Mom made a noise. “You came here yesterday in a dress? I think he recognized your freckle pattern.”

 
Butterscotch

22. Testing

by Erin Halfelven

The other questionnaire turned out to be an abbreviated personality inventory test like some I had seen before. A lot of colleges have them as part of the application process. Sixty-four questions on this one but I still finished before we got called for our appointment, by which time Mom was kibitzing over my shoulder.

One question was, “I am a self-starter,” and I had marked that one, ‘Agree’ and Mom snorted.

“What?” I asked, a little annoyed.

“You are not, you know. You never do anything until someone tells you to.”

That was terribly unfair and I ignored her, going on to the next question, which was, “I have a rich internal fantasy life.” Well, it’s not completely internal, I play fantasy role-playing-games. I was a little unsure how to answer.

“Go back and change that last one to Strongly Disagree,” Mom told me.

“Mom!” I protested.

“Go on, change it,” she insisted. “Don’t lie. The test is no good if you lie.”

I went back and changed it to Not Sure or Don’t Know. “Happy?” I asked.

She giggled. Mom’s not a big giggler so I turned around to look at her. She shrugged, picked up a magazine and stopped looking over my shoulder.

I went back to the test and decided to answer the one about fantasy with ‘Agree’. The next was another toughie. “It takes a lot of convincing to get me to change my mind.”

Tough not because I didn’t know the answer but because I did. And it was embarrassing. But Mom was right, I shouldn’t lie on the test. I marked that one ‘Disagree’. Okay, yeah, but I’m not a complete wimp.

Eventually we got called back and answered more questions from the same Nurse Donovan while she also took blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, and a tray of blood samples in the standard array of prepared vials. Mom watched her technique with professional interest.

“Mom’s a vampire, too,” I explained.

“Ah,” said the nurse.

“You do this a lot,” Mom observed. “I’m afraid I’m on a desk job now and am out of practice.”

They traded experiences for a bit then Nurse Donovan told me to take off my clothes, except for underwear, and put on a flimsy gown she handed me. “Opening to the back,” she added. “The doctor will join you shortly.”

Then she left. The room was just as cold as it had been yesterday and Mom did the same thing Marjorie had done when I began to shiver; she fetched a blanket out of one of the cabinets and wrapped me in it. I was grateful because this time, my thinly-clad bottom was sitting on cold steel.

Dr. Forbes appeared a few minutes later, accompanied by Nurse Donovan. After greetings in which names were established, Mom being Ms Lillian Parker and me being David Kissee, the doctor washed his hands and began examining me.

It got embarrassingly thorough. He had me take the front of the gown down while he looked at my nipples. “Mild gynecomastia with enlarged nipples,” he told the nurse and she wrote that down.

He looked at my groin. “Descended testicles but gonadal development is consistent with pubertal threshold, say about twelve years old.” Another embarrassment. He didn’t just look at things, he felt of them and his hands were cold.

He remarked at one point, “You have some mild growth of pubic hair but no axillary or body hair at all.”

“Uh—I had it waxed off,” I explained. Nurse Donovan winced and the doctor’s eyebrows went up.

He looked around my asshole and asked if I had ever been sexually penetrated there. “No,” I said. My embarrassment meter was broken with that one.

At last, he let me wrap the blanket back around me and appeared to settle in for a chat. After some nothing-burger pleasantries, he said, “Your cheek swab from yesterday shows no gross chromosomal abnormalities, but there are other tests for more subtle genetic differences we can do.”

“Um—what does that mean, gross abnormalities?”

“You don’t have any missing or extra chromosomes, and none that are obviously deformed. You do seem to have a mild degree of genetic micro-chimerism but with modern medicine pushing into this area, we have found that this is not as unusual as once thought. Blood tests may show us more, but we’re not expecting a major finding here.”

Talk about answering a question without providing new information. “Uh—?”

Mom to the rescue. “Almost everyone has a few cells in their body inherited directly from their mother, hon. It doesn’t mean anything unless you have a severe auto-immune disease. Which you don’t.”

That was a little clearer. “Okay,” I said.

The doctor continued. “We’re going to rush the blood lab work through, so perhaps we can get some answers on other questions this afternoon. Fortunately, the lab we use is right in this building, so I have sent Emmaline to fast-walk the samples to the right technicians.”

Emmaline? Must be someone else in the office we hadn’t met.

“Your physical appearance is of a young male at the beginning of puberty, thirteen or fourteen, yet you are almost eighteen. According to the history you gave, your development progressed normally until about age fifteen when it stalled and in fact, may have regressed a bit.”

I nodded, hardly blushing at all.

