Author's Note
: I'm legally obligated to warn the reader that the story is now starting to have a faint incest vibe.
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CHAPTER 3
LIKE A FLASHBACK IN THE DARK
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When Gabrielle came out of the bathroom, naked as the day she was born, everything had changed. The allegory was lost on her but her head was too busy anyway. All the events, the discoveries, the fresh memories: all as many internal monologues like a cacophony of reinforced love, renewed hope and adventures to come. The bass line was fireworks of sperm and the riff was the tan lines on Sophia's butt. Atop the mix was the possibility of a new era in her most secret of her secret life. With someone she could welcome at her side.
Sophia.
"I have to tell Lily about this."
*****
Gabrielle Sommers did not remember meeting Lily Chervony. It happened during this part of early life before consciousness kicks in.
When the Sommers met Miss Chervony, the three of them were employed at the same publishing company in Los Angeles. On one side, conservative parents of two, working in the religious texts department; on the other, a tattooed, pierced, Crocs-wearing redhead, junior editor at the street art books department, single and very much pregnant: nothing would have brought these people together, except casual chatter at the baby shower.
Isla Chervony needed a new place to live as soon as possible before giving birth.
Three blocks away from them a house was for sale, the Sommers said, not thinking she could afford it.
But she could.
And she did.
Three months later, on a courtesy visit, their year-old Gabrielle saw her week-old Lily in her crib and that was it: friends at first sight.
By an evident incompatibility of characters and values, the parents never got close other than by circumstance: being neighbors, coworkers and having daughters bound by a friendship whose origins faded into the mists of time. But despite a lot of opposing views on life and on raising children, they understood the two girls were also raising each other and they would have to stay out of their way.
They grew up every day together, understanding each other in a wordless unison, sharing secrets as easily as sharing their toys.
And secrets were plenty.
Lily did remember when her friend shared her most secret secret. It was the day Isla asked Gabrielle why her parents had become so over-protective, why she was wearing all these shapeless clothes, why she had no more friends at school and flunked twelfth grade, and most importantly why she dumped that boy.
Gabrielle answered all that but later and to Lily only, safe under the covers. At first a quiet tale lit by flashlight, which would become a lifelong dialog.
It went kind of like this:
It was Halloween night. It was Gabrielle's birthday.
She was seventeen years old when she entered that house. It looked like in those movies, the kind of party that stops when the cops show up. A festive brawl so big she didn't even know who invited her.
There was everything her parents (all parents) feared there would be. Alcohol, drugs, sharp objects and pointy corners, boys, men. There was her first boyfriend ever. Dylan. Far from Ryan but at least it rhymed. There was Sophia too. Kind of her chaperone till midnight.
Till she turned eighteen.
Gabrielle was born on November 1
st
, officially at midnight sharp, colloquially at witching hour. So far her idea of a fun time had been hanging out, driving around or playing Mario Kart. She was dressed as a biblically accurate angel. Her belly full of birthday cake, she was six beers down plus maybe five shots of whatever. She was one hit away from throwing up. She was going too far all at once, unleashed for the first time. From shy to reckless in a few sips. She was scheming a way to finally get farer than second base with Dylan tonight. Assuming this CEO of autism would know how to deal with it. Whenever she bumped into her through the crowd, she violently hugged her sister, dressed as slutty Jack Sparrow, so violently happy to be there. To live this.
She wished Lily were here. That hippie nerd was at one of those nerdy hippie pagan gatherings in a field somewhere.
With her mom, ugh. Without her phone, double-ugh.
She wished Sophia had come with a date too. Instead she was with a girl friend, Betty, dressed as slutty Harley Quinn cause she was original like that. Together they were pretending to be slutty lesbians, as straight white girls do when they're drunk.
Gabrielle pretended to be at home in this teenage mess.
Whether the
thing
did start at midnight sharp, she never knew. Actually she didn't know what time it was when she came out of the bathroom she'd locked herself in, to go shout into Sophia's ear that something was wrong.
Sophia saw 1:36am on her phone when she had no other choice but to call and wake up the parents.
Inebriated panic chased Betty away, put Dylan into impotent autopilot. They locked themselves in an empty bedroom, Gabrielle crying, Sophia freaking out.
The now 18-year-old was itching in her panties, it had been going on for an hour and it didn't stop.
It sounded funny, it sounded gross. It wasn't. Sophia had to stop Gabrielle from scratching herself raw. She had blood under her fingernails. It was no joke.
People knocked at some point, thinking there was a murder in there; the crying, the yelling, the distressed calls.
"What do I do?"
*What's wrong with her?*
"I DON'T KNOW!"
*She drank too much, is that it? just tell me!*
This kind of call.
Eventually it was decided that Dylan was sober enough to take Sophia's car and drive them to the emergency room where they would meet the parents.
Gabrielle's voice was broken when they arrived. She was terrified and exhausted, as everybody else in the car. Yet not as much as Camille and Greg Sommers.
They found in the waiting room one daughter groaning and shaking, the other gone to the crashing side of drunk and painfully aware of it, and a boy they had never seen before and who looked like he had come out of his house for the first time in his life.
He was thanked and promptly dismissed. The last time Gabrielle saw him.
