Wheels and wings 28

Chapter 28

Character List.

Jack Thomas Later AKA Ellie Transvestite/intersexual and keen cyclist.
Amanda Thomas AKA Amie Jack's sister.
Charlotte Dawson Keen girl cyclist and Jack’s soon-to-be girlfriend.
Bob Cycling club captain.
Mr Thomas Weston School games master and keen rugby player.
Billy Davies. Rugby ‘jock’, kind to Jack, he fancies Charlotte.
Marjorie Spencer. Holder of unofficial ‘Prettiest-girl-in-the-school’ title.
Miss Elizabeth Postlethwaite. The English Mistress.
Aunty Olwen Where Jack changes for school and leaves his bike.
Mandy. Olwen’s daughter, Jack’s older cousin.
Mr Griffiths The County solicitor.

Chapter 28

As Ellie cycled home a summer thunderstorm struck and she was quickly saturated because she was only wearing thin summer Lycra. As the squalls buffeted her Ellie knew she would be late getting home for the meal with Auntie Olwen Now instead of a relaxed slow ride, she pedalled furiously through the increasingly violent storm. Her mother sat staring nervously through the window then sighed with maternal relief as she watched her child racing up the lane in the pouring rain. She met Ellie at the door and wagged her head.

“Just have a quick shower; Amie’s laid some dry clothes out on your bed. Leave your hair; it’ll take too long to dry.”

Ellie complied quickly and within half an hour the family were on their way to Aunty Olwen’s. Mandy met them, laughed at Ellie’s bedraggled hair.. As she tousled her fingers through Ellie’s hair, she asked if Ellie was going to move to Manchester. Ellie explained that for now, the school had shocked her by pulling out all the stops to accommodate her intergenderism. Because they had proven to be so amenable she had decided she was staying at home. Mandy noticed Amie’s contented smile and she grinned.

“Still got your big sis then Amie?”

Amie grinned and nodded.

After tea, Mandy styled both her cousins’ hair and the evening ended on a high note. The next morning at school, Marjorie complimented Ellie on her hair.

“Who did it for you El’s?” Marjorie wondered.

“Oh Thor the god of thunder.”

“Ellie grinned at Marge’s blank expression so she explained about the storm.”

Marjorie giggled and they shared the joke while Ellie also savoured another girl moment as she stepped up another rung on her ascent into womanhood. Ellie also sensed the vibes emanating from Charlotte’s desk but she pointedly ignored them and thus inadvertently misread them.

It seemed to Ellie that now she was considering transitioning, it was not worth trying to talk to Charlotte for to Ellie’s eyes, Charlotte seemed locked in mood of censure and resentment. The frozen silence between them deepened and they did not even acknowledge each other’s existence.

Ellie pointedly avoided Charlotte and chose a new seat on the other side of the classroom. This only served to also worsen matters. Ellie had convinced herself that Charlotte’s only ambition was to somehow turn her away from transitioning and because of her residual uncertainties, Ellie felt most comfortable avoiding Charlotte whenever she could. She felt that if Charlotte asked too many questions then Ellie’s confused uncertainty would give out inaccurate answers that would send even more confusing signals or worse make Ellie appear to be lying if she changed her mind later on. Ellie’s gender uncertainty only served to add yet more grist to the mill.

Ellie therefore felt that avoidance was the best tactic for it made her safe from Charlotte’s apparent bile. She totally misread Charlotte’s overtures to re-establish their friendship as some sort of sneaky tactic to destroy what little confidence she had left. Ellie felt any attempt by Charlotte to regain friendship was akin to a Trojan horse; a plot to steer her away from her undecided and uncertain paths.

Sadly nobody had seen fit to explain accurately to Charlotte that Ellie’s life was in a state of unpredictable flux. Ellie was still uncertain about giving up cycling and going whole hog for womanhood.

Unfortunately, Ellie’s rejection of Charlotte’s overtures for reconciliation served to heighten the tension between them and within a couple of months other class members had tended to take sides. A fault line developed in the class where there had once been a general culture of co-operation and friendship. The students most torn by this rift were Billy and Marjorie who until then, had enjoyed amicable relations with both protagonists.

