Tuesday morning builds on Monday’s fine start to Operation; Avoid Rick and Weird Feelings. The title isn’t very snappy I know, I’m workshopping replacements. My morning begins with another session in the library before Homeroom. Isolation isn’t so unfamiliar to me, this used to be my life most mornings. I almost miss the common room, weird huh?

I make it through Math and Geography, and I only have one class remaining before I have to see him again at lunchtime. I’m pretty convinced he’s going to manage to talk to me this time, but what he’ll say, I don’t know. I have far too much on my mind between yesterday’s hints from Frau Whistler and Rick’s… situation. Why can’t my life be simple?

“Does anyone have the answer to this? What was so significant about Elizabeth Blackwell?” My History teacher, Mrs Benson asks, as she glances around the classroom. “This should be fresh in your memories as we covered it only last week.”

I tentatively raise my hand.

“Alexander.”

I HATE teachers who use our full names, it particularly bothers me for reasons you might appreciate.

“Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to get a medical degree in the United States in 1857, Ma’am. She founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children with her sister Emily, and Marie Zakrzewska.”

Mrs Benson nods approvingly. “Absolutely correct! And it was this clinic that paved the way for female physicians in the United States going forward, your mother is a physician, isn’t she Alexander?”

I cringe a little but nod. “Yes Ma’am, Cardiologist at Mercy General.”

She’s very pleased with the response. I can thank my mother for my knowledge of Blackwell and her clinic actually. It’s a story she told me years ago and one I strive to follow in the footsteps of. Mom didn’t realize it, but she inspired me to be like them and her one day.

The bell goes on history twenty minutes later and we’re making our way to Lunch. I’m still working out how best to avoid a guy I sit across from at the table when a foot catches my ankle and I hit the deck hard.

“Fucking nerd faggot,” A voice chuckles darkly as its owner vanishes into the crowd of students. Nobody stops to help me up, they just briefly part as I struggle back to my feet. I could make a fuss, but it would never make a difference; this kind of stuff happens to people like me. The socially privileged think they have a right to abuse the rest of us for appearing to slight their intelligence, their feelings, or just plain fun. I’m pretty sure this one didn’t like the fact that answered a question and was praised for it.

I’m still nursing the bruise on my shin when I reach the dining room. Rick is already sitting there when I arrive and I catch sight of the look on his face; this time it’s most certainly one of hurt. I hate doing this but I have to for both of our sakes. He doesn’t need the confusion and I don’t need the hope I feel when I’m around him. Better for us to remain acquaintances that don’t get too close than to suffer any of what lies ahead.

As we sit down, I discover Lord Brandon is in fine fettle again today and he’s gunning for a reaction from me. If earlier examples from this year haven’t been enough of a clue, I have been designated his target of choice. Remember what I said about my big mouth? Sometimes it’s an asset and sometimes it gets me in more trouble than I’d like. Sometimes, it gets me out of trouble too, I’m quite smart. This isn’t one of those times.

“Nice of you to join us eventually Miss Winters,” he sneers as I drop into my spot beside him. Just for reference, the table head gets the only chair, everyone else occupies benches on both sides of the table.

“Brandon, no matter how much you call me a girl, I’m still not going out with you,” I reply deadpan. I just don’t have time for him today and my desire to fuck around has reached peak find out. The double bluff is an excellent strategy for the moron with a small brain and an even shorter temper. The only problem is, Alex isn’t driving right now. I’m tired and I’m frustrated and emotional. Holly is very much at the surface now and she’s not taking Brandon’s bullshit.

“What? I wouldn’t ever!” he splutters. “Are you admitting you’re gay finally?”

“I mean, you just called me a girl,” I point out with a shrug. I check my nails with disinterest before fixing him with an amused look. “So that would make me straight, wouldn’t it genius? Although faced with a guy like you, it would probably turn me into a lesbian.”

