I don’t say anything, though I imagine the real problem will be to get Maddy to wear little girl clothes like these. But then the alternative is for her to run around in a pajama top six sizes too big for her. In the end she’ll have to make the practical choice.
From the other bag, Qiang takes out toys. She sets a teddy bear on the gurney, at Maddy’s feet. There are also a couple of Barbie dolls and a baby doll. Lastly, Qiang produces a pile of coloring books and a box of crayons. “I thought these would help keep her entertained once she is more active.”
“Good idea,” I say. I take the teddy bear and press it against Maddy. The bear is almost as big as she is. She mumbles in her sleep and then lets go of my hand to wrap her arm around the bear. As she pulls it close, I hear her mutter Grace’s name.
I choke up a little as I imagine her disappointment when she wakes up.
***
The bear is the first thing to go. There’s a moment of disorientation when Maddy wakes up with the stuffed toy clutched to her. I see her eyes go wide at the sight of the teddy bear she imagined was Grace. With a sob, she hurls the bear away, against the wall.
I rush over to her side and help her to sit up. She looks down at her bulging stomach and then holds up her tiny hands. She starts to cry again. “It’s real,” she says. “It’s all real.”
“I know,” I say.
“I’m still a baby.”
“You’re not a baby. You’re a big girl.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“Madison, listen to me: you’re not a baby. And you won’t be so long as you remember who you are. Right?”
“I guess.”
I see the clothes Qiang’s left in a pile on the floor. “I know, how about we get you dressed? That’ll make you feel better.”
“Maybe.”
I bring the clothes over for her to inspect. As I expected, she isn’t thrilled with the choices. “These are baby clothes,” she says. She throws the unicorn T-shirt on top of the teddy bear. “I want my real clothes!”
“I know, honey, but those won’t fit right now.” I go through the pile and take out a purple sweatshirt and sweatpants. Besides that they’re a little less girly than the other clothes, they should also stretch enough to fit. “Why don’t you try these for a little while?”
“I don’t wanna.”
“Madison, please. It’s just for a little while. Unless you want to go around naked.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Now Maddy, is that what a big girl would say?”
She thinks about this for a moment before she shakes her head. “No.” She snatches the clothes away from me. Even with the gurney at its lowest setting, I have to take her hand to help her get down. Besides the sweatshirt and sweatpants, she takes a pair of underwear and socks as well into a corner. “Don’t peek.”
“I won’t.” I want to ask if she needs any help, but that would make things much more awkward. So I sit on the gurney and face away from her. I hear her grunt a few times. I hope Qiang guessed right about the sizes.
I get my answer when Maddy waddles up to me. The sweatshirt is tight on her, enough that when she raises her arms, I can see her bare belly. It’s hard to resist blowing a raspberry on that cute little tummy sticking out. It’s almost as hard not to pinch her adorable cheeks.
I do pick her up and help her back onto the gurney. She sits next to me; her feet dangle in the air. Qiang didn’t provide a pair of shoes for Maddy, probably to keep her from running away. Not that she could get very far in her present condition.
“What do we do now?” Maddy asks.
“There’s some dolls. Or coloring books.”
“Those are for babies.”
“They don’t have to be.” I pick up the Barbie dolls. I pass one with black hair to Maddy. “We could pretend the gurney is Grace’s shop. That doll is you and Barbie is Grace—”
“She wishes.”
I smile legitimately for the first time in what seems like forever. “Yeah, she does. And the redheaded one will be me. I’m helping a customer find something to wear. And Grace—” I pause as I try to think up a story. It’s been about forty years since I played with toys and I never played with dolls—those were for girls.
“Grace is telling me about her new job,” Maddy says. “It’s not much fun sitting around listening to all these addicts whine all the time. And I tell her that at least she’s helping people.”
Maddy snatches the Barbie away from me. She presses its face against the doll that represents her. “Then we kiss and your face turns all red like it always does—”
“It does not!”
