I made a fuss when a nurse told me I had to be taken to the clinic's front doors in a wheelchair, claiming it was the "rules".

I sighed, grumbled that I could walk just fine, then flopped into the seat and scowled as we made our way to the front entrance.

The nurse, her name tag showed Katie on it, dropped me off outside the doors and left me there to sit and wait for my ride. I knew, and had known for a fair while, that Mr. Giacomo hated bullies and bullying with a passion, but I sure wasn't expecting the surprise I received.

A fairly old pick-up truck, one of the smaller RAM models, pulled up and a large but pretty woman in the truck called my name through the open passenger side window. What surprised me even more is that she called me DeeDee, not Dempsey, and my head snapped up like a shot.

She must have seen my reaction and the fact that I cringed into the chair right after that.

I didn't see her look over at me and sigh, but I heard the door of the truck opening, then closing again, and a short while later, a pair of large but soft arms were slowly pulling me forward and wrapping me in a nice hug, something I hadn't experienced for quite some time.

"I'm Safira Giacomo, DeeDee. I'm Vincenzo's wife, I'm here to take you to our home, he'll be picking up your sisters about now," she stated.

I sat there trembling in her arms for a few minutes, but she just stayed there and kept hugging me. Then the tears erupted, I guess it was relief that my sisters were fine that brought them on; I laid my head on her rounded shoulder and cried my heart out for what seemed like forever.

Mrs. Giacomo let me dry my face on my sleeve, shaking her head all the while, but smiling just the same. "Let's go home, DeeDee."

Getting into this truck was a lot easier than getting into Mr. Giacomo's, I was soon buckled into the passenger seat and we were on our way.

It took us about thirty-five minutes or so to get back to town from the clinic because some idiot driving a heavily modified recent model Mustang took the turns that swing north and east on 77, just east of the intersection of 35 which heads into Danbury, way too fast and lost control on the turn. His car flipped several times, turning it and him into proverbial Swiss cheese in the process, car parts were everywhere.

We actually had to wait for nearly ten minutes as a group of fire department folks from Danbury cleared the road, it was that bad.

Mrs. Giacomo overheard a deputy sheriff say the guy was doing better than 150 mph when he hit the second turn and lost control. It turns out that one of the deputies was sitting just around the second turn and saw it all happen. Not the first time something like that has happened around here, too many non-residents seem to think that because there are so few people here, they won't be seen or caught doing shit like that.

We arrived at the Giacomo house, a split-level four bedroom ranch style house on the north side of town, just inside the town limits.

The house wasn't particularly big, but it wasn't a falling apart shambles like the dump that we had known as home until now. I sat there in the truck, just staring at the house in shock until Mrs. Giacomo gently pulled me back to reality and said, "Welcome to your new home."

Oh, geez, there's the darn buckets going again! Her saying welcome home had me bawling, leaned against the window, for quite a while. It wasn't until the rumble of Mr. Giacomo's big pick-up announced his arrival and that of my sisters that the flood of tears stopped.

I unbuckled myself and was out of Mrs. Giacomo's truck like a shot. I came very close to flattening my two sisters as I grabbed them in a hug.

Jenny and Jill were happy to see me, especially when they learned that I would be fine, I just had a bruised shoulder thanks to the asshole.

All five of us headed into the house, then settled into seats in the living room to relax for a little while and sort out the arrangements.

Mrs. Giacomo took a few minutes to bring her husband up to speed regarding me, including describing the driver/car sandwich situation. She described it like that because it was all too apt, the guy's remains were in the middle of a very crumpled and battered car.

Think of it like this: take a napkin, fold it in half, then in half the other way, then repeat the process. It's a lot more compact than it was, right?

Mr. Giacomo shook his head and sighed, "I'm glad you had it easy, Safira, although I wish you hadn't had to see that accident. I got to the house where these children lived... well, survived might be more accurate, only to find their mother passed out on the living room floor.

"It took me nearly fifteen minutes to bring her around, then another half hour before anything I said seemed to make any sense to her.

"These two," he pointed at Jenny and Jill briefly, "just sat in the two easy chairs and waited while I dealt with their heavily intoxicated mother.

