Golden Hours
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

I always considered that I would be involved in medicine somehow – I wanted to save lives. I considered myself a caring person, but I also liked the idea of adventure – of standing between life and death and fighting to allow somebody to live. It seemed to me to be the noblest calling.

In our childhood games my older brother would get tired of being the patient, and that would mean that I was relegated to being the nurse, despite being a boy. I liked that role. To me assisting a truly brilliant man and fighting beside him was somehow even better. And I also liked the nurse’s outfit. It was my first experience of cross dressing, and it would not be my last.

But apart from that private fascination, I grew up to be a normal boy. I went on to do all the things a normal boy did at high school, although never quite as well as my older brother. I had girlfriends and seemed to prove to myself that I was heterosexual. I just had a secret obsession that I was very good at keeping a secret.

When I left high school I did some paramedic training and joined the Peace Corps for two years. I was sent to Costa Rica and I worked as support for vaccination and public health programs. Plenty of people think that the Peace Corps is for losers, but I loved my time in it.

I did some more training when I got back and I went to work for an ambulance service in Los Angeles. It was all I ever wanted.

Death is a big part of working as a front-line responder. Sometimes people are dead already, or so close to death that you know that CPR is what you have to do, but it won’t work. Then there are people who seem to have a chance and you work hard to keep them alive and get them to hospital. But most victims that you get into the bus you know that they will get to the Emergency Department. Some of those surprise you and die, if you get something wrong, or sometimes it just happens.

Paramedics are not doctors. The doctors always tell us that. They always say that we are not expected to see everything and understand all the signs – that is what a medical degree is for. Experience will help us in the end, but while we build that we need to treat somebody as we find them.

The crazy thing with Annette was that she seemed so calm and relaxed that I thought that she could not be badly hurt. What I did not understand was that she had reached the point of serenity when she knew that she was going to die, and she just wanted to go out with dignity.

When we got her onto the gurney, I thought that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She had long blond hair and blue eyes. She had held her hands over her face while she was beaten, but she had contusions all over her body. She had been bashed with something hard and heavy.

We got her to the ambulance to check her injuries. There, what was left of her clothes could be cut away looking for open wounds and signs of internal injuries. That was my job while Faye looked after the shunt and the IV drip. Sometimes the deadly injury can be missed, so I was thorough. That is when I found that Annette had a penis.

I suppose I should have been shocked, that such a perfect woman was not a woman at all, but I was in rescue mode. I just made the observation into the recording - “subject is transgender” and kept looking. But perhaps I was put off, or somehow knocked off my game by the shock.

She said – “Please tuck it back. I don’t want to die with it hanging out like that.”

“You’re not going to die,” I told her. I knew so little.

Faye had the monitors set up and she was in the driver’s seat accelerating away, gently because she had done her turns in the back and knew how to avoid moving the patient too much.

“I wanted him to know,” said Annette, reaching out to hold my sleeve. “Things seemed like they were getting serious, so he needed to know. I was not wrong about him. He felt the same way. I know that now. He was thinking about a future with me. If he had just wanted sex, he would not have reacted like that. He was making plans, you see. All his dreams were dashed when I told him. I was the cause of his pain. Can you get a message to the police? Can you tell him that I forgive him? It was not his fault.”

She was clawing at my arm and getting agitated. She was trying to shift the blame from the man who had beaten her to within an inch her life. I had no time for that brute whatever his story might be.

“Let’s just concentrate on keeping you stable,” I said. “Don’t waste your energy on being upset. There will be time for that when you get to hospital. Just stay with me. Where does it hurt?”

“All over and nowhere,” she said. “I don’t think that I am going to make it. Thank you for everything that you are doing, but I don’t think it will change anything.”

“We have some deep contusions here, but we will make it to the hospital.” I was suddenly aware that she was smiling, just looking up at the ceiling.

“I never got to have the final operation,” she said. “There will be an M on my death certificate. That will be my only regret. I don’t regret anything else, even though it has meant that I lost the love of certain people close to me. I had to live my life, you see. My life before I became Annette was no life at all. It was meaningless and awful. I have lived a good life ever since. A woman’s life.”

“That’s good,” I said. “Talk to me about how good your life is. Stay in the fight. There will be plenty more of that good life ahead of you. Think about that surgery you want. Make plans from your hospital bed. Your vital signs are not so bad. Just stay with us”.

“I fought it to start with,” she said. “I wanted a normal life. But then I understand that I could never be normal in that body. A true life would never be mine. I would never be happy. Even now, I am happy. I am me, even if not quite complete. Who is? I will die happy.”

“You won’t die,” I pleaded.

“Are you happy? Could you ever be as happy as I am? That is the happiness that can only come from accepting who you are and doing something about it. I don’t feel any pain anymore. I am fulfilled.”

They were the last words that she said.

I don’t weep over the bodies of those I go to aid, but as I went through those desperate chest compressions I cried like a baby. I shouted at her lifeless body, begging her to come back. In that short time I understood that she was the best of people, and I was hopelessly inadequate and unfulfilled.

The crazy thing was that this all took place in less than an hour. We paramedics call it “The Golden Hour”. What you do in that hour can save a life. But we could not do major surgery in the back of an ambulance. She was bleeding internally and dying from loss of blood, even though I could not see it. She was dead within that hour.

But it was a golden hour for me. My life was saved in that hour. The fact was that I enjoyed my job despite all the stress or maybe because of it. It kept my thoughts away from who I was and who I had to be. Annette changed all of that.

From her I learned grace. Becoming a different person cannot be forced – it needs to come from within. You need to let it happen. I could never be as perfect as her on the outside, but I could be a woman.

I also learned from her to tell him early. If he sees you only as a woman then it means that is what you are, but he needs to know about your past, and the problems you will face in the future if you are to be together.

I told him the story, pretty much as I am telling it to you. He was puzzled. He did not understand, until the moment that he did. He was shocked, of course, just as the man who went to prison for killing Annette was, but after a break from my love, he came back. I was not surprised that he did.

The End

Annette