“Around fifty years ago, most developed countries added gender dysphoria to the list of things they test for and treat prenatally. Over the next few years, researchers’ attention shifted focus toward prenatal sex reassignment. Adult sex reassignment was done by fewer doctors and hospitals every year; no young doctors were going into a field where the supply of new patients had dried up. By now, I’m pretty sure all the surgeons, psychologists and endocrinologists with experience in that area have retired.”

---

Twisted Throwback

part 4 of 25

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Twisted universe. It's set about a generation later than "Twisted", "Twisted Pink", etc. A somewhat different version was serialized on the morpheuscabinet2 mailing list in January-April 2014.

Thanks to Morpheus, Maggie Finson, D.A.W., Johanna, and JM for beta-reading earlier drafts. Thanks to Grover, Paps Paw, and others who commented on the earlier serial.

I apologize for the delay on this chapter. I've had Internet connection problems.

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---

Dad and I ate supper alone, as Mom and Mildred were at Uncle Greg’s clinic. They didn’t come home until after eight o’clock, and when they did, Mildred was wearing new clothes that pretty much fit her, and had a couple of bags of other clothes.

“We’ll need to do some more serious clothes shopping this weekend,” Mom said, “at the mall in Rome, maybe... And depending on how long we spend at the Twist specialist, we might have time to stop at a mall in Atlanta on the way home.”

“It won’t help,” Mildred said. “I’ll still be ugly however nice clothes I have.”

“I think you’re beautiful,” I blurted. “I mean... all those colors in your scales, and the patterns, especially in the sunlight...”

“Would you want to look like this?” she asked.

“No, but... I think that’s at least partly my Twist. It’s making me want to look a particular way — I’m not sure how yet. I think before my Twist, I’d much rather have looked like you than like Paul, or some of the guests we saw at Kerry’s wedding.”

“I know you’re just trying to be nice,” she said, “and I appreciate it, but just don’t, okay?”

I didn’t say anything to that; I realized that this was just like me not believing Mom when she said she liked the way I looked with or without the goatee. I changed the subject instead, saying to Mom:

“Um... I hate to break it to you, but I think I’m going to need new clothes too.”

“What? Why?”

“I was talking with Uncle Greg about what I’d been feeling and thinking, and we figured out that I need to wear something different now. I’m not sure what, yet. I hope if I look around at a clothing store I’ll see something that clicks with me.”

She sighed. “All right, we’ll do that. Do you think you’ll need to dress more formally, like your father?”

“Maybe... I don’t think that’s it. At least I don’t feel any obvious desire to wear a suit and tie.” Now that I thought of it, I particularly didn’t want to wear a tie; I’d never enjoyed wearing a tie at weddings and funerals, but I could put up with it. Now I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to wear one at all.

Mildred and Mom ate some of the leftovers from the supper Dad and I had cooked, and we went to bed, or at least to our bedrooms. I stayed up a while longer, running the recordings from my conversations with Dad, Mom and Mildred through a speech-to-text program and then picking out the sentences that seemed inexplicably wrong to copy into the file I’d started earlier. I couldn’t see any obvious pattern to them yet.

---

After what Uncle Jack had said, I’d decided to write down as much as I could remember of my dreams. This is what I wrote that Thursday morning:

I’m at school, I think, though not any particular real classroom. And I’m wearing something ridiculously inappropriate — I can’t remember exactly what, but I think a swimsuit and a big hat and boxing gloves. Nobody notices, though.

Then the teacher — not a teacher I’ve ever actually had, or anybody I’ve ever met — calls on me, but he doesn’t say “Cyrus”, he says some other name I can’t remember now, and I answer the question, only I can’t remember the question or the answer now.

After I wrote that down, I went to the bathroom. It was occupied, so I waited a while, and then knocked on the door and said: “Can you hurry up? I really need to go.”

Mildred’s voice sounded weak: “Use Mom and Dad’s bathroom... this is going to take a while.”

