The Cumbrian Confusion - Part 4

They were finishing up the dishes from breakfast when Ridley finally spoke up. It had been obvious that there’d been something on their mind all morning, but Lily had done her best not to pressure them. She’d learned by that point that Ridley wasn’t the best at sharing personal matters.

“I… I think I have a lead for a job-thing,” they said, drying the frying pan. “But I have to head out of town. It’s over in Carlisle. So, I’ll probably be gone all day.”

“Ah, that would be a bit of a commute, if you do get it,” she replied, nodding.

“Uh, well, if I get the job I was thinking I would rent a room or something. That’s a long way to travel each day,” the said, seeming rather daunted by the idea.

A reminder to Ridley that she was not in London anymore, where she was pretty sure the various commuter rail lines that were on the Tube map stretched further than the distance between them and Carlisle. Distances that had struck her Canadian views as being annoying but vaguely doable commutes. Here in rural England, though, it seemed such things were balked at.

“Well, good luck, but maybe not too much good luck. We’d miss you,” she said, letting out what she hoped was a playful laugh.

-

The small and non-descript brick office building was so lacking in character that Ridley felt foolish to hold any sort of emotions regarding entering it. Let alone an emotion as strong as fear. Yet he couldn’t help it. Stepping in there, handing over his wallet and phone, he’d be telling someone other than Lily and her great aunt about his situation. What that would mean, he couldn’t guess.

Still, he had to do it. If the experimental cough syrup really did cause his current situation, then it could be a miracle drug for trans people everywhere. What was the small risk of never seeing the sun again, because he’d been locked away in a secret subterranean laboratory compared to that?

Probably not much.

Buuut… enough to make him dither outside the building for a few minutes, fighting against the desire to flee.

Finally, he realised the receptionist in the small office was watching him through the window and became too embarrassed to run away. They had his phone number, after all.

He bit the bullet and marched in, stiffly trudging up to the small white desk. The whole place looked like a dentist’s office or something. Which, he had remembered from before, but now it seemed somehow intimidating in its banality.

“Hello,” he squeaked.

“Hello,” the receptionist said, doing a quite respectable job of trying to act like the conversation was starting on a normal footing. Which meant she was only mildly failing. “How can I help you?”

“I… I have an appointment. I was involved in the recent trial for the experimental cough syrup,” he replied.

“Oh. I had heard there was someone running a bit late,” the receptionist replied, before turning to check her computer. “So… you would be Ridley Gardiner then, miss?”

“Um… yes,” he replied.

“Ah, well—huh, that’s odd. The spreadsheet has you down as male,” she mumbled, staring at the screen, as if the computer might be intimidated into ‘fixing’ that data point.

“It… there’s a reason for that,” he mumbled.

The receptionist gave him a small once over, but then nodded slowly. “Ah… apologies. I’ll… I’ll call my superior in for your check in.”

Ridley nodded, standing awkwardly for the few moments it took the greying thin man in the lab coat to emerge from the back office. He recognised the man from when he’d first signed up, and one of his previous check ins, but… the man seemed rather taller now. It was strange what a difference a few centimetres of height made on one’s perceptions.

“Mister Gardi—um… Miss Gardiner?” the man said, doing a double take.

“Maybe?” Ridley replied.

“Maybe?” the man repeated.

“That’s the… it’s the side effect I mentioned in my text,” he said.

Silence lingered for a few long moments as the man processed what he’d heard. “Side… effect.”

“Mhm. I—well, I can’t say for certain that it was your product that did it to me, but… I was taking it as per the lab instructions, then I woke up like this. Since there’s a chance it was related I thought I should report it?” Ridley replied.

“You’re… you… are you quite serious?” the man asked.

Ridley nodded. “If you want to compare my blood samples or fingerprints or whatever to prove it, we can.”

