(Going to lay him, boss?) (Eunice!) (Oh, piffle, Boss. We’re Siamese twins now and should be honest with each other. You wanted to lay me for years. But couldn’t. You knew you wanted to, I knew it too; we just never talked about it. Now you still can’t. But you can lay him if you want to…and it’s the best way to say ‘Thank you.’ But watch it. dearie. Do it here, not where you might get caught. He has a jealous wife; he has all the signs.) (Eunice, I’m not going to discuss such a ridiculous idea! I’m surprised at you. You, a nice girl—and married yourself.) (Wups, dearie! I’m not married. ‘Until death do us part’ is the limit…and I’m a ghost. ’Minds me, though—my husband—erase and correct; my widower, Joe Branca. Got to talk about him, too. Doc’s turning to go. So wet your lips and smile, if you have it even faintly on your mind. And you have.)
Miss Smith wet her lips and smiled. “Adios, Doctor, not good-bye. Hurry back. When you can.” (You’re learning, dearie, you’re learning.)
Dr. Garcia said, “Miss Smith—”
“Oh. Yes, Doctor?”
“If you’re ready, I’ll get nurses in and we’ll unharness you and several other things. You can have a general anesthetic if you wish. I suggest locals, with a chin screen to keep you from seeing how I’m bungling it. With something you want to read projected, and some music.”
“Music would be nice. But I won’t read, I’m too interested. Locals, then. Or nothing, pain doesn’t upset me.”
“But it upsets me, so we’ll use local anesthesia.”
For an hour and more she listened to a tape of evergreens, from classic rock she had never grown used to clear back to folk music popular before Johann Schmidt was born. Mostly she enjoyed lazily the sensuous pleasure of feeling her body being touched and handled and manipulated. Not only was it wonderful to have a body after days of complete paralysis from the neck down (plus fear of being forever a basket case, a fear Johann had never fully admitted) but also, most important, this body felt everything so sensitively—just to be touched was pleasure.
Not much like that old wreck you discarded! For the past ten, fifteen years that body’s sole virtue had been that it still ran. It reminded her of a fifth-hand Model-T Ford that he and four other young cake-eaters had bought for seventy dollars in Baltimore and had driven half across the continent—no lights, no brakes (the reverse had to serve), no driving licenses (unheard of), no instruments, no nothing. But the tough and ugly little touring car had chugged along on three cylinders (not always the same three) at an (estimated) top speed of twenty-five miles an hour. They had stopped now and then to throw water on the spokes to keep them from falling out.
Somewhere on a dirt road in Missouri it had coughed and quit, and smell had traced the trouble to the wiring. Yonny had fixed it—wrapped the burned insulation with toilet paper, tied it with string…cranked the heap and it had started at once and chugged along as before.
She wondered where the sturdy old junkpile had wound up? And what had become of her male body? Johann’s will had left it to a medical school—but since Johann hadn’t died, quite, that will did not control. Had they pickled it? Or swept it out with the trash? Must ask.
Several times she felt pulling sensations that should have hurt but did not and once a sharp pain which she ignored. There were odors, sour-sweet and nauseating; she thought of suggesting that the air system be turned up, then decided to mind her own business. Presently the odors were gone and she became aware that she was being given a bed bath; then sheets and pad were being changed.
The chin screen was removed; the top part of the fresh bottom sheet was whisked into place by two nurses while a third lifted Miss Smith’s shoulders. Two nurses left the room, carrying a hamper between them. “There,” said Dr. Garcia. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Not at all. I feel grand.” She wiggled her toes, opened and closed her thighs. “Grand! Now I’m me all over—free! Doctor? Since I’m no longer wired for sight and sound, not to mention plumbing, do we need this fancy hospital bed? I would stop feeling like an invalid sooner if I had my own bed.”
“Mmm…must you rush it? This bed is the right height for nurses to work on you—back rubs and such—and it has side rails which can be raised when you sleep. Miss Smith, every nurse’s nightmare is the thought of a patient falling out of bed.”
“Well! What do you think I am? A baby?”