“Does so. You’re so embarrassed to see two girls kissing.”
“I’ve kissed plenty of girls.”
“But you didn’t really like any of them. You like boys.”
My face turns red for real. I think of that awful date with Seth for the first time in weeks, or maybe even months. Things had been so much simpler back then. “Maybe I do.”
“Boys are gross.”
“Some are.”
Maddy starts to make her dolls walk away from me. “Grace and I go upstairs and—” Maddy can’t finish. She throws the dolls to the floor and then starts to sob.
“Don’t cry, Maddy. It’s all right.”
“I was just thinking. I’ll never get to…you know with Grace again.”
“Of course you will. We’ll find some way to make you a grown-up again.”
Right on cue, the door opens. Qiang comes in; her face brightens with a smile. “Hello, Madison. Are you ready to go on a trip?”
“Where?”
“To see some nice men. They want to make sure you are feeling all right.”
“You mean doctors want to probe me,” Maddy says with a sniffle.
“Yes. We want to make sure you are not getting any younger.”
“Younger?”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “You’re not getting any younger. You’re fine.”
Maddy isn’t convinced. She presses against my side. “Can Stace go with me?”
“I am afraid not.”
“I don’t want to go alone. I want Stace!”
“I am sorry, little one. That is not possible.”
As Maddy starts to cry again, I pat her back. “It’ll be all right. They aren’t going to hurt you. And I’ll be right here when you get back.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.” I give her a short hug. “Go on with Qiang so she can take care of you.”
“All right,” Maddy says. She takes Qiang’s hand to hop off the gurney. Before she leaves, Maddy turns to wave to me. I wave back. I just hope that’s not our last goodbye.
Chapter 12
Over the next few days, Maddy adjusts to life as a toddler. She sleeps most of the time. I can’t really blame her; sleep is about the only way to escape the madness of this situation. When she is awake, she lies on the floor and colors in the books Qiang bought. To amuse herself, she picks outlandish colors for people’s skin and hair. She shows me a princess she’s colored with dark blue skin and bright red hair. “You like it?” she asks.
“It’s great. You’re like a miniature Picasso.”
Her lips tremble at that. She doesn’t like when I reference her small stature. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, you’re right. I am pretty miniature right now.” She forces a smile as she pats her belly. “Except here.”
She turns back to her coloring. Later I see her working diligently on another princess. For this one she uses the peach crayon for the skin and dark brown for the hair. I kneel down beside her as she finishes. “Is that you?” I ask.
“No, it’s Grace,” she says. She colors the skirt of the princess’s dress tan, so that it looks somewhat like what Grace wore the night we disappeared.
The real problem comes when Maddy tries to write Grace’s name in the margin. Her first attempt is so shaky that it’s illegible. Maddy tries a
gain; she squints as she concentrates on the page. This next attempt is legible, though the letters are uneven and wobbly, like a kindergartner’s. Maddy throws the crayon down and then begins to cry at last.
As I always do, I pat her back and mumble what encouragement I can. “It’s not fair,” she mutters. “I didn’t do anything.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“Then why are they doing this?”
“I don’t know, honey,” I say. I wonder if I should finally come clean to Maddy about why Dr. Ling wanted me. With how broken up Maddy is already, I decide against it. She’s been through enough already.
“I didn’t do anything!” she wails again.
“I know.” I hug her close until she’s cried herself out. After that she’s ready for a nap. Before I help her onto the gurney, she tears the picture she colored of Grace out of the book. She hugs it to her chest like the teddy bear as she falls asleep.
She’s asleep for about an hour when the door opens. It’s Qiang again. “Haven’t they tested her enough?” I ask. In the past few days they’ve poked and prodded little Maddy in just about every way possible, which included X-rays and an MRI.
“I have not come for Madison. Dr. Ling wishes to see you.”
I look down at Maddy, the picture of Grace still tight against her chest. “Tell him I’m busy.”
