I haven't written in years, but here is an attempt to get this down. It's been orbiting my brainspace for months so I decided to share it. Oddly, if this happened to actually be within reach of our current technology, I would not be surprised.

It was a stupid wreck. Unavoidable (for me, not him), but still, very, very stupid!

Sadly, a honking mother, late to get her spoiled, entitled child to school, irritated a redneck in an old pickup truck (who was goofy and grumpy enough, without being mildly smashed, which he was) until he decided to use the overly large and powerful gas guzzling V10 he has shoe-horned from a wrecked race car to tire-smoke the woman into submission. Sadly, because in his mildly smashed state, his old work boot with the duct-tape augmented sole, slipped off the brake pedal, mid-tire rending spin, and he shot forward through the red light into the side of my fourth hand minivan.

Of course, he couldn’t have rear-ended me, so that the seat belt and high backed seat could catch me. No. And he couldn’t have hit me head-on, where the mass of the engine and transaxle could have teamed with the air-bag and safety zones to give me a fighting chance. No. Nor could he have slammed into me on the passenger side, away from where I was sitting. Sure, I would have been slapped around like a rag doll, but I probably would have escaped with no permanent injuries.

No. Not with this level of stupidity. He actually came from my left, across the two lanes going the other way, across the left turn lane, across the left lane going my way, in between two heavy dump trucks loaded to go service a construction area, straight into the drivers door of my van.

The EMTs evacuated me through the passenger’s side sliding door. Oddly, it worked better after the impact than before. Go figure. I was pretty much paste held together, loosely, with my (broken) skeleton.

I had been making a secret Christmas gift run to a city near the town where I lived. A very bad chain-reaction wreck on the interstate had flooded all the near-by hospitals so the local military base volunteered to take me on an emergency basis. Honestly, from the description the EMTs had given, they did not expect me to make it to infirmary there. However, being big, fat, and ugly, I was also strong and not much for quitting or giving up. I was still hanging on, somehow, when the ambulance roared into the Emergency entrance of the infirmary.

What a lot of people did not know, this base infirmary was also a research center, dedicated to discovering and improving trauma treatment methods, treatments, and pharmaceuticals for treating injured military members.

Using the resources of the Federal government and the U.S. military, my wife was choppered in and was outside my treatment room less than a half hour after I was rolled in, myself. The medic that came out of the room told her, simply, “I don’t expect your husband to live much longer. We only have one option left that actually holds any amount of hope. And when I say hope, I mean instead of a 100% chance of death, we will have something like a 90% chance of death. It’s completely experimental and has not been tested on humans, yet.”

My wife promptly fainted. A nurse revived her with some smelling salts to see the medic checking his watch. Turning to her, he said, “We might have five or ten minutes left, but I doubt it. If you want him to have even a small chance, give me the okay to try the new treatment on him.”

She took a deep breath, focused, then nodded yes and said, “Yes, do it.”

The medic squinted into her eyes. “Let me say, again. This will be the first time we try this compound on humans. That being said, I still believe this is the way to go.”

She turned white but nodded again. “This is what he would do. He would say a little chance is better than no chance. Never quit. Never give up. Never stop trying.”

For the first time since the pickup slammed into my minivan, the medic smiled. He rushed back into the treatment room and shouted, “It’s a GO, people, it’s a go! Make this happen and if you believe in a higher power, now is the time to pray.”

The team lowered my mangled body into a box that looked like a cross between a coffin a homemade submarine, and a full-body acupuncture system straight out of Star Trek.

After connecting me with myriad sensors, tubes, IVs, and catheters, the lid was closed and the big green (I bet you were expecting RED!!) button was unlocked and pushed.

Various solutions were pumped into my body. Sensors were reading so many of my various statuses (stati?) than an entire team was posted just to follow my progress. Tiny needles fired tiny impulses of energy into tiny nexuses (nexi???). The box slowly filled with a breathable fluid that enhanced healing and discouraged scars.

The spin-up to full engagement of all the systems in the box/submarine/Star Trek rig took about two hours. The fact that I was still alive, in itself, was amazing. The medic went out to speak to my wife, who was in full panic mode and completely occupying two nurses trying to extract her from her panic attack. His patented scowling squint quickly gained her attention.

Panic attack immediately forgotten she sat up to the edge of her chair, clasping her hands over her (impressive) cleavage. “Is he going to be ok?!?”

