Chapter 41: An Occasional Good DeedAn hour ter I sat at the edge of a medical bed in Scooter’s examination room in the Meditrine ibsp; Sterilized stainless steel gleamed under bright florest lights. Tools and sharp-edged implements glistened from their trays and from behind locked gss. Simir to the man’s underground surgical room, this one was crammed from wall-to-wall with books and charts, and hi-tech equipment, but here it was all kept and orderly. A long ter cut off the far end of the room.

  Uhe soothing designs of the Hygieia tre--despite all its modernist touches--this pce felt like a hospital: a pce where people died.

  “How you feeling, Girlie?” the doctor asked, perched on a high stool.

  “Fine,” I grunted. “Tired.”

  Scooter watched me ily as he worked. “Busy st light, I’m sure,” he said. “How are the ribs?”

  I shrugged. “Not bad. Hurts a bit when I make a sudden movement.”

  “Then don’t make sudden movements,” he said. The tone of his voice clearly added ‘idiot’. “Have you been taking those painkillers? They help?”

  Suspicious, the way he asked about those pills. “Yeah.”

  With both my shirt and the corset off I shivered in the air-ditioned room. Scooter’s fingers probed at my ribs, his geouch belied by the size of his hands. He nodded with approval when I didn’t win pain. His stethoscope shone coldly as it slid ay chest.

  “You seem surprisingly calm,” he said.

  “Why wouldn’t I be? There something you’re not telling me?” A tremor crept into my void I fought it down. I wao have words with this man. Oh, how I wanted discuss certain s that I had. Thing is, it’s not a good idea to have a go at the man who’ll be holding a ko your face ter in the day.

  “Most people are nervous before surgery.” Scooter said. “That’s normal.” A wide, toothy grin split his fabsp; “But maybe you’re more sad than scared?”

  “Sad?”

  His hand jerked in the general dire of my discarded clothes. “All that fem stuff. After all, you’ve gotten so good at wearing--”

  “You know?” I interrupted. “I think that’s what I’m going to fug miss most: these pleasant chats of ours. That and the goddamy sessions.”

  Sched. “Any time.”

  The sight of the doctor and his mockery filled me with such rage that I had to look away and cast my eye across the room. One door led into a small vatory; another, of transparent gss, bato his offid waiting room, with its desk and puter, stacks of books and files, and an expensive-lookiher sofa. Behind that closed door sat dy’s aunt, legs crossed at the knee, one foot bobbing with impatient ay.

  “Iing,” Scooter murmured. I returned my attention to the man and found his hands tched on to my tits, his thumb roughly massaging the small, grey nibs at the tip.

  “Hey!”

  He flicked curious, dark blue eyes my way. “Nothing? ion?”

  “No, thank you very mubsp; Keep your hands to yourself, yeah?” I nearly punched his hands away. “It’s been a couple of days since I’ve felt anything from them.”

  I watched warily as he brought his face close to my chest. He took a little sniff and then, before I could stop him, his tongue flicked out across a nipple. Nose wrinkling in disgust he turned away and spat.

  “Jesus Christ, Scooter!” I shoved him away and crossed my arms ay bare chest. “What the fuck’s your problem?”

  “Some discharge, slightly oily, sweet smelling,” he muttered, nodding to himself as he walked over to the ter. He washed his hands before turning bae. “They must be at the very end of their cycle. Another day and the prosthetics would have fallen off on their own.” His eyes flicked down to my crotbsp; “Down there?”

  “Fug thing fell away this m.”

  He snorted. “Must’ve been a relief.”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe,” I agreed, nodding emphatically. “Five mier I was ihroom. Jacked off like there’s no tomorrow.”

  The doctor returo his examination, shaking his head in mild distaste. He tapped my kook some blood, took my blood pressure--he hat it was a little high--and shone a light in my eye and did the whole doctor thing in silenbsp; I did my best to remain calm throughout as he jotted notes and information about me iient chart he carried in hand. When he spoke the seriousness of his voie by surprise.

  “David?” he asked, and I raised an eyebrow at hearing him use my name. “Listen, all joking aside: do you like this girlie shit?”

  I gred at him. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Not at all,” he answered, meeting my gaze levelly.

  “I hate it! Scooter, I fug hate all this bullshit.” I gestured angrily towards the corset, the gy top, cwed at the skirt I was wearing. “I’m a guy, yeah? You have any idea how embarrassing this crap is?”