So I knocked on Mom and Dad’s door, and Mom answered — she was still in her nightgown. “I need to go, and Mildred’s in our bathroom,” I said.

“Is it an emergency?”

“Yes!”

“All right, go ahead... your father’s in the shower. Oswald,” she called out, “Cyrus needs to use our bathroom.”

“Very well,” Dad called from behind the shower curtain as I hurried into the bathroom. “I shall stay in here till you finish.”

Something Mom had said had bothered me, and I tried to remember her exact words so I could write them down. I peed, and washed my hands, and went back to my room — Mom had already gone downstairs by the time I left the bathroom, and Mildred was still in ours.

A little later I found Mom and Uncle Jack downstairs drinking coffee and fixing breakfast. Mom was telling Uncle Jack about Mildred’s Twist.

“We’re going to the Twist specialists today,” she said to me. “I called them yesterday right after Mildred’s Twist, and they called back and left a message with an appointment time while we were at Uncle Greg’s clinic.”

“Good,” I said. “Maybe they can help me figure this thing out. And maybe they can help Mildred.”

“I hope so... she’s really upset. She doesn’t want to go back to school.”

Dad came downstairs, all dressed for the day, before Mildred left the bathroom. About that time Mom went to check on her, and returned with her fifteen minutes later. I’m not sure how I could tell that Mildred was embarrassed — she can’t blush anymore, and her facial features are so unusual that you can’t rely on the same cues you do with a norm. But I could tell.

“I think Mildred’s going to need a special diet,” was all Mom said. “Hopefully the Twist specialists can help us figure out what.”

A while later, after Dad left for work, the rest of us left to go see the Twist specialists in Atlanta. Uncle Jack said he’d keep us company while we waited, and go for a long walk around the neighborhood while we were seeing the doctors. And his stories about his travels helped distract me from my discomfort and Mildred from her misery, though we talked about other things as well, mainly our Twists and what we could do about them. Mildred wanted to move to Spiral — by herself if necessary, going to live with Kerry and Jeff or some other relatives and going to school there — or, if she had to stay in Trittsville, to home-school. Mom said she’d talk to Dad about maybe home-schooling her, but they wanted her to try going back to school first, and that if she was going to Spiral, so were the rest of us.

“And maybe we’ll wait until Cyrus graduates from high school — do you think you could wait that long, honey, so your brother can finish school here?”

Mildred shot me a resentful glance, as if that were my fault, and I hastily spoke up: “I don’t mind moving to Spiral in the middle of a school year if that’s what’s best for Mildred. And I don’t understand my own Twist very well yet; I might be in a hurry to move to Spiral myself in a few days.”

The Twist specialists our family uses are at the Emory Clinic, east of downtown Atlanta, right next to Emory University and to a beautiful neighborhood with houses a hundred and fifty to two hundred years old. Uncle Jack told us about some neat things he’d seen around there, including a monument that encouraged students to figure out what gravity is and how it can be controlled. We had a long walk from the parking deck to the clinic, and then a fairly long wait in the waiting room.

The Twist clinic’s waiting room was partitioned off from the waiting rooms for other clinics. There were several people waiting there when we arrived: a boy about Mildred’s age or a little older with grey, rocky skin, with a beautiful woman who acted like his mother but didn’t look old enough to have a son his age (not that that meant anything with Twisted), and a pretty girl about my age with a woman who seemed to be her mother. When we walked in, the boy was showing off his trick, juggling several pebbles without touching them, trying to impress the girl, and the girl was steadfastly ignoring him. She seemed to be embarrassed, whether at being hit on by a boy younger than her, or because she didn’t have clothes that fit her Twisted body yet; her blouse was way too tight.

When we came in and sat down, the boy came over to us and showed off his trick. “Do you have any tricks?” he asked us.

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “My uncle thinks I probably do, but he’s not sure.”

“How would your uncle know if you don’t?”

“He’s a doctor.”

“What about you?” the boy said to Mildred.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “Uncle Greg said maybe.”

