Some days it’s just not worth it to drag yourself out of bed.

Part Six

[***][***][***]

“What!” I shouted out in shock. “How the hell could you do that?"

“I wasn’t trying too, it just happened, I woke up and it was all stiff and hard, and I tried to roll over and get back to sleep and rolled over right on top of it! By the time I realized what had happened I had already put my whole body weight on top of it, it freaking HURTS!”

“Oh man,” I said winching as I visualized it. They say wounded vets or anybody really who had lost a limb could still feel it sometimes. I wondered if I could make the medical journals with phantom limb syndrome when the body part was still attached, just a thousand miles away.

“Yeah,” I agreed with her. “Sounds terrible, what do you want me to do about it.” I tried not to sound snarky, but could tell I was failing.

“It still hurts! And it’s not getting any better, I… I just, didn’t know who else to call.”

Oh… hell

“Where are you?” I asked reluctantly.

“I can’t… why do you need to know?” she replied cautiously while still sounding in pain.

“You don’t need to tell me EXACTLY where you are just generally,” I replied with as much goodwill as I could manage. “A hotel?”

“Um, yeah,” she replied unenthusiastically.

“Does it have an ice machine?”

“I think so.”

“Go outside and find the ice machine, DON’T FORGET to take your room key. Bring a bucket of Ice back to your room and then let me know when you have it.”

I waited for a minute or so, trying not to visualize the picture of my former manly visage walking around in the early morning hours in my underwear blurting out ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Every other step. Eventually I heard the rumble of heavy machinery followed by drops in the bucket and the sounds of a wounded man walking back.

“OK,” she said breathlessly. “Now what?”

“Contrary to popular belief, those things are hard to just rip right off. The erectile tissue is designed to expand and contract so you probably haven’t damaged it, just bruised it and you have to get the swelling down…. Both types of swelling down, which the ice should accomplish either way. Grab a pillowcase, or a shirt, or something, fill it up with ice and then apply the dressing to the affected area… so to speak.”

What followed was a low pitched shriek followed by what I knew was a sigh of content as the ice pack began to do its noble work. An awkward silence soon followed as we both realised the emergency situation was over with, and that we were now on the phone with each other after one of us in the relationship had vowed never to speak to the other again.

Plus the whole body theft thing.

So I broke the ice a bit… metaphorically speaking. “Sometimes it just sucks to be a dude, Jessica.”

“How do guys not do that all the time?” she eventually asked, totally inquisitive.

“I don’t know,” I said rubbing my forehead trying to think of an appropriate reply. “Instinct, I guess. You’ll get used to it… Where’s Roxy?”

“Who,” she asked uncertain.

“My car, Rocinante. My F-bird that you took away from me to have fun, fun, fun, with!”

“Oh, it’s is out back of the hotel, but it’s ok. I left it out of the sun under the shade of a maple tree.”

“You left my girl in a SURFACE lot, under a syrup tree, in SAP SEASON!!!”

“Calm down,” she answered and I could just hear her grinning, the beautiful evil bitch. “You seem more pissed off about me taking your car than your body.”

“New people are born every day, I’m not worth much, but you can’t just call up Pontiac and have em run off another 75 fire bird. For one thing, they are going out of business.”

“OK, jeez, I’ll take it to a drive thru car wash next time I fill up.”

“A DRIVE THRU !! You go out there and you wash it by HAND!” my voice going shrill and hysterical against all my best wishes. My mood must have gotten through to her though.

“Yes Thomas,” she said sounding suddenly serious and calm. “I promise… I will wash your car by hand.”

I was oddly comforted by her deep soothing voice. I hoped it wasn’t some sort of genetic predisposition on this body’s part. But hopefully, now that I could be on the lookout for it, I wouldn’t be taken in by just any boy’s sweet talking jive.

“So,” she said trying to end another of those awkward silences. “How ya been…considering, you know…”

“I set a tree on fire today…yesterday…” I answered her as I lay back down into bed, just too tired to even sit up anymore. “I don’t think that I’m coping well.”

“Did you make your usual clean get away?”

“It was another state, so I’m good.”

