by Witt, L. A.
The defense even made a feeble argument, complete with a so-called expert witness, that Alex’s resistance to the implant was a symptom of his incompetence to make the decision at all.
“Shifters who refuse the implant are in dire need of extensive therapy,” the alleged expert had said. “Forced treatment of a shifter is no different than forced treatment of a patient with a severe form of schizophrenia. When a patient’s illness clouds his judgment, it’s necessary for others to step in and take action for his own good.”
The prosecution, of course, eviscerated her. He brought out the psychiatrist who’d evaluated Alex, and while she acknowledged his depression and drinking problem, she declared him fully competent to make his own decision regarding the implant. Plus, Alex’s parents and the pastor—who’d also been the “surgeon”—were nowhere near qualified to declare Alex competent or not. Still, Alex and I both worried the other expert’s comments may have planted seeds of doubt into the heads of some of the jurors.
Next up on the stand was a neurosurgeon specializing in these implants. He testified for the prosecution, and calmly rattled the jury with grim facts about the devices, potential side effects, invasiveness of the surgery, risk after risk after risk. By the end of that testimony, sweat curled the ends of Alex’s hair.
The worst part of the trial was when Alex took the stand. The defense attorney ripped him to shreds, questioning him so mercilessly that just thinking about it made my stomach turn. She made a point of using his given name, sneering every time it found its mark, until the judge ordered her to use “Mr. Nichols” instead. Even then, she emphasized “Mr.” just to get under his skin, and it worked. Alex never lost his cool, fortunately, but when he got home that night, he killed better than half of a bottle of tequila.
At long last, both sides rested, and after the closing arguments, the jury was dismissed to hash it out. I’d go to my grave wondering what went down in the deliberation room. The case was as cut and dry as any I’d ever seen. Alex was an adult. Neither his parents nor the surgeon were qualified to deem him unable to make his own medical decisions, and a qualified psychiatrist had deemed him fully competent. The surgery was performed without his consent, in unsterile conditions, using an implant that wasn’t FDA approved. Even the most bigoted shifter hater had to have seen that Alex’s parents and the surgeon acted illegally.
Cut and dry or not, it took six hours for the jury to reach a guilty verdict.
One of the most heartbreaking moments came not during the testimonies, but after the verdicts were read and his parents were taken from the courtroom in handcuffs. Sitting with a social worker and her foster parents on the other side of the room, Alex’s younger sister collapsed into sobs. He took one look at her, then turned away, grimacing with more pain than when he’d had the spinal headache. If there was a moment when I was certain he’d regretted pressing charges, that was it.
As soon as court was adjourned, we made a quick exit with the DA, carefully dodging both family and media. After slipping out through a back door, I drove Alex to my place, where we hid his car in my garage. Cell phones stayed off. So did the television. We shut ourselves in and shut the world out.
The trial was over. His parents—and most likely the pastor who thought he was a surgeon—were going to jail.
Still, Alex was in no mood to celebrate.
He’d said next to nothing on the drive home. I suspected part of that had to do with the conversation he’d had with the DA before we left. Though it was highly likely the defendants would be ordered to pay for the surgery, the DA agreed with Alex’s pessimistic prediction that getting the money would be like getting blood from a stone.
“The pastor’s assets have been seized pending an investigation,” the DA had said. “And from the sound of it, he was as broke as your parents. Getting close to a hundred thousand dollars out of any of them probably isn’t going to happen.”
I appreciated his honesty. I was sure Alex did, too. Still, he might’ve held off on that little tidbit for a day or two. Alex had enough on his mind.
One elbow on the armrest of my couch, Alex chewed his thumbnail and stared into nothing with blank eyes. His foot tapped rapidly, and his fingers drummed on his knee. He looked simultaneously restless and exhausted.
“How are you holding up?” I asked.
Alex sighed. “I just put my parents in prison. My sister’s world is flipped on its ass. I still have this thing in my spine. I . . . really don’t know.”
“Want a drink?”
“Several, actually.”
I laughed quietly. “How about starting with one?”
He managed something in the ballpark of a laugh, and I went into the kitchen to get us a couple of drinks. When I came back, we both sat on the couch, beers in hand and alone with our thoughts.
Out of nowhere, Alex broke the silence. “Ever wonder what kind of a backlash there would be if someone came up with an implant that could change a static into a shifter?”
“Somehow I doubt that would make it very far. The world wants to make more shifters static, not the other way around.”
“And they wonder why so many shifters commit suicide,” he muttered.
“The suicide rate is really that much higher?”
He nodded. “Surprised?”
“Yes and no.” I played at the label on my beer bottle with my thumbnail. “Just seems like, as a society, we’d be over this sort of thing by now.”
“You would think.” He took a long drink. “Things are better now. Health care’s catching up. Discrimination is illegal, even if it’s not enforced as much as it should be. Being a shifter isn’t grounds for automatic child removal or requiring supervised visits. We can get the same custody arrangements as statics. Some judges are still asses about it, but the tide is turning very, very slowly.”