The grey-skinned boy’s mother came over and started talking to Mom. The boy went on enthusing:

“Isn’t this awesome? I was hoping I’d be able to fly or teleport after I Twisted, but this is almost as good!”

“Have you ever heard of any Twisted that can teleport?” I asked, surprised.

“Yeah; it’s pretty rare, and they can’t jump very far, but I’ve heard about a couple. I’m Bobby, what’s your name?”

I hesitated a moment before saying, “I’m Cyrus.” When Mildred didn’t speak up right away, I added: “And this is my sister Mildred. We both just Twisted.”

“Awesome! Like, at the same time? What were you doing?”

“It was on different days,” Mildred said. “He Twisted at school during lunch on Tuesday, and I Twisted yesterday during P.E. This guy in my class found a snake, and he said it wasn’t poisonous, and it didn’t look like the poisonous snakes native to Georgia we’d studied, and he was letting people touch it, and I wanted to touch it too, but it twisted around and I think it bit me. And just then my Twist started, and the next thing I know I’m waking up in the school office with snake-skin.”

“Awesome!”

“Are you kidding?” she burst out. “I could have gotten lucky like her,” pointing at the well-endowed girl who was ignoring us or at least trying to appear as though she were, “and I turn ugly instead.”

“You’re not ugly!” he said, surprised. “I mean, you’re not pretty the same way as her, I guess, but... she looks like a norm. Unless she shows off her trick, if she even has one, you wouldn’t know she’s Twisted. You’re... wow, I’ll bet there’s nobody like you anywhere, even any other Twisted.”

“And that’s a good thing?” Mildred asked, incredulous.

“Actually,” Uncle Jack put in quietly (he’d seemed to be half-listening to Mom’s conversation with Bobby’s mom, and half to us) “if I’m not mistaken, she’s as uncomfortable with her Twist right now as either of you.”

“How do you mean?” I asked. “She looks... yeah, I can see that she looks uncomfortable. But I’ll bet she’ll get used to being gorgeous a lot sooner than Mildred gets used to having snake skin.”

“She might take as long as that to get used to being female.”

I thought about that, and sneaked another couple of glances at her, wondering how Uncle Jack could tell. I’d heard of Twisted who changed sex, and even met one — the best man at Jeff and Kerry’s wedding had been a girl until he was fifteen. But it had never happened in our family, or among the few Twisted in Trittsville who weren’t related to us. It reminded me of Erin Ann Pendergrass; if this girl hadn’t gotten a mental Twist to go with her physical Twist, she’d be as miserable having a girl’s body as Governor Pendergrass had been before her... what did they call it? Transition. Still, at the moment I couldn’t really bring myself to pity her.

“I’d rather be like her than Mildred, though.” Mildred looked hurt at that, and I was sorry I’d said it, but I couldn’t take it back. To change the subject I said to Bobby: “You seem pretty pleased with your Twist. Being grey like that doesn’t bother you?”

“Nah,” he said. “It might be annoying sometimes, but I’d rather look weird and have a cool trick than look normal and have no trick, or a weird compulsion.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “I haven’t even figured out what my compulsions are and they’re driving me crazy already.”

Just then one of the nurses came out and called Bobby back; his mother said goodbye to Mom and went with him. I thought about talking to the girl Uncle Jack thought used to be a boy, but she looked like she wanted to be left alone, so I worked on my tablet instead, processing and analyzing the recorded conversations from breakfast and the ride down here and so forth. I still didn’t see any obvious pattern in the sentences that seemed wrong to me, but I looked around on the net and found a tool for calculating word frequencies in a text, and used that. And then it popped out — at least part of it.

Besides the basic grammar-words like “the, of, he,” and so forth, the most common word in those sentences was “Cyrus.” That’s when I realized, and I said: “I don’t like my name.”

“What?” Mom asked.

“My name. I think... I’m not sure yet. I want to be called something different, but I’m not sure what yet.” It felt like I needed to discover my new name, I couldn’t just make one up.

