Drew Nance Book 2: "The Hidden Staircase" by Bobbie J. Cabot Chapter Five: Drew, Frank Hardy and Safe Houses / Dr. Joe, Nurse Sally and Slow-release Vitamins

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At around two in the morning, sleepiness made them want to turn in. Drew was thankful that her bed was Queen-sized, so there was enough room for all three of them. And, though they intended to sleep already, they ended up talking until almost four.

In the morning, Carson took a peek inside Drew’s room and saw the three of them. Drew was in the center and her two friends were curled around her. Iola had her right hand and arm over Drew’s waist and Callie had her left hand on one of Drew’s breasts. All three of them were snoring softly.

Carson chuckled quietly and closed the door, deciding to let them sleep. He didn’t know exactly how to feel about what he just saw. On the one hand, he had a bit of a kind of pride to know that his kid had two beautiful girls. It wasn’t an enlightened point of view for a father, but that was what he felt. But then again, the girls weren’t “hers.” He knew they were best friends, and Drew said it was platonic. And he knew that was the truth based on how she acted around them. And if it wasn’t platonic, Drew was supposed to be a girl, after all. That would mean the girls would have to be into girls for something to happen.

Actually, he mostly felt jealous of Drew. When he was in high school, he never had two girls in bed, let alone that pretty, and he thought Drew lucky that, in her guise as a girl, she had opportunities like that.

But he trusted Drew, and the fact that she kept her room’s door open and ajar meant she wasn’t hiding anything. And, presumably, the girls knew that the door was open so they wouldn’t have been doing anything that they weren’t supposed to be doing.

As he walked downstairs, he thought about it. In the conscious part of his mind, what he worried about was Drew being found out. But if Drew felt comfortable enough to go and sleep with people right beside her, then he knew she was very confident with her disguise. Still, he worried. In fact, he wouldn’t even have considered their Hawaii trip if he wasn’t confident in her ability to protect her identity.

He thought about why he thought of a Hawaii trip. After all, the agency offered other tours where the danger of Drew being found out was so much less. He had leafed through some brochures for a cruise to the Arctic, a hiking tour of Yosemite, and a cultural tour of Tokyo. He picked Hawaii... a Hawaii trip was the natural selection for a family vacation. All things being equal, a trip to Hawaii would have been the natural choice, but then again, his family wasn’t the run-of-the-mill family.

As he put up some coffee to brew, he thought that through. In the end, he had to conclude that, either he was confident of Drew maintaining the subterfuge, or he really thought of Drew as a girl. Subconsciously.

That idea bothered him, sure, but at the moment, he was bothered more about Callie’s hand on Drew’s breast while wearing that very skimpy nightie.

He put some coffee in a thermos mug and decided to leave early for work. He needed some distance.

- - - - -

The girls woke up at around ten. It was mostly because of Drew yawning and stretching that everyone woke up. Iola gave Drew a hug but no kiss on the cheek. “Sorry,” Iola mumbled. “Morning breath.” She got up and went to the bathroom.

Callie, still half asleep, mumbled sleepily and snuggled further against Drew.

“Good morning, Cal,” Drew said, and belatedly noticed that Callie was fondling her left boob.

Drew gently lifted her hand from her breast, but as soon as she let go, Callie put it back again.

Drew sighed a little exasperatedly. And then, Callie started massaging it. That really woke Drew up. Wearing gaffs were never really comfortable. And this discomfort sort of helped her keep things under control. But her proximity to Callie, her feminine scent, her sexy nightie and what she was doing to her breast was definitely making it difficult to maintain her control on things. And it was starting to become a little painful as she strained against the restrictive gaff.

These things were one of the more frustrating things about her life as Drew. She lifted Callie’s hand again, and gently shook her awake.

“Callie, Honey,” Drew said. “It’s half past ten. Time to wake up.”

Callie fluttered her eyes open.

“Good morning, my love,” Callie said in a sultry, half-asleep voice, and that sounded so sexy to Drew.

Callie leaned forward and gave Drew a kiss on the lips. It wasn’t meant to be sexy. Just a short peck, but Drew started blushing fiercely.

Callie giggled sleepily at that. And then the time dawned on her. “Oh, no! It’s after ten? Omigod, I’m late!”

She sat up and scrambled for her purse. “I gotta call Aunt Arlene! I promised to pass by for her and we’d go home together. And I’m late!” She went out into the hall to talk to her aunt.

Drew sat up. She sighed, a bit in relief and a bit in confusion. The way Callie was affecting her, she was definitely in trouble.