“Oh hell baby… what are we gonna do?” she wined out anxiously.

“I thought you had a cunning plan,” I retorted sarcastically

“I KNOW!” she shrieked at me. “It’s just, everything seemed to make so much sense at the time and I was SOOOO angry. I didn’t even think she would actually do something when I called. Or that it would work if she did.”

“Well it did,” I argued back. “So now what?”

“Plebe summer starts Monday and I HAVE to be there. Otherwise this was all for nothing and we will both be living in a world of 100% shit and not just the 90% we are now.”

“I agree,” I said after a significant pause. “At least one of us should.”

“But what about you?”

“I have about ten days left on the rent of your room at school. Then I guess I start living out of Heathers car, not sure what I’ll do about food. Find a job I guess.”

“WHAT! You can’t just… what about college?”

“I hate to break it to you sweetie, but you are technically speaking a deadbeat dad. I doubt I could stay in or even pay for school and still raise a kid all on my own.”

“You have to speak to my father’s lawyers, you need MONEY! You can’t just live on the street plotting your revenge against me. Think of the baby.”

“I am, and I can’t speak to the lawyers, that’s your money.”

“So think of it as child support,” she implored me over the phone. “Even when I was at my craziest I never thought that you would be alone, cut off, with nothing. Tommy, you can’t do this to me. You have to go to the lawyers and get the inheritance.”

“I wouldn’t know the first thing about it. Pretending to be you with those people, who are gonna be wary about any sort of fraud.”

“Don’t worry about it; Mr. DeGeas has hardly seen me in a decade. He won’t know if you act any different, and if he does, who the hell cares! You ARE Martin Scott’s daughter right down to the fingerprints and DNA.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Please Tommy!” she implored me and I could tell she was about try cry manly tears.

“OK, OK, I’ll talk to the guy, though how I’m getting to Nebraska I don’t know. Even if I liked the idea of driving that far, I’m not sure how to pay for gas.”

“You’ve still got my purse right,” she asked me concerned.

“Yes.”

“Then use the card!”

“Which one? And I had no idea of which ones were good and what the credit limits were. You were always talking about how little you had as an allowance.”

“That was an allowance! For junk food and trips to the movies. For necessary expenditures, like plane tickets HOME you moron, the auditors always approve it. Just use the green card from First National there is like… thousands on it.”

“All right, I’ll think about it… in the morning!” I said exasperated at the lack of sleep.

“Ha, you should probably thank me for taking your place,” she said jokingly, trying to lighten the mood. “You would have to start waking up this early all the time anyway and that would have spoiled your legendary beauty sleep.”

“No Jessica,” I said coldly. “I don’t think I WILL thank you.”

I could tell that hit her hard, and what passed next was our longest awkward silence yet.

“Do you,” she asked hesitantly in a very soft voice. “Do you think that you can ever be able to forgive me?”

“I can’t just fall out of love with you,” I answered her truthfully. “Maybe if I worked hard at it, I could somehow manage… maybe with a team of scientists and generous federal grant... But forgive?” I said pondering the question and all its implications. I considered all that had been done to me in a fit of her half deserved rage. Everything that had been taken away from me and the long life that was ahead of me. As a woman.

“No,” I answered clearly. Then I turned off the phone, and removed the battery.

[***][***][***]

I slept, when I managed to sleep at all, until around noon,. When my body woke me to life’s little necessities. I made use of the toilet and sink that was built into the room, but one of the oddities of this particular residence hall was that the bathing facilities were communal, if I wanted to get clean, I would have to leave the relative safely of Jessica’s room and head off into the wilderness that was the women’s showers. I still didn’t understand it, if they had gone through the trouble of putting a toilet in each room how much extra square footage would it have cost to add a shower stall, too? I had a sneaking suspicion, deep down inside my reptile brain that the architects of this particular hall had all been men and they vented their own particular kink by forcing all these teenage heiresses to shower together. I resolved to look carefully for any hidden cameras built directly into the wall.