“That… I believe we will have to, to believe such a claim. I do think I want to believe you, as there’s something about you that—though siblings can look impressively alike,” the man said, waffling slightly before giving a small nod to himself. “I’ll call a car to take us to the lab.”

Not sure how long that might take, Ridley headed over to sit in the small reception area. He could feel the receptionist staring at him for a number of minutes. Still, there wasn’t anything to be learned from continuing to watch him, so her eyes eventually went elsewhere.

It wasn’t long after that that a company van pulled up. The man led Ridley into a seat in the back, then sat up with the driver. The trip was quiet, but fairly short. While Carlisle was the biggest city in Cumbria it still wasn’t that large.

The lab proved to be in one of the more industrial parts of town, tucked away in the sort of place one didn’t walk to unless they could avoid it. Ridley was led into the clean and fairly new looking facility, through some slightly winding generic hallways, and then to a small room that looked like a doctor’s office. He sat down in a chair and quietly noted that the room didn’t have any windows. Only bright artificial lighting.

Still, it didn’t look designed to hold someone prisoner. There wasn’t any sort of a toilet and the door was just a door. It probably locked, but there was plenty of furniture he could throw at it if he needed to escape. So escape seemed plausible.

A few minutes after being led in, a lab technician arrived to take a blood sample.

“Oh,” the man said, after he’d finished extracting what he’d come for. “You’ll also have to turn your phone off. Or, at least, to airplane mode. Some of the machinery here is a bit sensitive to the EM output.”

That did little to improve Ridley’s mood, but he begrudgingly complied.

Of course, it left him with nothing to do as he waited. There wasn’t a clock in the room, but he could check his phone if he really cared… not that he did. It had been roughly noon when he’d finally stepped into the office and there was plenty of time until the last train back home.

He paced around for a bit, growing more and more bored. The desperation of it left him thrilled when another employee arrived, even if they were only there to take his fingerprints.

“Do you know how much longer the blood work will take?” he asked.

“Maybe an hour longer?” the employee said.

Ridley’s eye twitched slightly, but he nodded, accepting that.

It proved to be rather a long and slow hour, however. He ended up trying to take a nap on the examination table after a while. Only to be woken up from the spotty nap by a number of people in lab coats entering the room. Presumably all doctors or otherwise medical-type folks.

“Hello?” he mumbled, blinking himself awake.

“Hello,” a small south Asian woman said with a small smile.

“We need to take a few more blood samples, to check a few things,” a man said. “To pin down what exactly happened to you… possibly some other tests as well.”

“Oh, um… ok,” Ridley mumbled, sticking out his arm.

He really hoped it would take long.

-

Waking up and preparing breakfast, Lily slowly realised that Ridley hadn’t returned in the night. She’d thought they might have just snuck in the night before, while she’d been dozing in front of her laptop, engaged in email tag with someone five time zones behind her.

But, no. Checking their room, there was no sign of them. She was about to move on, to go wake up Hyacinth, when something caught her eye.

Feeling a little guilty about snooping in Ridley’s room, she stepped over to check what was sitting on the desk. Something she figured was fine, as she wasn’t opening anything. Just looking at something sitting out in the open.

What she found was Ridley’s new (fake) ID.

Which was confusing, because wasn’t Ridley supposed to be job hunting? They’d need their ID?

Unless… something nagged at Lily’s subconscious, and so she headed downstairs to where her laptop was waiting. A quick bit of hunting online, her concern was confirmed.

There was an experimental cough suppressant being tested by a lab based in Carlisle. Which surely was the one Ridley had been a part of.

Thankfully, they had a number of addresses listed on their website.

It was hard not to worry something dramatic might happen, though. People didn’t just spontaneously change sexes, and who knew what a pharmaceutical company might do if they got the chance to experiment.

“I think I need to make a trip to Carlisle,” she mumbled to herself, trying to calm her nerves.

“Oh?” her great aunt asked, looking up from her tv watching.