“Yes, Miss, that’s what I think you are. A baby getting acquainted with its body. Babies can fall. But I don’t intend to let you fall. Either out of bed, or in learning to walk. Or in taking a tub bath, which you will be demanding almost at once.”
(Play it cool, Boss!) “Doctor, I will follow your orders. But my own bed has its points. It will contour, just touch a button. And it has hydraulic lift. Raises as high as this one or higher—but will also lower till it’s hardly more than a mattress on the floor, ten inches high. Will this one do that?”
“Mmm, no.”
“I did fall out of bed, ten years back. It shook me up so, that I ordered this special bed. Back when I was still walking I used to raise it to the easiest height—about at my hips—to get into it. Then lower it all the way down to sleep.”
“Mmm…maybe we can make a deal. Will you promise me always to lower the bed once you get into it? Even if you don’t intend to sleep.”
She smiled. “Signed and witnessed and with posted performance bond.”
“I don’t think we need to go that far. Miss Smith, we no longer need to monitor you the forty-’leven way we’ve been doing. But I want a continuous check on heart action and respiration until you are living a normal life. That’s the main reason I need this life-support bed. But if you will let me fasten to your skin, anywhere on your ribs, a little pickup-transmitter weighing a half ounce and no bigger than an alloy dollar, we don’t need this fancy bed. It’s comfortable, you’ll forget it’s on you. You can bathe with it in place—waterproof and sticks like a poor relation.”
She smiled. “Start sticking!”
“I’ll fetch it. And have the nurses swap beds.”
“Oh, the nurses can’t move my bed. It takes big huskies and a power dolly. Tell Cunningham. But no rush. Speaking of nurses—Winnie, don’t you need to wash your hands or something? I want to talk to my doctor.”
The redhead smiled at her. “Dear, I’ve heard everything. Don’t mind me.”
“Look, Winnie, you did a lovely job on my face when I did not know how. But that’s the point, dear. Outside I’m a woman. But up here back of my eyes is still a crabby old man who is far too shy—chicken, I mean—too chicken to discuss intimate matters with a pretty girl present. And I must.”
“Miss Gersten, go to the watch station and take a break. I’ll call you.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
One she was gone Johann said, “You’re durn sure all the mikes are dead?”
“We’re private, Miss Smith.”
“Call me ‘Johann,’ Doc; this has got to be a man-to-man—and embarrasses me even discussing it with a man. All right, first question: Did I come sick—menstruate—in the last few days?”
Garcia looked surprised. “You twigged? Yes, you are just over your period; we removed a tampon while we were working on you and it was not necessary to replace it. But where did I miss? I thought I had anticipated it and had bolshoi painkiller in you in time. You felt cramps?”
“Not a twinge. But things didn’t feel right…and that’s when I started getting suspicious about my sex.” She looked thoughtful. “Perhaps it was the tampons—I felt something odd down there—and now the feeling is no longer there.”
“Might have been that. I would have used napkin pads, usual hospital practice. But there were just too many bells and whistles—plumbing I mean—in the way. I didn’t think you would notice a tampon placed while you were sedated. Contrary to popular belief there is almost no sensation inside a vagina.”
“So? There damn well is in mine! I just didn’t know what the sensation was.”
“Well, the matter has never come up before; your case is unique. Was that all that was troubling you, Miss—sorry! ‘Johann.’”
“No. This new body of mine—Has it had a whatchamacallit, a female examination?”
“Oh, certainly. Dr. Kystra, best G-Y-N man in town. Done while you were paralyzed, checked again after your spinal cord fused but done while you were in deep sedation. All okay.”
“I want a full report. Damn it, Doc, I’m in charge of this body now…and I know as little about how to be female as my Grossmutter knew about aircraft. Nothing, that is.”
“I can get the report out of file if you want it—”
“I do!”
“—but I can tell it in terms you are more likely to understand. Shall I?”
“Go ahead.”
“You have a normal female body, physiological age circa twenty-five—calendar age somewhat older, I understand. Breasts normal virginal—which doesn’t mean your body is virgo intacta; it isn’t. Just means you haven’t suckled a child. No trace of abdominal surgery, from which I conclude that your appendix is in place and your tubes are intact—”
“Meaning I could get pregnant.”