Thankfully, most of the other girls had left for the summer, and those few year round kids who were warehoused by their parents had their morning showers just a little earlier than the crack of noon. I set Jessica’s collection of paints and powders on the shelf inside the stall and hung up her bathrobe, (pink of course) and turned on the shower to as hot as an institutional sized water heater could provide. I didn’t know what I was going to do. When Jess delivered her knockout punch of telling me she was pregnant, I knew what to do. Marry her. When she performed her little switcheroo, I knew what to do. Find a way back. And now that there was no way back? It was at this moment more than any other I wish I could call my parents and ask them. But Jessica had even taken that away from me.

The General, he was an odd kind of father. The thing that you must understand is that he wasn’t a modern man. Oh, he uses email and Skype, he can even program a spreadsheet, but that’s all just technology. Morally, culturally, spiritually, he was not a man of the 21st century; he was a man of the 12th. He believed, and taught to all his children, old fashioned ideas. Things like honor, piety, justice.

And duty.

But what was my duty? I pondered as the hot water flowed over me. I’d sworn no oaths yet to the United States, beyond the daily pledge of allegiance in grade school. And I saw no reason to defy the flag or the republic for which it stands, even if I was now female, so I was good there. The Marines wouldn’t have me, for at least another seven months, and even then they had an unreasonable bias against single teenage mothers with infants enlisting. I HAD sworn on oath to abide with my wife, forsaking all others, till death parts us and all that. And if things turned out the way they looked to be turning out, I wasn’t gonna have any choice in the abiding with my wife part of it. And I certainly hadn’t sworn no oaths to love honor and obey any HUSBAND! No, I didn’t have any pressing duty toward Tommy née Jessica. The Navy would have the care and feeding of her for the next four years, and they don’t exactly appreciate housewives setting up shop in the barracks, anyway.

The baby?

There is the long and the short of it. I could stand clear of other responsibilities, and all honor to me. But the baby was still mine. Reader, for a minute there, just between you me and the shower walls. I considered doing what Jessica wanted all along. She was right; things would just be so much easier if there just wasn’t a kid on the way. But then I thought about what my father would have done in my place…. and smiled at the thought. He’d have spent two hours copping a free feel and when that was over he would have burned that gypsy’s entire farm to the ground not just one tree and then…

And then he would have done his duty, and been the best damned marine mama on this or any other Earth.

[***][***][***]

My girl had been born and raised in fly over country. If you haven’t heard that joke before, it’s the part of the United States that is between New York and Los Angeles. the implicit assumption being that those two cities were the only important parts of America. And Omaha was right smack in the middle of it. I’m sure it was a pleasant enough town as these little towns go, but having seen the wild world over it held little interest to a hard charging marine, even in my current, reduced circumstances. According to the emails on Jessica’s laptop, the main point of contact with her father’s estate was a Mr. Bernard DeGeas. And it was the matter of a few phone calls to arrange a meeting in two days. He had apparently been expecting my phone call for some time…

“Goodbye Bob,” I said to him patting his hood while the attendant looked at me oddly. “Try not to sneak attack any Buicks when my back is turned.”

The driver got in and pulled away toward the back of the lot. I started to feel a little tight in the chest when I saw Bob being taken away. But then I cursed the obvious effect of the female hormones coursing through my veins. How could I ever love that car? It had airbags!

Mayor Fiorello La Guardia Airport is one of those seventh circle of hell jobs you usually only hear about happening to other people and not yourself. I am quite convinced that there must be some sort of epic conspiracy among its victims to keep word of all its transgressions relatively quiet. It must be some sort of national schadenfreude, “If I had to go through it, so do you”. My other option of a flight to Omaha would mean leaving through Newark, but that would still require crossing New York City traffic and also, I had sort of made a promise to myself never to go back to Jersey. I’m not sure what the statue of limitations was on arboreal homicide, but I wasn’t taking any chances after I had toaken the gypsy’s offered hand and threw it back in her face.

There was an airline that Jess and I had used the last time we had flown to Omaha for Thanksgiving with evil stepmother during one of her domestic phases. It was called Midwest Express, and it was wonderful…. They always ran on time, never overbooked, every seat they had was either an isle or a window. And every flight, even if it lasted only an hour they would bake chocolate chip cookies while you were in the air and serve them free to the passengers. The smell would permeate the cabin and it was like what I imagined the fight to heaven would be like after long, happy and righteous life.