“Just your first name?” Uncle Jack asked. “Do you still —?”

“Harper is fine,” I interrupted hastily. “I like being a Harper. I just don’t like ‘Cyrus’.” After a pause for thought, I added: “Or ‘Andrew’.” That was my middle name.

Mom looked at a loss. “I understand... I think. I’m sure your father will understand. Your grandpa Newell, well —”

Andrew was Mom’s father’s name. Her parents weren’t Twisted, and they might be less understanding of Twist compulsions than the Harpers. Cyrus was just a name Dad liked.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t help it. Maybe I’ll let Grandpa and Grandma Newell keep calling me Cyrus Andrew and use my new name, whatever it is, only with people in Trittsville...”

“No, do what you need to do,” Mom said.

I thought about looking up a database of names and their origins and trying to figure out what my new name should be, but I decided to work on my paper instead. Half an hour passed; the nurse called for “Richard Lyell,” and the girl and her mother got up and followed her. Apparently Uncle Jack was right. I could sort of see it in the way she walked. There’s another person who’ll probably need a new name, I thought. I went back to work on my term paper, wondering if I could find anything about why Governor Pendergrass had chosen the name “Erin Ann.”

Then the nurse called for me and Mildred. Uncle Jack stood up as we did, and said: “I reckon I’ll go for a walk now; I’ll be back in a couple of hours, sooner if you call or message me and tell me you’re done early.”

“I think it’ll take at least that long,” Mom said. Uncle Jack left, and we followed the nurse back down the hall to a pair of neighboring exam rooms with a connecting door, ones they used for siblings of opposite sexes.

“You know the drill,” the nurse, Eileen, said. “Get into the hospital gowns and I’ll come and take you for your scans.”

Mom went in the left-hand room with Mildred, and I went in the other room and made sure the connecting door was shut. I changed into the hospital gown Eileen had left on the exam table, and sat down with my tablet to read for a minute before she opened the door and looked in.

“Ready? Come on.”

Mildred and I followed her down the hall to a couple of different rooms; we took turns standing in front of or laying down inside of different kinds of scanner, like the one in Uncle Greg’s office but fancier. Then she escorted us back to the exam rooms. When I was dressed again, I picked up my tablet and started reading again, but a minute later there was a knock at the connecting door.

“Are you decent?” Mom’s voice came, muffled.

“Sure,” I said, and she opened the door.

“Just checking on you,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“Sure,” I said.

“I think I’d better stay in here with Mildred. She’s — not taking this well.”

“I know.” Mom went back into the other room, and I read another article for my term paper.

A clinical psychologist, Dr. Oldstadt, came in a few minutes later. He asked me to tell him about my Twist, and I told him how it happened and everything Uncle Greg and I had figured out about it so far. He gave me a series of psychological tests — to compare the results with the tests I’d taken at my last visit, almost a year ago. Then he left me alone, saying he’d be back to discuss the results of the tests after I’d seen some other doctors.

Dr. Yarrow, the thaumatologist — that’s what they call a trick specialist — came in a while later. He said that the scans indicated I did indeed have a trick, exactly one, and asked if I’d figured out what it was yet, and suggested some exercises for triggering it. He took me to a long narrow room, mostly empty with shielded walls and a target at the far end, and he stood behind a transparent shield and talked me through those exercises, instructing me to concentrate my attention on the target in case my trick turned out to be something destructive. But nothing happened. He said that was fairly common, that only certain kinds of tricks could be triggered by these exercises, and that I’d just have to discover mine the old-fashioned way, letting it activate unconsciously when I needed it.

Dr. Yarrow took me back to the exam room, and a while later Dr. Oldstadt came back with a woman who introduced herself as Dr. Wentworth, a neurologist.

“Dr. Oldstadt tells me you’re not happy with the name ‘Cyrus’,” she said. “What would you like me to call you?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “You can keep calling me ‘Cyrus’ until I figure out what my new name should be.”

