Chances Are Omnibus (Gender Swap Fiction)

by P. T. Dilloway

  “Why?” I start to cry again as I think of the last month. “I was happy. I mean, happier than I’ve been in a long, long time.”

  “Why is that, Stacey?”

  “It’s like you said: because it was easy, simple. I didn’t have all this baggage anymore.”

  “But it was a lie.”

  “So what? It was a good lie.”

  “Do you think you could have gone on living that lie forever?”

  “Why not? If Grace hadn’t shown up and if Dr. Palmer hadn’t called, I’d still be living it. I’d be home right now, dreaming in my bed. Tomorrow I’d get up and Jamie and I would go shopping and maybe see a movie. And Monday I’d go to school and see Darren.” I glare hard at Dr. Macintosh. “That’s the reason you wanted me to remember, isn’t it? You couldn’t stand that your nephew and I were in love. I wasn’t good enough for him.”

  “Why would I think that?”

  “Because I’m not rich or beautiful or anything like that.”

  He shakes his head. His voice is still perfectly calm as he says, “Stacey, you made Darren the happiest he’s been in his entire life. He never could have gone out on stage to play the piano tonight if you hadn’t been there with him.”

  “Then why do this? We were all happier with the lie.”

  “Are you sure about that? Do you think Grace was happy?”

  I think of Grace the last time I saw her, how pale and thin she’d gotten. “No, I guess not.”

  “What about your ex-wife, Madison’s mother? She’s not happy either. And what about Jake and Tess?”

  “They like having us around.”

  “Are you sure about that? You realize how hard Jake’s been working so he can provide for two little girls who showed up on his doorstep?”

  “He always works hard. And Tess likes us around. She likes being a mommy.”

  “Not all the time. Like when two little girls are bickering or when one selfish little girl runs away from home.”

  “Yeah, so maybe it wasn’t a honeymoon in paradise for everyone. But it wasn’t a cakewalk for everyone when I was grown up either. Tess and Jake still had to take care of me.”

  “Not as much, though.”

  “Yeah, maybe not.” The realization starts to sink in. “I was being selfish, wasn’t I?”

  “Not entirely. As I said, you were very helpful for Darren. And for Jamie too.”

  “Now I’m going to hurt them.”

  “Kids are resilient. They’ll bounce back.”

  “Will I?”

  “I think you can, if you want to.” He takes my hand and helps me sit up. “I’ll help you.”

  ***

  Tess is ecstatic to hear from me. I can hear the tears in her voice as she says, “Oh, thank God! I was so worried about you!”

  “I’m sorry, Grandma Tess. I didn’t mean to worry you,” I say. I sound every bit like a little girl who’s been scolded.

  “It’s all right, dear. The important thing is you’re safe.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But when you get home, you’re grounded for two months.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now, your grandfather and Madison should still be at the lab. You can probably meet them there if Dr. Macintosh will take you.”

  “OK.” Before I hang up, I say, “I love you, Grandma.”

  “I love you too, dear. Come back safe.”

  I turn to Dr. Macintosh. “Can I say goodbye to Darren? I promise I won’t be mean.”

  “Go ahead. I have to ask Mrs. Finley to look after him for a couple of hours anyway.”

  I run upstairs and knock on Darren’s door. “Darren? It’s me. I’m really sorry about what happened. Can we talk about it?”

  “Go away!” he shouts.

  “Darren, please. I might be going away for a really long time. I just want to say goodbye.”

  I wait for a minute; each second brings me closer to tears. I may not be a little girl on the inside, but I still love Darren with a ten-year-old’s enthusiasm. And maybe some of that love wasn’t just a little girl’s crush. Darren is so sweet and kind and talented and he’s not bad-looking, at least not to me.

  The door finally opens. He’s still in his pajamas, but I can see he’s been crying too. I can’t blame him after the awful things I said to him. I try to hug him, but he pushes me back. “What do you want?”

  “I want to say goodbye. And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean all those things I said. I was just mad.” My eyes water. It won’t be long until I’m a sobbing mess again. “I was so stupid to think I could run away. I mean, I’m just a little girl. I can’t even turn on the stove yet.”