She went to her bathroom and took her toothbrush down. As she brushed her teeth, she thought of waking up beside the girls, but mostly about waking up beside Callie. And the fact that she had her hand on her left breast. Drew had to come to some kind of decision about her relationship with Callie eventually.

As she brushed her teeth and dreamily thought about Callie, Iola suddenly appearing by her elbow and reaching for the toothpaste tube surprised her. Apparently, Iola was on the toilet when she came in.

“Aaah!” Drew shrieked.

“Good morning, Drew,” Iola nonchalantly started to brush her teeth.

“Ummm,” Drew said as she started dribbling from the mouth.

“Hey, guys,” Callie said. She came directly into the bathroom and went to the toilet. She pulled down her flimsy panties and sat down. The sound of water hitting porcelain was loud in the bath. “I talked to Aunt Arlene,“ she said while she peed ”I apologized for being late but she’s fine to wait if I can come by before twelve. Do you think we can make it?”

“You really had to go, huh,” Iola said over the sound of her peeing.

“Swamp Pop and soda, you know,” Callie said.

Drew rinsed her mouth quickly. “I think I’ll make us some coffee and something to eat.” She rushed out of the bath.

“Hmmm,” Iola said.

“I think we made Drew uncomfortable,” Callie said. She wiped, flushed, stood up and pulled up her panties. “What’s up with that?”

“Drew’s not too comfortable sharing the bathroom, I guess. If you think about it, she has no brothers or sisters.” She washed her hands and started brushing as well.

“And the Nances are loaded, too. She never did have to share a bathroom if she didn’t want to. This house has six bathrooms! And this one’s exclusively hers. We only have two in ours.”

“Do you think we have to apologize?”

“I don’t know. Just ignore it, and brush your teeth.”

Over a quick brunch, Callie and Iola apologized to Drew. They used the other bathrooms to shower and get ready, and Drew had enough privacy to get ready herself.

Drew brought Iola home and dropped Callie at the hospital. She told them she had an errand to run: she had to meet up with Eva Jacobs to see the house she wanted to show her.

She couldn’t really tell Eva that they really weren’t in the market for a house but she didn’t have the heart for it, so she went.

She looked at her phone to confirm the address. Pretty soon, she was pulling over behind a very well maintained sixty-year-old canary yellow-on-white Plymouth.

“Hey, Ms Jacobs,” she called and gave her a hug.

“Hi, Drew!” the older lady said delightedly, and returned the hug. “So how are you doing?”

“Pretty good. Hey, when you said the house was near the shore, I didn’t know how close.”

“Yes. It’s also pretty close to the St. George Terminal where the Staten Island Ferry to Manhattan docks. It’s on the boardwalk, practically.” She gestured to a simple two-story place. (Drew tried not to be a smart-aleck and say, “yes, I know.”)

“Here it is,” she said. “Two bedrooms on the top floor, a kitchen, living area and bathroom on the ground floor. There’s a through-garage attached.”

It was at the corner of a whole row of newly renovated and reconstructed houses. It was in a part of the newly renewed section of St. George very near the edge of the water.

The area was hit very badly by the hurricane several years ago. These were the houses that were devastated and reconstructed. In this particular area, very few of the original owners stayed. Most of them sold their property to new families and professionals that mostly lived off-island, so the place was quiet most of the week since their new owners and occupants were mostly off-island working.

This particular house Ms Jacobs was showing her was a fairly small, rectangular two-story one on the corner of the row of houses, and was surrounded by a shoulder-high hedge. The hedge was newly planted, as well as trees and saplings at the back.

They stepped in the house.

“What’s a through-garage anyway?”

“It’s a narrow one-car garage that opens on both ends, and allows you to drive your car through it. This particular one’s long enough that you can park two cars in there back to back. Of course, needless to say, you cannot pass your car through anymore if you do.”

“Very unusual kind of garage, in any case.”

“It’s usually the kind of garage they put near brownstones in New York, to maximize the use of narrow spaces and give brownstone owners a garage to park their cars in. A few brownstones do have such garages. And given the small size of this particular house, it seemed appropriate. I guess the original owners were from mainland New York. And it’s the only one here with a super-narrow one-port garage, or what looks like a one-port garage. The rest are regular garages.

“As you know, if you’re in Staten Island, you have to be driving a car. The island is the only place in the five boroughs where the majority of people own a car. The garage was a late addition to the house by the owners to try and up its value and appeal.”

Drew looked through the front windows. “Nice view of the water.” She looked through the left and right windows and had a fairly large view of the street to the right, and the neighbor’s house to the left. She looked at the window on the far side, near the kitchen. “Hey, lots of trees. Nice.”