“Well, perhaps we can help you a little way toward that by the time you leave here. I’d like to go over the differences in your scans from your last visit, most of which are probably due to your Twist, and then Dr. Oldstadt will have some other things to talk to you about...”

She pulled up holograms of two scans, just of my head, and peeled back the skin and bone to show the brain, then started highlighting particular regions of the brain and talking about how they had changed. One of them she said was for managing my trick, whatever it was, and the others... well, she went on for a while and I can’t remember exactly what she said. The layperson’s summary was that I seemed to have a lot of small, subtle personality changes, and some major changes to my concept of my self, but that there didn’t seem to be any evidence that I was a sociopath or psychopath.

“That’s... good to hear. I mean, I don’t want to hurt anybody, but it’s nice to hear that I’m probably not going to start wanting to hurt people either. I’m still finding out things about my Twist, like until an hour or so ago I didn’t realize I didn’t like the name ‘Cyrus’ anymore.”

“That, and your dissatisfaction with your appearance, are undoubtedly related to the change in your self-concept that Dr. Wentworth mentioned,” Dr. Oldstadt said. “The differences in your psychological profile tests match up with her neurological analysis: many small changes, with no obvious pattern, except that you’re less pleased with your appearance and presentation than you were before your Twist. I have some ideas, however, which I’d like to confirm by doing some additional tests...”

“Great,” I said with a sigh. “Sure, let’s do them. I want to figure this out.”

So they took me down the hall to another room, sat me in a comfortable chair, and set up the sensors of another scanner all around my head. Then they dimmed the lights and showed me a long series of pictures — mostly people, both sexes and all races and ages, wearing all kinds of different clothes, mostly modern but a lot of them in old-fashioned clothes from various periods, or superheroes in costume from old movies, or military uniforms. Some of the pictures stayed up for several seconds, some disappeared and were replaced by others before I could consciously take in any details.

Then the lights came back up, and they told me I could get up and go back to the exam room. A little later Dr. Oldstadt and Dr. Wentworth came in.

“So what did you find out, with that last test?” I asked.

Dr. Oldstadt said: “You’ll recall that we talked earlier about an exercise someone — I think your uncle? — had suggested: looking at various images of people, wearing various kinds of clothing, and trying to pin down these feelings that you ought to look somehow different.”

“Right. So that was what this was about? You could have told me what to look for —”

“That wasn’t necessary, and might have been counterproductive. We watched how various parts of your brain reacted to different images, and how your eyes tracked across them, what details they focused on first and which they lingered on longest. Here are some of the images you seemed to show the greatest interest in...”

He brought up an array of pictures on the wall display. One was an old painting of a young woman wearing a long blue dress with a lot of fancy ornamentation that I didn’t know the names of then. Another was a photo of a slightly older woman holding a baby; she was wearing a simpler but still pretty dress. Another showed a man and woman about Mom and Dad’s age, both wearing formal dress. At this date I don’t remember all of the pictures, but most of them were like that — there was a woman in almost all of the pictures, some showed just a woman by herself, and most of the women were wearing nice clothes.

“So... I spent more time looking at the pictures of women? That’s not surprising, I guess.” I could feel myself blushing.

“Yes,” said Dr. Oldstadt, “but... you spent more time looking at these images than at certain others. Do you recall there were several images of women in bathing suits, or short skirts, or otherwise wearing fewer clothes than most of these?”

“Oh... Yeah, I guess so.”

“Perhaps you should ask yourself: is it these women’s bodies that interest you, or their clothes?”

Realization dawned. I looked again at the painting of the woman in the blue dress, and said: “I’d really like a dress like that. Those, um, decorative things on the upper sleeves and so forth make it look really nice. But I’m afraid it would look silly on me.”

“If you could wear it without looking silly, would you?” asked Dr. Oldstadt.

“Yes!” More and more pieces were falling into place.

“Would you rather look like the woman in that picture, at least in some respects, than the way you look now?”

“...Yes,” I said slowly, and then: “I see what’s wrong now. I’m supposed to be a girl.”