Darth Dipshit is now red in the face and getting angrier by the second. Here’s where the curveball in my plan enters the game and presents the home run hit. Little do I realize, I’m playing ball in a phone booth, and balls bounce.

“Brandon, That’s enough; knock it off now,” Rick interjects sternly. I think he realizes that I’m probably touching a nerve and about to set off Mount Dumbass. “You started this, now be a man and knock it off before we all end up in the shit when a teacher steps in.”

Brandon glares at him and then at every expectant face at the table. In his eyes, they’re watching their glorious leader for his next move. He realizes that he has to have the last word, his ego demands it. “I suppose I’ll have to be,” He sighs. “Seeing as this little faggot can’t seem to manage it.”

I really shouldn’t, it’s quite possibly the most incendiary thing I could possibly do at this point, but now the red rag has been presented in an already enjoyable game of prod the bear. The words leave my mouth before I realize just how bad it’s going to be.

“I’m pretty sure that’s what your ex-girlfriend said,” I snicker.

There is dead silence at the table and it’s as though time freezes outside of our little bubble. If you’re really sharp-sighted, I’m pretty sure you can watch a blood vessel blow in Brandon’s forehead. I don’t see the fist coming, but I catch it right in the side of my head. The world spins and I remember hitting the floor, but the rest of the next few minutes are a complete and utter blur.

As my senses swim back to me in a miasma of light and sound, I can hear raised voices as though filtered through cotton wool. I’m pretty sure there’s yelling and shouting happening but I couldn’t tell you what anyone was saying exactly. I blink and try to clear my vision but it’s still cloudy and indistinct. Shapes are moving rapidly and they seem to converge before separating once again. One shape goes flying, and the other lunges after it. Nothing really makes a lot of sense at the moment.

It takes a few minutes for my vision to clear sufficiently that I can see what’s happening. Something feels wet and I’ve got a splitting headache. Now I can see, that the scene before me is one of utter pandemonium. Rick is kneeling on the back of Brandon, as are several other football players. Teachers are trying to pull them off him and failing miserably at their quest. I sit up, or at least, I attempt to do so. My head spins and I hit the deck a second time and my vision fades to black.

The next time I open my eyes, I’m in the back of an Ambulance. They’re pretty impossible to mistake, what with the sirens, paramedics, and such.

“Where am I?” I mutter through dry lips, not sure who’s even nearby.

A uniformed paramedic appears above me. “It’s ok, miss, you’re safe, you’re in an Ambulance on the way to hospital. What do you remember?”

“School… punch, floor,” I mutter, wincing at the flash of pain that radiates through my head. “I don’t tell good jokes apparently.”

The medic smiles as he checks the monitor beside me. I can’t look around because my head is firmly held in place by a cervical collar. A tiny sob escapes my lips as the emotions finally catch up to me.

I feel a hand take mine and squeeze.

“Hey, relax Hol, you’re going to be ok.”

Rob, I recognize Rob’s voice right as his face appears above me. “They’ve got you strapped down, you got attacked.”

My head clears enough that I remember the punches and the fog that followed. I genuinely have no recollection of what happened. “What..?”

“Happened?” Rob raises an eyebrow. “That asshole Brandon knocked you clean out. Rick stepped in then several more of us did too. We managed to get him off you before he did too much… god I’m sorry.” he sighed.

“It’s ok,” I murmur. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Rob shakes his head but whatever he’s going to say is delayed as the medic leans over me and begins asking me a list of concussion-related questions. What is my name, do I know where am I, what date is it? They are all designed to check a patient’s mental faculties and work out just how scrambled they are, clinically speaking. It allows them to perform a check of basic function along with other factors like pupil response and blood pressure to assess for brain injury.

Concussions are essentially bruising of the grey matter. When the head is impacted, or impacts something it stops dead. The brain being somewhat more fluid keeps going like a fat man on a water slide. Bruised tissue is essentially internal bleeding at a smaller scale. Bruising causes swelling which leads to pressure and that can cause headaches and temporarily impact parts of the body like the optic nerve. Getting too technical? Sorry, force of habit.