“The other end faces towards the back of a bunch of new houses also just rebuilt, and are full of new families. So the people on this block put lots of trees and bushes behind the back of their houses, to hide their houses from their new neighbors.”

“Nice. Can I see the upstairs?”

They climbed the short single-flight stairway and came out to a connecting hall that connected two rooms – one facing back and one facing towards the water. Each one was a fairly large room, the one facing the water had a terrace and large wide windows on three sides while the other room had regular ones.

Drew went to the front room and stepped out on the terrace. She liked the view a lot. She went back in and looked up, noting the trapdoor to what probably was an attic crawlspace. She didn’t bother to look in there and went to the other room and looked around. Pretty much the same as the other one except for the window sizes.

“It’s a pretty nice little house, Ms Jacobs. I like it. But...”

“You and your father decide, Drew. Here’s the card of the realtor. I’m not getting any kind of commission or anything. I just told them I owed a favor to this family looking for a new house and asked if I could show them this one.”

“They must have thought that was very weird – a stranger wanting to show a house for no commission.”

Ms Jacobs laughed. “True. But I guess they were desperate to unload the property. They did offer a commission, but I said no, and just apply it as a discount on the property’s list price. Although it’s freshly constructed, because property sales by the water around here hasn’t picked up after the hurricane, there have been no takers.”

Drew nodded. And then she started thinking. She brought out her phone and started snapping pictures. “Did you tell them who we were?” she asked Ms Jacobs.

“No,” she answered. “All I said was I knew someone, but wasn’t specific. Should I have?”

“Oh, no need.” Drew was starting to get some ideas.

“So... are you interested?”

“I’ll talk to my dad and see if he would be interested. In any case, whether or not we get it, you can consider the favor returned.” They walked back out to the sidewalk.

“Well, that’s good.” She smiled. “Just wanted to help.”

Drew gave her a hug. “You did. Thank you.”

“Hey, I have a couple of tickets to a Concert In the Park thing this week weekend. My newspaper got them for me, but I’m afraid it’s not my type of concert. Would you want them?”

“Central Park? If it’s Beethoven or anything like that...” Drew made a face.

“Yes, it’s Central Park, but it’s not Beethoven. It’s a promotional concert by one of these music companies.”

“What recording company?”

“Ah, no, not a recording company. I think they make musical instruments. Guitars, I think. They’re promoting a new pop band, I think. And my nieces seem to think they’re good.”

“Well... can you make it three tickets?”

Ms Jacobs laughed, and fanned out three tickets. “Well, what do you know? Apparently I have exactly three tickets.”

Drew laughed and gave her another hug. “Thank you Evvie,” Drew giggled.

“No worries. Tell Iola and Callie hi for me. And come by my house in Riverdale. I’ll give you guys a nice home-cooked Beef Stroganoff.”

“I will. I’ll give you a call.” She walked Ms Jacobs back to her car. “By the way, nice car.”

It was a lemon-yellow-and-white two-door 1956 Ford Fairlane Victoria Six with lots of chrome trim.

“Nice, huh? It’s was actually Marlee’s. I had it overhauled, converted and repainted by that friend of yours. You know? Otto?” She got in and turned the ignition on.

“Well, she looks real nice. Sounds nice, too.”

“Thanks. Well, see you, Honey. Don’t forget to call, okay?”

“It’s a date. Seeya, Evvie.”

As Drew watched Eva drive towards the St. George Terminal for her short ferry ride back to Manhattan, Drew started thinking.

She got in her car, grabbed her crappy burner phone from the glove compartment and clicked one of the only three phone numbers saved on that particular phone. There was Carson’s burner phone, Lieutenant Hardy’s and Nurse Sally’s. She clicked Lieutenant Hardy’s.

“Hello, Lieutenant? Hi... Oh, no – nothing’s wrong. But I wanna meet. Three o’clock at the usual place? ‘kay. Seeya then.” She hung up and noted the time. Fifteen seconds on the phone. That was good. As required by their friend, New York Police Lieutenant Frank Hardy, they can only use their burner phones for thirty seconds or less to prevent tracing. Of course, Drew knew that was bunk since the records would be saved in the telco’s servers, and a printout of her calls could be made if they knew her number. But far be it for Drew to contradict the lieutenant.

Anyway, her meeting with him at three o’clock meant she had about one hour and thirty minutes to get to Manhattan. She could have actually ridden the ferry along with Eva but since she didn’t, that meant she had to wait for thirty minutes for the next one. It was just as well because she had time to go back to their house and get one of the smaller-valued bearer bonds from inside their secret safe.