“Ridley may have gotten themself into a bit of a pickle,” Lily replied, doing her best not to worry her great aunt. “The pharmaceutical company is probably having a panic attack over their product’s possible side effect.”

“Oh my…” Hyacinth said, nodding a little. “You can ask John to borrow his car if you’re in a hurry. Tell him it was my idea.”

“Thank you,” Lily replied.

-

How long it had been since his phone had died, Ridley couldn’t say. He had learned that doctor’s examination tables weren’t very pleasant places to sleep, however.  Between rarely being given more than an hour or two’s peace at any one point (as best as he could guess) and the small hard ‘bed’, he really hadn’t managed to sleep well at all.

At one point he’d complained to the lab technician and someone had returned a while later with muffins and some crackers from the break room, but he was pretty starving.

He’d also been allowed to make runs to the water closet from time to time, but it was annoying to have to stay put until someone showed up.

Staring at the ceiling, he was ready to guess it was about 3am. Which meant he was doomed to have a horrible day with how poorly he was sleeping. It also meant there would be hours until he got breakfast, which was even more wonderful.

It was all adding up to him wondering if maybe, just maybe, they really were looking to turn him into a prisoner for the foreseeable future.

As he let out a sigh at his predicament the door opened once more. He sat up to find a single technician entering.

“Did you guys need more blood?” he asked. “Or… don’t tell me it’s another urine sample? I don’t want to have to do that again. It’s so awkward now…”

“Uh, no. You’re wanted at the front desk,” the technician said, looking a bit bashful.

Confused, Ridley followed the man down the generic hallways. He yawned a few times, and nearly missed a turn in his half awake state, but they made it to the front in the end.

The fact that the sun was up utterly baffled Ridley’s sense of time, and he stared blankly at the window for a few seconds, not processing anything else.

“We’re very sorry,” someone was saying. “We became so caught up in the confusion of what had happened to Miss Gardiner that we quite lost track of how long we were keeping her here for.”

“Him,” he muttered, still staring vaguely towards the window. “I’ve been trying to make it fit, but it doesn’t. I’m just not a ‘her’.”

“Ah. I had suspected as much.”

Wait. He knew that voice.

Spinning on his heels (and nearly teetering over in his half asleep state) Ridley found himself staring at Lily, looking rather angelic as she stood there, the one familiar face in an otherwise intimidating crowd.

He couldn’t help but pale as he realised he’d finally confessed the truth to her.

She was going to hate him. Especially when he explained his crushing on her. That wanting to be compatible with her sexuality, was a major driver behind his attempts to be a woman.

“He’s free to go, then?” Lily said, turning towards the assorted doctors present and wearing a quite convincing smile. “You’re not going to keep him here against his will, are you?”

There was a sharpness to her voice that, with it currently being in his defense, made him feel a little giddy inside.

“We’d like to stay in touch to run further tests, but we didn’t mean to hold him prisoner or anything like that,” a doctor replied.

“Thank you… well, come on, Ridley. Let’s go get some proper food in you,” she said, holding a hand out for him.

Nervous about how things were going to go for him, he took her hand and followed her out the door. She led him towards a small car, where she nearly offered him the driver’s seat, before shaking her head and hurrying around to open the passenger side door.

He took his seat quietly, waiting for her to get in and start driving. There was enough of a silence that he started to nod, being at risk of dozing again. With a good deal of effort, he shook it off, knowing he had to get ahead of things.

“I was trying. Really trying,” he mumbled. “To… to be a woman. It seemed better for everyone.”

“Trying to be something you aren’t often does,” Lily replied, compassion in her voice. “But it’s better to be yourself.”

He gave a small nod. “It… I wasn’t just trying to get in your pants or anything. I valued the friendship with you and your aunt as much as anything.”

“Wha—what does trying to get in my pants have to do with—well, any of this?” Lily asked.

“I—since you thought I was a woman and asked me on a date and… all of that,” he mumbled.