The medic made the same gesture as a traffic cop slowing a border-line speeder. “Whoa, there, ma’am. We have him in a treatment capsule. His sensor data shows that he is alive. Just to be candidly honest with you, we did not expect him to make it to the hospital, much less last for the three or four hours that he has. The treatment capsule is in full engagement. That alone took two hours. We take that as an excellent sign. Your husband’s mantra about not giving up has stood him in good stead. That being said, we really have only the outlines of what will happen. The machine is designed to activate every last bit of recovery and healing ability in the body. We are hoping that your husband’s outstanding strength and will to live will be a benefit. This machine, or some like it, have helped mice, cats, dogs, horses, and various apes and monkeys recover from trauma every bit as bad as what your husband experienced. The rub is that even though the apes and monkeys are very similar to us, they aren’t 100% like us. We honestly don’t know the outcome of this procedure.”

“On the positive side,” he continued, “we have updated his chances from 90% likely to die to 50/50. One of our more optimistic nurses made a bet with one our more cynical medics that if he dies, she will perform oral… ummm… entertainment… on the medic. She really believes he will live. Personally, I would actually lean his way, myself. But ask me again if he is still alive in two more hours. Now, I am going to try to get a two hour nap because this process is scheduled to go about 60 hours. An occasional nap now and then is the best I am going to get until then.”

He was gone before she could even sputter.

<<<<<>>>>>

One of the nurses from the research team monitoring the sensors made a face. “Some of these hormone levels look weird. Mainly the female and pregnancy hormones.” She pushed some other people back from their monitors, recording levels from various areas. After consulting some digital notes from various sources, she called the chief researcher over and said, “Look, these hormone levels, and these other readings look like a mishmash of a teenage girl exploding into puberty and a pregnant woman. We never got any of this in any of the animal trials.”

The researcher looked the data over several times, scratching his head. Then his eyes rounded, giving him a horrified look. “By all that’s holy, please Lord, don’t let it be true!” He dropped the clipboard of notes and data, forgotten, and clasped his hands in supplication.

The nurse, with a very annoyed look on her face, picked up the clipboard, and asked, “Ok doc, what gives? You look like you just saw the tax man, your divorce attorney, and your commute to work all in one look.”

“Well,” he began, “we did have a lot of these readings in a few of the trials. In every case, we had definite age regression, biologically speaking; meaning that the mind and memories seemed to be unaffected, but the bodies, in every case, went from mature, even older adult to mid- to late-stage adolescence. Also, in every case, the subject was female.”

He paused and collapsed heavily into the nearest recliner, one of many kept for researchers to grab cat naps. He gazed at her with a haunted look. “We aren’t sure how this system works, but we theorize that, somehow, it rejuvenates the DNA and refreshes the telomeres. We had worried that damaged chromosomes could cause problems but the animal trials never showed any evidence of this happening. I am wondering if, maybe, a damaged Y chromosome could cause the X to replace it, or something similar, resulting in an XX individual rather an a typical XY male. If the body is rejuvenated as the DNA and telomeres are, then this new female chromosome pair could, literally, rebuild the individual as a female rather than a male.”

His hand flew up, slapping his forehead, then slid slowly into an extended, tortured facepalm. “We could have ruined his life by saving it.”

Growling, the nurse stomped her foot, reaching for every last bit of willpower to keep from slapping his misogynistic face from his skull. “For your information, doc, being a woman does not have to ruin your life. Some of us even enjoy it.” She stomped away, frustrated that she worked for this man.

To his credit, he lept to his feet. “Wait, wait, it’s not he being a woman part, that I mean, exactly. This guy is a gray headed fat white guy with a wife. He is a never say die type. Look up his records. I’ll buy your breakfast tomorrow if he hasn’t been married to her his entire adult life. Of course, you could always offer to buy mine if I’m right….”

She grinned, quickly loosing her anger as she began to get a hint of where he was going with his thoughts. Checking into my background, she sighed. “I’m not buying your breakfast, but maybe, just maybe, I’ll bring you a cup of coffee, later. He as been married to her for 30 years. They have two kids. First marriage for either of them.”

“See,” he cut in, “established husband, father, provider, patriarch. Now he is a teen aged girl. And he still has all of his mind and memories, complete with preferences and prejudices. What he does not have, though, is any experience as a female. Not to mention, his wife is completely devastated by his injuries. How is she going to take the possibility, no, likelihood, that her husband is going to come out of that box as a teen age girl? Healthy? Hell yes! Recovered? 100%! Her husband? Well, now we have a problem. I mean, none of this is his fault. It’s not even our fault. But it just might be our problem.