One of Ling’s thugs steps into the room. “I am sorry,” Qiang says. “It is not a request.”
I bend down to kiss Maddy’s forehead. “I’ll be back soon,” I whisper.
***
Qiang and the guard don’t take me to the principal’s office. Instead the guard shoves me into the school’s kitchen. There’s still a rusty stove and sink, but the rest of the equipment is gone. On the steel counters now are computers, folders, and beakers. This must be Dr. Ling’s lab, where he and his minions work on their version of FY-1978.
Another guard appears and wheels in a gurney like the ones Maddy and I sleep on. For all I know it could be the one from my cell. He stops it beside me. “Get on, please,” Qiang says.
“Why?”
“I cannot say. Please do it or else we will do it by force.”
“Yeah, sure,” I say. “I could use a nap anyway.”
As soon as I’m on the gurney, one of the goons starts to strap me onto it. That is until Dr. Ling says from the doorway, “The straps won’t be necessary. Will they, Mr. Fischer?”
“No.”
“Good.” Ling comes to stand beside the gurney. He still wears a black suit, but now he also wears rubber gloves. I figure he wants to take some more blood from me. It’s been a few days since they last did that.
It’s not a syringe Dr. Ling takes out of his pocket. Instead it’s something that looks like a meat thermometer, the kind you put in a Thanksgiving turkey. “You going to cook me?” I ask.
“Not at all. I designed this little device to measure your cellular decay.”
“So?”
“It tells us how old you are based on the amount of decay in your cells, sort of like counting the rings of a tree.”
“You’ve used it on Maddy already?”
“Yes. Your daughter’s reading came back at four-point-nine.”
“That’s about what I figured,” I say. “Did you tell her that?”
“There’s no need. All that matters is the result has been constant.”
“So she’s not regressing anymore?”
“Not from what we can determine.”
Without warning, Ling jams the meat thermometer into my elbow. I wince with pain, but try not to cry in front of him. Like a thermometer, he leaves it in my arm for a couple of minutes. Then it begins to beep. He yanks the gauge out of my arm. He holds it up so I can see the red digital numbers: 18.7.
“How much of a margin for error is there on that?” I ask.
“I estimate about a point-two differential.”
“Great.” Which means I could be eighteen-and-a-half or just about nineteen. Too bad Dr. Palmer doesn’t have one of these things. If I get out of here alive, maybe I’ll tell her about it. “Now that you found that out, can I go back to my daughter?”
“Not yet. Take off your clothes.”
“What?”
“Remove your clothes. Unless you want one of my associates to do it for you.”
“Why do you want me naked?”
“There’s no need to be shy, Mr. Fischer. I’ve seen you naked several times while you were unconscious.”
“You son of a bitch!” Before I can move, one of the goons has a meaty hand on my shoulder to press me down on the gurney.
When the other thug starts to grab my pajamas, I kick at him. “Let me do it,” I hiss at him. Ling says something in Chinese that backs the goons off.
A minute later, I’m naked on the gurney. I want to brush my hair forward to cover myself, but Dr. Ling stops me. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” he says. He snaps his fingers. Three guys in lab coats appear; I’m not sure where they’ve been hiding all this time.
They start to fasten diodes all over my body. I see why Ling didn’t want me to cover up my breasts when one of the technicians fastens diodes to my nipples. “Is that really necessary?” I say.
“Yes. We must have complete coverage of your body to observe an accurate result.”
“What are you doing to me?”
He reaches into his jacket for a syringe. It’s filled with a dark red liquid. Though it looks different from Dr. Nath’s version, I know it has to be FY-1978. “No! You can’t!”
“We must. Thanks to your daughter’s sacrifice, we have altered the formula. It should be perfect now.”
“But I already have the serum in my blood.”
“Very true.” Dr. Ling touches one of the diodes on my arm. “That is what these are for, so we can observe the interaction of my serum with that in your blood.”
“But isn’t that going to fuck up the test of your serum?”
