The first thing I remember was the cold. It wasn’t an unbearable cold, it wasn’t freezing, but it was uncomfortable. Through barely cracked eyelids I could see white walls, a flat-screen television, a plethora of ‘Get Well Soon’ cards taped to the walls. My body was heavy, I could move a bit but I was entirely too stiff to even raise myself into a sitting position.

“Hey, you’re awake,” A soothing female voice said. My eyes darted, trying to find the source. She came into view for me; it was a blonde girl, slightly older than me dressed in a set of blue scrubs, a badge clipped to her collar read ‘Nurse’. Was I in a hospital? Why? “My name is Rachel, I’m going to be your nurse until 4 PM, we’re going to get a doctor in here later to explain everything to you, but right now I can tell you that according to your CT scan you’ve probably suffered some memory loss, so can you go ahead and give me your name and date of birth?”

“Um…” My lips felt cracked, my throat sore. I forced the words anyway. “Daniel…Daniel Harrison. Um…6/7/1998….”

The nurse frowned and pursed her lips. I could see the lines forming on her brow as she turned to a kiosk beside the bed and tapped a few keys. Had I said something wrong?

“Are you sure that’s your name?” She asked again, looking over at me, her deep blue eyes connecting with mine.

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“Okay,” She said finally. “Do you know where you are?”

“The hospital…”

“Which hospital?”

“Uh…I…the…one in town? Like…um…Community Hospital?”

“Okay,” The nurse frowned again. “Whose the president?”

“Oh um…Barrack Obama,” My throat was starting to feel a little bit better. Not much. “Can I…can I get some water?”

“Absolutely,” Rachel, the nurse smiled. “And I’m going to page the doctors; your family is down in the waiting room, they’ve been waiting for you to come out of it.”

“Nurse…Rachel,” I said as she pressed the call button beside my bed. “What happened? Why…why am I here?”

“You were in a car accident,” She explained. “It was bad, you’ve been here for about a month, but we finally were able to move you out of the ICE and down here to floor eleven. You’re at Woodcrest Pediatrics, the children’s hospital.”

“Children’s hospital?” I frowned. “But I’m like…seventeen…”

“We take anyone up to twenty-six,” She explained. “Especially if there are mitigating circumstances.”

“Mitigating-“ I started to say but the moment I spoke, the door opened softly and a few people I recognized passed through. “Mom?”

“Kari!” My mom gasped, addressing me by a name I didn’t recognize. “Oh thank god, how are you feeling?”

My mom, and dad rushed to the bedsie; mom grasped my hand tightly, dad smiled at me from a little further down.

“Kari?” I frowned. “Who…whose Kari?”

“We were spot on about the memory issues,” I heard the nurse say to someone outside my field of view. “She doesn’t seem to remember-“

“She?” I interrupted. I could feel my face turning red. What were they talking about? “I’m…I’m a boy, I…I’m not Kari, I’m Daniel.”

“She thinks it’s 2013,” Nurse Rachel said helpfully. “When did-“

“When she was 19,” My mom said softly. “Um, okay, Kari? We need to tell you something-“

“My name is Daniel,” I said hotly. It wasn’t that they were wrong, but this whole situation was wrong. Kari was a name I’d kept buried deep inside for years. I’d whispered it at night, like a prayer. I’d pretended to be her online, I prayed that I could be her, but I could never be her, that was impossible. Why did my parents know that name? Why were they calling me by that name? They couldn’t know, they cold never know. They wouldn’t accept it, they would hate me. Did they hate me? Oh god, what was happening?

“Okay,” My mom said, placing her other hand on my shoulder. “Kari, we named you Daniel when you were born, but that wasn’t the name you wanted, we accepted that, and we still love you. You…started your physical transition when you were nineteen, as you were going to college. You’re twenty-one now, and you’ve had…everything hon. You’re Kari now, I hope you remember soon but if you don’t, I want you to know that we still love you, so much, and we’re going to help see you through this, okay?”

“She has some other friends that stopped by, they’re still out in the waiting room,” Nurse Rachel said. “I’m going to go fill them in on the situation, would it be okay if they stopped in?”

“Of course,” My dad nodded. “It would be great for her to see them. Might even jog her memory, right?”

“Absolutely,” Nurse Rachel nodded. “I’ll go fill them in, they’ll be here shortly.”

Friends? I had friends? I’d never had friends in high school. Why did I have friends now?

“Mom? Dad?” I said weakly, trying to raise my head but to no avail. “I…I’m Kari now?”

“Yes sweetie,” My dad nodded. “You’ve been Kari for a while now, and you’ve never been happier.”