Fifteen minutes later, she was at the St. George ferry station, got a ticket and pulled up in line. While she waited, she bought a big sour-cream-and-onion soft pretzel, parked her car in line for the ferry and started making notes about her new scheme while she munched.

Soon, she was parking in her dad’s building. She had called her dad beforehand, but Carson was a little too busy so she decided not to go up to visit. She said that she’ll just park in her dad’s spot, and go and have a Big Mac in McDonald’s.

Those were, of course, code. The redundant statement of having a Big Mac in McDonald’s meant she had a meeting with Lieutenant Hardy in, where else, their “favorite” McDonald’s.

There was one other time that they had to use the codes that they had agreed with Lieutenant Hardy. That was when they found that little bug. The code for a bug was “pizza for dinner.” They had many other codes, and hopefully they won’t be used anytime soon.

Carson replied that he liked the vegetable and cheese that they used in their burgers. Drew winced – obviously, Carson tried hard to get “vegetable and cheese” in the conversation, the code phrase that meant he understood. His effort didn’t sound too natural, but at least he was able to get his meaning across.

Anyway, Drew parked in the first available visitor’s parking in the underground car park in Tate Center, put the burner phone in her purse, and walked the four blocks to the McDonald’s that Lieutenant Hardy had specified was their standard meeting place.

She fell in line and got a small fries, small chicken nuggets and small diet Coke.

She then went to the farthest corner. Normally, that area would have been empty. With two wall pillars, the tables of the restaurant would not have fit, given the small area and weirdly shaped space. But this time, there was a table there. Before someone else could snake Drew out of the table, she had gotten there and quickly sat down.

A special undersized, specially shaped table was specially built to fit the little secluded corner. Normally, that table would have been in storage but Lieutenant Hardy would arrange to have it put there if he had to secretly meet with someone. The pillars acted as natural duck blinds so no one in the restaurant would see the people sitting at the table if they leaned back a bit. And the restaurant owner did regular sweeps for bugs. He also made sure that the area remained a blind spot of the security cams.

Frank Hardy’s older brother Joe used to be in the force, too (he was a police sergeant), But because of an injury, he was transferred to desk duty. And knowing he wouldn’t be able to get back to regular duty, he decided to retire early and buy a McDonald’s franchise with some friends. And, as a favor to his kid brother, Joe Hardy would keep his place free of surveillance bugs and set up that little area in case of any private interviews that Frank needed to have.

So Drew sat in the little cubby-like booth and enjoyed her fries, nuggets and soda. At exactly three PM, Lieutenant Hardy showed up and sat down with a very large Coke. “Hey, kid,” Hardy said. “How’re you and your dad?”

“Doing okay, Lieutenant.” She told him the latest with them – like her dad’s getting to know the top executives of Tate (she left it to her dad to update him more thoroughly on that), Aunt Arlene getting a part-time job as their house help, their pending trip to Hawaii, that she sold Phil back his car, and she used that money to buy a reconditioned Peugeot RCZ Sports Coupe. (It was part of their agreement to keep him up-to-date with any Nance Family goings-on, so this wasn’t really chitchat, though it felt like it.)

“You know, Kid,” Frank said, “when you go through the airport on your trip, you’ll probably trigger an anomaly in the airport body scanners.”

“Anomaly? What ‘anomaly?’ Well, this’ll be my first time at the airport, so I don’t know...”

“It’s no big deal. It’s just that your gender on your ID might not match what their scanners detect, or your implants might show up, but all that will mean is that they might pat you down.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep. But I will give you a letter, which will detail your implants, and it’ll identify you as transgender. Keep this in your bag and only bring it out when they have an issue.”

“But won’t that like give me away to my friends?”

“Just find a way so that they go ahead of you, and they won’t hear any kind of issues. I’ll try and be nearby so that I can smooth things out if need be.”

“How about in Hawaii?”

“I won’t be around to help, but I think the letter will suffice.”

“This makes me worry, Frank...”

“Me, too, kid. I don’t think there will be any trouble, but worse comes to worse and an ‘anomaly’ is triggered, the TSA folks will definitely assume you’re transgender. So it’s best that your friends not be around for that.”

“But... if that happens, won’t that be recorded somewhere?”

“I’ll expunge any record of it, don’t worry.”

“Whew. But... should I still push on with this trip?”

“It’s your call, but I think it’ll be okay. You can’t keep on hiding.