  “So it was all an act, then?”

  “Of course it was!”

  “Even st night?”

  I didn’t araight away. When the quiet became unfortable I relutly asked, “What do you mean?”

  “You know damn well what I mean,” Scooter answered. He dragged a small monitor on a wheeled cart over from its er and tapped at a couple of keys. A little earlier he’d used the same puter to show some of the proposed ges they were going to make to my fabsp; Any other time, watg a doanipute my features on a s, turnio--well, someone else--would’ve been just a little freaky. But the face was male, and that’s all that mattered. I felt a desperate o return to a normal mase life, no matter what it was.

  The s came alive and dispyed a still frame of some video footage. It showed Harry and me, sitting in the Bacchus Bar.

  I sighed. “What do you wao say?”

  Scooter tapped on the space bar and cycled through a few short clips: the brief kiss on the lips between Harry and I; my hand on his knees and our close versation; standing together and leaving the bar, arm in arm. I flushed hot with humiliation at the sight of myself, flirting with another man, sitting with him, cuddling into his embrace, pying the bar bimbo, blonde, pretty, vapid. I had to physically restrain my hand from clutg at the sharp, angry pain that fred through my stomad head.

  Scnced back at me. “You sure you don’t like this stuff . . . dy?”

  My face burned with fury and shame. “Fuck you, Jonathon.”

  “Because you sure seemed to be enjoying yourself.”

  I nearly choked on my anger. I jumped off the bed ao stalk out of the room. I caught K’s inquisitive gnce from the waiting room and couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Why’d you do it?” Scooter called after me.

  “Screw you, doc,” I snapped over my shoulder.

  His voice reached me just as I went to leave. “What you did, David? It may have saved his life.”

  I hesitated at the door. Looking back, I was surprised at the sympathy he dispyed. “What do you mean?”

  “Harry Longman,” he stated, and theured for me to e babsp; “And drop the theatrics, will you? e sit down. Where the hell were you going, dressed liked that?”

  I gnced down and saw the grey, inflexible mounds still affixed to my bared chest. With a sigh I returo the examination table. “You’re an asshole,” I muttered.

  “So are you,” he said. “Yet here we are, apparently both capable of an occasional good deed.” Scooter released a deep sigh and picked up my clothes and tossed them over to me. I got dressed in silence as he tio talk. “How did you get Harry to ge his mind?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I muttered.

  “Mr Longman is dying, David. That’s why he’s at the Asklepios ic.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I answered, sliding my top ohe corset. “He told me st night.”

  “Did he tell you that we’ve been trying to get him to agree to an experimental procedure for months, now? It’s risky, but the only shot he’s got. He’s refused up till now.”

  I grudgingly turned my full attention back to Scooter. “No. He didn’t mention it.”

  “Funny that. Because this is the thing: time and again he’s said no, not ied. No reason to justify the risk, he said. Lived a full life, he said. And I’ve got no more musi me, he said.

  “And then you came along, David. You just breezed into his favourite hangout prang around in a skirt and a few hours ter you’re his best friend. A year he’s been here and you’re the first person he’s really ected with. You go out, have a couple of dates . . . and suddenly he ges his mind.”

  “Really? Hey, that’s great news.”

  “He called you his ‘broken flower’. His Calliope, he said, a new muse. He said that any world that tains such fantastid strange creatures as you is one worth staying in.”

  Scooter’s words brought a wide grin to my fabsp; Well . . . holy shit. Something good did e of st night. I hoped that Harry pulled through.

  “So how did you do it?”

  I shrugged. “He was lonely.”

  “He was lonely?” Scooter snorted. “Gee, I wonder how our team of expert therapists missed that. ‘He was lonely.’ You figured that out all on your own?”

  I gred at him. “Yeah, I guess I’m clever that way. The man wasn’t just lonely; he was ready to die. We’re all lonely, Scooter. That’s human. But only a few of us are ready to die because of it.”

  “Fine,” Scooter answered, and he sounded relutly ied. “Then how’d you know that was his problem?”