“We’re so proud of you,” My mom added with a smile, stroking my forehead.

“And…you…don’t hate me?” I think I was crying. I was definitely crying, my mom wiped a tear away from my cheek.

“Sweetie,” She smiled. “You’re our child, how could we ever hate you?”

“So what…what’s…happening now? Where am I? What am I doing here? I mean…car accident but…Woodcrest?”

“Woodcrest,” My mom confirmed. “You go to Woodcrest University, you’re majoring in information technology, and would you believe it? You’re in a fraternity, well, a co-ed fraternity, it’s complicated.”

“Their logo is a Panda,” My dad laughed.

“I think it’s their mascot,” My mom shrugged. “They have a huge panda sitting on the front porch of their house.”

“Can I see a mirror?” I asked. “I want to see what I look like.”

“Oh absolutely sweetie, um…I have a small one in my purse. We can’t get you up to the bathroom mirror so, hold on,” My mom dug around in her purse for a moment and then produced a small handheld mirror with a handle. She held it in front of me, and I’m going to be honest, I was afraid to look for a moment. When I finally worked up the courage, I stared into the glass, and the person who stared back, didn’t look like me at all. It was a pretty redhead, a little older than me, or wait, no, that was me. Her hair was a little matted, but it hung past her shoulders. Her eyebrows were shaped perfectly, her lips were thin, but feminine. It was a girl. A girl was looking back at me. Almost the girl I’d pictured myself as so many times. Almost.

“Kari,” I whispered soundlessly as I examined her freckled face.

“You okay sweetie,” My mom pulled the mirror away slowly, I rolled my eyes upward to meet hers.

“I think I am,” My voice began to crack. “Are you sure you still love me?”

“You can ask me as many times as you want,” She said firmly. “The answer is ALWAYS going to be yes.”

“You are our daughter,” My dad reassured me. “Our beautiful daughter and we’re proud of you. We’ll get through this, you just need to listen to the doctors, and the nurses, and you need to work on getting better. That’s all you need to focus on right now, okay?”

The door opened again, this time it was nurse Rachel leading three people I’d never met in my life, or at least I didn’t remember meeting them. A short brown haired girl in a faded army jacket and a black skirt, a tall bleach-blonde girl, dressed a little more formally in a black blazer and slack. Then there was a third girl, dressed way more casually in a white t-shirt and a pair of jeans. The t-shirt was loose fitting, and across it I could see Greek letters. I could make out Gamma, and Alpha, but I couldn’t remember what the third one was.

“Hi Kari,” The taller bleach-blonde girl said, smiling toward me. “My name is Willow, I’m the president of Omega Psi, your fraternity, or as you liked to call it, a Sofornity, because it’s co-ed. This is Noir, and the taller one here is Courtney.”

“And…I know you?” I was so confused. “You’re my friends? Why…why would anyone want to be friends with me?”

“Don’t be stupid, Kari,” The one named Noir said, practically skipping to the bedside. “You’re like the coolest person in the house, I mean, apart from Abbie, but no one is cooler than Abbie; she’s the one that makes that fucking killer lasagna.”

“I…I don’t think I like lasagna,” I couldn’t think of much else to say.

“You like it when Abbie makes it,” Courtney said helpfully. “You make some pretty good stuff too, I love you fried chicken. The girls at my house can’t cook, Tiffany tried once, she actually thought marshmallows were croutons.”

“Wait, whose Tiffany?” I asked.

“You don’t want to know,” Willow reassured me. “So over the next few days, or weeks, we’re going to bring other members from Omega Psi in, let you get to know them, and you know, once you get better, you can come home, if that’s what you want.”

“Come home? You mean…live…at the frat house?”

“The sofornity,” Noir nodded. “Yes, that’s where you live. I mean, you went through all that pledge crap, so why wouldn’t you want to live there? Besides, you’re going to need all the help you can get. Especially with that hair, it’s like…some kind fucking birds’ nest.”

“Oh my god, Noir,” Willow gasped. “Don’t make fun of her hair, look at all she’s been through!”

“Yeah, and the hair just makes it worse,” Noir laughed. I smiled.

I didn’t know who these people were, I wasn’t even sure how I’d gotten here, but I knew one thing for certain. Yesterday I was a seventeen year old boy, I’d hated my life, I’d dreamed of being Kari, I’d prayed for it, and I’d been trudging through each and every day wishing I could be something else, wallowing in a pool of grief and sorry; dead, even though I was still very much alive. Today I was Kari, I was really Kari. I had friends. I was alive. But was it even real? As I looked at the warm faces around me, I felt like I belonged, finally, at long last, and I prayed it wouldn’t end.