“So... A Peugeot, huh? Pretty flash for a girl,” Frank grinned as he deftly changed the topic. “At least no new ‘cases.’ You know how I feel about your ‘cases,’ Kid, right?”

“Yes, yes. I will be careful and all that...”

“I’d rather you don’t do them anymore, but ‘nuff said: it’s your decision. Anyway, we need to finish this quick. Prying eyes and so forth. So, what’s up? Why the meeting?”

“Okay. Well, first, everything’s fine, like I said, and lots happening. But I had thought of something, and I wanted to pass it by you.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“I came across a house for sale near our current place.” She slid her phone towards Joe, and Joe paged through the pictures.

“Nice little house,” he said. “So?”

“We’re worried about people keeping our place under surveillance, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, assume that we had another place that no one knew about. Where we can keep all of our, ummm, ‘secret’ stuff. Some place near enough to our current place so we can get to it easily, but far enough away that no one can connect it to us.”

“Well, that would be convenient. Of course, we’d need to make sure that you’d be unobserved going there or leaving.”

“Right. So lemme tell you about the new place.”

She told him that the place was practically rebuilt from scratch with lots of new shrubbery lining the roads, and many trees with foliage enough to obscure passing cars. Also, the houses nearby were mostly rebuilt houses owned by a lot of young professionals that worked in the mainland. This meant that the neighborhood was mostly deserted during the workweek.

She then described the house and Frank said it looked like a good place to set up as a safe house – very clean and new, a simple layout so no places to hide anything, and the surrounding areas were easily surveyed from the inside of the house.

Frank agreed, and said it could be made safe like a CIA safe house.

“Well, okay,” Drew said, “but I’d like it not to be under surveillance, even by your guys.”

“Are you kidding, Kid? Of course, I won’t have it under surveillance. The whole point of all this skulking around is to not leave any kind of connections between them, you and me. So, of course I won’t have it under surveillance. As far as I’m concerned, this is just a random house in Staten Island.”

“Okay. Point taken.”

So,” he chuckled. “Here’s what we need to do...”

Frank Hardy discussed the steps they needed to take to convert the place into a safe house.

Firstly, they needed to purchase the place anonymously. Frank had enough anonymous names in the Witness Protection Program that they can use as the anonymous “buyers.” Drew turned over the bearer bond that was worth enough to buy the place plus a lot extra left over.

Secondly, Drew needed to talk to Eva Jacobs and tell her that someone beat them to the house. That way, that particular connection to the house was severed, and Eva Jacobs won’t ask any awkward questions, or actually visit the place.

Third, Frank would use the contractors that he had on tap to check out the place, do some renovations, and outfit it as well – like with furniture, appliances and other essential things.

Drew wrote down a short list of stuff that she thought she’d need – mostly normal stuff, but there were a lot of unusual stuff: several power tools, rolls of that Faraday Cage material she used liberally at their house, lots of thumb tacks, wallpaper, extra carpeting material, an air gapped computer, several portable radio signal detectors and nonlinear junction detectors, several high-quality motion-triggered surveillance cameras, and several timer switches. She wrote with her right hand in order to disguise her handwriting (she had shifted to using the left to write when she began her life as Drew).

Drew also asked for some specific “upgrades” to the house – things like re-finishing the back garage door with veneer to make it look like part of the wall instead of a garage door, change the garage door controls, change the garage door itself and the outside door to anti-intrusion doors, and to put some more trees to line the back and the surrounding curb.

There were some more but those were the most visible changes.

She also asked to line the entire length of the road out back with tall, leafy ornamental trees.

Obviously, this was to obscure any cars passing through the back street from the houses.

Drew’s last requests regarding the fix-up were to cover the entire floor with decorative tile – a specific kind – a certain ceramic Mexican tile that came in one-foot by one-foot squares. She also asked if he could have safety bars put in the windows but make them look decorative, change the window glass to frosted bulletproof glass, and also have power breakers and a water cutoff installed inside. Hardy agreed with these changes as they would make the house safer. He didn’t understand the need for the tile, though. Maybe Drew just liked the tiles, he assumed.

Frank said he’d use the leftover cash from the bearer bond to cover the expense for all this. Hopefully, it would be enough. Otherwise, he couldn’t do it. So he had Drew prioritize the changes in case he couldn’t do all of it and have to drop some of them.

Drew asked if it was okay to get a new car. She had been thinking of getting one so that she could use to get around without her being recognized as Drew. Hardy looked at her very skeptically. Drew tried to rationalize it, and said that driving into the house via a car gave her a reasonable method of ignoring others while she went up to the house. Otherwise, she had to find creative ways to avoid people if she went on foot without looking like she was avoiding them.