We arrive at the Emergency Room and we’re taken inside pretty sharpish. I’m strapped to a damn gurney with my head in foam blocks and a cervical collar around my neck so I can’t see much besides the roof above me. I’m wheeled into a triage bay where Doctors and nurses descend on me like a plague of locus.

“Adolescent female presenting with blunt force trauma, fist, and floor. Lost consciousness on scene and regained in the bus. GCS initially five and climbing to fourteen in the truck.”

“Any meds?”

“None,”

There’s a flurry of sound and voices as people flitter around me, I briefly hear Rob’s voice then it’s gone. After a few minutes, the room clears out and It’s quiet, weirdly quiet.

“Miss, can you hear me?” a female voice asks. I can feel cool air on my chest, I’m not wearing a shirt, that’s not good.

“I can hear you,” I reply cautiously. “What’s going on?”

“You’re at Mercy General in the Emergency Room. You were brought in with a severe concussion, what do you remember?” The doctor appears above me and smiles. She has a short brunette pixie cut and big tortoiseshell glasses, she looks like a medical version of hipster Tinkerbell.

“Getting hit by a semi-truck full of stupid?”

“A sense of humor is good,” she smiles. “Anything else?”

“I was at school, we were having lunch. A fight started and I think I was hit in the head; it gets fuzzy after that.”

“What’s your name honey?”

“Alex,”

“Ok sweetheart, that’s fantastic. We’re going to be taking you up for a few scans to make sure nothing is too wrong. Your brother came in with you. He explained to me that you’re a little different from other girls. I’m taking some precautious for your dignity’s sake ok?”

Oh fuck, I didn’t imagine that outcome.

The doctor smiles again reassuringly. “It’s just me in here right now, but I need to warn you; I have to get you trauma naked so I can get you into a gown and up to imaging, alright? I promise I’ll be as respectful as possible.”

“Uh, ok.”

I can feel scissors next to my skin as my clothing is cut away. It’s not a particularly pleasant experience seeing as my arms, legs, and neck are all strapped down. You see, This isn’t some sort of kink, when one has suffered a cranial trauma, that is, bonking one’s noggin, it’s often advisable to make sure nothing else was broken in the process. The head after all is attached to the body by one very breakable thing called your neck. If you start acting like an inflatable at a car wash, your spine doesn’t tend to thank you.

The doctor covers my now cold bare flesh with a hospital gown. Feeling this powerless is an excruciating feeling and one I endeavor to abate as much as possible in years to come when I was on the other side of the stethoscope.

“There we go honey, all done,” she announces once my humiliation is complete. “Let's get you whisked up to imaging and hopefully get you out of all this mess, eh?”

I won’t bore you with my trip to imaging, it’s incredibly dull. Before you ask, yes, Mercy General is the hospital where my Mom works, so I’m already worried that I won’t get to swear Rob to silence before it’s too late. Currently, as far as I’m aware they haven’t put two and two together, for which I am rather glad. Rob knows; I’m not sure how I can use that to my advantage at the moment but I’m also concussed, leave me alone. All that I can think is that I’m about to be fully and parentally exposed and I am not ready. I’m not even mentally ready to explain myself.

The Imaging department at the hospital is where they take a look under the hood without having to actually get under the hood. You’ve all seen Medical dramas; I won’t explain an MRI or an X-ray to you dearest reader. Once I’ve been irradiated, magnetized, and sizzled at gas mark five for a good hour I’m transferred to a room on a general ward and finally freed from my restraints. I appreciate the concern for my body, but being in restraints is exhausting and frustrating. Thankfully the painkillers they have given me have reduced my suffering to a dull ache.

