Part 7 Morning Has Broken

I came back to consciousness, of a sort. I was unable to see anything but could hear machinery making noises around me. I felt different and suddenly thought that being able to feel at all was proof that something good had happened.

It took me some time before I figured out what the difference was. I was obviously in a hospital bed but now my body had no bandages while my head was swathed in them.

That could only be good, couldn’t it? I took my time, working up from my toes. I flexed and relaxed muscles starting from the toes and thought a lot about the feelings as I did so.

I had only got to my knees when I must have either gone to sleep or had been put under again. When I next woke nothing had changed so I started from the knees and carried on up my body.

I seemed to have more feed-back from my body this time and when I got to my groin I squeezed my muscle and felt the tube that was inserted there.

“That was odd” I thought. I knew what it felt like with no testicles but that felt as if there was no penis; or else mine had become very sensitive.

Working up I had the idea that I may be a lot thinner than before, perhaps I had been under so long my body had atrophied but, there again, it felt right.

I hadn't started on my fingers when I felt someone take hold of my hand and a voice said “If you can hear me, squeeze” so I did.

There was a gasp and then a series of questions about what I could or couldn’t feel, followed by some simple maths with the voice asking what’s two and two with me squeezing four times.

I don’t know if the voice was pleased or upset at my answers because not long after that I slid into blackness again.

Next time I woke I could see. Well, there were glows around me and I must have been in a dark room but I could make of shapes of monitors and slowly the focus returned, as if I had not used my eyes for the longest time.

There were still tubes in me because I could now feel them or else the bandages that kept them in place. My head felt lighter, less like a mummy.

“Of course” I thought, “they needed to take the top of your head off to get to the brain.”

The operation must have lasted days, with all the nerves to hook up. Thinking of that I wondered if I was still using my old eyes or new ones. I hoped to find out soon.

As I looked around a hand passed in front of my eyes and a straw was put on my lips. I closed my mouth and took a suck of what tasted like nectar but was probably only pure water.

A woman's voice said, “Can you make a sound for me, please?”

I did my best and croaked, “Hello, you. Am I alive?”

The voice said, “You most certainly are. You’re now a wonderful result of our work. It was your willingness and your money that pulled off the most advanced operation ever attempted.”

“That’s good,” I croaked and went back to sleep.

This was my life for some time. I woke, had a short conversation, gained a little more feeling and then slept again. Every time I woke my voice was easier for others to understand and I came to the conclusion that the donor body must have been female because I sounded female and my body felt female. I started to explore what I could with my hands and a couple of parts I did find were definitely female!

They started sending in a physio to work with me on moving my limbs first but it was forbidden for me to move my head, which seemed to be held in a frame.

I had no qualms with the girl who was the physio because she was very gentle at first, getting me to make more adventurous moves later. I was spoken to a lot but nothing was said about the success or otherwise of the operation.

One of the visitors told me it would only be considered a success when my head was free from the frame and I could stand on my own two feet. Two feet; which I could see when I raised my leg high enough, that were quite dainty and, I thought, not that old.

Likewise my hands were smallish with very long fingers, guitarists’ fingers. Then came the big day when the surfer surgeon, now looking a little older but very pleased with himself, stood next to the bed and explained the next step.

“First” he said, “We’ll put you under for a while. We need to disconnect all of the electrodes that have been monitoring your brain activity which is, happily for you, very close to normal. The next thing is to take out the screws that hold you in place. These had to be there to make sure you didn’t move and upset the healing process. As you can imagine, we had to open the skull so that we could work inside your head.”

He smiled at that, “Actually, both your heads.”

“We had to remove all of the hair first and it will take a while to grow back but you’ll be able to wear a wig which will also cover the ring of stitches around your skull. The skull you now have does have another small repair that was caused by the thing that gifted your body to us. I’ll get the psychiatrist to explain all that once you’re moving around.”

He then said, “Ready for another little sleepies?”