  I shrugged again. “How the hell should I know? I just knew. It’s the same way that I could tell that you’re an ambitious egomaniac jerkwad full of secrets—such as the fact you like her.” I jerked a finger in K’s dire, and his face flushed an angry red. “The same way I knew from the moment I met her that she’s a fug dyke nutcase with trol issues. . . and that, yeah, I trust her implicitly.” I did up the final button on the blouse I wore. Iing. Three weeks ago it took all my tration to work a button with those y finger. Now I could manage almost unsciously. Borderline miraculous, that was. “Although in Harry’s case . . . I mean, , have you even listeo his musibsp; Read his lyribsp; It’s all there. The guy’s lonely. He’s lost. He’s . . . bored, hell, I don’t know, looking for something, someone.”

  Scooter ran one beefy hand through his thick mess of hair, thinking. “And so let me guess--dy was just what he was looking for?”

  My ugh was hollow. “dy? Hell no. Seriously, you don’t think a guy like Harry scores a girl like dy any time he wants? You say the ic’s been watg him--tell me Scooter, how many girls just like dy has he seduced and fucked over the past year? How many has he led into the park, or back to his room?

  “Fuy like Harry? Girls like dy are a dime a dozen and you know what? They do nothing to kill the loneliness. Hell, they make it worse. Waking up in bed o someone and somehow you feel more disected than before? God, it kills, Scooter, it fug kills and the only thing that makes you feel better is going out again and doing it all ain.” I shook me head, earrings and golden bangs fluttering about my fabsp; “dy was the st thing he was looking for.”

  Scooted looked at me quizzically. “Then--”

  I sighed. “Harry needed . . . hell, whatever it is I’ve been since K brought me here. A pretty girl. A cute groupie to ftter his pride, arm dy who looked good hanging off his arm . . . a flirt who could turn him on and make him feel like a man. It’s what he thinks he needs but it’s not what he wants. What he wants is a friend-- to hang out with, shoot the shit and match him drink for drink. versation and, hell, you know--the whole bullshit male-bonding thing . . . something more than a gushing star-struck bimbo. He he girl to feed his ego and the guy to feed his soul.”

  “Is that what you are, then?” Scooter asked, intrigued. “Guy and girl?”

  I gred at him, my anger and barely cealed sense of betrayal simmering to the fore once again. “It’s what I made myself into,” I said.

  “Just like that,” Scooter said. His voice was doubtful.

  I frowned. “No, not ‘just like that.’ You have any idea how hard it was, to rex into his arms?” I waved my hand towards the puter monitor, still dispying a frozen image of Harry and dy in a rexed embrabsp; God, they looked so happy, Harry just a little bemused but so very, very tent; and dy, her smile so simple, those beautiful eyes firmly set upon her man. “Shit, every touch, every . . . kiss, fuck, it made me sick Scooter, made me want to throw up.”

  “So why--”

  “Because he’s a friend!” I shouted.

  Why the fuck couldn’t people uand? Harry was a friend. I’d just met the man but it’s not time that determihe value of a friendship. I owed the man and I take that kind of responsibility seriously. I owed him a favour, and where I e from, favours are sacred. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for a friend. In a world where love fails and family betrays and people die, friendship is the only thing worth believing in. Real friendship--friends that are stant in all things and there when you hem; how rare and precious such a thing is! Harry had found his reason to stay in this world--dy--and in some twisted way he’d beine as well.

  Even if he didn’t ask for my help, couldn’t ask for it--there’s no way I could’ve let the guy die. And if dy was the only ohat could get close to him . . . then fuck it, I’d be dy for him. I’d . . . .

  I’d kissed him. I . . . kissed a man. A man, for chrissake! I’d been trying tet about st night. Obsessing about dy to kill the doubts, losing myself in routine, keep my mind busy. But some things you should never ignore, ever fet. Phantom sensations lurked at the edge of thought: a man’s hand caressing my ass, a man’s tongue sliding against mine, what the fuck had I done, what had I . . . done?

  “David?” Scooter’s voice came from far away. “David!”

  I gagged. Bile rose in my throat. That . . . bastard, that selfish iece of shit! Saving that man’s ass just to preserve some pathetic memory? Wasted--ruiainted. Now when I thought of Persephone and that song and that one good memory . . . I’d always remember Harry fug Longman and his fingers digging through my hair, his cock swellih my hand . . . his smell, leather and age still ging to me. My palm felt slid I saw blood there, beading up where my fingers has cut the skin. White knuckles. Red palm--and nails.