The rift continued for two academic years as both Ellie and Charlotte pursued their own ambitions. The most telling consequence of the rift was that Ellie chose not to go out on club rides anymore and she pursued her own cycling aims; these being mainly hill-climb specialisation and road racing. She did return to the club in the December but her mood was one of resentment at the way she felt she had been treated, she became a somewhat truculent antisocial member who avoided all social activities and even missed the annual Christmas party.

She did not participate in the general club runs and she chose only to enter time trials and formal road-races where she soon made it clear to everybody that she was not prepared to socialise afterwards.

The last social event that Ellie attended during her school years was the school leaver’s prom and even this proved a disaster. By some ghastly stroke of unfortunate luck, she chose a dress identical to Charlotte’s. Charlotte’s clique of friends was abusive to

Ellie and the pair had a huge row on the dance-floor in front of the whole class. Two weeks later both Ellie and Charlotte completed their high school years.

Each gained excellent ‘A level’ grades that gave them carte-blanche access to any university of their choice. Charlotte chose to study law at a university near home but Ellie decided to study medicine further afield. By this time they had remained blind to the other’s existence for over two years and they did not even discuss their choices of university after achieving their grades. Both left their respective homes at aged eighteen seemingly never to see each other again.

Charlotte though, still hankered to renew the friendship even if she felt she could never rekindle the relationship she had once shared so fondly. Sadly, the rift was so deep and wide that they no longer spoke to each other and they had not even mentioned to each other which universities they were hoping to attend. Ellie in particular was keen to keep her choice of Manchester a secret from her old school friends. She knew about the gay village and secretly hoped that its existence would provide the outlet she needed to not only explore but also express her uncertain gender.

September of that University entrance year saw both students joining their separate university cycling clubs and pursuing their hobbies on top of their academic careers. For Ellie it was a lonely year as she spent long hours at her studies and to her chagrin, found little solace in the gay village. She found little empathy with the ‘gay crowd’ even though she had no cause to condemn them. She most of them seemingly shallow and mostly hell bent on a destructive, dissolute life-style that seemed to offer no finality, no solution to the uncertainties and insecurities of the gay life-style. Another side that pained her was meeting older, resentful gays who had found solace in alcohol because of the destruction wrought on their early lives by the strictures of the nineteen forties and fifties. Many of these older men particularly, resented the libertarian and indulgent freedoms that their younger brothers enjoyed. Ellie found much pain and resentment in the older generations who still hung around the village for want of better and more supportive circumstances.

As a younger person she began to recognise the hardships those older sisters and brothers had endured in their youth. It served to drive her ever harder into studying and she became known as a ‘swot’ ; a lonely, introverted, obsessive ‘blue-stocking’ girl.

~O~

Fate however was to bring Ellie and Charlotte together again in a most unexpected way.

Sometime during their second year of university Charlotte entered a sportive ride that involved several mountainous circuits of a course in the Pennine hills close to the city of Manchester where Ellie had become something of an academic hermit.

During her first year at medical school, Ellie had naturally decided to give blood as a donor and she was mildly surprised to learn that she had an exceptionally rare blood group. To Ellie it did not matter. She rarely went racing on her bike and made sure she indulged her riding on the most traffic free roads to avoid risk of accidents with cars.

Charlotte on the other hand had remained very enthusiastic about her cycling and she raced almost every weekend at some event or another.

On learning about her blood group, Ellie had a quiet laugh with her tutor when they realised that if Ellie had a serious accident on her bike, she could well end up in her own teaching hospital receiving her own blood from the local rare-blood bank that the hospital maintained. After this discovery Ellie was also placed on an ‘emergency donor’ list so that she could be located at any reasonable time to supply her rare blood if necessary. To this end the blood-bank organisers donated a free mobile phone to Ellie in order that she remained on call.

For the next year Ellie received no calls but being as she needed her mobile phone more-or-less constantly, it was always close by her side.

The day came however, when Ellie received the call. She was enjoying an afternoon tea with some of the other medical colleagues but she recognised the voice on the other end as the blood bank secretary who explained the urgency to Ellie..

