhere on rural road 128. They said to wait where we were, someone would come help us out of the ditch and lead us to the B&B. Shortly, a tractor came trundling down the road from the direction we had been going. They got us out of the ditch and turned back around in the direction we had been going. Then they turned and went back the way we came. We followed. Ten minutes later, we came to a sign announcing the B&B, just about the time the road turned to pavement. It turned in, and we followed. We parked, and the tractor driver came to the driver's side window.

"I don't know why you were coming the direction you were. You should have come from the highway."

"We did, the map app said to get off at exit 422."

"Oh, it must not have updated after exit 423 reopened. Yeah, the highway is just a short hop on down this road." So we were going the wrong way in the right direction.