“—the latter opinion having been confirmed by insufflation while you were paralyzed. You not only could get pregnant; you will. Unless you live an absolutely chaste life—and even if you plan to, I would still recommend precautionary contraception—say six-month implants in one buttock. The best-laid plans of mice and men, you know. And women. Especially women. Since you are Rh-negative, about six-sevenths of the male population could give you a damaged or stillborn child. We can prevent that if we know it in time, but an unexpected pregnancy can turn out tragically. So don’t let it be unexpected. Plan it. In the meantime use contraception.”
“Doc, what makes you so damn sure I’ll get pregnant? Even if I get married—which I do not plan on—hell, I’ve had only hours to get used to the notion of being female; I certainly haven’t had time to consider being actively female. But even so, as the old gal said, ‘Shucks, honey, hundreds and hundreds of times ain’t nothing happen a-tall.’”
“If you adjust normally to being a young female, you will be active about it, that’s why. Or you will eventually wind up on Dr. Rosenthal’s confession couch or some emotional equivalent such as joining a nunnery. Johann, your new body has a normal female hormonal balance; you had better plan accordingly. Even getting your tubes cut is no answer; you might come down with the emotional never-get-overs through regretting it. As for what the old gal said, it doesn’t apply. Because of that child you’ve already had.”
“What?” (Boss, why didn’t you mind your own business? I could have told you all of this you need to know.) (Shut up, Eunice.)
Garcia looked surprised. “You didn’t know? I had assumed that, since this body was that of your secretary, you knew that she had had a child. Or children.”
“Not only didn’t know it, I don’t believe it.” Surely the security investigation would have turned up such an obvious fact…and God knows Eunice had never been out of his sight since then long enough to bear a child.
“I’m afraid you will have to believe it, uh, Johann. Striations called stretch marks on belly and buttocks—hardly noticeable unless your skin is tanned and then easily concealed by cosmetics. But present. Not definitive, as a woman, or even a male, can get stretch marks from obesity. But characteristic. But the thing that nails it down is that the cervix of the virgin womb does not look like that of a woman who has borne a child. The difference is so marked that a layman can spot it. I have seen yours. Q.E.D. Could be photographed if you doubt me.”
(Drop it, Boss!)
“Oh, I believe you, now that you’ve explained it.”
“A comparison photo might be a good idea. Make you more careful. I was not implying any criticism of Mrs. Branca; I was simply warning you that the baby-baking apparatus you inherited from her is in prime shape and ready to be triggered each lunar month. Say about ten days from now.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Want a lecture on contraception?”
“No.” Johann smiled wryly. “Apparently I have at least a week before I need a chastity girdle.”
“Approximately, by statistics. But, uh, Johann. No, ‘Miss’ Smith—do you know the technical term we physicians use to describe girls who depend on rhythm?”
“No. What?”
“We call them ‘mothers.’”
“Oh. Oh!”
“So don’t wait too long. Next question?”
“Uh…no more today, Doctor; I need to digest what you’ve told me. Thank you.”
“Not at all, Miss Smith. Shall I have them switch beds now?”
“I’ll send for Cunningham later; I’d like to rest. Doctor? Could you stick that dingus on my ribs? Then have the nurses stay out a couple of hours?”
“Certainly. If you’ll let me raise the safety rails, as this bed is not only ten inches from the floor.”
“Oh, of course.”
10
(Well, Eunice?) (So you want to hear about my little bastard? Boss, you’re a dirty old man.) (Sweetheart, I don’t want to hear anything you don’t want to tell. You could have quintuplets by a Barbary ape and it wouldn’t affect how I feel about you.) (Mealymouthed old hypocrite. You’re dying of curiosity.) (I am like hell ‘dying of curiosity.’ It’s your business and yours alone.) (Oh, don’t be so mean, Boss. My business is your business. How else? Seeing the close relationship we have…and which I like, if there is any doubt in your dirty old mind. You brought me back to life…when I was as dead as folk songs. And now I’m happy. So coax me a little, I’ll give.) (All right, dearest—how in the world did you manage to have a baby? When did you find time? Your snoopsheet traced you clear back through high school.)