It wasn't the place to raise their voices and the time to start a parental inquisition. It went like psycho-gymnastics to try and figure out what happened, trying not to stir lies, not to antagonize their children while precisely asking about their mischief, what Gabrielle took and how much, if she watched her glass the whole time, if she cut herself shaving her pubic hair and why the hell she did that in the first place.
An hour later once the flow of dressed up teens with fat lips or alcohol poisoning had dimmed enough, a triage nurse brought them to another nurse, who examined her, then two interns, one by one floored by the case. Nothing was wrong with her apart from the intoxication and a high level of stress.
They paged the gynecologist on duty and had to explain Gabrielle they could not give her tranquilizers of any sort yet. So the voices did rise. And before she could get accused of simulating, she asked everybody to leave her "room", she threw them out in the hallway, far enough that she would not hear them arguing. She stayed alone with her pins and needles.
The rash was going so deep in her vagina it was no use scratching herself anymore. And she hanged on to her exhaustion, because at least it wasn't fear.
In this configuration, Sophia could get scolded and lectured openly, but she, her parents, the whole staff froze as something unusual happened:
The telephone operator had left her workstation to tell the interns she just got a call from a Department of Experimental Medicine. And in a few minutes the phone would ring inside Dr. Kumar's office and they would have to take it.
"Why Kumar?"
"Hell if I know, honey."
"Is he here?"
"I don't see why."
Dr. Reed, the less nervous of the two interns, turned to nurse Koenig. "It's on the...third floor? Do we have a key?"
And as she opened the door for him three minutes later, they could hear the landline ringing from inside the dark and empty room. Somehow they knew it would not stop until they picked it up. Weirdness brought weird certitudes, especially at this time of night.
It was a man on the line, presenting himself as Dr. Stewart, head of the Department of Experimental Medicine at Stanford. He had a message for Mr. & Mrs. Sommers.
It was now 4am, a puzzled Dr. Reed handed them a printed list of three names with their contact information.
"First we have to tell you your daughter is fine," he said, "she's in no danger whatsoever. But you will have to go see one of these three specialists tomorrow, after she spends the rest of the night in observation with us."
"I don't understand, the closest one is like an hour away from here," Mr. Sommers said.
"I assure you they're all very competent physicians, I've met Dr. Emmerson a few times, she—"
"Who gave you that list?" Mrs. Sommers cut in.
Koenig and Reed exchanged a quick glance.
"Dr. Stewart, from Stanford. We checked. The method may be a little unconventional but the man knows what he's talking about, he..." Reed explained but meanwhile, far away from this uncomfortable talk and the tumult of the place, Gabrielle was asleep on a gurney, behind curtains, knocked-out. The agonizing tingling in her genitals had stopped.
It had been replaced by sexual pleasure. Unbeknownst to her. Just a gentle sweetness inside her, making her twitch like a cat dreaming...
...until the car radio woke her up the next morning and it was only a vague impression in her numbed self, soon fading out as dreams often do.
There was an orange dawn on the left and Sophia on her right. A long road and tall trees covered with dew far ahead and far behind.
She asked where they were going. Mrs. Sommers said Dr. Emmerson, to be examined, and if they had been able to get an appointment at such short notice and on a Sunday, it meant something serious was at stake. So she had to be ready.
"I'm not itchy anymore, you know? I feel...fine, I guess."
Her mother on the passenger seat turned to look at her, nearly frowning; then to her husband and asked him: "Do we even have coverage for that?"
Sophia woke up, hungover. Mr. Sommers turned the radio up to listen to the 8am news.
Thirty minutes later, they were in Emmerson's office, ready to hear.
*****
Not only the doctor looked young, she also looked unprepared. It didn't seem right in this impressive, state of the art medical office, so elegantly isolated in the verdure of a high-class business park. After five minutes, everybody sitting across from her, she was still skimming through the medical record spread out on her desk. She still had not asked to examine Gabrielle. She still had not said much.
When she eventually raised her head, it looked like she was taking the plunge:
Thirty years ago, a medical team studied the case of Regina White, a girl whose vagina had mutated into a penis on her eighteenth birthday.
The subject had none of the usual intersex traits, genetically, hormonally, physiologically, etc. She simply was a woman with a penis, in every impossible way.
After some breakthroughs, the study caught the attention of Dr. Stewart who had just written a confidential report for the World Health Organization, documenting hundreds of similar cases, genital mutations happening at random around the globe. Always females. Always eighteen.
He met with Regina, then with the team and, after a long negotiation, relocated them to Stanford, under his authority.
Becoming soon the most advanced research unit on the matter, they were asked to organize a program, backed by the UN, to detect and protect the girls undergoing transformation and help them keep a normal life.
Considering the aberrant symptoms and the moral crisis it could bring, it was decided that the caducean syndrome—as it was called—would be kept secret from the public and the research was to be managed by only a small ring of scientists.
Emmerson entered the program two years ago and had sworn an Oath of protection. She was a Tutor, waiting for her first assignment. It was why Dr. Stewart had brought the Sommers to her. Their daughter was most likely to be a Rebz—as they were called.
Examining Gabrielle, taking a blood sample, etc. was pointless as the results would come back too late: the transformation was occurring over the course of three days, and she had gone through
day 1