  Darren smiles for just a moment at this. “It was pretty stupid,” he says.

  “But it’s not stupid that I love you, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” I lean forward to kiss him on the lips. It’s another dry child’s kiss, but to me it feels better than even when I kissed Grace. Maybe because my love for Darren is so much purer.

  After we pull apart, he asks, “Do you have to leave tonight?”

  “I’m afraid so. I wish I could stay,” I say and then remember his song for me. “But it’s like you said, we can still write. Maybe chat online and stuff. And maybe you can go to college in California or I can go to college here and then we can be together again.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But no matter what, I’m never going to forget you. You’re my first real boyfriend.”

  “You’re my first real girlfriend too.”

  “For the rest of my life, even when I’m an old, old lady I can say, ‘Darren Macintosh was the first boy I kissed.’”

  “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

  “So do I.” We look down shyly at the floor at the same time. “I’ll talk to you later, OK?”

  “OK.”

  I give him one final peck on the cheek. Then I go downstairs to wait for Darren’s uncle to take me back to Lennox Pharmaceuticals.

  ***

  While I wait, I change out of the red dress into something warmer. Jamie gave me a T-shirt and jeans, both as pink as the sweatshirt. When I see myself swaddled in so much pink, I don’t feel as bad as I once did. I look cute.

  Not long after I step out of the bathroom, Dr. Macintosh returns with an old woman, his next-door neighbor. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Finley,” he says. “It should only be for an hour or so. I’m afraid Stacey here isn’t feeling well.”

  I take that as my cue to cough dramatically. “I want Gwamma and Gwampa,” I say. I borrow Maddy’s cute toddler lisp.

  “Oh, you poor dear,” Mrs. Finley says. She pats my head. Then she turns back to Dr. Macintosh. “I’ll take good care of Darren for you.”

  “Thank you so much,” he says again.

  He carries me out to his Lexus. I lean my head against his shoulder like a sick little girl would. “You’re sure she’s buying this?” I ask.

  “You might have oversold it a little.”

  “Sorry.”

  He opens the back door and buckles me in the middle. “Stay right there,” he says.

  “I know. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I stay in place as he goes around to the driver’s seat and gets behind the wheel. He starts up the engine. A few seconds later we’re on the road to the lab, where Dr. Palmer promises to have good news for us.

  I know something is wrong when there’s no one at the front gate. The gate itself is raised so we can drive through, but there’s no one inside the guard shack. At least no one alive. Dr. Macintosh doesn’t think anything of it, but he’s not as familiar with Lennox Pharmaceuticals as I am.

  “Do you have a gun?” I ask.

  “No. Do I need one?”

  “Right now, maybe.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There should have been someone manning the gate. They wouldn’t just leave it open and untended at night, not after what happened with Artie Luther. They aren’t that stupid.”

&n
bsp; “I see. You think we should turn back?”

  “No,” I say. I point to Jake’s Fairlane parked by the front doors. “We gotta see what happened to Jake and Maddy.”

  “Maybe you should stay here,” Dr. Macintosh suggests.

  “You won’t know where you’re going.”

  “Stacey—”

  “Jake and Maddy went in there. They could be dead or hurt. We gotta find out.”

  “OK,” he says. He gets out of the car. I assume he’ll open my door for me, but instead he opens the trunk. He rummages around until I see him hold up a tire iron. “It’s something, right?”

  “Yeah, something.”

  I climb out of the car. It feels reassuring to take his much-bigger hand. I lead him up to the front doors, which are unlocked. I remember the first time I came here. Artie Luther’s goons murdered the guards on duty then.

  Whoever broke into Lennox Pharmaceuticals this time isn’t any kinder. I press my face against Dr. Macintosh when I see a guard on the floor behind the front desk. He pats my back as I whimper. “It’s all right, Stacey.”

  “Maybe I should go back to the car,” I say. “I’m too little for this.”

  “You’ll be fine,” he says. “Just keep your eyes closed until I say so.”

  “OK.”