 

 

After the hospital porters deposit my padded chariot in a room, I’m left in peace and quiet. It’s quite intimidating because I’ve never been hurt like this before in my life and I’m feeling quite isolated. I’m glad Rob is nearby, but right now, it’s just me.

I seem to have been admitted as a female, which is, as much as I would love it, a problem. Parents tend to visit their injured children in hospitals, especially when they work there. I don’t see a lot of ways around Mom and the ‘oh hi I’m a girl’ issue. Honestly? My heart is pounding and running laps on how to explain my current situation.

There’s a knock at the door as I’m mid panic and the doctor from earlier pops her head in with a smile. “Hello Alex, how are we feeling?”

Well, I can’t say terrified that my Mom will find out I’m a girl and that my life is over, can I?

“My head’s still thumping and I feel a little stiff, but I’m not as woozy,” I admit.

“That’s good,” the doctor smiles as she arrives at my bedside and checks through the chart attached to the foot. When she’s done, she comes over and does the whole pen light in the eyes routine before stepping back. “I don’t think we were properly introduced earlier, I’m Harriet Jones, your Doctor. You gave us all quite a scare you know.”

“Wasn’t my first choice admittedly.” I offer. “I’d rather have stayed away too.”

“Do you remember much about what happened?”

I think back, it is a little foggy. “I was having lunch, I said something, and Brandon, one of the boys, hit me. After that, it was a little blurry until I was in the ambulance, but I remember fighting and shouting.”

Doctor Jones nods. “That’s normal for a concussion, things will clear up in a few days. I got your results back from imaging and we have no immediate concerns. There’s some minor swelling and you do have a moderate concussion. Honestly, honey, you’ve been incredibly lucky. A couple of stitches and some rest and you’ll be right as rain.”

Yeah, acid rain.

“Do you know where my brother is?” I ask uncertainly. I’d like at least one ally here, it might soften things with the parentals.

“Robert?” she asks with a smile. “He’s a really protective brother, isn’t he? You’re a lucky girl. He’s right outside honey, ok? I also called for your Mom. She’s in the middle of surgery at the moment, but she’s getting someone to step in for her and she’ll be right down to see you, ok?”

Welp, the connection has been made, The best I can do is try to deflect on my end. Maybe I can blame this all on assumption and a horrible mistake?

Doctor Jones misinterprets the look of panic on my face and squeezes my hand. “It’s ok sweetheart, you’re going to be ok, I promise. I know it’s tough not having your mom here but she knows you’re ok, I made sure of it. Get some rest and she’ll be here soon, I promise.”

“Uh, thanks,” I answered uncertainly. “I appreciate it, Doctor.”

“I’ll let your brother know that he can come see you, ok?” She gives me a last smile and makes her exit.

What the hell has today become? I’m trying to decide how to best explain my way out of my mess when there’s a knock at the door. “Come in?”

The door cracks open and Rob sticks his head inside cautiously. “Uh, are you good for a visitor Holly?”

“Uh, sure.”

Rob steps inside and closes the door. He doesn’t approach, he just stands by the door and looks at me. “I was so afraid…”

The look on his face is heartbreaking; my big tough badass older brother genuinely looks frightened. Rob shakes his head and steps forward slightly. “I only just got to… you only just told me… the real you. I was afraid you’d die and that would be it; over. I’d never get to know you properly.”

“What actually happened? I don’t remember much,” I ask, trying to distract from awkward mortality questions

Rob chuckles darkly. “Well, he hit you, although I didn’t see that first part. Why he did it, I’m not so sure. Knowing you it was probably your big mouth.” he opines with a pointed look in my direction. My sheepish grin confirms his theory.

“It was all real fast; you hit the ground like a ragdoll and he started on you again when Rick jumped him. Within seconds most of the team was on him. Once we got him subdued and I got to you… Alex,” breathes, his eyes full of sorrow. “I thought you were dead, you weren’t moving… there was blood everywhere. I was so scared.”