Hardy chuckled and said that he could tell that she really just wanted a new car, and was looking at him to justify it. But he agreed and said he’d need the specs of the car so that he could “anonymize” it with the proper license plates, VIN number, stickers, registration documents with the DMV, erase the records of the original ones, et cetera. Drew said that wasn’t a problem – she had all the details including the make, model and color of the car she had in mind. She also asked to have the registration made out to someone named Rose. Frank said that was easily done, and would include a driver’s license in the package, so Drew gave him details of that fictitious driver. Essentially, it was her with straight, long brunette hair, twenty-one years old, of some independent means, maybe a book writer that was just starting out.

They wrapped things up, with Frank promising to find a way to dead-drop the key for the new house, all the paperwork and the letter from the government. After that, without any further word, Frank left.

Drew took her time to finish her fries so that it wouldn’t look like they were together, and after ten minutes, she left McDonald’s as casually as Frank.

As she walked down the street, she called up Otto on her regular phone.

“Hi, Otto, it’s Drew. Listen, After you’re through with the RCZ, can you handle another project? A small one – just a paint job. What? Yeah, you’re right. Can do? Okay, I’ll email you the details later. Thanks!” She hung up and walked back up to downtown Manhattan to do some window-shopping.

After an hour of walking around and looking at stuff, she realized something. Though she never flaunted it, especially to her best friends, she realized that she was so much richer than them. And her casual suggestion of shopping might not have been a good idea. She thought of ways to fix it. While she was thinking and scheming, her burner phone pinged. She checked it out and it was Nurse Sally sending her a text.

“I’m not feeling well,” Nurse Sally texted, which was a code phrase again, that meant they wanted her to come visit her at the clinic. Drew thought there might be something wrong, dropped the blouse she was looking at and texted her back right away.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Drew texted back. “I’ll bring a vegetable and cheese pizza later at around five.”

She started to worry what it could be while she rode a taxi to Queens. She asked to be dropped off a block away from Doctor Joe’s - what some people called the “country’s most expensive small clinic.”

Few people called it that, however, since it was a secret surgical clinic that very few knew about, and was only used by certain famous celebrities and some law enforcement agencies when they needed some confidential plastic surgery done. “Doctor Joe” and his assistant, “Nurse Sally,” did the work, no questions asked, and their patients were released with none of them the wiser.

Doctor Joe and Nurse Sally were actually the good guys, and were also as good a plastic surgeon and surgical nurse that lost their licenses to practice could be, that is. And they only accepted commissions if they thought the surgery wasn’t for any... sinister purposes.

The two were, in fact, responsible for the surgical procedures that changed Bill and Andy Fayne to Carson and Drew Nance, and Nurse Sally kept in touch with them to see how their procedures held up.

The operations they had weren’t big deal procedures – Carson only had a facelift and nose job while Andy had a facelift, an adam’s apple shave, a full FFS procedure including a nose job, a whole-body electrolysis, lipo and body sculpting, and a breast implant (The FFS wasn’t too drastic because Andy looked a lot like his cousin Jane to begin with).

Though they weren’t much different from their other clients, Nurse Sally was quite fascinated with Drew’s change from boy to girl, and was very excited about changing her completely into a girl. They haven’t done an SRS yet, and she was very excited at the idea. To her it was almost like a fetish thing.

It wasn’t hard to believe that of Nurse Sally, given her piercings, over-inflated chest and over-botoxed lips. She could have been a star on American Ink or something, and would look comfortable on the arm of some biker.

Carson and Drew had repeatedly said no to her suggestions of an SRS, but she pursued it. Drew had to admit that Sally was a very, very competent medical practitioner, as was Dr. Joe. Plus, she was very helpful in maintaining Drew’s cover. For example, she was the one who taught Drew female deportment, taught her how to use lotions and soaking in baths to keep her skin femininely soft, got her vitamins and other supplements for better hair and complexion, coached her on improving her female voice, and did the electrolysis and laser procedures to remove Drew’s body hair.

But Nurse Sally’s single-minded obsession to give Drew an SRS was troubling. Drew hoped that the text she got from her wasn’t about yet another campaign to convince her to proceed with the surgery.

Drew rang the bell of the normal-looking house in Queens, and after a moment, she was buzzed in.

“Hello,” Drew called. “Doctor Joe? Sally? It’s Drew.”

“Come on up, Drew,” Nurse Sally called. “We’re upstairs.”