(Boss, did that security report mention the high school semester I lost from rheumatic fever?) (Let me think. Yes, it did.) (Misspelling. Spell it ‘romantic’ fever. I was fifteen and a cheerleader. Our basketball team won the regional conference…and I felt so good, I got knocked up.) (Eunice, ‘knocked up’ is not an expression a lady uses.) (Oh, Boss, sometimes you make me sick. By your rules I’m not a lady and never was—and I’ve got as much right to be inside this skull as you have and maybe more—so you haven’t any business trying to force me to talk the way your mother did. Not when I no longer have Joe to turn to when I get tired of your prissy ways.)
(I’m sorry, Eunice.)
(’Sall right, Boss. I love you. But you and I are cuddled up pretty close; we ought to relax and enjoy it. I can teach you a lot about how to be female, if you’ll let me. But right now you listen. Don’t interrupt.) The ghost voice started reciting a string of monosyllables, all of them taboo in the faraway days of Johann’s youth.
(Eunice! Please, darling, it doesn’t become you.)
(Pipe down, Boss. I’m going to finish this even if you blow every fuse.) The recitation went on—
(That does it, I guess—those are the words I had tagged in my mind never to use in your presence. Now tell me—was there even one you didn’t understand?)
(That’s not the point. A person should not use language which offends others.)
(I never did, Boss. In public. But I’m home now—or thought I was. Do you want me to go away again?)
(No, no, no! Uh, you were away?) (I certainly was, Boss. Dead. I suppose. But I’m here now and I want to stay. If you’ll let me. If I can relax and be happy and not have to be on guard all the time for fear of offending you. I can’t see why a Latin polysyllable makes me more a lady than a monosyllable with the same meaning. You and I think with the same brain—yours—eat with the same mouth—mine, or used to be—and pee through the same hole. So why shouldn’t we share the same vocabulary? Speaking of peeing—oh, pardon me, sir, I meant to say ‘micturition’—)
(None of your sarcasm, girl!)
(Just who are you calling a ‘girl,’ girlie? Feel yourself, go ahead and feel. Some knockers, eh, Boss?—and h
ow you used to stare at them, you horny old goat. Made me tingle. But I was saying, speaking of micturition, that we are going to have to ring for a bedpan fairly soon, now that we no longer are rigged with plumbing…and there is no way for me to leave the room while you pee. I don’t dare leave; it’s dark out there and I might not find my way back. So it’s either get used to such things—or send me away forever—or bust your nice new bladder.)
(Okay, Eunice, you’ve made your point.)
(Have I offended you again, Boss?)
(Eunice, you have never offended me. Sometimes you have startled me, sometimes you have surprised me and often delighted me. But you have never offended me. Not even with that list of blunt words.)
(Well…as I saw it, if you already knew them, you couldn’t really be offended; if you didn’t understand them, then you couldn’t possibly be offended.)
(All right, dear. I’ll quit trying to correct your speech. But for the record—I used all those words long before your mother was born. Possibly before your grandmother was born.) (Grandma is sixty-eight). (Learned ’em all and used them with relish long before your grandmother was born—with relish because they were sinful, then. I take it they aren’t, to you kids now.)
(No, they’re just words. Short-talk.)
(Not short-talk, as they were used before video corrupted the language. Except—What was that one word? ‘Frimp’?)
(Oh. Shouldn’t have included that one, Boss; it’s not a classic word. Current slang, swing talk. It’s a general verb, one which includes every possible way to copulate—) (Pfui! You youngsters. When I was a kid, we had at least two dozen words meaning ‘frimp,’ some new, some old besides the standard taboo words for it.) (You didn’t let me finish, Boss.—every possible way to hook up two or more bodies—any number—of any sex, or combinations of all six sexes, and including far-out variations that would shock you right out of this bed. But swing is a today scene, so it’s not surprising you hadn’t heard the word ‘frimp’ before.)