“Shit,” Now I feel quite bad for him, this clearly got to him and I’m more worried about me.

Rob shifts awkwardly, and I can tell he’s come to the real kicker. “Teachers cleared everyone out and the EMTs came. They checked you over and rushed you to the ambulance, they… made an assumption about you because of how you looked. That, and when they took off your shirt to put you on a monitor, you had… on your chest, you had…” he swallows and looks uncertainly at me, “breasts.”

Ah, that’s just plain sibling awkward. “Rob, you know I’ve been taking the medication right? The hormones? Well, it’s making me develop like I should. That means I have breasts.”

He looks a little uncertain for a moment, almost hesitant. “I knew you were serious Holly, that this was real, but… that just shocked me to my core. I’ve seen you looking like a girl, sure, but when they cut away your shirt and I saw… your chest in your bra it finally killed Alex in my head. Does that make sense?”

I nod. I guess it really does bring the reality of this home beyond the theoretical, so his hamfisted explanation makes some sense. Sorry for dumping the girls on you that way brother dearest!

I remember the important topic at hand…. Mom.

“Uh, Rob, I need a favor.”

“What? Anything?”

“Look, Mom and Dad; they can’t know about this, not yet. I need to try and keep this under wraps until I can get some place safe like college. I know it’s a lot but can you… You know, run interference?”

Rob looks super awkward all of a sudden. “Uh, that’s gonna be hard Holly, Mom… she knows already.”

 

 

Modern Day Holly here with your ‘ew it’s boring and real’ warning. The next chunk of the story is a little on the more introspective and sad side. It's not bad, but you try unpacking your reality and keeping it funny and light. We’ll be back to the usual antics soon enough, but for now, enjoy a fat dose of my reality as it was that fateful day.

I wake up from a nap I hadn’t realized I had taken. You know hospitals; you tend to sleep a ton because there are not a lot of other things to do. The room I’m in is dark, telling me that I’ve managed to miss a good portion of the afternoon and evening so far, I guess I needed it. Somewhere nearby I can hear the soft rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor reminding me that I’m trapped here in a hospital. My head is much more clear now and the headache is almost entirely gone. What isn’t gone, however, is the stinging ache I can feel somewhere behind my head. I reach behind and feel the dressing at the base of my skull.

My movement alerts the other person in the room, the one I hadn’t seen yet. They’re sitting quietly in the gloom, taking up one of the room’s nasty hospital visitor’s chairs: Doctor Veronica Winters, aka Mom. She’s sitting there in her scrubs looking like she’s not managed to get home yet. I suddenly feel very guilty for worrying her, probably more than I fear her reaction to my secret. She looks over at me when she senses my movement and smiles in the gloom.

“Alex,” she murmurs softly, moving over to my side in the way that mothers do. Reaching above my head, she switches on one of the bedside lamps and angles it away so it doesn’t blind us both. To my sensitive head, it’s still quite a sharp change. “I didn’t want to wake you, honey, you were sleeping. How are you feeling?”

I smile weakly and shrug. “You didn’t have to come down, I know you were busy.”

Mom rolls her eyes. “I only found out three hours into a bypass surgery. As soon as they told me you were bought in, I scrubbed out and let Marcie Johnson take over. There was no way was I missing my child’s time of need.”

Fuzzy heart moment goes brr.

Mom’s lip quirks. “You know, I was a little surprised to find you here.”

“What do you mean?”

She sits gently on the edge of the bed and takes my hand in hers. “They told me that my daughter had been brought in after a fight at her school. On my way down here, I was wondering how the hell Chrissie managed to get attacked at College in Chicago and then get admitted here, half a country away.”

“Really good AirMed?” I offer sheepishly, not really expecting it to actually work. You know, it’s one of those jokes you make when you know you’re screwed but hope they’ll spare you.