I booked with Delta and I plotted a mutiny while I was doing it.

The shuttle from the car agency dropped me off at my terminal, a weary feminine look and a ten dollar tip convinced the driver to go find a trolley and help me unload half the department store that I had been forced to pack from Jessica’s room. Fortunately enough, the mechanism was serviced recently and a minimum amount of force on my part. I, along with twice my body weight in luggage, was on the move. The Delta ticket counter had the longest line, of course. And it was a good thirty minutes before I even got my first sneer from the uniformed workers much less a helping hand. When it was my turn to unass my gear, the gaudily dressed female bridge and tunnel ticket agent gave off a larcenous look and smirked. Oh... So…Subtly.

“You understand Miss that there will be an additional baggage fee, you are only allowed two pieces of luggage under 50 pounds and a carry on.”

“Yea, I figured,” I said blowing away a rebellious strand of hair from my bangs away from my face while I leaned and put both elbows on the counter to get a better look at the agent’s assets. “How much?”

“Well, let’s just weigh them shall we?” she said giving me an odd look. I notice that she didn’t offer to help lift them for me while she did it though, the little hussy.

“Oh,” she said with a sorry expression that I could tell wasn’t. “That’s too bad, it’s quite a lot over. Have you been traveling abroad?”

“Boarding school,” I answered tersely as I awaited the bad news.

“Must be nice, OK, Honey, that will come to $488.23.”

“That’s more than I paid for my whole ticket!”

“I’m sorry, but with the overages, airline fees, and the local airport tax, that’s what it comes too.”

“I could FedEx it all to Nebraska for $40.”

“Honey, you maybe could, but then your bags wouldn’t arrive at the same time you do.”

“Is there a FedEx in the terminal?”

“Um,” she said obviously confused at my counter attack. “No, I don’t think so.”

“UPS, U.S. Mail?” I continued hopefully.

“We have a few mailboxes, if that’s what you mean?… look your holding up the line.”

“Right then, fine, forget it.”

“OK, then, Sweetie,” she said happily. “Will that be debit or credit.”

“What? No, I mean forget it; we’ll leave the bags behind. Well, I’ll take the two I’m allowed that one and that one.” I said pointing at the two smallest which I hoped were under 50 pounds.

“You can’t just leave your suitcases behind.”

“Sure I can, you say I can’t bring them on board so by your logic I can leave them behind.”

She looked at me for a few seconds totally confused. It was probably the first time her little game of extortion had failed when the family refused to pay the ransom. But I wasn’t going act the precious princess over someone else’s clothes.

“You can’t just leave them here.” said the girl forcefully. “The airport has a very strong policy on unattended luggage.”

“They are not unattended, they’re yours. My girlfri… The person who picked them out for me has very good taste and I’m sure you will enjoy some of the outfits inside more than I would. Though, they may need to be taken out a bit up top.” I said indicating what medical science had blessed her with. Damn, but I REALLY hoped it was too soon to be developing an inferiority complex.

“I don’t want your clothes!”

“Are you sure? Most of them have Italian names written on them I can’t pronounce,” I asked appealingly.

“Just pay the overages!” she screamed looking over my shoulder at the steadily growing, and growing grouchier, line.

“No,” I said simply crossing my hands under my breasts, and giving off a defiant stare.

“Uh,” She said sensing impending teenage rebellion. “Let me check with my supervisor.”

She did just that bringing back said notable to just close enough that she could point me out to the older woman, but still remain just out of earshot. But I could still hear the occasional word drift through the terminal like ‘bags’ and ‘little’ and ‘bitch‘. Its times like that I really hated air travel. But if I just gave in and paid the blackmail, even if it WAS with someone else’s money., the terrorists win.

Eventually, they gave up on how many different combinations of female dog they could call me and walked over to the counter. The older lady was the first to speak.

