Ye of Little Faith

Barbie Lee
copyright 8/29/21
Permission given may be copied and shared but not for monetary gains.
Ye of Little Faith

David, all you have to do is cut it off.” Dr. David Woods was my personal physician and had been for the past forty three years.

“You’re insane. And it’s against the law to mutilate dead people.” He shook his head as a hint of a smile touched his face.

David thought I was joking, I wasn’t. “Who has to know. Besides I’ll be dead so it’s no big deal. I don’t think I will feel it. After all dead people don’t feel pain. Which will be a double blessing as I escape from this body I’ve mistreated all my life.”

“Mistreated? You don’t drink, don’t smoke, never did and you never used drugs. I wish ninety percent of my patients mistreated their bodies like you have yours.”

“It was physical mistreatment David. I manhandled farm equipment by myself it should have took two to four men to move and hook up. Loaded hay bales, hundred pound seed and feed sacks and ten gallon cans of milk. I installed heaters and air conditioners by myself that weighed eight to sixteen hundred pounds. I lifted forty gallon water heaters still full of water when they were so corroded they wouldn’t drain. I carried twenty one foot joins of four inch steel pipe because the crew couldn’t get the fork lift started.

Yes, I mistreated this body. You know as well as I the small size and bone structure wasn’t intended to do any of those things except in an emergency. Damn it David, I was stupid trying to prove I was a man when I own a girl size body. I’ve paid the price these last eighteen years. God should have recycled me when I retired. Every year it has got worse as I growl, moan, and groan as I get out of bed every morning.”

“And? I do the same thing and I’m certainly not ready to toss in the towel yet. Hell Don, eighty percent of my patients complain before they get out of bed.”

“You’re awful quick with percentages. What about the twenty percent who don’t complain?”

A smile spread across David’s face. “Their wives push them out before they have the chance to complain.”

“Back to my request David. Can I count on you?”

“Don, you’re as healthy as a horse. I asked you to touch your toes without bending your knees. You did. I asked you to turn right, left, and bend over backwards a little. You did. My questions didn’t stump you and your memory is sharp. We can discuss this in twenty years.”

“David, I’m not living twenty more years. I had a long talk with God last month. He told me this coming Sunday on the eighteenth He will send Bonnie back to collect me. I laid out what I wish to be buried in. What I don’t want is to still have a penis and balls. For my final rest I don’t want the part of myself I always despised to be buried with me. All I’m asking is for you to step into the morgue, snip and toss the offending pieces down the disposal. I’m offering ten thousand dollars for a couple minutes of your time. You know I won’t be back to complain later if I changed my mind.”

“Okay, I’ll think about it.”

As I left David’s office I knew he wasn’t going to do it. In all fairness it could be possible for him to lose his medical license. I didn’t have the money to ask him to do it before I died. Sixty thousand dollars for SRS was pretty well the norm now. And that wasn’t counting the shrink’s charges before anyone would touch me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~0~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tuesday Dr. David Woods called Carl Fielders, the country physician when he read in the paper Don Woods had died Sunday. Carl informed David the body confused a lot of people. Although he was evasive about the reason for the confusion. He told David a woman who gave her name as Bonnie, had called the Sheriff Dept Sunday morning informing them Don Evans had passed in her sleep. Although told to stay at the house, no woman was found when Deputies arrived a few hours later with the county physician. The door was unlocked and they found Don laying on top his bed. Only it it wasn’t him. They took fingerprints to identify the body which matched the ones they had on file when he registered for concealed carry. They sent in the fingerprints and the FBI confirmed it was Don when they took his prints to work on a Federal building. The city had his fingerprints on file when he applied for a police permit as a guard for a housing project.

David figured the name the woman gave was a coincidence. Bonnie was the name of Don’s wife. She died from cancer twenty years earlier. He had never met two more in love people in his life, especially after they had been married for so many years. When people told him, he needed to remarry, he would tell them he was married.

Tuesday Dr. David Woods walked into Heavenly Gates funeral home. The woman in the soft green business suit approached. “May I help you?”

“Yes, I was informed you have a Don Evans here. You picked him up Sunday. I talked to Carl Fielders our county physician and he waved the autopsy. May I see the body?’

“Of course.The government records we received didn’t have anything in them about the lady being female. Everything they sent us listed her as male. Follow me please, she’s in our Lavender Room for viewing by family and friends.”

David didn’t follow. “Miss, I think there has been a mistake. I’d like to see Don Marion Woods.”

“No mistake, if you come this way.” She stepped into a hallway.

He followed the woman past several doors before she turned into a lavender room. Walking across the room she stopped beside a rose colored casket and motioned with a sweep of her hand. “This is Don Marion Woods.”

David walked toward the casket and stumbled when his eyes focused on the beauty laying there. He started to object this wasn’t Don. Yet the face resembled him somewhat. She was dressed in a white satin, brocaded and beaded wedding gown, chandelier diamond earrings and gold necklace.

He backed up and looked at the woman. “How…,”

“She was dressed this way laying on her bed when we picked her up.

He shook his head. “You keep saying her.”

“Well unless all of us here are blind or can’t tell the difference between a male and female, despite the government papers, that’s a female in that casket.”

Don turned his attention back to the body. She had breasts but Don had breasts after being on hormones for almost twenty years. She had a wedding band on her left hand and it looked like the same one Don always wore.

He returned his attention back to the woman as he pulled out his billfold and opened it to his medical license. “I’m a doctor and I assume you handle male and female bodies. I
hope this question doesn’t offend you. I’ve known Don for more than forty years and was his personal physician. I will swear on my physician’s oath he was a male. A transsexual male but a male with the male parts between his legs.”

He could hardly believe he was going to ask the next question even as a doctor. “Does she have…”

It looked like the woman was going to laugh before she composed herself. “Doctor if you’re asking me if this woman has a penis and balls? No she doesn’t. As you stated no autopsy was performed. We did have her completely undressed before we pumped her full of embalming fluid and she is a genetic female as far as all of us can tell.”

“If this is your patient and you say she’s a male then I believe you up to the time we had her naked on the embalming table.”

David shook his head as a smile spread from ear to ear. “Ma’am, do you believe in God?”

“No I’m atheist.”

David turned and stared at the body. “I never believed but I didn’t disbelieve either. Don kept telling me there are no miracles only lack of faith. I…, think…, I’m looking at faith strong enough it was a miracle.”

“Don, I don’t have your faith. Put in a good word for me when you’re talking to your God, if you would.” David was headed for the door.