"I don't know if the drinking was normal for her or not, or a symptom of her husband being gone, but it wasn't helping matters at all.

We were in that shack for over an hour before she was able to fully understand that I was there to take the two girls. When that did get through the slowly receding haze of the alcohol, though, she just shrugged and mumbled something about them being better off away from there."

"The Child Protection Services worker, Paula Felderman, was there the whole time to make sure nothing untoward happened. Their mother signed the papers to transfer custody of all three children over to us and I let the girls go up to get whatever belongings they wanted."

"Yeah, bro, we brought some of your stuff, too, some basic clothing plus your favourite books and your comic and manga collections." This came from my sister Jenny. As soon as she finished, the two raced out to the trucks and started carrying several shabby suitcases inside.

It took them three trips to bring in the suitcases. Jill pointed at two, saying, "That's your clothes, that's your books and other stuff, bro."

It was not easy to get up off of that sofa and hug the twins, largely because tears could be seen to be trickling down my cheeks.

At that point, Jenny and Jill realized that I was upset by something, although they had no idea what it might be.

Mr. Giacomo intervened, "Well, girls, Dempsey admitted something really serious to me the other day, he wants to be a girl like you."

Jenny and Jill were stunned to say the least. Mr. Dempsey and I spent a good fifteen minutes explaining things to them.

Their response, once the twins knew everything, was to jump on me and smother me in hugs, hugs soon joined in on by the Giacomos.

"My name is Denise Deirdre, I don't mind if you call me DeeDee, okay?" I whispered to them while still wrapped in the big group hug.

The next half hour was spent giving us a quick tour of the house and the large back yard attached to it. The big attraction in the back yard was a pair of mature oak trees near the back fence. These trees were big, although not as old or as large as some oaks could end up being.

Each of the two oaks had a large swing seat attached under one of the bigger limbs, giving a nice spot to relax when we needed it.

I ended up with a room to myself. What shocked me was the size of the room, easily three times as big as my old room in the shack.

Mr. Giacomo placed his hand on my shoulder and smiled down at me, "We'll need to get some furniture, I guess you're pleased with the room?"

"Pleased?" I whispered. "Pleased is an understatement, all I had before was a six foot by eight foot place to hide in that hellhole."

He laughed, a big, rumbling sound that brought a smile to my face. Laughter was not something heard often in that place where I used to live.

"One last thing to show the three of you, I hope you like it," was his comment as we made our way down to the main floor.

He opened a door on one side of the hallway not far from the entrance to the kitchen, the door revealed steps leading downward.

He led us down the narrower steps here, telling us to be careful, then opened a door, showing us a small laundry room.

But the big surprise was what was lying beyond the door on the other side of that short, narrow hallway. He smiled as he opened it; Jenny, Jill and I stood there in the doorway, looking around. There was an acoustic guitar on one stand, an electric guitar on another, and at the back of the room, separated from each other but on slightly elevated platforms, a nice six piece drum set and a very decent keyboard system.

The look on our faces as we saw those instruments waiting there was one of sheer joy.

I've always had a bit of an interest in acoustic guitars, Jenny loved keyboards but had only been able to use the two at school. Jill had a better voice than either Jenny or myself, but the instruments here didn't have the fascination for her that they did for us, although she did like to fool around with various horns at times. The three of us made our way into the room, barely breathing as we moved around the instruments.

The acoustic was a Fender Malibu Classic in hot rod red, I ran my fingers gently along the frets and over the soundboard, sighing happily. Jenny was just as happily examining the keyboard, which turned out to be a rather expensive Roland 88 key stage piano system.

I took a quick look at the electric guitar, holy shit! It was a Les Paul studio model, another rather expensive piece of equipment. It was obvious that the Giacomos had spent a lot of money on these instruments, they may not be absolute top of the line but they are all quality items.

If that were the case, that drum set was going to be a beaut! Yep, a 6 piece Yamaha Stage Custom set in cranberry red.

That was when Jill spoke up, her voice barely a whisper, but still quite audible to us all, "Now if there was a nice alto sax here, I'd be in love!"

Mr. Giacomo had a good laugh at that, the rest of us were grinning as we made our way upstairs to put things away and help with dinner.