Next time I woke I was lying on a softer bed with a pillow under my head. The nurse was there with some drink for me again and then offered me some soft food, something like gruel, which she said was high in protein.

I could now move my head from side to side but my neck was a little stiff. Two days later the main tubes were removed and I was able to sit up in the bed. That was when I discovered that I now had real breasts. It took my mind back over thirty years to when I had the forms on for long periods. It didn’t particularly worry me.

Soon, I ready to do proper walking exercise and see the psychiatrist. Both were new experiences as the walking was different with the different bone structure and it took a few days before I was able to walk smoothly.

The shrink was another thing altogether. She slowly took me through the details of the body I now inhabited. I was in the body of Samantha Saunders, an approximately eighteen year old that had been shot in the head with a subsonic twenty-two which scrambled her brain and left everything else perfect.

I asked about my old body and was told that it had been cremated and a funeral service had been held with quite a big turn-out.

My new name had been added to my last will and testament and my old effects were now in storage in this building. All cash residue was now in my current account as was the money left over from the off-shore account.

All in all, I was a very well off teenage girl. Make that ‘nearly bald’ teenage girl.

Everyone was on tenterhooks wondering how I would take the change of sex but my previous time as a woman was making it easy. I had one session with a make-up artist and surprised her by nailing a good look first time.

I was able to walk in low heels and higher ones would be easier once my leg muscles got stronger. They had me in nighties and then dressing in day wear and I was carrying it off well. I was able to shower myself and it was a pleasure to be clean and smell nice.

I also took a long look at myself in the mirror. I was, I thought, reasonably pretty, in an impish way. My teeth were good and they had used the original eyes which were a stunning blue.

All in all, I looked good and would look better with some hair, some stubble now sprouting. The only odd thing about my reflection was the ring of stitch marks which looked like a crown of thorns.

Every day I also had a session on what skills I had remembered. I mentioned that I had started out as a gardener and they had me identifying flowers which went pretty well, considering that I hadn’t done gardening for over thirty years.

I had no problems remembering my work with the council or my time with Sammy. Oddly enough, when I thought about Sammy I could feel my fingers making chords so I asked if Samantha played and was told that it was thought she did.

We all had a lot of discussion about remembered muscle training.

The test was that we got the guitar from the store and I sat down with it and, sure enough, I could strum a tune. My own brain was able to remember tunes but I had never played in my life and considered that I had been too old to learn.

It would be interesting to see what else she could do, maybe she could roller blade, dance, sing; it would be fun to find out.

I asked how she got shot and was told was that she was standing in a supermarket when someone tried to rob it. The robbery went wrong and she had been held hostage but the robber must have got spooked and shot her, so allowing him to be taken down by the police.

It was because she had been taken away quickly and sent to the clinic inside twenty-four hours it was an easier operation, if you can call six weeks in a coma then thirty-six hours on the table and two months recuperation easy.

I was told that there had been three teams of six surgeons working four hours at a time.

The thing with Samantha was that she had no older history. The police had tried to trace her family and come up against a dead end when she was sixteen, or thereabouts, a girl living on the street first and then ‘sofa surfing’ with friends.

Those friends all had said that she wouldn’t speak about her previous life but had seemed angry when asked about it. It looked as if I could simply take over her life and go forward from there.

I was really looking forward to being a teenager with a sixty year old brain. The other thing that excited me was actually having working sex organs, the last time I had cum had been two days before the wall accident. I was working myself up to seeing what I could achieve with this new bit of kit.

I obviously had no memory of her sex life but could only approach it with my old ideas.

Part 8 Knowing Me, Knowing You

There lay the crux of my problems, something that no-one had considered when the concept had been discussed. I knew everything now about a dead guy but nothing about the living girl I had become.

Her memories had died with her and there was no-one who could tell me about her childhood or parents.

All I had was the contents of the back-pack she had with her when she died, as well as the few items the police had recovered from the friends she had dossed with. I asked for, and got, a room with a big table where I could lay everything out and examine it.