Mom’s lip quirks again even as she frowns at my comment. “Would you believe my surprise when I came in here and Harriet from the ER briefed me on my youngest daughter Alex’s injuries?”

Gulp! That didn’t last long at all, did it? I’ve no chance here but the truth, Mom doesn’t do bullshit.

“I can explain, Mom, I promise.”

Mom shakes her head and squeezes my hand. “You don’t need to sweetheart. I know, and I have known for quite a long time. It wasn’t quite how I expected you to tell me though.”

Excuse_me.com/what.html

“You know? How?”

She nods and intertwines our fingers like she did when I was a small child. “I’ve known for a while now baby.” she smiles kindly. “I didn’t know how to broach it with you so we decided to wait. Your father and I, we saw how sad you were and just how much you were hurting, we didn’t know what to do to help. We saw how you spent time with Chrissie growing up, how very different you were to Robert and we saw all the behaviors and the responses; we tried to pretend it wasn’t really happening.”

She sighs heavily and for the first time, she looks way older. “We sent you to that school to see if it might encourage you to play with the other boys, to adjust and become comfortable. Unfortunately, it only seemed to make things worse. I think we realized it was too late when you withdrew yourself from us last year. By that point, it was all we could do to try and communicate, somehow.”

She sighs and strokes my hair. “I saw the signs, I’m not an idiot darling. I know you started taking hormones; remember that you are the child of a doctor, after all. If anyone had the knowledge and resources to pursue this themselves, it was you.”

Mom leans forward and strokes my cheek, her smile is so warm and genuine that I cannot possibly feel afraid as I stare into her eyes. “I also recognized the signs from Chrissie and my own childhood honey; a young girl entering puberty isn’t so easy to miss to a mother’s gaze.”

I goldfish, everything I had known is falling apart. My expectations of rejection, my fear of coming out. Even how well I had hidden my feelings before, during, and after I started to try to save myself. “You kept asking me if I was ok? Why not just tell me that you knew? I thought…” I sigh and look away. “I thought you were oblivious.”

“I wanted you to open up in your own time,” she admits. “It was when I felt your bra strap the other week that I realized your father and I had to say something sooner rather than later. That I had missed so much that you were already in your first bra, it had gone on for long enough.”

“You don’t hate me?” I almost whisper, terrified to hear the answer but powerless to not ask it anyway. “You don’t want to send me to military school or conversion therapy to have me fixed?”

I can see the tears sliding down Mom’s cheeks now. “No darling, I’d never dream of doing that. I would never, could never hate you for who you are baby.”

“Oh, Mom!”

Let’s just say the next twenty minutes are a monumental blubfest sponsored by Estrogen. I’m hugging Mom, she is hugging me and tears are flowing freely. Noses are being blown and ugly crying is very much the order of the day, it’s not some Hollywood moment, but it feels amazing to just exist with her now that there are no more lies.

I’m not sure what to think about this whole mess if I’m honest. There are ways that I imagined my coming outgoing, some better than others. Honestly, I was more terrified of the potential and refused to let myself hope for a good outcome. Fear is a paralyzing drug, and one that isn’t easy to overcome. Honestly, even in my most positive thoughts about this, I never imagined coming out to my Mom in a hospital bed after nearly getting killed by one ton of idiot.

Am I bothered that they knew already? That they didn’t talk to me about it? Partly, I suppose. I might have done things differently if they had told me before the semester started. I can’t change the past, so I must accept the future. So far, it’s not looking awful.

When we settle down and I finish drying my now very red and puffy eyes. I’m just staring at my Mom and it feels like im looking at her for the very first time. I can see her as a woman and not a mother. Growing up, we see our parents as idealized figures; they’re Mom and Dad, and they exist outside of human constraints. Actually seeing my own mother as an adult human female with flaws and imperfections is new to me. A human who can be imperfect, but somehow it makes her more relatable.

