"What's so funny?" the nurse asked with a smile.

"Oh, everything!" I exclaimed. "The room, the curtains, the bed, this tasteless food... my funny little body with its breasts and—" I stopped and looked down at my lap.

"Hmmm...," the nurse said. "You are a funny little girl, aren't you?"

That was so wrong it made me laugh even more.

---

 
This is a response to one of Melanie Ezell's Challenges,
number 24: Build Your Own Body.

You Are The Target

1. Yes To Everything

 

Coming back to consciousness after an operation isn't the same as waking up. It's not like you were asleep; it's more like you were turned off. When it's all over, the doctor turns you back on.

When they put me under, they told me I'd wake up in the same place, in that high gurney, on those crisp, starchy sheets, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling beige curtains.

I opened my eyes for a moment and saw it wasn't so... there were curtains, but they were yellow, of a rough material... the cheap, shabby kind that you find in a cut-rate hotel. And I wasn't lying on a gurney, but in a bed. The sheets were softer and less starchy, but they didn't have that snappy, blazing white, germ-free feeling of hospital sheets.

All of that was strange. And yet, there was something even stranger: The funny thing was, I didn't mind. It was all wrong, but it only made me smile. Weird, yeah... and I knew that it should bother me, but it didn't.

"Are you awake?" a soft female voice asked. "Would you like some water?" She gently put a straw between my lips, and I drew on it, tasting the icy cold water. It was too cold... but again, I didn't mind.

The anesthetic was still strong upon me, so I kept my eyes shut. The nurse took my blood pressure, pulse, and temperature. She flashed a tiny light in each of my eyes in turn. She asked me to grip her hands for a moment, and then she ran something up the soles of each of my feet. I wanted to ask her what was going on, and I especially wanted to know what on earth she was doing with my feet, but all I did was lick my lips.

She gave me a few more sips of water. I shut my eyes and heard her make a phone call to my doctor. Then I fell asleep.

When I woke up later, I was alone. My head was a little less fuzzy. I shifted around in the bed. Dear lord, every part of me felt different. My skin, of course, was younger, softer, more sensitive. I expected that; at least that was as it should be. On the other hand, my body felt different — but different in a wrong way. A *very* wrong way. I felt slinky, flexible in an unfamiliar way... Sure, I was supposed to lose my pot belly, but my waist felt small, way too small.

I lifted my head and took a look at the outline of my body, covered by the sheet.

"Oh, you're kidding me!" I said on a weak breath.

My chest was too small in one way and too big in another. My whole body was absurdly narrow, like a young girl, and I had a pair of breasts stuck on the front of me. By churning my feet, I worked the bedclothes off of me, and tugged the hospital gown down. Sure enough, two fleshy mounds were fastened to my chest! What the hell!?

I was busy trying to push them off of me when the nurse walked back in.

"Hey, hey, hey, now! What are you doing?" she said. "Let's cover you back up! You'll catch your death of cold that way."

"It's all wrong," I told her. "I've got breasts."

"Of course you've got breasts," she said. "We've all got breasts."

"Ohhh," I murmured, slurring my words a little, "That doesn't make it right."
 

---

 

A few hours later, when the doctor arrived, I was sitting up, drinking broth and eyeing a block of wiggling Jell-O. "How's my patient?" he asked, rubbing his hands and smiling.

"Everything's wrong," I told him with a smile. "I'm not in the hospital and I'm not a woman. I mean, I am a woman, but I'm not supposed to be. I'm not supposed to look like this."

"That's a very common reaction," he told me. "But I can assure you that you very painstakingly chose to look the way you do."

"I did?"

"Yes," he assured me. "You and I — and several specialists — went over *every* detail of this new body of yours. Several times. Up to the last moment, in fact."

"Huh," I replied, but I knew he was wrong.

"Aside from that," he asked, "How are you feeling?"

"A little groggy, but otherwise fine," I said. "One thing, though... and this is really strange... but... uh..." What I wanted to say was slipping away from me, but I caught it again. "I feel like... like everything's fine. You know? Like I should be upset, but instead I feel that everything is fine. Isn't that bizarre? Have you ever had laughing gas? It's kind of like that... like everything makes me smile, even if it shouldn't. I feel like I'd say yes to everything."