“Something tells me today might help turn that tide.”
He stared at the coffee table with unfocused eyes. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”
“A jury ruled in your favor,” I said. “Yeah, it took them a while to reach the verdict, but it did ultimately come out in your favor.”
Alex shrugged. “The law was on my side. They didn’t have much choice.”
“Which is why it took them six hours to deliberate?” I resisted the urge to put a hand on his arm. I’d seen Alex depressed too many times before, and I couldn’t be sure if even the most platonic contact would be welcome now. “Maybe this means people are catching on that being a shifter and wanting to stay a shifter isn’t a bad thing.”
He didn’t respond.
“Let’s face it,” I said. “Ten years ago, the prosecutor would have been hard-pressed to persuade a jury that you were mentally capable of refusing the implant, even with the psychiatrist’s testimony. The burden of proof wouldn’t have been on the defense, let’s put it that way.” I paused. “Twenty years ago, I doubt this would have ever gone to court. Another ten before that, you would have been institutionalized long before this ever happened.”
Alex shuddered.
“Society’s getting there,” I said. “You said so yourself. Every case like this, everyone who’s willing to stand up like you did, is one step closer.”
“Always glad to be the sacrificial lamb.”
I swallowed hard, but didn’t know what to say. Seeing him like this killed me, just like it had every time she’d fallen into a depression over the last couple of years. For a fleeting moment, my mind went back to that weekend we’d spent at the coast. Her demons hadn’t followed her then. Whatever was waiting for her back home seemed forgotten. For those three days, it was only us. That was the one and only time I’d ever seen her truly happy, and ever since then, I’d ached to see that again.
It was there. I’d tasted it once. I just didn’t know how to bring it back, and it sure as hell wasn’t coming back on a day like today. He certainly deserved to feel that way after what he’d been through. There had to be a karmic scale out there that had long a
go reached the point of “okay, enough bad shit, let’s send this guy some happiness.”
The urge to reach for him and put an arm around him was, more than it had been since all this had started, almost irresistible. We hadn’t touched in weeks, and tonight, I wanted to be close to him, if only to provide comfort. Even before things had gotten so complicated, we’d had moments like this, and when they’d happened, I was completely helpless. I couldn’t find the words to encourage him, make him feel better, anything.
So this time, I settled for the next best thing. “Another drink?”
“Please.”
With fresh beers in hand, the silence hung between us once again.
I finally spoke. “Mind if I ask a personal question?”
“I’ve been answering them for the last week,” he said into his drink. “One more won’t make much difference.”
“Is it true what they all said during the trial? About attempting suicide when you were a teenager?”
He looked at me, his expression blank. “You think I lied under oath?”
“No, no, I’m just curious about it. You don’t have to answer. I know you’ve probably talked about it more in the last week than you ever wanted to.”
Alex didn’t respond right away. He took a long drink, rolled it around in his mouth, and all the while, his eyes were focused on something in the distance. A few times, I thought he was letting the subject die, but then he spoke.
“My parents think I tried to kill myself twice,” he whispered. “They don’t know about the third time.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “What happened?”
“The first time was when I was thirteen.” He rubbed his forehead. “After my stepdad told me what really happened to my father. He said my dad had been so ashamed of what he was, and so haunted by it, he’d killed himself. And I thought, hell, if Dad couldn’t handle this, then neither could I. But later, I talked to my aunt, and she said that was bull. He didn’t kill himself because he was a shifter.”
I moistened my parched lips. “Why did he do it?”
Alex swallowed. “Because after my mom took us from him, he had nothing left.” He focused on peeling the label off his beer bottle. “She refused to let him see us because he was a shifter, and back then, the courts were on her side.”
“Did she think it was contagious or something?”
“She was still afraid we’d both turn out to be shifters, and she was sure he’d encourage us to try shifting. Like he’d egg us on or something.” Alex sighed and set the bottle on the end table. “Anyway, then when I was fifteen, my folks sent me to this summer camp. I didn’t realize ’til I got there that it was just a month-long seminar of trying to browbeat me into realizing there was something wrong with me. I mean, what did they want? It wasn’t like I could stop being a shifter. Even if I didn’t shift, the gene was still there. The need to shift was still there.”
“So you tried to kill yourself after that?”
He shook his head. “If I’d done it after, I might have succeeded. I did it at the camp, and someone found me in time.”
“Is that what happened to your wrists?” I asked softly.
He pulled his forearm against himself, turning the other wrist downward to hide the scars.
“You don’t have to—”
“These weren’t suicide attempts.” After a moment’s hesitation, he held out his arm. The lines were hair-thin and perfectly straight, though not parallel to each other, scoring his skin all the way from his wrist to just below his elbow. “I really don’t know if it was a cry for help, a way to get attention, or just a way to have control over some pain, but . . . there it is.”
“Did it work as a cry for help?”
He snorted. “Hardly. I spent my teenage years wearing long-sleeve shirts for a reason.” He glared at the scars. “I don’t know what I was thinking, honestly. I was so fucked up in the head back then.”
