Change in Me -3- Trading Deadline

I considered whether you wanted someone sure of their skill or someone who was kind of iffy to do your sex change?

I hadn’t really had much choice, though. But having had Jane Alexander — pardon me — Dr. Jane Alexander do the surgery pretty much answered a question I hadn’t asked. It had been a sex change operation. They hadn’t stopped with just removing affected tissue but had gone ahead and constructed a vagina for me.

“I guess this makes me a lesbian,” I said. “Has anyone told my girlfriend yet?” I smiled, a bit bitterly perhaps.

My sister rolled her eyes at me, and my smile widened, just to annoy her. I couldn’t miss the real concern she seemed to be feeling, though. She’s my Big Sis and of course, she cares. I had to blink several times and change the mental track I was following.

I couldn’t imagine that Cara Woolery, the aforementioned girlfriend, would take the news gracefully. Her dad was the sort of California politician who kind of emphasized the South in Southern California, and while she didn’t subscribe wholeheartedly to his brand of conservatism, she remained pretty conventional in her tastes.

Tastes? It had taken a bit of persuasion to get her to agree to oral sex in the first place. My new situation might be a buffet choice too far.

I must have still been grinning, because Dr. Alexander frowned at me. Deservedly, perhaps, but if you can’t make jokes about something, it’s way too serious.

She spoke again after another consult with her pad. “You may be able to leave the hospital tomorrow, Mr. March. We’ll want to change your dressings a couple of times and instruct you in wound care.”

I nodded. Nobody really likes being in the hospital, but leaving didn’t appeal to me all that much either.

“You have to learn how to insert the forms to maintain the passage, otherwise it might close up and be pretty useless for, well, for sex. Is that a concern for you?”

Beth made a noise, a dry squeak like someone had stepped on a lizard, but I ignored that.

“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “Is there enough left there for you to reconstruct a more male configuration?”

She nodded sort of sideways. “Not one that would offer the level of satisfaction a natural penis provides. And, at any rate, you need to do some healing before more surgery.”

I mumbled something. It wasn’t good news.

Beth reached for my hand, and I let her take it. She squeezed, and I squeezed back. My future looked…strange and a bit unpredictable. I opened my mouth, licked the back of my teeth, and made a clicking sound.

“Is talking about this disturbing to you, Mr. March?”

I looked up at her and decided that her concern was both genuine and professional. I shook my head. “I need to know things. You say I can go home tomorrow?”

“Mm,” she agreed. “It’s better if you have someone to stay with you. A family member?” She looked at Beth.

Beth considered. “You were renting a room in Lancaster for the season?” She knew, but she made it a question. I’d rented a room with Mr. And Mrs. Yardley while their son was on a Mormon overseas mission somewhere in Africa. They probably already knew the Hilltoppers season was over.

“Season ended for me yesterday,” I said. “We lost the elimination round, so we’re out of the postseason. And -uh- and then this happened.” I shrugged, then suppressed a wince. Something had hurt for a moment, but I couldn’t quite locate the pain.

“He can stay with me,” Beth told the doctor, then repeated it to me. “You can stay with me.”

“You already have roommates,” I pointed out.

She shook her head. “You can have my room for now, I’ll sleep in the den.”

“Francine? Henrietta? They won’t mind?”

“They have the big bedroom and their own bathroom, so they can just lump it!”

I grinned. Frank and Hank were a well-known pair on the pro circuit, two of the real lesbians who made the stereotype of lady golfers come alive. I had to laugh, “I guess any of their objections to me as a roommate are sort of moot now.”

Beth didn’t seem to know whether to laugh or not, and Doc Alexander just ignored the byplay. “I’ll be back in the afternoon to change your dressing and give you instructions,” she announced.

I nodded. “Fine,” I said.

Beth and I watched her leave.

Having thought about lesbians, I couldn’t be too surprised when Beth’s phone vibrated, receiving a text message from Rhona that she was pulling into the visitors’ lot at the hospital. Rhona had been Mom’s wife now for a couple of years and always made a face when I called her Aunt Rhona.

She was a good sort, though, and a good fit for Mom, who had let her artistic side blossom after the divorce and needed a practical, no-nonsense paralegal-type to dot i’s and cross t’s for her.

“She’ll be up in ten minutes or so,” Beth told me. “Hospital security isn’t a complete joke but nothing like the airport.”

“Mphm,” I grunted, pulling at the edge of the sheet. I wasn’t in pain exactly, but there was an unpleasant background of discomfort that moved around like an ocean current. “What does Rhona know?” I asked.

“About what I did when I got here a few hours ago. That you’ve had a very serious operation related to your groin injury. I didn’t find out they had... had done... done a…”

“Sex change operation,” I supplied.

“That…,” she agreed. “Not until I talked to the doctor after I got here.”

I took a moment to think. “Do me a favor, Sis,” I asked after a bit.

“Sure,” she responded before I had a chance to amplify.

“Can you intercept Rhona,, take her aside, tell her what has happened—what is going on?”

‘Uh, yeah,” she replied. “I can do that, I can take her to the visitors’ lounge on this floor.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Give me half an hour or so, and knock before you come back in.”

Beth is a brick. She didn’t question or need any more instruction. She stood up and bent across the bed to give me a peck on the forehead. “I’d better go out and wait for her near the ‘evelators’.” (We’d called them that since we were kids.)

I watched her go. She paused at the door to look back at me. “Bye, Addy,” she said. “You can do this.”

I nodded, then as soon as she had let the door close behind her, I pulled several tissues from the flat little box on the bed table and held them to my face. Even if someone did come in, they wouldn’t see me cry.