"Ah, well, you don't want to do that, do you?" he replied. "Or do you?" he joked. He picked up a clipboard and started writing. "I've given you a healthy dose of a drug called a euphoric. I'm sure I told you this before the operation."

"Oh, yes, I remember now," I said.

"I have heard that comparison to nitrous oxide — what you call laughing gas — but the euphoric has a more thorough and predictable effect. It will gradually wear off, but you may feel the effects for a day or two. Maybe even three."

"Okay," I said. "But seriously, I'm sure I'm in the wrong body."

"I was quite sure you'd say that," he told me. "You changed your mind several times a day before the operation. But at this point, I am relieved to say, the die is cast."

"Huh," I replied again.

The doctor glanced over his shoulder at the nurse, who had her back to us. Then he pulled an envelope from his pocket and slid it under my pillow. I gave him a puzzled look and pulled it back out to look at it. Alarmed, he hastily shoved it back under, took my hands away from the pillow and crossed them over my belly, and whispered in my ear, "WAIT TILL YOU'RE ALONE!"
 

---

 

Right after he left, the nurse went into the bathroom. Full of curiosity, I pulled out the envelope. It contained a blue index card that had the name and address of a bank, along with the time 11:00 am, and the words "ALONE - NO NURSE." I stuck the card somewhere in the middle of Gideon's Bible, and fell back to sleep.
 

---

 

By evening, I'd gone to the bathroom by myself, walked all around the room, and did a few dance steps. I sat in a chair and ate a white meal: boiled fish, boiled potatoes, boiled califlower. I don't know why that was the menu. I felt fine; I could have eaten anything. Of course, it made me laugh.

"What's funny?" the nurse asked with a smile.

"Oh, everything!" I exclaimed. "The room, the curtains, the bed, this tasteless food... my funny little body with its breasts and—" I stopped and looked down at my lap.

"Hmmm...," the nurse said. "You are a funny little girl, aren't you?"

That was so wrong it made me laugh even more.
 

---

 

The next morning I told the nurse I was going out. She insisted on coming with me, but I refused, telling her I was fine and that I wanted a little time to be alone. She acquiesced, but told me over and over in various ways to "be careful."

"You're still under the influence of the euphoric, remember, and you've got a good chance of doing something silly."

"I will," I told her. "I mean, I won't. I know what I'm doing; it's just that it makes me laugh."

The motel office called me a cab. I arrived at the bank a full 20 minutes early, but the doctor was already there. He was wearing dark glasses and slouched down in an old Toyota.

He gestured me over, so I climbed into his car.

"Where are we going?" I asked as I fumbled uselessly with the seat belt. He looked at me as though I was insane.

"We're going into the bank," he said. "You know this."

"No, I don't," I replied.

He swallowed hard, and looking very sternly at me, in a very tight, tense voice he said, "Listen, Mrs. Mozzicone: we've gone to a lot of trouble to set this up, and I expect to be paid for my trouble. If you're not going to pay me what you owe, I'm sure I can point your husband's friends in your direction." He was trembling as he spoke, fighting to keep his voice from breaking. "Maybe they would pay me double... or more!"

I felt my face break into a huge smile. That damn euphoric was still inside me!

I took a breath and got a grip on myself, and in the most serious tone I could manage I told him, "Doctor, listen to me carefully because this is not a joke. I'm not Mrs. Mozzicone. My name is Arlo Henson, and I'm not supposed to be a girl."

He huffed in disbelief. "Please, Mrs. Mozzicone. Don't play games with me. Don't insult my intelligence."

"I'm not playing games. I'm telling you the truth. My name is Henson. Arlo Henson. Two days ago I was a white-haired, pot-bellied man with bushy eyebrows. I was an electrician. You and I argued about what age I ought to be. You wanted me to be a kid and I told you I wanted to be at least 33. In the end we settled on 29. Do you remember?"