“Perhaps. At any rate, we have taken enough of your blood. You have no more use to us than your daughter.”
I turn to Qiang, the only one even remotely friendly in this room. “Don’t let him do this. Please!”
“I am sorry, Stacey. I cannot interfere.”
I try to rip the diodes off to at least buy some time. I get the ones on my nipples loose before the goons stop me. They press my arms down. One of the technicians tightens the straps around my hands so I can’t move them again. There’s nothing I can do then except thrash around and scream.
“Keep her steady, please,” Ling says. The goons hold me down; one presses a hand over my mouth to silence my screams.
I close my eyes so I can’t watch. There’s the prick of the needle in my neck. Just as before, my entire body goes numb almost immediately. The goons let me go. I want to scream, but I can’t. I can’t do anything but lie there and wait.
***
The last time this happened, I had an out-of-body experience. While at the bottom of the harbor, I watched myself change from a middle-aged man into a teenaged girl. Because of that, I didn’t feel any pain as my body compacted and reshaped itself.
This time there’s no out-of-body experience. I’m still in my body as the changes begin. Though I’m numb, I can still feel my body change. The very first thing I feel is like someone pressing down on my nose, as if to jam it into my brain. After that comes pressure below my eyes as if someone is trying to push my cheekbones into my eyes. I’m becoming Chinese like Maddy.
“Good, very good,” Dr. Ling says. “No signs of drug interaction so far.”
He helpfully turns my head to the side, where I can see a monitor, like the one we watched Maddy on before. As I figured, my face has already rearranged itself, my nose smaller and my cheekbones higher. My hair has straightened and turned black too. As I watch the monitor it starts to feel like someone’s jammed hot needles in my eyes. I want to scream, but my vocal chords are still paralyzed. I wish I could just pass out, but that doesn’t happen
either.
My vision turns red for a few seconds. When it clears, I can see on the monitor that I’ve got the same slanted eyes as everyone else in the room—and Maddy. I’m Chinese, like all of them. I wish I could cry from these new eyes, but I can’t do that either.
Nothing happens for a minute. I still can’t move. Dr. Ling sticks the meat thermometer in my arm again. When it beeps this time he says, “Sixteen-point-four. Very good, gentlemen.” A few moments later, he says, “Sixteen-point-two. Sixteen-point-zero. Fifteen-point-nine.” He turns to his technicians and barks at them in Chinese. They answer in the same language, though with far less authority.
Something’s gone wrong. I’m getting younger. Though I can’t move my limbs, I can feel pressure on all of them, like someone’s put my bones in a vise and is cranking it like mad. On the monitor, I can see my body shrink as I continue to regress. I watch as my breasts go from C-cups to nubs that would hardly fit into a training bra.
Prepubescent. That’s what I am now. A little girl, though not so little yet as Maddy. My mosquito bite boobs flatten out completely while the rest of my body continues to shrink. As I compact, my midsection turns flabby. Not as much as Maddy, just a little potbelly.
“Ten-point-eight,” Ling says. His voice is on the edge of panic now. Maybe his formula isn’t right yet, or maybe it has interacted with the FY-1978 already in my blood. Whatever’s going on, I doubt he can stop it. Before long I’ll be a toddler like Maddy. Maybe I’ll go all the way back to an infant. Or maybe I’ll turn into so many stem cells.
I feel the hot needles in my eyes again. My vision blurs. I can’t see the monitor to watch the rest of the change. “Ten-point-two,” Ling says with disbelief.
As sudden as it began, it stops just as quickly. I still can’t see the monitor, but I can’t feel the pressure on my bones anymore. Maybe it’s stopped. Maybe this is as young as I get. “Ten-point-zero,” Ling says. “Holding steady.”
I wish I could smile at that. Ten-point-zero. That means it’s my birthday. I’m ten years old now. With that thought, I finally pass out.
Chapter 13
Chances Are Omnibus (Gender Swap Fiction) Page 33