Part 7 of 7

Chapter 14
How did four years go by so fast? Seems like just Yesterday Rose was starting high school and in a few minutes she would be walking across the stage to receive her diploma. Travis and Ruth smiled to think the entire family was there to watch, and not incidentally keep track of the active four-year-old and frenetic two-year-old grandchildren who were bored with the whole affair.

Not only was the family watching, but many of the ranch hands were there as well, resplendent in their finest cowboy outfits. They had seats on the lower level of the bleachers to accommodate Grandpa Ben's wheelchair, he had a hard time walking these days but was beaming with pride as his latest grandchild graduated from High school.

Rose was beaming as well, but not because she was graduating high school. For her, the real graduation had come two years before when she turned sixteen and started HRT. The changes were coming along nicely, her hips were wider, her waist narrower and her breasts were growing enough she had dug out her first pair of forms so that she could keep wearing her bras without discomfort.

After four years of high school, crowds of people were not so daunting. Her days of home schooling seemed to be in the distant past now. She smiled at Luke and Betsy, her first boyfriend and his steady girl, as they found the places on the rows of seats. Fate had placed them next to each other as their last names started with the same letter. Rose's current heart throb, a boy name of Stephen Zago, was, as always, at the very end of the line.

Rose idly speculated if being Rose Zago would mean she was always last in line. She and Steve had been an item for more than a year now, and he was still interested even after she told him she was trans.

That took a lot of trust, and Steve had proved worthy of that trust. Sure, things were a bit strained when she finally told him, but by then she was sure he was someone she could spend her life with. He was one of three people in her school (besides her sisters) who knew she was trans, and all three were willing to accept her for what she was and not what they wanted her to be.

Would Steve still be her boyfriend by the end of college? They were going to be going to the same college, so there was hope. Rose the Romantic had been sure the Luke and she were going to be together forever in wedded bliss from the moment they first kissed. She was in love, the world was beautiful. The dry grasslands would bloom and flourish as they rode hand-in-hand into the sunset.

Well, that was four years ago. The love of the ages evolved to a lasting friendship before the end of the school year, but by then Rose was getting a feel for what was happening in the wider world. Unlike so many high-school romances, Luke and Rose did not hate each other's guts by the time they decided they were not meant for each other. In fact, Rose was the one who pointed Betsy toward Luke after the breakup. She was pretty proud of her skill at matchmaking, especially seeing the ring on Betsy's finger that graduation morning.

Rose was looking forward to becoming an Aggie - a student at Texas A&M University. In the dim bygone reaches of the nineteenth century A&M started out as Agricultural & Mechanical, but now they were just letters in homage to the past. In a twist of fate, she had become the sibling who wanted to continue to run the ranch and keep it in the family.

Odd how things worked out. When Roosevelt Andrew had been born, Travis was thrilled to have a son to carry on the name and keep the ranch in the family. When Roosevelt Andrew made it clear she was Rosie Ann there was some regret, but Travis was a wise man who knew better than to try to control his children's lives. He had seven daughters and that was that. So the son who used to be was determined to become the daughter that carried on the family tradition.

Now in his late forties, Travis was beginning to understand his father's complaints that getting old is not for sissies! A good hot bath after a day in the saddle was more welcome than ever. The occasional twinges when picking up something heavy were annoying and damned if there hadn't been a couple of nights when he fell asleep even though Ruth was hinting she was horny.

Now that was really annoying!

The whole idea of passing the ranch to the next generation was starting to acquire a new layer of meaning. While all of their children still had a love of the ranching life, they had found places as doctors and programmers and even a lawyer. Ruth and Travis could be proud of the children they had raised together.

For the last time, they watched one of their children stride across the stage in her ridiculously high heels to receive a diploma. Now they would have to wait about fourteen more years for the first grandchild to do the walk.

Nice to have plans for the future.
 

If the four years of high school passed quickly, the first two years of college passed both slowly and quickly. Quickly because she was studying hard to become a competent ranch manager and slowly, since Rose's body seemed determined to mature far too slowly for her taste. The doctors finally decided that Rose had stopped growing and she could finally have her GRS in the summer between her sophomore and junior years.

