Nurse Joe
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Just because I am big doesn’t mean I am stupid. In fact, I am pretty smart. I was just a big guy from an early age; big and too strong for all the other kids. That got me into trouble, and trouble kept me away from classes.

I could still play football though. Offensive lineman was my position. I was protecting my quarterback or blocking a runner. It is about protection but if people get in my way, I push them aside or I ran over them. Still, football alone does not get you the diploma you need for a decent job. So, I fell back on what I knew. I got a job as a bouncer. My job was to keep the bad people out. I was looking after everybody inside.

I liked to think that I was smart enough to talk people out of making trouble. As I say, I am not dumb. I know people; I like people.

But I have a problem with my strength. I was not being overly aggressive. He had been told to leave the Club for abusing women. I don’t like that – people abusing others. He was just refusing to be held as I led him out. It was just supposed to be a bloody nose – a firm one maybe, but that’s all. But it killed him. The blow cracked his skull against the wall.

As if having no qualifications was not problem enough, try adding a criminal record. There was not much jail time. It was manslaughter and I had people speak up for me, including some I had thrown out of the bar. But you carry a stigma, and a probation officer on your back.

Then I saw a job advertised. It seemed like a long shot. It was for a trainee nurse. The thing that caught my eye was the words: “Male applicants are welcome, in particular those capable of heavy lifting”. My probation officer laughed, but I asked him why? I pointed out that I would like a job helping people.

I had no diploma, but they sat me down and talked to me. I spoke well, I think. I told them that I liked to help people, and they seemed to like that. I was able to show them that my lack of a diploma was not a reflection of my abilities. I am sure that is why they invited me back and agreed to give me a trial.

I had thought that I might be lifting cripples or something, but it turned out that my job would be closer to the work I did for the bar. It was just about keeping people in rather than keeping people out.

It was a private institution called Halstead House. There were qualified doctors and nurses, and as a trainee I would be more than an orderly who were just there for crowd control. I could sit papers and qualify as a real nurse. As it was, I was expected to attend to injections as soon as I had completed a training course.

It was like a dream come true. At last I would be able to apply myself and use the intellect that had been muscled to one side in my desire to be accepted, and I would be healing people. You have to understand the way I felt about this job even when I learned what was going on at Halstead House.

When I did find out, some may say that I should have just walked away. I would have, if I felt that the institution I worked for was doing any real harm, but I came to know that it was healing, just of a sort not so well understood.

The first thing I noticed was that all of the patients (although at Halstead House we call them “guests”) were girls. I mean not women (with one or two exceptions) but young girls, some barely teenagers, and all of them super-hot! If the job was my dream, this seemed like the best dream ever.

On my first few days the girls seemed fearful of me. There is nothing strange about that. To be honest, I am used to it, being the size I am. I just smiled and said something nice to show that I am not the person I look like I might be. I care. I really do.

Then I witnessed some resistance – the first I had seen. I mean a girl was struggling against an injection, and I was called over to hold her. There were tears in her eyes and she was just saying: “No, no. Please no” in a husky voice. You cannot not be affected by a cry like that.

“We are trying to correct aberrant behavior,” Doctor Price explained when I talked to him afterwards. I had to look up “aberrant” later, but it was clear to me that Halstead House must be some kind of mental institution, although everyone appeared perfectly sane, and nobody was being violent. I was not worried. It seemed that my size would be an advantage in psychiatric nursing. It was still healing.

“We have a 100% success rate,” the doctor told me. “Everyone of these lovely ladies will be discharged in time, and most in less than two years. They will go on to have an important place in society, hopefully as wives, and maybe as mothers.”

That sounded like something I wanted to be a part of. How many nurses can claim a 100% cure rate? Most lose a few. I told the doctor that I was 100% on board. The way I figured it was that these guys were the professionals – I was just the help. They call the shots and I am just the gun for hire, banging those shots off. It is not my call.

Still, the first castration was hard for me to witness. No guy wants to see that. It hurts just to think about it – right? What made it worse that I was holding her down because the doctor said she needed to be conscious and witness the operation, with just what they call “epidural anesthesia” where there is no feeling below the waist and the legs are paralyzed.

But like they pointed out: Girls are not supposed to have balls. They have got to go. And it seemed like all the girls at Halstead House had that problem.

I remember the doc saying, that first time: “Now Suzanne, when you see those testicles go in the kidney bowl you will understand that your future can never be male.” She was wriggling her arms and shoulders and crying.

I whispered: “Close your eyes, Suzanne” or something like that. I am not sure whether they were closed or not. Mine were.

They all had girls’ names given to them when they arrived. I never saw the admission procedure but there was a block with individual secure rooms where all of them stayed for the first week. After that they were released into the main house and most shared pretty little two-bed bedrooms.

I also had the job of administering hormones, hormone blockers and for some, sedatives. That job was not so bad. If there was reluctance, I would just explain that I needed to do my job, and if there was resistance I just did my job in spite of that. I was stronger than any three of these girls.

But, after a while anyway, for every girl who was unwilling there were plenty who could not wait to get their shots and see the effects. At least that is how they ended up.

And that was the best part about my job: Watching my guests become women. When some of them arrive, they are trouble-makers, angry with life. You wonder if they will ever be able to find meaning the way I have been able to do. What kind of future do they have? But give them the treatments, something pretty to wear, watch them brush their growing hair and starting to feel good about themselves, and Hey Presto – happiness. It is like a weed turning into a flower – something delicate and perfumed.

Even a guy like me can appreciate beauty, and it seems all the more wonderful when it comes out of dirt. That is a big reward for me, personally.

So, I love my job. I am doing good, ridding the world of scum, making pretty things and living and working surrounded by beauty. Great, Huh? I would not want to throw that away.

I know that it is wrong to become involved with any of the guests, but I guess that something feelings are stronger than principles. My weakness was a girl called Lindsay.

When she arrived, Lindsay had really long hair, like it was almost down to her waist. I figured that if some of the guests really were just ordinary girls, she had to be one. Also, most of the other girls were all wearing makeup, but Lindsay hardly wore any, except maybe a little lipstick and mascara, but she still looked prettier than the others. She had breasts, wonderful breasts. She had to be one of the real ones turning up to brush up her beauty skills and maybe provide an example for all those rose buds about to bloom.

I knew she liked me. I knew that she could see that I liked her – I mean I liked her hard out.

Anyway, there was some disturbance in the bra fitting and I went in to sort it out – just some new entrant crying about having titties, while the rest of the girls were comparing sizes while Mrs. Plumtree was out of the room. Lindsay suggested that I be the judge of the best breasts.

“We are looking for size and shape, Joe,” she said. I barely looked at the others. I had to pick her.

I was so hot for her it was driving me crazy. It was like she knew she had me on a leash just by looking at me; big Joe, subdued by invisible chains.

“Please tell me that you are not like the rest of them and that you are really a girl.”

Lindsay smiled at me and said: “I’m not a girl yet but I soon will be. I used to be Larry. Don’t you remember helping Dr. Price perform my castration last week.

Larry! I try not to look at their faces as I said, but I remembered Larry was the guy with a big dick, almost as big as mine. Not quite. Now a big dick and no balls. It seemed unbelievable. I sort of spluttered: “So, you soon will be … what? … what will they do?”

“Turn my dick inside out and make me a deep moist vagina,” said Lindsay, licking her lips.

Big enough for me, I figured. I have to make her my girl.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2021