“How long did that go on?”
“Couple of years. I stopped when I was sixteen or so, I think.”
“What changed?”
He laughed humorlessly. “Started drinking.” He lifted his beer bottle to his lips. “Didn’t hurt as much.” After he took a drink, he watched his fingers playing with the bottle cap on the end table. “I almost succeeded when I was seventeen. Killing myself, I mean.”
My blood turned cold. “You did?”
Cheeks coloring slightly, he nodded. “That’s the time my parents don’t know about. I had my stepdad’s pistol. Out, loaded, ready to go.”
I swallowed. “What stopped you?”
“It occurred to me that he’d probably get some sick satisfaction out of knowing I’d taken care of ‘the problem’ using his own gun. He always made a point of making sure I knew where the gun and ammo were, so . . .” Alex trailed off, shrugging with one shoulder. “That, and I was only a few months away from eighteen. I just needed to get through a few more months, and then I could get out.”
“Damn,” I whispered.
“Yeah.” He stared at nothing for another long moment. “You know, sometimes I wonder if my dad would have stayed around if he’d known I was a shifter.”
I cocked my head.
“I mean, you think he’d have offed himself if he knew he was leaving me—a shifter—behind with my mother and stepfather?”
“If he was a shifter, wouldn’t he have known you were, though?”
“Not necessarily. It’s genetic, but I don’t know, I guess it’s recessive or something. My sister’s static, so . . .” He shrugged. “Dad probably didn’t know I was, too. I knew before he died, but I had no way of reaching him. And I guess even if I could have, I was afraid he’d tell my mom. Don’t know why, but . . . I was a kid. I was scared.”
“But you eventually told your mother?”
“She figured it out.” He gave a dry laugh as he lifted his beer bottle to his lips again. “There’s only so long you can hide that there’s a female in the house who’s going through puberty. I kept it a secret until I was fourteen, and suddenly they understood—they thought—why I’d tried to do myself in the year before. And it was pretty much downhill from there until I moved out.”
“Wow,” I whispered. “I honestly never realized how much something like this could rule your life.”
“It shouldn’t, but when you constantly hear how horrible you are, what a freak you are, how there’s something wrong with you . . .” His voice caught. He looked away, then quickly went for his drink.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Alex cleared his throat. “That was one of the reasons I was afraid to tell you.”
“What do you mean?”
Looking into his nearly empty beer bottle, he said, “With you, I finally felt like there wasn’t anything wrong with me. When I took you to the Mat, you didn’t freak about the people there. Shifters, trans, anyone. And I guess I got hooked on that. On being around someone who made me feel . . .”
I leaned forward, inclining my head slightly. “What?”
“You made me feel human.” He looked at me. “I didn’t want to lose that.”
“But you just said you knew I was cool with shifters.”
“Being cool with it and sleeping with it are two different things. As we’re both finding out the hard way now. Thanks for sticking by me, though. This can’t be easy for you.”
“Sticking by you is the easy part,” I said softly. “Watching you go through this? Not so much.”
“You say that now,” he said, his voice shaking a little. He dropped his gaze. “We’ll see what happens if I’m stuck as a man for the rest of my life.”
“I don’t care if you are.” I reached across the void and finally made contact, putting a hand over his. His breath caught. Mine did too. His hand twitched under mine, and I thought for a moment he’d pull it away, but he didn’t.
“Alex, I want you to be able to shift because that’s what you need to be happy. But . . .” I swallowed ha
rd. “Even if you can’t, I’m not going anywhere.”
He avoided my eyes. “Listen, I don’t want sympathy, Damon. I don’t want you to stay with me because leaving would make you feel guilty. I hope you’ll at least stay around as a friend, because I really do need the support right now, but as far as our relationship . . .” He looked at me again. “We’ve already kicked the physical side of it, and I know you want that—with someone—as much as I do. It’s your call, continuing this or not, but I won’t hold it against you if you can’t do it.”
What could I say to that? Alex didn’t disgust or repel me, but at least for now, he was male. I was heterosexual. Yeah, I’d made him feel human, but the fact remained we were both human. Only human. I couldn’t make myself feel something that wasn’t there. I couldn’t force chemistry, I couldn’t fake it, and he deserved someone who didn’t have to.
For lack of anything else to say, I asked, “Another drink?”
“I haven’t passed out yet.” He set the empty bottle on the coffee table. “So, yes. Please.”
He wanted to drink himself numb. Drown everything in a brown bottle. Escape, if only for a few hours.
Just this once, I didn’t try to stop him.
I called in sick the next day. Let them fire me. So what if I’d already been out the whole week because of the trial? I was hungover, depressed, demoralized, and I couldn’t afford the fucking surgery anyway, so what did I care if I burned more sick time? Wasn’t like I could go anywhere. I’d taken a cab home from Damon’s last night since we were both too shitfaced to drive. My car was still at his place, and there was no way in hell I was coughing up the money to go to my shit job so I could be gawked at while my head pounded and my boss accumulated reasons to can me.