  Strong hands grabbed my head on both sides and pulled me out of myself. “David!” Jonathon demanded. “What you did--it was good, David, you may have saved his life.”

  Grudging respect--I saw it in Scooter’s eyes. The disgust I felt over st night burned away before the almost blinding hatred I felt for the man in front of me now. This was not Harry’s fault; Harry was a friend. But Jonathes was a man I had trusted, and who had betrayed me, and if I didn’t need him, I could have killed him right then and there. I really could have.

  “No more,” I nearly growled. “No more . . . dy. No more bullshit. Stop this, Jonathon, stop what you’re doing to me.”

  “What do you mean?” His face went deliberately bnk.

  “You think I’m fug stupid?” I hissed. “Where were they? In the goddamn painkillers? Subliminal ditioning in the music while I slept? Or was it in my food?”

  “David, you’re not. . . .”

  “Where were the drugs?” I screamed at him. “These motherfug headaches, the way I’ve been ag--you don’t think I know when I’m being fucked around, you son-of-a-bitch?” Over in the waiting room K watched us curiously, but the heavy gss door blocked the sounds of my ranting. “I know who I am! I’m a man, dammit! I’m not dy! I don’t-- st night-- I said I trusted you but that didn’t give you the right to--”

  A quickly made decision flicked across his eyes. “It was for your own good,” Scooter interrupted, his voice steady, his fafling fronted with my anger.

  “So you admit--”

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “The Asklepios ic drugged you, David. Does that make you feel better? Does it alleviate the guilt that you’ve been prang around like a girl for the st three weeks? Last night was ehe drugs. Bme it on the drugs, David, bme it all on hypnotic suggestions and even on me if it’ll make you feel better.”

  My hands trembled at my side, ag from the restraint. “You bastard.”

  “I told you the first time we met: the Asclepieion is my top , David, not you. Your disguise was a good o not good enough. It wasn’t up to my standards. The experts helped to polish the rough edges but it was the mannerisms that were going to give you away. You looked like a girl but acted like a guy, so the ic helped shore up your weaknesses. And it worked. You survived intad tomorrow you’ll wake up a new man.”

  “What did you do to me?” I demanded.

  “Mild hypnotiothing more.” Even now, I could tell he was lying. Whatever they’d fed me was a hell of a lore more than just ‘mild hypnotics’. “We fed them to you a range of ways. One pound was air-born and slipped in through the ventition at night. Some was in the meds you took. All that reading and practice you did? The drug simply helped your hard work stibsp; A little positive reinfort helped subdue your natural guilt over ag like a girl. Your own obsession with Harry Longman carried it that final step.”

  “And the headaches?”

  He hesitated. “Not an unon side-effebsp; Nothing serious.”

  More bastard lying. “You still had nht. . . .”

  “I had every right to do what I did,” he stated, and loudly smmed shut the patient chart in his hand. “This is my ibsp; You are here at my sufferance!” His crazy red hair jumped and shook as he atuated each point by smming his fist against the solid metal bedframe. “You are alive because of me!”

  “And Harry’s alive because of me,” I answered levelly.

  Mouth open mid-rant, Scooter stopped. He stared at me for a moment, and then suddenly grinned widely. “This is true,” he said. “sider us even?”

  “Not even close,” I said.

  Doctor Jonathes nodded. “Fair enough,” he said, and shrugged, and I saw how little importance he attached to my fiveness. “For what it’s worth, the self-ditioning should fade quickly. If you don’t try to act feminine, you won’t, though some of the learned behaviours might slip through unsciously. Things like brushing back your hair; and even that will fade quickly in the absence of tinued reinfort. Even drug-induced hypnosis is just hypnosis; it ’t make you do anything you’re deeply opposed to.

  “So make your farewells to dy. I’ll make sure everything’s prepped and ready. We’ll be ready to start within the hour.”

  The doctor left the room, leaving me along at the edge of the examination table. I stared at my red-tipped fingers, at the sexy stiletto spike and the delicate leather strap that wound its my ankle and calf. Long blonde hair fell in a whispering cascade ay shoulders. I licked my lips and tasted the makeup there that made my mouth full and shiny. With every movement I felt the tickle of ce against soft aive skin; suspeautened and loosened as I crossed my legs. The feminiure came so easily it was frightening.

  I wouldn’t miss any of this. I really wouldn’t.

  Author's Notes:

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