“Yes Miss Thomas, It’s very serious, the victim was struck by a car and suffered severe injuries. Yours is the only blood compatible.”

“And you’re saying the blood bank’s empty. How can that be?”

“Blood only lasts so long Miss Thomas, you know that. There’s only one pint left. We had to despatch some to Belgium recently and the recipient is still in intensive care. We need more of your blood rather urgently.”

Ellie had been on extended training during that summer as she worked in a hospital away down in Brighton on the South Coast of England. Again she had chosen Brighton because it offered freedom for her alternative lifestyle. In addition to her hospital attendance, Ellie had been busy exploring the varied pleasures and night life of Brighton during her time off. As she put down the phone, she made her excuses to the registrar and she realised he hadn’t donated any blood to the Manchester blood-bank for nearly three months. She had not even informed the London bank that she was available if her blood was needed down south. She began to feel a little guilty.

On receiving the call from Manchester, Ellie knew it could take several hours to locate her rare type of blood anywhere else and then more time would be wasted despatching it. Ellie realised that she would have to become the ‘portable, living blood-donor’ and that she would have to go north immediately to Manchester; a journey of some three hundred miles by road. She had double checked while the blood-bank secretary had searched around and there seemed to be no other option. She was the living walking blood-bank most immediately available. Three hundred miles by road or, over two hundred miles... as the crow flies ... and Ellie was no crow. She cursed softly as she replied to the rare-blood-bank secretary.

“It’ll take me about five hours to reach there and that’s only if the traffic is clear around Birmingham. Are you sure I’m the nearest donor?”

There was a reciprocal muttered curse from the other end as the secretary confirmed the situation.

“Yes Miss Thomas, as far as we can tell. There’s another donor over in Belgium but he’s the very one who received your last supplies of blood. I’ve just checked with the Automobile association and they say the M5/M6 junction is at a standstill. Can you stay on the line please or better still can you go to the nearest airport. I’m going to organise a helicopter.”

Ellie shuddered at the sheer cost of involving a helicopter and she was secretly glad that the national health system and the navy or air ambulance service would somehow surmount the costs and logistics. She closed her phone, made her final apologies to her medical mentor in the garden then within minutes she was driving to the airport and arrived to find some staff already waiting for her.

“Are you Miss Ellie Thomas the blood donor?”

“Uhm, yes. My God, you guys have been quick! Where do I go?”

“Leave your car keys with us and wait in the freight area by the control tower. There’s already a chopper coming from Portsmouth naval base.”

Ellie was surprised and impressed as she settled down to wait.

,Jeeze! This must be costing the government a fortune,’ she concluded as she guiltily remembered her missed appointments.
Then she scolded herself as she remembered.

‘Giving blood was voluntary! She hadn’t broken any laws. Forgetful, yes; perhaps a little irresponsible even; but she wasn’t some sort of criminal.’ She reflected ruefully on having enjoyed Brighton’s night-life so much she had been totally distracted from donating blood.

Still she felt guilty and that guilt was only ameliorated by the provision of the helicopter.

She hadn’t long to wait as she sat in her pretty floaty summer frock and sipped a welcome cup of tea. Soon she heard the tell-tale clatter of a giant sea-king air-sea rescue helicopter as it roared in. She turned to her minder.

“Crickey, couldn’t they have found something a little smaller and less expensive? One of the air-ambulance choppers or something.”

“Yes, but this is faster and it was the nearest on immediate availability.”

Ellie knew the need for speed so she shrugged and followed her minder to the landing circle. Within seconds she was airborne as the winch-man explained the drill.

“When we get to Manchester it’s not ordinarily equipped to receive big rescue choppers because it’s not one of our regular rescue destinations for casualties. We normally rescue people from the mountains or the sea and fly them to preselected hospitals equipped with large landing pads fit to receive us. Consequently we’ll need to lower you on the winch, are you up to that young lady?”

Ellie glowed with satisfaction as she realised that the winch-man had accepted her utterly as a young lady and she nodded happily.

