CHAPTER 83
Alice’s appointment duly came, and despite my misgivings I made time to go along with her. If I was being told off for interfering, I could still offer moral support by my presence.

It was a heavy meeting, with reams of reports and some quite heavy conversation. Alice’s side of things was simple: she had had enough of living a half-life with unwanted anatomical parts obstructing her future. She had demonstrated more than sufficiently through her real life test not only how she identified herself, but how she was perceived by others. Her endocrinologist’s reports were fine, her liver and other functions more than adequate, and her basic fitness, especially after her weight loss, definitely up to the mark.

Dr Oliver, the doctor charged with her review, hit back with counter-arguments about her age and history.

“You have had recent surgery to your cranium, Alice, and I do believe you arrested while in hospital. That is not a good thing to have on your record when asking for such a serious operation. I am going to be frank, I have severe doubts about your fitness for this.

“Look, you have lived most of your life with this…physical condition, and coped, why such a sudden urge to go under the knife?”

“Because my friend can’t cope, and I no longer want just to cope, I want to get on and live properly for a few years.”

“Ah. This friend, would it happen to be a man?”

Alice smiled, happily. “Oh, very much a man, doctor.”

“And can I assume from your attitude that he is neither bi nor homosexual?”

“Bingo, Doctor. That is the problem. He can see me as I am, up to a point, but then my anatomy comes into the picture---no, I don’t mean that we get intimate, it’s that he knows it is there and he is repelled by it. As am I.”

“So, you are seeking the ability to indulge in sexual intercourse”

Alice sighed in obvious exasperation. “No, doctor, I am simply seeking the ability to indulge in being held by the man I love without him shying away from me. That may not sound like the greatest thing in the world, but it is rather important to me, and I rather believe to Arwel”

“Arwel? The…er…”

“Yes, the ‘er’ and this young lady’s uncle. Now, I have made my desires plain, you have Astrid’s report on my mental state, and I can’t see what more you would need. It’s quite a simple thing, really; do I get the service from the NHS that I have paid my taxes for, or do I cash in my savings and bugger off to Thailand? One way or the other, it’s coming off for good”

Dr Oliver looked a little flustered. Alice was in full force-of-nature mode, and he looked as if he had been hit by a small tornado. I myself was slowly realising how firmly she had made up her mind. Thailand…if it wasn’t an empty threat, it would leave me with huge problems. There was no way I could leave her alone and hurting in a Thai hospital, or, worse, dead, but no way I could abandon my family. If she was going to take the risks anyway….

“Doctor…may I say a word? I know this awkward old trout has set her heart on things, and I simply can’t accompany her all the way out there. If she dies out there, I don’t know what I will do, well, I don’t know what I’ll do if she dies anyway, but at least if it is here she will be with family and friends”

Alice was staring at me “Die…?”

“Yes, you silly old woman, die. That’s what this man is trying to get across to you!”

“That’s my choice, Sar, my risk. It’s got to the stage now where I can see my freedom through the bars, and I just want to open the cage. That’s all, Sar. If I die, I die, but at least I tried. I have to try, love, otherwise I will die, in the end, having lost, and to be honest, I’m not going to die THAT much later, am I?”

It wasn’t an argument I could ever win, and to a large extent I blamed myself and Janet. What would she have done without having the two of us to rub her nose in things? That was the point I mentally surrendered. She would live, or she would die, but either way she was going under the knife.

The doc waved us goodbye with a promise to send her his verdict after he had had time to go through all the reports and consult with the surgical team, and Alice insisted we stop at a pub on the way home. The weather was still warm, and as we sat in the garden with our drinks, and I looked at Alice’s hint of cleavage, I realised that I had hardly ever seen her in anything other than skirts since our return from Australia. She seemed to insist on being as feminine as possible. Not Anne’s style of paint and scent, but shoes, dresses, nothing androgynous, and I wondered if it was because she didn’t dare risk anything that didn’t shout ‘woman inside’ in a bellow, or if it was because she was simply enjoying the ability to dress as she had always wanted.

She never wore anything tarty, no pelmet skirts or nipple-flashing tops (and she did indeed have nipples now), and while she loved heels they were never 5” fetish items, just feminine and pretty. It was her movements, though, that shouted her identity, just as they had on that first day at our house, and as I watched her with her glass of white wine I suddenly stepped out from behind my eyes and saw her as Arwel must do, not as someone who had known Alan for so long.

The dumpiness, the little round man in a dress, had gone. The weight loss had done great things to her, and she now had cheek bones instead of jowls. Redistribution of the fat that remained had softened her lines while the loss of her belly had made them finer. Even her legs looked better, and unless she clenched a calf the male musculature wasn’t that evident.

The main thing, though, was her smile. She was smiling now, and it reached beyond her eyes to her whole posture, which almost levitated when she was in such a good mood. I could see why Arwel was so able to put his preconceptions to one side with her, how she was so easily taken as Aunty Alice. Too many years with the man had prejudiced my eyes.

Sod it. Whatever course of action she decided, it was my turn to shut up and support her properly. Pray god that she wasn’t going to piss off and leave us, but anything else would be a win. Just…

“What has Arwel said about this, Alice?”

“He doesn’t know yet.”

“Surely, if you are doing this for him, he should have a say”

“I am doing it for myself, love, and hopefully that will end becoming doing it for us. Once I know if there is a possibility of it happening, then I will present him with a firm proposal”

“Proposal?”

“No, silly girl, not that sort. I’m a traditional woman, that’s his job”

“Please tell me you haven’t been discussing marriage with him! That would really freak him out!”

“And would that be a bad thing, a marriage?”

“Oh, for god’s sake, you know what I mean”

“What we have discussed is simple. We get on, neither of us is getting any younger, and some day soon I will be retiring fully from work. We have discussed sharing a house. Before you ask, we have NOT discussed sharing a bed. That is something I do not see happening in the foreseeable future, not with him”

“You want it though, don’t you?”

Alice turned wistful. “And is it not something you couldn’t live without, now? Without Tony?”

She was right. I had slept alone all my life, up until I met him that second time, and I never, ever wanted to do it again. His night shifts were bad enough, but I knew where he was, and, more importantly, knew he would ne back in our bed. The sex was, of course, wonderful, but what mattered was always his presence beside or around me, rather than in me. I made that decision.

“Whatever, Alice, I will be with you. One way or another we’ll see you happy. Please, though, let me talk with Arwel and you together. If he can accommodate you in any way that doesn’t risk your life, surely that’s worth a try? When are you seeing him next?”

I got a flash of her impish grin, as she looked over my shoulder.

“In about three seconds, I would say”