That's where things got complicated.

Genital Reconstruction Surgery is no small thing, and comes with a pretty steep price tag. The Jordan family was pretty well off, but even a well off family could be daunted by such bills. Fortunately, the Jordan spread had several oil wells within its boundaries, wells that produced a small amount of oil at a steady rate. Exxon or BP would turn up their nose at the minuscule quantities of Jordan Crude, but month after month, year after year, those barrels of oil were trucked off and the proceeds put into a rainy day fund.

Some years, when there was a glut of oil it hardly paid to sell the stuff. Other years, when the price went crazy and the speculators were just as crazy, the Rainy Day account filled nicely. The Jordan accountants would move the money from the Rainy Day fund into stable investments once a year and with the magic of the market the Rainy Day Fund was quite substantial. Even with judicious tapping for sending seven girls to college, there was enough to make Rose's surgery a reality.

Not only were there sufficient funds, but Doctor Ramona Jordan had almost completed her surgical residency and was to be part of Rose's surgical team when the time came. Psychiatric permission was no problem - not many transgendered folks had eighteen years of Real Life Test under their skirts.

Thus it was that, one week after exams were over, Rose and Steve - still her boyfriend and now her fiancee - packed their bags and moved into the guest room at sister Ramona and husband Rubin's home. In an evening of too much wine and lots of silly talk, the sisters were able to make jokes about big sis finally getting to stick a knife in her annoying little sister. Doctors have some pretty strange ideas about what constituted humor.

This doctor was also one of the Magnificent Seven and, with the wine-lowered inhibitions the oldest and youngest sister were soon singing together. Pretty soon Ramona's husband Rubin was drawn in and what else could Steve do but provide the fourth part and a Barbershop Quartet was born. Up a Lazy River and The Sunny side of the Street gave way to more contemporary tunes until the hour grew very late. A wonderful way to get to know the other's mates and to forget that in a day or two Rose would be in an operating theatre.
 

The time came and Rose was settled in the hospital bed, IV in her arm and nothing in her stomach. The nurses on the floor were startled to hear the doctor and her patient singing a very upbeat version of The Kink's Lola as the pre-op checks were completed.

With Steve holding her hand, Rose watched her big sister push the plunger that sent the anesthetic into her IV and seemingly seconds later she woke up staring at a blank ceiling with gummy eyes.

The usual post-surgery recovery ensued - the less detail about that the better - and after a few days Rose was back in the guest room with Steve at her beck and call. Rosie had to laugh when she showed Steve the dilator set, his reaction was pretty typical. As she healed she offered to let Steve take a turn helping, but the poor guy took quite some time to work up the nerve.

He did hold up a mirror for her when the bandages came off, but he was trying very hard not to freak out at the sight - there was still enough swelling that it wasn't exactly the sort of thing anyone would fantasize about happening to his lover's body. Rose figured if he stuck through her GRS he had to be a keeper, and indeed he did stick.

Time passed, as it always does, and Rose felt up to returning home. Her parents' home, that is, and what she sincerely hoped would be where she and Steve would eventually call home.

She was careful about stairs, but they were manageable if she took it easy. Her biggest regret was that her favorite horse gave her such a pitiful look when she visited him, but there was no way she was going to be riding any time soon.

Ruth and Travis were cool with Steve sharing her bed, after all they had been in an apartment together for the past year, but somehow you revert to being a little kid when you come back to the home you grew up in. Besides, sex was not really in the cards for a few weeks yet. Well, intercourse, anyway.

It was good to be home, to hang out with the ranch hands and introduce Steve to them. He fit right in, pleased to be putting the things he had been learning into action on a real ranch. As Ruth and Travis watched the couple over the summer they grew assured that the ranch would be in good hands when the time came for them to pass it on.

Steve had an excellent grasp of the economics as well as the physical load of ranch life. The hands soon realized this was the guy who would one day be the Boss, and he damned well knew what he was doing. All the hands knew someone who had been forced to move on when a family ranch failed, and they were relieved that this ranch would be there for the duration.

When they returned to their apartment at school in the fall, they gave Rose's new equipment a thorough test. She had been right all along - she damn well was a woman!