Dr. Oldstadt and Dr. Wentworth looked at each other for a moment, and then back to me. Dr. Wentworth said:

“There is a lot of variation between individual people’s brains. There is more variation between the brains of individual men, or individual women, than there is between the brain of the ‘average’ man and that of the ‘average’ woman. But whichever aspect of brain function or structure I look at — grey matter to white matter ratio, size of the corpus callosum, response of the amygdala to emotionally intense images — on all of the measures I’ve looked at, your brain is now more like the average female brain than it was before.”

“So I’ve got a girl’s brain, then.” Things were making sense now. Dr. Wentworth looked pained, and said:

“That is an oversimplification; I was trying to explain how there isn’t exactly any such thing as a male brain or a female brain, in the unambiguous way we can talk about a male or female reproductive system. But, to some extent... well, yes, let’s just say you have a girl’s brain.”

“It all makes so much sense now!” And then I thought of something, and got out my tablet. “Look, this is the list of things people have said in the last few days that seemed somehow wrong. Here’s one where Dad was calling me ‘son’, and another, and here’s one where Uncle Jack is saying something to Mildred about ‘your brother’, and here’s Mildred saying ‘my brother’... and, oh, I see, this one’s wrong because Mom’s talking about me and saying ‘he’ and ‘him’.”

“You sound... excited,” Dr. Oldstadt remarked.

“I’m like Archimedes jumping out of the bathtub and running down the street yelling ‘Eureka.’ I’ve figured out my Twist! Well, y’all figured out most of it, but... anyway, what do we do next?”

“What would you like to do next?”

“Well, I know that people who are born like this normally have to go through counseling for a while before they start getting hormones, and then they have to wait at least another year before they get surgery, but could I maybe skip some of that since this is part of my Twist and we both know I’m not going to change my mind?”

Dr. Oldstadt stared at me. “You’ve already thought this through, then. How much were you holding back when we spoke earlier? You must have already known or strongly suspected —”

“No,” I said. “I’m kicking myself for not figuring it out sooner, 'cause it seems obvious now, but somehow I didn’t put all the pieces together until you asked me what I liked about those pictures.”

“Then how is it you’ve already made up your mind to start hormone replacement therapy and get sex reassignment surgery as soon as possible?”

I thought about that. “It just seems like the obvious thing to do.”

“Hmm. I suppose your Twist accounts for your eagerness to move through your transition as quickly as possible. What I’m curious about is how you know all this... I would have expected you, at most, to be asking me what modern medicine can do to give you a more feminine appearance — not to tell me what specific treatments you’d like and when. If you didn’t know you were transgendered until a few moments ago, when and why did you learn all this?”

“Oh. I’m doing a term paper on Erin Ann Pendergrass — didn’t I say?”

Dr. Oldstadt slapped his hand to his forehead and sighed. “No.”

“I was reading for it when my Twist happened...”

“You might have thought to mention that detail! Who knows, it might be important!” Dr. Wentworth put a hand on his arm, and he took a deep breath. “Well. Never mind that. So, I gather that you know what the state of the art was ninety-some years ago when Ms. Pendergrass went through her transition...”

“Yeah... oh. They’ve got something better now, don’t they?”

“Yes and no. Around fifty years ago, most developed countries added gender dysphoria to the list of things they test for and treat prenatally. The technology for adult sex reassignment had improved a fair bit since Ms. Pendergrass‘ time, but over the next few years, researchers’ attention shifted focus toward prenatal sex reassignment, both neurological and physiological. After that, adult sex reassignment was done by fewer doctors and hospitals every year; no young doctors were going into a field where the supply of new patients had dried up. By now, I’m pretty sure all the surgeons, psychologists and endocrinologists with experience in that area have retired.”

Well, that was enough to kill my eureka. “So there’s nothing we can do?”

“Not ‘nothing,’” he said. “But it won’t be as easy as it would have been back when there was a regular infrastructure for handling cases like yours. I’ll make inquiries, and put you in touch with appropriate doctors, but it will take some time.”