  I do as he says, my eyes squeezed shut as we shuffle away from the desk. When I open them again, I see the elevators. “We should take the stairs,” I say. My old cop instincts kick in. “They might have sabotaged the elevators.”

  “That makes sense.”

  He opens the door to the stairs. The stairs look so much bigger now, like a mountain. He pats my back. “How about a piggyback ride?”

  “Sure,” I say, the little girl in me unable to resist. Besides, it’ll be faster this way.

  He tucks the tire iron into his waistband and then picks me up with a groan. “I’m not that heavy,” I say. “I’m not fat like Maddy.”

  “You could lose a few pounds,” he says.

  I swat at his head as he puts me up on his shoulders. “That’s mean.”

  “I’m joking. I think your little tummy is cute.”

  “Thanks.” I look up at the steps, which seem a lot smaller now. “It’s the fifth floor. Watch out for any guards.”

  “You’ll see them before I can.”

  “Maybe.”

  At the fourth floor I start to get nervous. What will we find in the lab? Will it be trashed, Jake and Maddy’s bloody bodies on the floor? What about Dr. Palmer? Did they kill her too? Or if someone is after FY-1978 again they might have kept her alive, at least for now.

  There’s no one on the stairs to the fifth floor. If we’re lucky, Jake might have taken care of whoever it was. He might be cleaning up right now. Maddy might be napping somewhere, thumb in her mouth while she sleeps.

  As Dr. Macintosh opens the door to the fifth floor, we listen for anyone. There’s no sound of anyone alive up here. The lights are out, which leaves just dim red emergency lights. I whimper again and lean down to be closer to Dr. Macintosh.

  “It’s all right, Stacey,” he whispers. “Maybe you should stay here.”

  “No. It’d be scarier to be here alone.”

  I ask to be put down and he sets me on the floor. I take his hand again and lead him towards Dr. Palmer’s lab. He takes out the tire iron again, just in case. We creep along the dark corridors; my stomach churns more with every second as I wait for something to pop out at us. It’s even scarier than when Jamie and I watched Dream House by ourselves in the theater. If only I could be back home, in my bunk bed, clutching Pinky while I dream.

  No one jumps out at us. We reach the doors to the lab. I back away and flatten myself against the wall so Dr. Macintosh can take the lead. He raises the tire iron as he pushes one door open. I close my eyes and wait for the sound of a gunshot or a scream.

  I hear Dr. Macintosh ask, “Mr. Madigan? Can you hear me?”

  I hurry into the room. The lab is trashed. Jake is on the floor, surrounded by broken glass. There’s a large spot of blood on his right calf and a gash on his head. Someone shot him in the leg and then hit him, probably with something made of glass like a beaker.

  I kneel down beside him and put my head to his chest. He’s still alive! He seems to be breathing normally. Neither wound is probably fatal, unless he loses too much blood. I look up at Dr. Macintosh. “We need to tie off that wound in his leg and bandage his head. There’s probably a first aid kit around here somewhere.”

  “I’ll check,” Dr. Macintosh says.

  While he does that, I glance around the rest of the room. There’s no one else in here. No Dr. Palmer. No Maddy. Did she run away to hide somewhere else? We’ll have to search the building. After Jake is out of danger of bleeding to death.

  Dr. Macintosh returns with a red plastic box. “I found it,” he says. He opens it up. I play Florence Nightingale and clean the gash on Jake’s head and then apply a bandage to it. As I finish up, his eyes open.

  “Stacey?” he whispers.

  “Hi, Grandpa,” I say. “What happened? Where’s Maddy?”

  “Took her.”

  “Who?”

  “Ling,” he says and then passes out again.

  Chapter 41

  Dr. Macintosh ties a tourniquet around Jake’s leg while I sit on the floor, knees tucked beneath my chin. It can’t be Dr. Ling. He’s dead. That prison of his exploded. We saw it. The police investigated it. He couldn’t have survived.