His jaw fell open. "Oh, my God!" he cried, and ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

"I told you yesterday that it was all wrong. I'm not supposed to be a kid. I'm not supposed to be a girl. I'm supposed to be an adult male. You've obviously mixed up me and Mozzicone. The wires got crossed, more likely than not."

The doctor fumbled to pull out his phone, and in his haste he dropped it on the floor. He was so nervous he couldn't pick it up without dropping it again. I reached down, grabbed it, and put it into his shaking hands. He went to dial, and dropped it a second time. Again I picked it up and closed his hands around it. This time he managed to hold on. He hit a speed dial.

"Hi, Jen. This is Dr. Veerecks. Did Arlo Henson wake up yet?" His body shook at the answer, but kept his voice cool. "How was his recovery?" He listened, saying yes, yes at intervals, and a soft oh my God. After a few more comments and questions, he hung up. He swallowed hard enough to send down a baseball, then sat in unblinking silence for half a minute.

"Okay," he said at last. "He — or she — or he — signed herself out AMA... got a little belligerent, but that's often a side-effect of the anesthesia." He looked at me. "But he did make some remarks about being in the wrong body."

"So... can you switch us?" I asked.

"No," he said, showing some professional irritation. "That's a popular misconception, but it doesn't work like that. The transfers are one-way. We'd have to grow a second new body for each of you, but it doesn't sound like Mrs. Mozzicone will wait around for that. She's gone."

"But I can still get the body I paid for, right?" I asked.

"Hang on a moment and let me think," he commanded, and covered his face with his hands.

"Alright," he said. "This is what we'll do." He reached into the back seat and pulled an actual manila folder from his briefcase.

"Wow," I said. "I didn't think anybody used those things any more!"

"What?" he said in a distracted tone. "Oh, this... yes, we use paper records for the more... sensitive cases. Shred them, and you know they're gone. Digital records have a life of their own. You never know where they can go."

I assumed the file was Mrs. Mozzicone's record. The doctor copied a sixteen-digit code, numbers and letters, onto his business card. "Take this card," he said. "Don't lose it, if you want to get out of that body. Without it, they won't even talk to you. Now—" he paused to swallow again, with difficulty, and went on. "You stay at the motel until the euphoric wears off. Give it another day or two. The day after tomorrow, say, call Build-A-Body and tell them this case number. Tell them a mistake has been made and they need to fix it. Someone will come and get you and give you the body that you ordered.

"Alright? Okay? Good. That takes care of you.

"NOW," he went on, "we need to take care of me. Mrs. Mozzicone owes me a certain amount of money, and you need to go in the bank and get it for me." He handed me a key.

"Oh!" I exclaimed. "Is this going to be illegal?"

He frowned, then said, "Frankly, yes. Is that going to be a problem?"

"No," I said, "Not while I'm on this nutty drug, anyway." Then I laughed.
 

---

 

I showed my key and my new drivers license to a man in the bank. He very politely showed me to a small, windowless room. There, I unlocked a tiny box in the wall, like a post-office box. Inside, I found two envelopes, one marked YOU and the other marked DOCTOR. "This is a day for envelopes," I said out loud. Mine contained a business card for a storage place. Three sets of numbers were written on the back. I tucked it into my bra. It seemed like the safest place.

Outside, the doctor tore open his envelope and found a similar card. He drove to the storage place. His card also had three sets of numbers: The first opened the front door of the building. The second was a floor and locker number, and the third was the combination to that locker.

The locker was a little five-by-five room, empty except for two big white paint buckets, the five gallon size. They had no lids; the contents were covered by white cloths. He lifted the cloths, and...

"Holy crikes!" I exclaimed. "That's like a million dollars!"

"Shhh!" he hissed. "It's not like a million dollars. It *is* a million... or it better be."

"A million in each bucket?" I asked.

"Will you keep your voice down?" he whispered. "Please, stop shouting. Help me carry one." He replaced the cloths and picked one up. I grabbed the other, and struggled behind him. I guess my new body wasn't that strong.
 