“Ohhh… you think I’m a lesbian?” she asked, turning his way briefly.

“Uh—yes?”

“Everyone keeps doing that,” she muttered. “I’m bi. I just tend to find lesbians and bi girls react better to the ‘trans’ thing than straight guys, so I mostly date women. It’s the safer bet.”

“You… you do? I mean—you are?” he stammered.

“Yes. And I’ve dated a trans guy before, so don’t worry about that,” Lily replied.

Ridley found himself blushing as he realised what that would mean should things get… intimate.

-

In the end, they never figured out why Ridley’s body had changed overnight. The pharmaceutical company was eventually able to rule out that the cough syrup had been responsible (after performing a significantly larger second round of clinical trials, when the government became concerned). Magic remained the primary suspect in the eyes of Ridley, Lily, and great aunt Hyacinth, but they had no proof that it existed, let alone that it was responsible.

This was not to say, however, that they never figured out how Ridley’s body had changed overnight. Apparently whatever had caused it had left traces of bizarre enzymic activities. There wasn’t much left by the time he’d gone in for testing, but slower dividing cells, such as in his nerves, still had some traces of it.

Years of study and testing remained for the various teams now working on it, while there were rumours of a Nobel Prize for whoever cracked the code first. So, it was very firmly a start. The future of medical transitions looked bright.

Though, in Lily’s opinion, the present looked pretty good as well. Ridley had finally been allowed to start hormones about a year earlier and he was starting to grow in some proper stubble now. The fat on his face had also moved around a bit, so he didn’t seem quite so babyfaced, though that wasn’t to say he’d looked bad before. He just, well, looked more like himself now. Which had resulted in a sparkle to his eyes. The ‘I can see myself in the mirror’ sparkle.

“I will say,” he said, coming out of the washroom one morning, “I’m glad I didn’t start looking so much like myself until after I moved to Kingston with you.”

“Oh?” Lily asked, nursing her coffee.

“My old college friends probably would have realised it was me and dragged me back into nonsense again,” he replied, sitting down at the small kitchen table.

She gave him a small smile. “I’m glad you still see getting away from their bad influences as being worth losing a few inches.”

His cheeks went hot for a moment, before he realised what she’d meant. “Ah, yeah. A few inches of height. That’s a fair trade… losing inches elsewhere was a bit more annoying, though I still think I came out ahead overall. Looking back at it now.”

“Really?” she asked, genuinely a little surprised after the complaining he’d done during the months of endless medical exams.

The idea that he really thought he won out by no longer being medically cis.

“Mhm. Well, for one, I got to meet you,” he said, giving her her turn to blush. “But, also… I don’t know. I just sort of accepted masculinity before. I didn’t care about it. I didn’t examine what was good or bad about it. But, now? After getting to know trans people of all stripes? I—there’s a joy to be had in the masculinity I’ve built myself now. It’s healthier than it was before… finally seeing myself in the mirror again has tipped the balance over to think I won out.”

Lily smiled, before leaning over and kissing him on the cheek. “I’m glad.”

They spent a few more moments sitting quietly, enjoying one another’s company. They’d gotten good at that these last two and a half years. Especially now that they were in Lily’s apartment, with a nice view of the city. There was always so much to watch out those windows, when they just wanted a little quiet.

When they just wanted to accept how comfortably they’d each slotted into the other’s life.

He looked back at her, and then blushed slightly. “There’s, um… there’s one other benefit I’ve been thinking about.”

“Oh?” she asked, genuinely unsure what he was referring to.

“You, um… you told me you have, uh… with the fertility clinic. Frozen,” he said, starting to mumble as his eyes lowered to study the table. “And, well… now that I can feel like myself again, I was thinking I might… um… maybe… maybe think about having kids?”

“You—oh. You mean… oh my,” Lily mumbled, as he looked up at her with hopeful eyes.

That was… he was…

“Yes. Oh my… but yes,” she managed.