“Young lady,” she said giving me the benefit of the doubt. SHOWS HOW MUCH SHE KNOWS! “Jaime here tells me that you have quite a few bags and that you refused to pay the overages.”

“That is correct Madame. “ I said as primly as possible.

“Well, if you don’t want them to accompany you on this flight you can tag them for our freight service and they will get to Omaha as cargo space becomes available. It would mean that you would have to make a separate trip to the airport later, possibly a day or two.”

“How much is that?” I asked intrigued.

“75 dollars.”

“Flat?”

She hesitated only long enough for me to get the idea that this wasn’t the usual service and only existed for those select few customers who understood how to throw a tantrum. And while in my old body I could usually be seen as a pushover, this new body I knew appeared to the outside world like it had received advanced training on the issue.

“Yes,” she replied tersely

I considered the reduced price versus the pain in the ass costs of heading back for my bags later and made the deal. “Done,” I agreed holding out Jessica’s debit card.

Suckers.

[***][***][***]

I’m not going to dwell too long on the security gate process, because I hear high blood pressure is bad for the baby. I will just say that as a guy., once I hit that adolescent growth spurt and shot up past six feet and some odd, inches I never really had trouble with the TSA. ‘Yes sir, good afternoon sir, move along, move along’. As a girl, however, quite a few liberties were taken with my obviously dangerous form. It would be nice to say the woman who did it was a lesbian, but she just looked bored with the whole process.

There was a layover in Atlanta, it doesn’t matter if you were flying from Sacramento to San Diego, there was always a layover in Atlanta. And it would only last about 25 minutes with the arrival gate on one end of the terminal and the departure clear on the other. I knew I wouldn’t have enough time for any sort of lunch. So, if I wanted anything to eat for the next 8 hours, I would need to grab something before my flight, which brings us back to La Guardia.

There a quaint dish peculiar to the indigenous population. They grind wheat into a fine white powder, add salt, water and lard till it makes a nice flat bread, then top it with a tomato paste, pepper, garlic and several savory meats, enough mozzarella cheese to choke a donkey, then bake it. Legend has it that the water used, specific to the New York City water supply, is so unique after passing through hundreds of miles of aqueducts and aquifers that it cannot be duplicated anywhere else on Earth. And once added to those other mere mortal ingredients, makes a pizza that cannot be equaled anywhere.

I had for years been searching for the perfect slice, and in my travels had come damn close. Whenever occasion brought me to what the modest people who live there, refer to as the greatest city in the world, I try at least one different place and test the theory. I had no great hopes for the little place beyond the security gate, but it at least had the virtue of not being a chain and a large crowd to testify to its adequacy. And while it may not be the best, I had just exited the land of seafood on my way to the whatever it is that Nebraska could produce in abundance, and even bad New York City pizza is better than most. I was still feeling a touch of nausea and hadn’t quite decided to trust the gypsy’s preggo potion. But this was probably my last chance for a while for pizza that didn’t come out of a freezer, so screw my stomach, I am its master! …mistress.

I was seated reasonably fast and put my order in for two slices and coke. The waitress who took my order wasn’t more than a few years older than me, but judging by her belly and the two hands she was rubbing her back with when she thought the manager was not looking, she was about six months more pregnant. I couldn’t help but watch her, about ready to pop and still forced to sling pizzas hither and yon and serve traveling businessmen their three martini lunches even hear at the early hour of 10:45 A.M. I tried to imagine what I would be like at that point, how I would cope, if I even could? This woman obviously needed the money, otherwise, she would much rather have been at home, the pampered pregnant woman. I couldn’t help but notice that unlike myself, she wasn’t wearing a ring. And thought hateful thoughts at the bastard that left her in that state. I resolved to leave her a big tip, us single moms had to stick together.