---

 

The doctor took me back to where we'd met, outside the bank. He reminded me to wait "at least two or three days" before calling Build-A-Body. "Not before Thursday, anyway. Don't worry, they'll fix you up. Just tell them the case number and say that there's been a mistake. Don't mention the name Mozzicone; that's not in the records. They'll only know her by the case number."

I smiled and waved as he drove off. For some reason, the back of his car looked highly comical.
 

---

 

Across the street from the bank was a nice-looking diner, and I was feeling hungry. I went in and — though it was nearly noon — I ordered breakfast. The hostess placed me at a table by the front window, with a great view of the bank. I really need to sit and think this out, I told myself.

I'd had gone to Build-A-Body to start my life over. Because... let's face it: I never had much of a life. From the time I was a kid, I worked, even when I was small. Sure, I had friends, family, vacations. And I'm not saying that I suffered. It isn't that. Like anyone else, I had my share of troubles and joys. It's just that, I to feeling like I got on a train when I was born and all of a sudden the ride was over. In the end, I outlived my wife, our son, and everybody else I knew. At the age of 86 I was all alone. So I sold my house, my car... everything I owned. It took pretty much the whole pile to buy myself a new body, a new identity, a new life. It was all perfectly legal, everything registered with the appropriate state agencies. I spent some time choosing my new body: healthy, of course; stronger, of course; better looking? yes, but without exaggerating. Good teeth, good digestion, good nerves, quick reflexes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

HOWEVER, unlike Mrs. Mozzicone, I didn't want to start out as a kid. I wanted to be a full-fledged adult, and to me that meant at least the thirties. Doc and I argued, as I've said: he pushed for a low age — to get "more bang for your buck" as he put it — and in the end we compromised on 29. That meant that Mrs. Mozzicone was running around as a good-looking guy in his late twenties with white teeth and a full head of dark hair. I hope she didn't mind. At least she didn't wait around to fix it.

That was an important fact.

I, on the other hand, was in the body she chose: an eighteen-year-old cutie with a perky body and a name out of a romance novel. In my mind, it was the dumbest name ever, but it didn't matter. I was going to change it, and soon.

I knew who Maria Mozzicone was — or at least who she used to be. She was married to a mobster, and after more than forty years together, she killed him... brutally... for reasons that were never made clear. Greed, maybe. Jealousy, possibly. In any case, there was a lot of anger involved: news reports said that he died in a lot of pain and his corpse was viciously mutilated before, during, and afterward. Pictures of the scene were never shown to the public; they were judged to be too shocking.

Her trial was highly publicized, and she was always heavily guarded, even in prison, to protect her from her dead husband's associates.

Then a few months ago, she abruptly disappeared...

Some people thought she was dead, but I always suspected — and now knew for sure — that she was in the witness protection program. She must have testified and given evidence against her husband's criminal associates. She must have really delivered, because this went far beyond relocation and a new name: the government used Build-A-Body to quite literally give her a whole new identity.

They obviously wouldn't let her keep any criminal gains, so she must have set up this transfer with Build-A-Body's doctor. Somehow she stored the money, and had him pass her a key that he couldn't use.

So what was in "my" locker? I mused as I munched my last bit of toast and sipped my lukewarm coffee. If she gave the doctor two million... what kind of a tip do you give for that kind of service? Ten percent? Twenty? Were there ten or twenty million in my locker?

If I was going to do something, I was going to have to do it quickly, before the real Maria Mozzicone found out where I'd come to life.

It didn't take long to make up my mind.

In retrospect, I can see I made my mind up earlier, back at the storage place, when I stopped myself from checking the other locker. In spite of the my light-headed state, instinct warned me not to let the doctor know what he could have had.

I won't pretend... let me be clear: I knew I was about to do something wrong — morally wrong, legally wrong... badly, drastically, seriously wrong — and not only wrong, but reckless. I dabbed my lips with a napkin and thought, There isn't any doubt: this is absolutely the stupidest, craziest, most dangerous decision I ever made in my life.

Then, the euphoric in my system made me laugh and say So what?

I paid my bill, left a twenty percent tip, and ran outside to flag a cab.

[ This is part one of a three-part story. ]

© 2012 by Kaleigh Way