Drew climbed up to the second floor, and, after opening the door at the top of the stairs, stepped into the most advanced surgical facility in the country not affiliated with any hospital, government agency or educational institution. But, aside from the medical equipment lying around, it looked very like Monica’s and Rachel’s apartment from the nineties TV show, “Friends.”

The two main bedrooms were outfitted as modern surgical theaters, and a third one was like a small dormitory with two three-person bunk beds against two of the walls, a bank of dressers on the other, and a large walk-in closet on the wall across. The entire apartment also had no windows. (Dr. Joe and Nurse Sally had their own private rooms on the third floor.)

Drew was familiar with the place, having spent a month there recovering from Dr. Joe’s procedures, which turned him from an androgynous boy to Drew, the hot and glamorous heartbreaker of the Staten Island teenage set.

“Hey, Drew,” Nurse Sally came over and gave her a hug.

“Hey there, Sexy. So, where’s Dr. Joe?”

She gestured to the couch. “He’s doing one of his thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles.”

“What is it this time?” Drew giggled.

“This one’s a picture of a ‘Cacatua Ophthalmica,’” Dr. Joe explained.

“Whatinheck’s that?”

“It’s the scientific name fro the Blue-eyed Cockatoo.”

“Ahhh!” Drew and Sally both giggled.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Joe,” Drew said finally.

“My dear!” he smiled, stood up, and gave Drew a big hug.

He pulled back and started fondling Drew’s breasts. She was so shocked she couldn’t move.

“They’re holding up pretty good,” he said. He then started turning Drew’s face from side to side. “Also the facial surgeries – they’re holding up pretty good. I do great work.”

He then leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“So, my dear,” he said, “what are you doing here?”

“Sally gave me a call. Guess she wanted to talk to me about something.”

“Yeah, Dr. Joe,” Nurse Sally said. “So can you excuse us?”

“Of course,” he said, and went back to his puzzle.

“Let’s go to the bedroom,” Nurse Sally said and pulled Drew to the dormitory room.

Drew went passively and sat on one of the lower level bunkbeds.

“Okay. Now, what’s this about, Sally? Something wrong?”

“Oh, no! Nothing’s wrong. It’s just that Lieutenant Hardy gave us a call. He said you’re planning a vacation in Hawaii?”

“Well, yes. Why?”

“It’s just that, you know – Hawaii?”

“What about Hawaii?”

Hawaii? Sand and surf? Swimming? Et cetera, et cetera.”

That sounded familiar to Drew. “Is that bad in some way?”

“Oh, no! That’s all fun. Of course. It’s just that...”

“Spit it out already, Sally.”

“It’s just that sea water and strong sunlight would have some adverse effects on the skin and all, and...”

“Oh, no! Scars?”

“Oh, not at all! It’s a common fallacy that sunburn or suntans can affect plastic surgery scars and sutures. At least properly-done plastic surgery. It’s not that. It’s just that a vacation at a place like Hawaii would dry out the skin a lot, sweat out a lot of moisture, enzymes and oils.”

“So I’ll use a lot of suntan lotion.”

“Well, I guess that might help. But it’s just that, with all the work we’ve done, we might lose all of it., especially after all the trouble that you go through to look like a genuine girl.”

“Oh, no, no no! If this is another pitch for an SRS, forget it! And no hormone therapy! I am very happy with my current plumbing, okay? And no one, not you, not Dr. Joe, will touch it, cut it up or shrivel it up. ‘Kay?”

Nurse Sally sighed. “Okay. But that’s not what I’m suggesting. Nothing radical, at all. Here you go.”

She passed her a white plastic pill bottle just like the bottles her multivitamin pills came in, except this one was about a fifth the size, and, instead of a regular label, it had a picture of a sexy girl dancing. She looked like a disco girl from the eighties that was dancing to some boy-band tune, covered in dark eyeshadow glitter, a tight, spangly spandex mini-dress, big shoulderpads in her bolero-style jacket, and her hair puffed out with probably a ton of hairspray.

Drew had to chuckle. “What’s this?” Drew asked. “Some kind of eighties-era Ecstasy?”

Nurse Sally laughed. “Forget the label. These come from Sweden, and Swedish advertising is definitely unique.” Drew read the label: “Sats Fjorton.

“Hey, that sounds like my current one. How do you pronounce this?”

“It’s pronounced sats few-tong. Or something like that. It's made by the same company.”

“So, is this like my current pills?”