When I look at her objectively, Veronica Winters is a beautiful woman, despite her long hours divided between the hospital and raising three kids. Like me, she’s slim and brunette. We’re both around five foot six, but her spirit towers above everyone she touches. Mom’s entire life has been dedicated to others; whether it’s us kids or the people whose lives she saves. How could I possibly believe she would actually have rejected me? I feel so insanely stupid now that I was so scared.

The truth is, it’s not that simple, is it? It might have seemed obvious or simple to an outside observer, but I cannot begin to explain just how scared and paranoid the mind of a young kid is who finds themselves outside the societal norm. To be a trans kid, generally is to hide. We hide because society tells us so many horrible things about our mere existence. Why would you want to admit to it? Surely everyone you know secretly harbors those negative thoughts right? That hatred? It makes you paranoid.

“So you’re really ok with this? With me?” I sniff.

Mom makes a weird face. “Yes and no.” She holds up her hands to let her finish as I’m about to interject. “I one hundred percent support you Alex, you are my child and I will always support you. This is your life and if this is right for… god who am I kidding? Of course, this is right for you. I look at you now and I cannot see anything but my youngest daughter.”

Blub.

“What I’m not ok with, is that you took such dangerous risks to get here. I’m angry that you didn’t feel you could trust us, and I’m angry that you got hurt by that horrible boy.”

“I was scared Mom,” I admit. “I felt so alone, so isolated. I was convinced you and Dad would reject me and push me off to be like Rob. I couldn’t face it and I was desperate.”

“I love all of you all the same, but you are nothing like your brother,” she admits with a sardonic chuckle. “That would have been an impossible task.”

“I didn’t think I had a choice, Mom,” I admit sheepishly. “I couldn’t stand the idea of turning into a boy; It terrified me. I reached a dark point where It was do anything, or…”

I want to tell her I considered death, but all of a sudden, I cannot verbalize the words. The look of horror on her face however tells me that she understands all the same.

“When I saw the signs this summer and realized what you were doing, your father and I spoke.” She admits. “We knew we couldn’t confront you directly, not yet. I came up with the best plan I could; give you someone else to talk to; a trustworthy person that could keep the secret and at least keep you safe. All I needed was a good excuse to pack you off to the doctor for a checkup. With who else but my old college friend could I confine in that my youngest child was transgender?”

Ah, Doctor Harris, you rat.

“Don’t blame him,” Mom adds, like she can read my mind. “I told Tony my suspicions and he told me that he wouldn’t push, but if you chose to confide in him he would do what he could to be a neutral party. You have to believe I just wanted to keep you safe.”

“Why not just talk to me?” I do feel slightly betrayed, but more because I was so expertly out maneuvered. Point to you Mater.

She looks sheepish now, “You needed to tell me in your own time darling. I didn’t want to force you.”

“But if you knew I was taking hormones, you had to know that I was serious?”

“Do I want you to see a specialist? Absolutely. Did I want you to tell me first? Absolutely. Did you need to reach the point of acceptance first by yourself? yes.”

Why does she always have to be right?

“How long has Robert known?” She asks nodding back towards the door.

“He found out a couple of days ago,” I admit. “It was really sudden. He didn’t do anything silly, did he?”

Mom smiles and brushes some stray hair from my face. “Your brother was your brother. He tried to run interference and he even tried to prepare me, in his own silly way.”

I cringe at that, but I also love him for it. “That sounds like him, trying to be the hero.”

“He’s like his dad,” Mom smiles.

I nod my agreement and then smile. “I love Dad, but I’m glad I’m not.”

Mom squeezes my hand. “No, you’re a younger version of me.”

I had always seen myself that way; I was proud to be like her. Whether it was my looks, my hair, or my voice. Heck, even my desire to follow in her footsteps in Medicine. I wanted with all my heart to be like my Mom. To hear her say it back to me, and to validate those feelings felt incredible.

This had to be the most topsy turvy day of my life. Am I allowed to have some hope now?

 

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