Hope
By Samantha Jay
 © December 2012

I first met him nearly five years ago when he turned up at the support group I attended. He was shy and awkward and looked very lost. Even then I saw a kindred spirit, but I didn’t realise just how alike we were.
I was just completing my transition and was going to continue at the group, giving back what I had received; help and advice.
Anyway, he turned up one evening and I saw someone who needed a lot of help. I approached and went into overdrive.
“Hi, I’m Faith. I haven’t seen you before. You new?” Hey I didn’t say I was good.
He looked at me and I noticed the indecision.
“Sorry, as an opening line I know that sucks, but I really am called Faith.”
I could still see the fight or flight reaction and tried a new tack. I gently reached for his arm and said, “Are you a tea or coffee drinker. I like tea taken white without sugar.”
“Tea sounds fine,” he finally answered as I gently led him to a table.

From that awkward start a friendship grew. I learnt of his abuse at the hands of his family and so called friends. His desire to become female and that he was saving every penny he could from his three minimum rate jobs to pay for the operation to fulfil his longing. He spoke little of his family and experiences, but I pieced together some of what he had endured.
I helped as much as I could as he became the family that I had lost just as I became the family he had lost. I got him to move in with me so that he could save more. Until the day that he declared that he almost had enough.

The operation, although successful, threw up a problem. I knew he’d been abused, but he had never told me just how bad it had been. His heart had stopped twice on the operating table. Once back in the High Dependency Unit the process of healing began. But she, and the staff, were blindsided by the internal bleeding that the abuse had set up and the operation started. They knew she couldn’t cope with another operation so they pumped in drugs to promote clotting and units of whole blood.
I was listed as primary contact and I was called in by the Unit. When I arrived by her bedside I saw tubes and sensors on different parts of her body. She was unconscious, asleep I assumed, and I noticed the figures on the monitor screen. They were all low.
A nurse removed the nasal cannula that was supplying oxygen and I saw a glimmer of hope. I looked at the screen and saw the respiration figure slowly decrease. It got to five, dropped to four, then three, followed by two, one and finally zero. I then saw that the heart rate was also zero. The nurse switched off the monitor and in that instant Hope was extinguished.