CHAPTER 18
It smelled green, so logically it tasted green when I was sick, and said vomit was green as well, as my empty stomach dredged deep for something to chuck up.

Someone was hammering a piece of hot metal into me. I knew they were down there, with their mallets, because I could feel the banging, which they were timing to my heartbeat. My throat was sore, and my mouth still tasted green. Green and very dry. Someone was quietly snoring. I couldn’t seem to get my eyes to focus for a while, and my head…ouch.

That was how I knew the dwarfs down below were hammering in time with my heartbeat, because I could feel it in my head. Diastole, systouch, diastole, systouch.

My mouth was not only on its own synaesthetic trip, it didn’t want to talk to me. It didn’t seem to want to talk to anyone, actually, as I tried to ask whoever was about for a bloody drink, and tell them to evict the dwarfs.

My head was clearing only slowly, but I realised that the snoring was coming from my mother, in an armchair off to one side. Pete was sitting in his wheelchair, head thrown back and drooling. No stamina. I found a button thingy lying on my blanket, and pressed it Ten minutes or an eternity later, a nurse came in.

“Wawa, peas!

“You can’t drink yet, you’ll just throw it up, but I can give you something to wet your lips. Just a sip”

She held a cup with a straw to my mouth, and when I went to draw a big slug up, she actually pinched the straw shut.

“Now suck on this”

An ice cube. Bless you, girl. She gave Mum a shake, and then Pete, who made a lot of noise when he woke.

“Tea for you too?”

Mum stretched in a very unladylike way. “That would be delightful, my dear. Darling, how do you feel?”

“Whose bloody idea was this?”

“Yours, I believe. Something about matching your body to your soul. At least, that was part of a rather long and incoherent speech you were giving as they wheeled you away.

“Now, the surgeon says it went rather well, so now it’s just the healing process. The nasty bit is over”

Not from where I was lying it wasn’t. The nurse was back with tea, and did something to a drip bottle hanging by the bed, and…oooooooh, that was better. Pete was fully awake now, holding my hand, the one without all the wiry tuby things on it.

“Thank you for all this, love”

The silly man thought I was doing it all for him. That could be useful, save it up as a bargaining point. As the anti-pain stuff did its job, I was not only beginning to wake up, I was starting to think again. That old image of a viewpoint came back to me, and this was certainly an odd one, given my starting point. Looking down an expanse of white and pale blue hospital blankets, past the swell of my own breasts, to my mother on one side of the bed and the man I was to marry on the other. Well done, at last, John.

An aeon or two later I was allowed my own tea, and I sent the two of them off to find some breakfast or lunch or whatever time of day it was, and the surgeon made his first little visit. Up went my blanket, down went his head, in went his hands.

“Good, good, splendid, I should take a job sewing in a top fashion house, it’s that good!

“My little joke, dear. Now, I’m sure someone as educated as yourself has read every available piece of literature on the healing process, so you will know all about dilation, so I won’t go into all that nastiness. We have a pack you can take with you, a bit like an Ann Summers gift set, with instructions. You were rather well-endowed, and as you still had your clockweights I had plenty to work with. I must admit, the hair removal down there was a superb idea! Where did you get it from?”

“An article in the Guardian, doctor. There was a girl who hadn’t got rd of enough of her short and curlies, and ended up with a patch still growing right at the top of her new vagina. Every time her partner made love to her, he said it was like shagging a brillo pad, so I thought…”

“Excellent, excellent! I like well-read patients, it saves me so much trouble!”

And off he went. I remembered the embarrassment of lying there in that place by Gun Wharf, as they methodically went over a very sensitive part of me. Ouch. I also remembered the other part of that Guardian article, and shuddered.

A girl just like me had had her operation, and as is so often the case found herself alone and lost. So alone, that when the fundamentalist bible-bashers came round, she was swallowed up. They educated ‘him’, to realise that their deity didn’t make mistakes, and as Burns put it, “A man’s a man, for aa’ that”, and ‘he’ was a man despite everything, ’for aa’ that”

Men get married, to women, so they had found ‘him’ a suitable young lady from among the faithful, and post-nuptials she had quite reasonably complained that her husband shouldn’t come with breasts and a vagina. So ‘he’ went back to hospital and had ‘his’ femininity irrevocably destroyed, only to come to her senses a short time later.
There are articles I occasionally find that make me cry, and after laughing out loud (and wincing) at brillo-pad-girl, I had wept, at the story and at the picture of a woman who had utterly lost any chance of being complete.

That left me thinking, about several things. I was so lucky in my support, so utterly blessed, I could almost forget the wasted years courtesy of my father. Almost. But now I had taken a step so huge it frightened me. Was this the right thing to do?

I knew the answer as soon as my mind asked the question.

Mary popped round that afternoon (I had finally adjusted my clock) and after the usual pleasantries, she got down to it.

“You’re going through the ‘is this right?’ stage now, aren’t you?”

I laughed, which was stupid ,as of course it hurt. “You know me so well, Mary!”

“Well, I should do, shouldn’t I? And that question is inevitable. This is such a huge step that cold feet will be there before as well as after. It’s why we insist on such a long process before doing anything as radical as surgery”

“Yes, but you effectively signed me off early”

She laughed, which obviously didn’t hurt. “Was I wrong, then?”

I kept mine to a grin. “No. I have, as you know, just been working through that question, and I am absolutely certain this was right.”

She turned a little serious. “Laura, there are certain stages you will go through, one of which will involve some potentially serious depressive episodes. It doesn’t mean you are wrong, it doesn’t mean you have made a mistake, it’s just a glorified bout of nerves. Just remember, always, that you have your family around you, and that I am on the phone. And always, always bear in mind when you have those moments of self doubt that most women like you have to do this on their own. You have support beyond price; use it, rely on it and rejoice in it”

There were other visitors, over the next few days, including a waddling Jane, who had the ultrasound picture with her.

“It’s twins, Lor!”

I tried not to laugh, as that conversation with my mother came back, but in the end I had to.

“What’s tickling you. Laura?”

“It’s like when you went shopping, Jane, you always looked for the BOGOF!”

That set her off, and then she grimaced. “Er, Laura, do you have any spare knickers? I’ve sort of wet myself”

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An eternity later, they pulled half a bedsheet from inside me, along with the catheter, and I was free to move around. I am not going to go into any more intimate details here. You are either familiar with the processes or you are not, and if not you have no need for the details.

A little later we were back at our bungalow in Woodlands, and a relay team of home helps started, including both Tyler and Ollie, which was very useful. My first moment of angst came as I looked in the bedroom mirror naked. Still a boyish figure, despite the breasts. Was this illusion meant to be?

The door opened behind me, and Pete walked in. He held me from behind, and looked at my reflection over my shoulder. I felt him stiffening against my naked bottom, and my doubts were answered.

That’ll be a sale, then.

That's all, folks

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