There was a small pile of clothing, including what she had been wearing when she died, by the blood stains on one of the tee-shirts.

I had inherited a few plain bras and panties, a couple of pairs of jeans, a few tee’s and better tops, some shoes and socks, a jumper and a winter coat. Not a lot for a teenager but just enough for someone travelling light.

I had met many homeless with less who had existed on the streets when I was working. The only thing with any writing had been a library card made out to Samantha Saunders and a purse with S.S. on it and a little money.

One thing of note was a Yale key with ‘Home’ scratched on it. The police had tracked the number and it was one that had been made in some quantity and distributed with a few in each area across the country.

She had owned a tiny radio with earbuds and a small player that the buds also fitted. I spent several hours with that listening to her musical tastes which ranged from rap to punk with a lot of folk thrown in.

That I could relate to as it had been the staple of Sammy’s repertoire. Another set of music that I could also relate to was a bunch of Knoffler and Dire Straits numbers as they had still been played on the radio when I was a teenager myself.

That made me look at the small items that were found and I saw that she had plectrums and a set of finger-picking picks. I went and got the guitar, put on the picks and sat, wondering if magic did exist.

I put in the buds, found ‘Sultans of Swing’. I had watched Sammy work on this and, if one didn’t have the dexterity that Mark had, picks were a help.

I put it on repeat and listened, letting my body do whatever it wanted. By the third play I was starting to find the right strings, by the fifth I was getting it mostly right and also singing along. By the tenth play I had taken off the buds and was playing and singing on my own.

Magic had, indeed, prevailed. It wasn’t perfect but, damn, it felt good. When I stopped there was a smattering of applause from the door and I looked up to see some of the staff smiling at me, including my psychiatrist who also looked very interested at this development.

I was sure she was starting to write a book about muscle memory. On that I was right. She tried working with dementia patients but only had slight success because old age also brings arthritis. She then went on to work with trauma patients that were a bit younger and had played before. Her book changed the way things were done, but that was some years away.

By then I had a small apartment at the clinic, one that had been used for visiting specialists. They wanted me to stay with them for at least six months as they had to make sure there were no rejection problems.

With all of the compatibility tests that had been done I was sure everything was all right but was happy staying there because, when it came down to it, where could I go? My old life was over, my new was yet to be written and I was already a person ‘with no fixed abode’ or even an official existence, my fingerprints not coming up with any matches and my DNA being vague, to say the least.

It was a partial match with almost everyone living in the midlands that had roots in that area. Things were in train to give me an official existence but I think that they were waiting to make sure I carried on living before they got serious.

In the meantime I grew into my new self, helping out around the wards and spending a lot of time listening to her music and learning the tunes. I concentrated on the folk ones and, for a test, got one of the staff to get me a track that they liked and tried learning that one as well; being likely that Samantha had never played it.

It took a little longer but I finally got it down, so teaching my muscles a new variation of activity. I began to wander the clinic and give little recitals to cheer the patients up and created quite a repertoire with a lot of songs that the older ones could sing along to.

Of course, most of the songs were very old as it’s difficult to sing along to rap music. It was odd to be asked about Beatles songs, seeing that it was now a hundred years since their time.

As my time in the clinic carried on, I also started going out and about, firstly with a staff member to make sure I was all right, and then flying solo.

I had got sick of getting about in jeans so my first port of call was the bank where I got a credit card issued linked to my account. That, incidentally, made the teller blink when she looked me up.

That caused me to stop and think so, while I was there, I got a new, low fee – better interest account set up and put a big lump into that to sit for a while.

When I got my new credit card I hammered it by buying dresses, skirts, good underwear, hosiery and some jewellery. I had come to the conclusion that Samantha had either been not interested in sex or else had been a lesbian.

I was, I must say, neither. I had experimented and enjoyed it but it was only men in my thoughts as I did so.

So, the girl who now helped and sang around the clinic had become far more feminine than before and loving it. As my hair grew and hid the scars I got more and more into being Samantha.