[***][***][***]

I was still of two minds on heading to Omaha and taking Jessica’s inheritance. Hell, three or four minds if you wanted to get technical. I was still enough of a dude that living off my girls money sort of made me squirm. But on the other hand, I was in the body that it belonged too, and needed it to survive with. On the gripping hand, if waitresses can get by without inheritances, what self respecting Marine takes a handout? But then if I didn’t take it, what would happen, Jess/Tommy takes it in the divorce? To hell with that! I was sitting at the table alone with my thoughts playing with a strand of hair that had escaped my hap hazard ponytail this morning when the pizza arrived. Indications were good, the smell wafting up from the plate was invigorating and a well made pizza seemed to have recuperative powers of its own since all nausea just sort of drifted away. I was just about to bite into my slice, holding it with my hands, NEVER A FORK! When I noticed something odd.

There was a Marine waiting by the banks of payphones across the corridor from my table. Using the payphone was odd enough in this age of everyone and their six year old brother having their own cell phone. But what was also odd was the uniform itself. First off, it was a service uniform, the olive green equivalent to what a civilian wears a business suit for. It’s the sort of uniform a Marine wears for formal occasions like reporting for duty or serving on a court martial. I couldn’t off the top of my head tell you when I had last seen one since most Marines just went about in their digicam utility uniforms. Not for nothing, but all those buttons and ribbons were a pain to keep in order and the heavy material the uniform was made out of was, well, the design had not changed much since the 1930’s, and we’ll just leave it at that. I didn’t think he was on duty though, since he seemed to be taking care of a little girl whose hand he wouldn’t let go of.

And his ribbons were weird…

To a civilian, like I guess I must be myself, now that I thought about it; if they looked at the ribbons at all they just counted how many there were and judged the wearer by quantity not quality. But to someone who had been raised since birth to read their significance it could tell a story. This one said you had served in Afghanistan, that one said you had handed out beans and Band-Aids for the Humanitarian Service Medal. The dark purple one says you had been wounded and lived to tell about it. The awards were ranked, with the highest shown first either in its own row or at the top left of the first row. If you looked at a colonel and after a lifetime of service his highest award was a Joint Service Achievement Medal, then well... you knew he had led a virtuous life at the Pentagon, pushing file A to folder B and back again. And then if you ever saw a guy, usually an OLD guy at this point, with a sad look on his face and a little itty bitty baby blue ribbon with five white stars on it?... Then you snapped to attention, and gave him the sharpest salute you ever could. Better than the one you give the President. After all, the President was just the most powerful man on Earth. He had never been awarded the Medal of Honor.

Most people look at a man in uniform and expect to see a hero.

Which is what this mook was counting on I think, because while it’s conceivable a Marine might be so lost to good judgment that he mistakenly puts an Arctic Service Medal ahead of a Silver Star; no, only twenty something Marines had the right to wear the distinctive green yellow and red Vietnam Service Medal… not unless I was looking at a ghost. As I was pondering the supernatural, the man proved that he wasn’t mere ectoplasm by slamming the phone back in the cradle and giving the little girl a yank as he took off down the concourse. The girl had to fight him a little to head back for a little pink backpack but was soon captured again and man and child were on their way.

It was sufficiently disquieting that I got up from my uneaten pizza and followed them. The couple were easy to pursue, even in the cavalcade that was La Guardia. I tried keeping a safe distance, but had no real idea what a safe distance would be in this case. Was he some conman trying to get a free ride? Was he some nut job trying to play the hero? But by the way he kept tugging at the little dark haired girl to keep up, I was scared to death that it was a kidnapping. Who after all would suspect one of America’s finest? I resolved to record as much information that I could and then report it to airport security and made a grab for my cell phone when I realized I had left it, along with my purse and laptop behind at the pizzeria.

Yet another damned female setback! When I was a guy I traveled light, wallet in front pocket, cell phone on belt. Paperback book in the back pocket if I didn’t happen to be wearing cargo pants. But these never to be sufficiently damned WOMEN'S clothes didn’t believe in such useful things as pockets, and I hadn’t quite gotten used to the idea that I needed to carry my purse with me. I was just so use to WEARING everything I needed. And when the moment came that I needed to investigate something highly suspicious, I just didn’t remember that anything had changed. I considered heading back to grab my bags, but by the time I got there and back again, the imposter might have slipped away. La Guardia was a labyrinth of twisting concourses and switchback hallways, I might never catch up again and I was getting more apprehensive with every tug he gave. I resolved to keep them in my sights.