“Well, sort of. Your current ones, your Sats Sju pills, they’re daily vitamins and supplements. These new ones are just like that, except they’re monthly ones. They’re like time-release pills. Well, not really. But if you take one of them, you’re good for a month.”

"How's that even possible?"

Sally shrugged. "Beats me."

“Anyway, that sounds neat. Why couldn’t I get these instead of my current ones?”

“Well, these are at least twenty times more expensive.”

“We can afford it.”

“Also, orders for these are hard to fill. They don’t make a lot of these, actually. That’s mainly the reason they’re expensive. But I managed to get a couple of bottles. Direct from Sweden.”

“You know, I don’t get why I can’t use regular multivitamins and have to stick with these sats stuff.”

Nurse Sally sighed. “Regular vitamins are crap. And they won’t give you shinier hair or softer skin or stronger nails, or...”

“Sally, I have to ask – are they just vitamins? Really? Please tell me. I don’t want my...”

“Drew! I told you before - you’re not in any danger, and it doesn’t affect you in any way except give you softer skin and all that. And your thing is safe; don’t worry. They’re just harmless supplements!”

“My thing?”

“You know. That's what you were asking about, right?” She gestured towards Drew’s crotch. “Your thing?”

Drew blushed, and Nurse Sally laughed at her embarrassment.

“They’re just dietary supplements, Drew. FDA-approved, safe and available for over-the-counter sale.”

“But they’re not available...”

“True - not locally available, but available in Sweden, but that’s just because the production is very low so very little gets here, and they aren’t advertised very well. Just look at that picture! Even in Sweden, it's only available in very select health stores.”

“Okay, okay. But why did you bring this up? Why the, ummm, Sats Few-tone?"

Nurse Sally giggled. “It’s pronounced ‘Sats Fyootong.’ And your old ones are pronounced ‘Sats Hooo.’”

“Okay. So what’s with this ‘Sats Fyootong? Why offer it to me now?”

“Well, the daily pills I can get locally, but these ones - these monthly ones - I had to have specially ordered. Sorry! Twenty-eight days, I mean, not monthly. And if you’re gonna be busy with swimming and partying and all of that, with these pills, you don’t have to spend hours in the bathtub soaking, or lathering yourself with moisturizer twice a day. With these,” she gestured at the bottle in Drew’s hand, “you take one just before you leave for Hawaii, and you’re good for twenty-eight days. No need for the bathtub or the moisturizers, and your friends won’t become suspicious. At least about your bathtub and moisturizer mania.”

Drew nodded. “Twenty-eight isn’t really a round number,” she said suspiciously.

“Well, it’s advertised as a monthly supplement. But the people who made it knew the length of time of peak affectivity for the pill is twenty-eight days. You know how very exacting the Swiss are.”

Drew opened the bottle, took out the cotton and picked out one of them. “Big-ass pill,” Drew said.

“It’s a capsule.”

She looked into the bottle. “There’s, let’s see – there are only thirteen pills. Why thirteen pills? I mean, capsules.”

“It’s a one-year supply.”

If it’s a one-year supply, shouldn’t it be twelve pills? I mean, capsules?”

“Well, it’s twenty-eight days per capsule.”

“Oh, I forgot - sorry!”

“Anyway, that’s why I texted you – to give you the new pills.”

“Capsules, Sally.”

Nurse Sally playfully socked Drew on the shoulder. “Smarty-pants.”

“Listen – while I’m here, I wanted to ask something.”

“Yes?”

“In order to, you know, to not be found out, I have to wear, ummm, you know –“

“Yes, gaffs. I recommended them, remember?”

“It’s just that, you know, I end up wearing them almost everyday now.”

“What’s the question?”

Well, I just wanted to know, if that’s, ummm, if that’s bad for me. Or something.”

Nurse Sally chuckled at Drew’s blushing.

“Well,” she said, “prolonged use doesn’t really damage anything, but it could distend the scrotum.”

“Is that bad?”

“Not necessarily, but your balls may end up hanging lower than normal. And if you push your testicles into your abdominal cavity regularly, that could cause sterility if you do that often enough.”

“I don’t do that.”

“Well, you should be fine then. Also, to be safe, it’s best if you only wear gaffs six or seven days out of every ten. Try not to wear one as often as you can. As for your vacation, wearing one everyday during your vacation won't do anything permanant.”

“Okay. Thanks for the advice.”

“Of course, you know, if you had the operation, you’d not have that kind of problem anymore.” She looked at Drew and comically waggled her eyebrows up and down.

“Sally! I said no! Enough about SRS already!”

“Dammit...” Nurse Sally mumbled.

- - - to be continued - - -

 

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