“Sounds exciting. Yes, I’m up for it. Sorry I’m not wearing jeans or something, I ‘m wearing this dress because I just came straight from a posh afternoon tea with the registrar who was mentoring me.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve rescued naked people before now. Just sit back and enjoy the ride, we’ll be just over an hour.”

Ellie did just that and stared down fascinated at the patchwork of fields, roads and towns as she sped by at low level. It seemed like no time at all before she was gazing at the familiar outlines of her own teaching hospital and the winch-man was placing her in the harness.

“Just hit this catch and twist it to release yourself, go on give it a test now.”

Ellie practiced several times before the winch-man was satisfied and soon she found herself dangling on the end of the wire.

As she descended she grinned to herself for the four-point harness was dragging the hem of her beautiful floaty frock up to her belly. ‘Whoever’s waiting on the ground is getting a splendid view of my lacy underwear. If I’d known I was arriving like this, I’d have changed into my jeans first!’ She mused.

As she touched the ground and released the harness her skirt immediately billowed up to reveal everything and she squealed with embarrassment as she watched the consultant’s eyes widen with appreciation.

‘A perfect Marilyn Monroe moment!’ Ellie blushed when the downdraft finally disappeared as the helicopter ascended up and away.

Without wasting time on the niceties the consultant and his entourage explained as they rushed to the theatre. And as soon as they were sterile, Ellie was donating blood.

“Did you have a good breakfast Miss Thomas?”

Ellie recognised the familiar voice of her tutor as she replied.

“You know I did, I always have a huge breakfast when I’m cycling.”

“Good. I going to ask you to donate at least two pints; are you agreeable?”

Being a medical student, Ellie knew this would leave her somewhat weakened but she agreed to it and joked to hide her mild apprehension.

“Provided I get extra tea and plenty of biscuits.”

The tutor grinned gratefully.

“You can have a full English breakfast if you wish and a three course dinner to follow. We need your blood.”

“I always thought you were a vampire.” Ellie joked as the needle entered her arm.

Her tutor grinned.

“I presume you’re still living a healthy celibate life-style.”

“Is there any other for an intergendered transsexual?” Ellie riposted then added. “Who can I trust?”.

The tutor became serious for a moment.

“Yes, I understand that Ellie; life can be a bitch some times. Seriously though, I have to ask, have you been indulging in any risky activities?”

“No Doc. I’m clean. Still a good little virgin.”

“Good. We’ll test anyway but we need this now. She’s going into shock.”

“What happened to her anyway?” Ellie asked, idly passing the time as she squeezed the ball rhythmically.

“Oh she is one of your riding sorority. A cyclist hit by a car in some cycling race. Serious injuries to skull, femur and clavicle; lost a lot of blood. Hairline fracture to her pelvis as well but fortunately no organ damage just muscle tissue to her upper thigh. She’ll have an infinitely better chance of mending now we’ve got some suitable blood. The biggest fear is the break to her femur and the skull fracture.”

Ellie nodded knowingly for she knew all about collisions with cars. She had endured a couple of impacts herself but fortunately they had been minor hits.

Eventually she had delivered slightly over two pints and the team made her lie abed until the following morning. She savoured the huge supper and the following breakfast then grinned knowingly as her tutor reappeared at her bedside. Ellie knew the reason.

“Don’t tell me, you want more, you blood sucker.”

“You know the risks Ellie. We’ll take you down to IC to monitor your condition but we desperately need it. I won’t take more than a pint.”

“Damned right you won’t. Three pints in a day! Come on doc, that’s a big ask!!! Okay then, if you must!”

After twelve ounces were delivered Ellie became light headed and stopped pumping the ball. Her tutor recognised the symptoms and gratefully recovered what she had delivered. Elli herself then received a pint of plasma to replace the fluids and she finally fell into a deep sleep. It was mid afternoon when she woke feeling weak and groggy. The nurses assisted her with her ablutions then she immediately tucked into another huge meal. It was fully two days before Ellie had recovered enough to walk unaided and on the morning of the third day she was settled comfortably in the visitor’s lounge working on her lap-top when she had an unexpected visit.

~~ooo000ooo~~