Dr. Oldstadt and Dr. Wentworth left then, and a little later Mom opened the connecting door and came in.

“How’s Mildred doing?” I asked.

“She’s getting some more tests done — she’s still pretty upset about her Twist, but she’s feeling a little more cheerful since she discovered her trick.”

“Cool! What is it?”

“I’ll let her have the pleasure of showing you later.”

And let herself have the pleasure of making me wait, I thought.

“What about you?” she continued. “Have they figured out much?”

“I definitely have exactly one trick, like Uncle Greg thought, but I still don’t know what it is.” I took a deep breath. “And apparently I have a girl brain, and that’s why I’ve been feeling weird and uncomfortable, because I’m supposed to have a girl body to go with it, but Dr. Oldstadt says he’s not sure they can fix me.”

She looked stunned. “And... you were talking about feeling you needed different clothes. I suppose you’ll want to wear girl’s clothes?”

“Could I, do you think? I know they wouldn’t look right on me until we get my body fixed, but... I think I need to.”

“We’ll figure something out, honey. Whatever you need.” She was silent for a few moments. “What about ‘Ursula’?”

That was her mother’s name. I didn’t want to make her feel bad, but I had to tell her: “That sounds better than ‘Cyrus’, but still not right. Thanks for trying to help, though.”

“We’ll figure it out... what about ‘Diane’? ‘Theresa’? ‘Bonnie’?...”

We were still talking about possible names when Dr. Oldstadt came back in. He told Mom what he and Dr. Wentworth had told me, about the results of the tests and the fact that nobody these days knew how to do adult sex reassignment. Mom asked a lot of questions, about what would be involved with the hormones and surgery if we could find a doctor willing to do them, and they had her fill out some paperwork so they could file for my Twist stipend, to pay for girl clothes and stuff. Dr. Oldstadt said he would call us after trying to find someone to help me, and a few minutes later one of the nurses brought Mildred back from whatever test she’d been getting done.

“Mom told me you found out what your trick is,” I said to Mildred. I wanted to postpone talking about what I’d found out about myself. Mildred grinned — the first time I’d seen her do that since before her Twist.

“I’ll show you later — maybe when we get home.”

Then a Dr. Carter came in and said he wanted to talk to Mom about Mildred’s test results; she and Mildred went back in other other room and closed the door, and I read for my term paper for another twenty or thirty minutes before Mom opened the connecting door and said we were ready to go.

Uncle Jack was in the waiting room, chatting with a pair of twin boys about Mildred’s age and their mother. He looked up at us and asked, “Ready?”

“Yes,” Mom said. Uncle Jack said goodbye to the people he’d been talking with, and we all set out on the long walk to the parking deck.

“So what did you find out?” Uncle Jack asked.

Mom gave me a speculative look, and when I didn’t speak up right away, she said: “Mildred is what they call an ‘obligate carnivore’. She apparently can’t digest much else besides meat and eggs now — that’s probably why she was sick this morning.”

“That makes sense, I guess,” Uncle Jack said.

“And... she’s cold-blooded, now. I mean she doesn’t have a thermostat, she’s about as warm or cold as her surroundings. Uncle Greg thought so, but he wasn’t sure, and today Dr. Carter did some tests...”

I’m not sure what Mom said next because I was distracted by something moving in the corner of my eye. I turned and it was gone. Then Mildred was saying “...think I might hibernate if I don’t keep warm enough all winter,” and about that time I was distracted by something moving in an alcove with a water fountain and the entrances to a couple of restrooms. I stopped for a moment to look, but whatever it was was gone.

“Do you need to stop and use the restroom?” Mom said. “That’s probably a good idea, we’ll be on the road for a while.”

“Sure,” I said, and hesitated for a moment between the restrooms before reluctantly going into the men’s room.

When we’d all gathered in the hallway again, and started off toward the parking deck, I said: “I didn’t hear everything you said about Mildred’s Twist. About her being cold-blooded, and maybe hibernating?”