  The cop in me reminds me we didn’t actually see him die. The police hadn’t identified all of the remains yet. He could have gotten out in time. He could have been wounded, not killed. Though the question then is why he didn’t try to abduct us sooner. He had plenty of chances to pluck us away from Jake and Tess.

  “That ought to hold him for now,” Dr. Macintosh says. “We should call an ambulance.”

  “You do that. They won’t believe me,” I say. It occurs to me then how useless I am right now, too little to be much good to anyone, especially my daughter.

  I stay with Jake while Dr. Macintosh uses his cell phone to call 911. I hope Jake will wake up again to provide more details, but he stays unconscious. That leaves it up to me, who until two hours ago thought she was a ten-year-old girl.

  As I do on stage, I take a couple of deep breaths to try to relax. I close my eyes and try to think. Maddy needs me right now. Not Stacey Chang, her big sister. She needs Detective Steve Fischer, her daddy. First, what does Ling want Maddy for? The FY-1978. I remember what Qiang said, that Ling planned to take us to China so he could run more experiments before he had us killed and dissected.

  He’ll take her to China. He probably wanted both of us, but he’ll settle for just Madison. He’ll want to get there before anyone can catch up to him. He’ll be safe in China, free from extradition. So he’ll take a plane. Commercial flying is out; it’s too risky to keep a toddler—even if he drugs her—with him on a plane full of strangers for thirteen hours.

  A private jet. There’s less security on the smaller airfields. Plus he won’t have to worry some do-gooders on the flight will try to stop him. And God knows he can afford to charter a private jet from here to China.

  I leap to my feet. I run down the hall and slam into Dr. Macintosh with childish enthusiasm. “Dr. Mac, Dr. Mac! I know where he’s taking her!”

  “Where’s that, sweetheart?”

  “Dixon Field.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “We should call the police.”

  “They won’t believe us! And we gotta hurry. He’s taking her to China!”

  “China?”

  “He’s going to dissect her!”

  “You’re sure?”

  I take his hand and start to pull him towards the door. “Come on, we gotta go!”

  “What about Mr. Madigan?”

  “You called an ambulance, right?”

  “Yes—”

  “Then he’ll be fine. Let’s go!
”

  I don’t ask for a piggyback ride. It’s easier for me to run down the stairs than up them. I actually make it down ahead of Dr. Macintosh. He’s going to his car, but I stop and point to Jake’s. “This will be faster.”

  “I don’t have the keys.”

  “I do! I took them before I left.”

  Dr. Macintosh tousles my hair. “You are one clever little girl.”

  ***

  Dr. Macintosh hasn’t driven a stick in fifteen years. That explains why we’re thrown against our seatbelts every time he has to shift for the first couple of miles. “Maybe I should drive,” I say sullenly.

  “It’s coming back to me. Don’t worry.”

  “Will that be before or after I barf?”

  “So why Dixon Field?”

  “It’s the closest. He’s going to want to make a fast getaway. Soon as he’s over international waters, no one can touch him.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “So do I.”

  Dixon Field is about ten miles away. Once Dr. Macintosh gets the hang of driving a stick, it only takes us about five minutes to get there. The airfield is located at one end of the island; it faces the ocean so anyone who misses the runway can end up in the drink. It doesn’t have terminals or anything like that, just hangars for the companies who keep a plane there.

  The gates are locked as we approach. “You think we should run through them?”

  “Yes,” I say, though I know how pissed Jake will be about his precious Fairlane getting dinged up. But if it lets us save Madison, then it’ll be worth it.

  The Fairlane roars into the gates. We’re lucky this is a private airport that doesn’t have anything stronger than a chain-link fence with barbed wire. The car slams through the left side of the gate; it almost bends in half before it bounces away from us. I let out a scream of joy at this, even as I’m being thrown hard against my seatbelt.

  “Let’s do it again!” I scream.

  “Not on your life.”

  The question now is which hangar belongs to Ling. The easiest way to find out is to zip around the place to look for which doors are open. That’s what Dr. Macintosh does. At two in the morning there aren’t many hangars to choose from, only one with its door open, a plane being readied for takeoff. There are two big guys near it who sure as hell aren’t flight attendants.