“And you believed him?”
“Well, yes, I suppose I did.”
“Why?”
“Well, the girl looked very like him.”
“But not identical?”
“No, she was a female version of Kenneth.”
“Did you ever see them together?”
“No.”
“Have you seen her since?”
“I haven’t been home; I daren’t.”
“Quite. Perhaps it’s best I speak to Kenneth about this.”
“No, you can’t!” Linda said, quite heatedly.
John was intrigued.
“Why on earth not; there could be a very rational explanation for what you think you saw?”
“Kenneth might say things that I don’t want him to say!” she said, clearly getting distraught.
John frowned. Linda was showing some clear symptoms of paranoia and a real sense of being disconnected to reality. He had seen this before in people with high-powered and stressful jobs. There was a general inability to deal with both home-life and work. Often, one or the other would descend into an unreal type of chaos, involving hallucinations and the imagination creating an artificial reality in which rational and logical thought was conspicuous by its absence.
“Where is Kenneth now?”
“I hope he’s in school.”
“Good; now, does he attend as Kenneth or the girl?”
“Keira.”
“Quite; does he attend as Keira?”
“He says he has to go as Kenneth until he’s legally accepted as a girl.”
John nodded, making some notes on his pad.
“Does anyone else know about his intended transition?”
“He says the Headmaster knows, and some doctor that the school sent him to.”
“What doctor; do you know?”
“No; just that it’s a woman.”
“You don’t know her name?”
“No.”
“Now, I understand that in gender dysphoria cases where the patient is under seventeen, parental consent is necessary for the doctors to undertake various courses of treatment. Have you been made aware of this?”
“Oh yes, he made me sign a form.”
“Made you?”
Linda balked. If she mentioned what Kenneth threatened her with, then ...
“He told me I had to.”
“Why?”
“He said he’s been a boy long enough and he has to be a girl now.”
“Have you spoken to Graham about what has happened?”
“He’s abroad, on business, again. We haven’t spoken in days.”
John was aware, as were most people who knew the couple that Graham was screwing his secretary, but he thought that Linda didn’t know. Clearly from her tone of voice, she did!
“Okay; so I think I have an idea of what you believe has happened. I’m not a psychiatrist, so will confer with a colleague of mine. In the meantime, I’ll prescribe some medication that will calm you down a bit. If these help and some of what you might be imagining disappear, then we’ll reconsider, but if things continue, then I might have to refer you to someone more qualified.
“I will also contact the school. As Kenneth’s GP I should have been kept in the loop if he’s been referred to another doctor. However, as I am a friend of the family, he might consider that I am too close to you, as a family, to deal with this little problem objectively. I can understand his reasoning, although I’m sure I could handle this little problem without much difficulty.”
He wrote her a prescription and handed it to her.
“Come and see me in five days. If anything untoward happens in the meantime, give me a ring; okay?”
Linda was convinced that John thought her own diagnosis was correct and that she was having a mental breakdown. However, she took the prescription, thanked him, and left. As she drove to the chemist, she called Yvonne and told her the news.
“How have you been since I last saw you?”Anne Dobson asked Kenneth.
“Okay, I guess.”
“No headaches or anything?”
“Nope.”
“About the other issues, did you tell your mother you’d seen me?”
“Yes; but I think she’s having a breakdown.”
“What makes you say that?”
“She’s behaving very oddly. She hasn’t been home for about a week.”
“So, you’re on your own, or is your dad at home?”
“Dad’s still abroad on business.”
“You’re on your own, then?”
“I’m used to it.”
“Does your mother drink?”
“A bit.”
“Tell me a bit about her.”
Kenneth did, keeping it clean, but stressing how important her job was to her, and how unimportant he felt. He alluded to, rather than explained, his ‘suspicions’ of his parents’ infidelity but was not specific. The picture he painted for the doctor was of a young man with obvious dysphoria and a definite conviction that he should be female. He was subject to neglecting parents who were wealthy and so career orientated that it was almost to the point of abuse.
“Have you had contact with anyone from the social services?”
He laughed.
“Don’t be ridiculous; they set dogs onto social workers in my road.”
Anne had to prevent herself from laughing. She found Kenneth remarkably mature and level headed for a teenager with problems.
“Last time you shared a little with me about how you feel and that you firmly believe that you should be a girl. If you could press a button and change gender right now, without any surgery of anything else, would you do it?”
“Yes. I’d even do it, knowing that I had to have painful surgery and have a lifetime of hormones.”
She smiled and wrote on her pad.
“Does it ever happen?” he asked.
“Does ‘what’ ever happen?
“A change of gender, as in the stories on some websites; you know, a normal guy goes to bed and wakes up a genetic female.”
It was her turn to laugh.
“No, it never happens.”
“It would be good if it could, though, wouldn’t it?” he asked.
“It’d save the NHS a fair sized lump of money, and all that time and effort in undergoing transition, hormone treatment, laser treatment, GRS and facial surgery, not to mention the stress and angst among the family and friends.”
“I reckon it’s possible,” he said, with a surprising amount of confidence.
“What is? An instant change?”
“Yes. I mean, they say that in some cases the mind can control the body, don’t they?”
“Not in this sort of case.”
“Why not? I mean, just because it hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t mean it can’t happen.”
“Well, we’re dealing with several different medical issues. One, the DNA is pretty distinct and in only a handful of cases can it get confused. Then you have the genitalia. It is still impossible to grow female reproductive organs inside a previously male body, or vice versa. Then there’s the psychological side, which is highly complex and has to be handled delicately.”
“Then I’ll be the first!” he said, with a smile.
Anne liked Kenneth. Yes, he was clearly a troubled teen, but he was amazingly astute and bright, as well as possessing a highly developed, if a somewhat cynical sense of humour.
“Obviously, taking your age into account, and that you are still in school, we have to tread carefully. The school has written to me and I intend to write back to confirm that you have been diagnosed with a gender dysphoria, so in layman’s terms, you are a transsexual who is about to undergo assessment for transition from male to female. Surgery is not always an option, every case is different, and every person is different.
“One of the difficulties is preventing too much masculine development, so as you are sixteen, you have already initiated puberty, so we will do what we can to stop that, and reverse it to a degree by using hormones.”
She paused, observing that he did not seem particularly interested or even concerned about the prospect.
“If you go down this route, you will have to take female hormones for the rest of your life; you realise that, don’t you?”
“Not if I change properly. I’ll be able to make them myself, if I do that.”