They started to explain again — how it was important for Mildred to keep warm enough and not get too hot, that it wouldn’t be enough for her to wear a coat and gloves and so forth in the winter, she’d need to stay indoors where it was heated as much as she could. I was distracted a couple more times by something moving disturbingly in the corner of my eye, and then I stopped short, yelling: “Where did that come from?”

There was a big coral snake, five or six feet long, lying in the middle of the hallway. Or was it a king snake? At the moment I was too rattled to look carefully at what order the stripes were in; I just took a step back, as did Uncle Jack. Mom looked at Mildred and sighed; Mildred looked from me to Uncle Jack and then burst out giggling. The snake vanished.

“Now that Mildred’s shown you her trick, perhaps we can talk about your Twist,” Mom said. I hesitated, and Mildred spoke up:

“What kind of snake did you see?”

“A coral snake, I think, or a king snake — it disappeared before I could check.”

Uncle Jack looked surprised. “I saw a cobra.”

Mildred nodded. “Maybe I’ll get better control of that. Wanna help me practice?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Not here, please,” Mom said, and kept us moving. A few moments later she asked me, “Honey, do you want to tell them what we found out, or shall I?”

“I’ll tell them... can we wait till we get to the car, though?” Some people on their way from the parking deck to the clinic were passing us.

Mildred looked at me curiously, and Uncle Jack uneasily, but nobody insisted. I waited until we were all buckled in and Mom had started the car before I said:

“Earlier Mom and I were talking about names. Other than ‘Cyrus,’ I mean, since that doesn’t feel right anymore. And I still don’t know what I want to be called, but I’ve narrowed it down a lot, and of the names Mom and I talked about, there’s one that’s not quite right but it’s a lot better than ‘Cyrus’, and I guess can live with it until I figure out something better. You can call me ‘Amy’.”

Mildred gasped, and said: “But that’s a girl’s name!” I couldn’t see Uncle Jack’s expression from where I was sitting in the back seat, but after a few moments he nodded. I went on:

“Yeah, I’m kind of a girl now. Not all over, but in my brain, they said — that’s why my body and clothes don’t feel right.”

Mildred stared at me, and I looked away, feeling more uncomfortable than usual under her gaze. Then she burst out: “You must be feeling just as bad as me! I didn’t realize...” And then she was hugging me sideways, as best she could with our seatbelts in the way. I started crying.

“Thanks,” I whispered. Her scaly skin was cool to the touch, but it felt nice. After hugging for a good long while, maybe as much as a minute, we let go and looked at each other.

Mom and Uncle Jack were quiet and left us alone for a few minutes. Then Uncle Jack said: “So... Amy. They can probably help you, can’t they? I mean, I know there are things doctors can do for people like you. I’ve met a few people who had a surgical sex change — they weren’t Twisted, but since your Twist isn’t physical, it should work for you, unlike somebody like Paul.”

“Did they try to fix Paul?”

“They did plastic surgery on his nose and lips not long after his Twist. It was a long shot, but it occasionally works... But no, just a few weeks after the surgery he was back to looking the same way. You, though... Did the doctors say what they could do?”

I told them what Dr. Oldstadt had said, about how there was hardly anybody like me anymore, and most or all of the psychologists who used to counsel people with gender dysphoria and the surgeons who did sex reassignment had retired.

“But Dr. Oldstadt said he would talk to people and call us,” Mom added. “I’m sure all the techniques are well documented in old medical journals and so forth, and they can figure out how to help Amy.”

“I reckon so,” Uncle Jack said. “Yeah, now that you mention it, everybody I’ve ever met who had a surgical sex change was at least a few years older than me...”

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If you've enjoyed this and the other free stories I've posted here, you may also enjoy these novels and short fiction collection -- available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format.

Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes	Smashwords	Amazon
When Wasps Make Honey	Smashwords	Amazon
A Notional Treason	Smashwords	Amazon
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories	Smashwords	Amazon