In my last couple of months I was going out with a few of the single males to the pictures or a meal and had even spent happy times cuddling and kissing in the back of a few different cars.

I had not gone all the way, though, and I was sure that there would be a memo out there telling all the males in the place that I was a case study and not to spoil the results by getting me pregnant.

What was interesting was that I loved dancing. The younger guys sometimes took me to a dance club where I really got into it and, as an experiment, one of the older ones took me to a dinner/dance where it didn’t take me long to be dancing the waltz, foxtrot, you name it I was there.

Now, if there was one thing that had never featured in my old life, dancing would be top of the list. I wore big skirted dresses, twirled with the best of them and my partner and I would get some smattering of applause at times.

It was very intriguing that I was still a teenager but with good dance knowledge and good memory of guitar playing, both being muscle memory more than anything else. I also absorbed song lyrics like a sponge which was my own brain working to match the other muscles and augment them.

It made the staff work harder to get the details of my recovery into the records and, finally, they were able to put together a serious article for Lancet which had the whole medical fraternity jumping.

Even though my time was coming towards the end, they got me to stay on as we had a never-ending stream of medicos’ wanting to see me, talk to me, examine me and also talk to the surgeons who had worked on me.

The clinic went up several notches in the ranks of specialist lists and they started to get more interesting operations that had normally gone to the bigger places. They were also getting a fair bit of interest from aging tycoons who wanted the chance of a second life, just because they could afford it.

I had to laugh because my surfer surgeon told me one day that he had trebled the donation required and most of the tycoons had decided that they would rather keep their money. It was, he said, a mistake to do the operation on the wealthy and well-known because the consequences of failure were too high. Failure still being a big factor, even after my own success.

Just before I left the clinic they took on another customer. He was a confined to a wheelchair after a motorcycle accident but had won the lottery. He thought that the chance of mobility outweighed the wheelchair for the rest of his life.

I spent some time with him telling him my own story and the sensations I had when I woke in this body. He was still waiting for a body when I moved out of the clinic into a rental cottage not far away. I was almost staff and was donating my time two days a week helping out.

They finally got me all the official paperwork to say that I existed as Samantha Saunders so I went and did the exam to get a learners permit. I had to have this for three months before I could take the test so spent that time getting lessons a couple of days a week.

My driving, I thought, had suffered and then realised that Samantha had probably never driven so the lessons were necessary. Road rules; those I remembered.

The biker eventually got his match and had the operation, coming out of it well. His body donor had been fit and hearty right up to the day of his stroke. It turned out quite a good match, both in age and lifestyle and I would talk to the biker a lot when I went in.

Of course, he now took up all of the attention of the staff who, with the experience they had gained looking after me, were far more slick with what they did for him. His recuperation was quicker. It was a case of success breeding more success but I had a little pride in thinking I was the first.

It was the biker who came up with the idea and I fully agreed. The two of us would put on a Christmas party for the staff and our other contacts, all paid for by the two of us.

I hired a hall and arranged the catering and the biker organised a band. It would be by invitation only and we sat together to organise a list. It ended up as pretty long, over thirty surgeons, about fifty from the staff, his old friends who had come in to see his new look and, in my case the police that had worked so swiftly to get me here after I had been shot. Then worked so hard trying to find my history.

Then, of course, there were their partners. It ended up as quite an expensive affair but neither of us begrudged the money because it was these people who had allowed us to live.

The night of the party was cool but clear and inside the hall it was warm and cosy. I made sure that my dress was absolutely fabulous and I had bought some good jewellery to wear.

The meal was great and the band was good and I got to sing along with them before I was on the dancefloor being partnered by a lot of guys. The biker had a bunch of good looking ladies looking after him and everyone was having a wonderful time.

Then there was the sound of scuffling at the doors and a loud voice shouting “Let me in! Let me in! I have to see my daughter!”

Marianne Gregory © 2022