Soon enough, the little girl started tugging back, but this time on the man’s jacket, it looked like she was pointing at the bathroom they were about to pass. Eventually, probably giving in to the assumption that it was this, or deal with wet pants he gave in. I could see the man was clearly conflicted. He wanted to take the girl into the men’s room, but she shook her head and he clearly wanted to follow her into the ladies, but etiquette got the best of him, so he decided to let her have her way and go by herself as the least embarrassing option for all concerned. He stood out front of the entrance and watched her disappear inside the restroom.

I, oh so casually, decided I needed to use the facilities myself, one of the few times when it wasn’t actually necessary, fate being what it was. I passed the man out front and tracked the little girl inside and scoped out the stall she went to use. I was incredibly nervous, it was still possible that this was all in my head and the only thing that was wrong was my steadily cooling pizza. My state of anxiety was not helped of course by where I was waiting. My only other experience in a public women’s room had been in the one stall gas station, where I was by design the only one there. Now, I was in a massive bastion of femininity in one of the busiest airports on the planet, which had to make this particular ladies room in the money for busiest in its own field. Everywhere I turned, there were women primping and scurrying about. One of them was very obviously even changing clothes behind a stall as I could see arms extended upward while a top was being removed. And on the wall was a pay dispenser for products that, while I didn’t need them now, very possibly could in the imminent future. All things considered, I was grateful when I could hear the toiled being flushed and the little girl exiting and walking hesitantly toward the adult sized sink.

“Hi,” I said trying to be ten times more cheerful than I had ever been in my life. “That’s a cute backpack you have. I had one just like it when I was a little girl.”

“It’s Dora the explorer!” she said proudly.

“I loved Rugrats more, but Dora is cool too. My name is T… Jessica what’s yours?”

“Kayleigh,” she answered me cheerfully.

“I saw you come in with a man, my daddy is in the Marines too, we’re almost the same!”

“Oh, he’s not my daddy,” she said shaking her head. “He’s Uncle Jack, he’s friends with my mommy and daddy, he’s a Marine too! He said he’s gonna take me on a plane trip to see my daddy. He’s been away fighting the tourists, and my daddy wants to see me!”

“Uh huh,” I asked reasonably sure this preschooler meant terrorists, at least I hoped. “That’s great! Did your daddy say he was sending your Uncle Jack?”

“Yeah, Uncle Jack said he said so,” she said happily smiling ear to ear. “When he came to Mrs. Franklin’s house to pick me up, right after mommy dropped me off, he said he had a surprise for me.”

“I love surprises!” I had just had a big one last week after all. “Have you ever seen your Uncle Jack before today?”

“No,” she replied confused at the question.

“Didn’t mommy or daddy tell you not to speak to strangers?”

“He’s not a stranger! He wears a coat just like daddy’s and mommy always said If I got lost just to find someone in uniform anyway!” she said proud of her accomplishment.

“Kayleigh,” I said resolved in what I hoped was the right decision. “I’m going to take you to some other people in uniform, now wash your hands like a good little girl. Do you need help reaching the sink?”

She nodded, and I lifted her up until her hands were within range of the sensor. Once she was lathered and rinsed down I held her up to the air drier. She couldn’t have been more than 40 pounds, but I was still struggling to hold her at arm level. Jessica was very fit for a girl, but there are still certain design limitations with my new body.

“Here,” I said peeling off my blue top to reveal the camisole underneath. “You look cold, you should wear this, you won’t want to catch a cold and give it to your daddy, would you?”

Once the girl was covered in what looked on her like a full sized dress, she gravely picked up her Dora the Explorer backpack from the floor, and I held her hand as we exited the ladies room. I lucked out at first, the imposter was looking the other direction when we walked out. My heart jumped in my chest as I noticed him out of the corner of my eye take a look at us, but my desperate gamble at camouflage as well as the fact that Kayleigh was with someone else must have caused him to look away. We were another 30 feet away from him when he looked back and must have spotted something.

“Hey!” He shouted across the concourse. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I grabbed Kayleigh up in a fireman’s carry, and started running.