The doctor leaned forward. “An obvious preliminary hypothesis is hypogonadism, which is really a description, not a cause. Your sex hormone producing organs are not as developed, nor as active, as norms would predict. But we need to see the bloodwork. Also, you may have an underactive pituitary gland, stalling your development.”

I glanced at Mom and realized that she did understand what he was saying, so, okay, she could explain it to me later.

“Hypogonadism can be treated with externally supplied hormones,” said the doctor. “But in your case, we have a question: which hormones?”

He looked at Mom so I did too. “Yesterday, a young woman came into the office,” he turned back to me, “today we seem to have a young man.” He glanced at my hands but didn’t mention my nails. “So before much can be done in the way of treatment, once a diagnosis is decided on, we’ll need a decision on which way you,” meaning me, “wish things to proceed.”

“Ah—yeah.” I shivered despite the blanket wrapped around me.

He glanced at a clock on the wall. “It’s too late to get an ultrasound done before the technicians leave for lunch, so can you be back here at one? No, make it one-thirty.” Nurse Donovan nodded and scribbled away.

The doctor went on. “We can’t expect to have bloodwork returned before three, two at the earliest, so after ultrasound and time for us to look at results, we can have another conference at…four?” He smiled. “It’s Friday so we try to get everyone out of here by five.”

More was said but the outcome was that Mom and I could leave and return at 1:30 for the ultrasound, then again at four for a consultation. I was a bit annoyed because I had been sitting in my underwear on a cold, hard, steel table for a half-hour when I could have been dressed and lots more comfortable for all the talky-talky.

In minutes, Mom and I were in the elevator headed down.

“Will you stop rubbing your chest? It actually makes your nipples stand out more.”

My blush reflex had not reset since the doctor’s talk so I could mostly ignore that. “It itches,” I said. “They itch, I mean. I think because people keep talking about them.”

She snorted. Well, so what if it were psychosomatic, they really did itch.

In the lobby, the same man who had been behind the security desk came around to help us with the heavy door. “Have a good afternoon,” he said as we exited.

“Thank you,” we both said.

With the door closed behind us, I remarked, “At least he didn’t call us both, ‘Ladies’.”

Mom made a noise. “You came here yesterday in a dress? I think he recognized your freckle pattern.” I frowned at her as she continued. “But he probably sees a lot of traffic to the various clinics here. Dr. Forbes may be a specialist in patients like you.”

“Like me? How like me?” I didn’t think she meant redheads.

“Presenting as female one day and as mostly male the next? Gender dysphoria, they call it now, but it used to be called transsexualism.”

“Mph. I don’t know if I’m that. I’m just a kid with a hormone problem who had a strange adventure yesterday.”

Mom grinned at me. “Uh, huh.” She pulled out her phone while we walked to the car and asked the built-in assistant. “Nearest lingerie shop,” she asked it.

“Mom!” I protested.

“You need protection. You’re going to hurt yourself scratching.”

I crossed my arms on my chest and glared at her. “I—you—no!”

“Hush,” she ordered me. The app reported several lingerie shops within twenty minutes drive. Mom rejected the first two with addresses in Koreatown as being unlikely to have what she was looking for. The next was a Victoria’s Secret in a vertical mall on the edge of Downtown.

“Mom, I can’t go into…. Dressed like this? I mean….”

“Poo,” she pooh-poohed. “You did it yesterday with your girlfriend, you can do it today with your mother. At least you’re not covered in grass clippings. Besides, no one will care at all.”

“I dunno,” I said, my resistance wilting as we reached the car.

“You’ll see,” Mom promised.

We followed Wilshire and found parking just off 7th street with the mall only a block away. “This is a bad idea,” I told her. “I’m going to be a boy in a lingerie store, everyone will laugh.”

“No one will laugh,” Mom promised again. “Now what size bra did Margo buy you?”

“Uh—32A,” I said. I didn’t correct her on the name, it wasn’t important.

Most of the mall was underground with both trendy and discount shops laid out in compact squares on three floors. I cringed when we sighted the Victoria’s Secret. Mom stopped with a hand on my forearm. “You’re still nervous about this?”

“Um—yeah?” You do not ‘duh!’ your mother.

“I can’t imagine why,” she said with a grin. “Tell you what, let’s make a little bet. We go in, get you fitted for a bra, and no one calls you he or treats you like a boy, I win. If you feel they have twigged to what’s in your pants, you can claim the win, and we’ll leave without buying anything.”

“Uh—?” I glanced at my hands. With my nails painted the bet was tilted against me.

“But if I win,” Mom went on, “when we come out, we get your ears pierced at the little kiosk over there.” She pointed.

My hands had gone to my ears. “Mom!”

With her hand on my forearm she started forward. “Is the bet on?”

I sighed and followed her, my ears already twinging in anticipated pain.