The Making of Us

by Debbie McGowan

  “OK, seeing as we’re being totally up front…?” Leigh said, seeking my agreement that we were.

  “Yep.”

  “I can’t have kids. Even if I could get pregnant, it would have to be with IVF, and I’d need a caesarean delivery. I had an operation where they kind of made a vagina so I don’t get infections, but I’ve never actually had a period.”

  “From what my mum says, that’s not a bad thing.”

  “Definitely not. I can’t even… I’m not ashamed of having a uterus and ovaries. I’m not ashamed full stop. But there are parts of me that sometimes feel…I don’t know. Weird? I think it’s because the consultant I had when I was younger was obsessed with ‘giving me the best chance at a normal life’, whatever that means. CAH makes you grow really fast, so you’re bigger than all the other kids, and then you just stop growing. If my legs were proportional to my torso, I’d be about five foot ten.” Leigh held their hand up in front of my chin. “It’d make kissing easier.”

  I laughed. “Because it’s so hard.”

  Leigh stretched on tippy-toes, so we could prove how ‘not hard’ it really was, and we kissed on the move.

  “That was when I started running,” they said. “I put loads of weight on, which happens with the growth and hormones and stuff. Weight gain, body hair… Periods would’ve been a step too far.”

  “Do you want kids?” I asked.

  “I’d like to adopt, but it’s absolutely not a deal breaker. It’s just there are loads of kids in care waiting to be adopted, but people don’t want them because they’re too old, and they’re, like, four or something. My foster parents look after these two brothers who are three and six, and the littly’s got cystic fibrosis. He’s a cheeky monkey, so sweet, but even when he was a baby, nobody wanted him because of his CF, and if they did want him, they didn’t want his older brother. How mean is that?”

  “Very,” I said, and I had been listening, but I was sure Leigh’s shivering was getting worse. “Do you need your injection?” I asked.

  Their lip stud shifted left to right.

  “If I’m worrying over nothing, tell me to shut up, OK?”

  They sighed. “No, you’re not. I don’t need my injection, but I don’t feel right.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Sit in the café?” Leigh suggested. “I think I’m just cold.”

  I took off the checked shirt I was wearing over my t-shirt; Leigh accepted it without argument and put it on. It almost reached their knees. “Ready?” I asked.

  Leigh took my hand, and we walked to the café, ordered hot chocolates, and sat near the window. Leigh slouched in the chair with their elbows on the table, their hands deep inside the shirt sleeves, slow-blinking at the view. I wasn’t prepared to risk leaving it any longer.

  “You’re going to hate me for suggesting this—” I hated me for suggesting it “—but I’d be happier if we called 111.”

  “Do it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. I know what they’ll say…” Leigh continued staring out at the ocean.

  It felt like betrayal. All I wanted to do was give the local healthcare team a heads-up in case Leigh’s condition became critical. I took out my mobile and made the call, pressing numbers as directed until I finally made it through to a human being.

  “Can I take your name, please?”

  “My name’s Jesse Thomas. But I’m not the patient.” Leigh’s nostrils flared at the word.

  “What’s the patient’s name, please?”

  “Leigh Hunter.”

  “And their date of birth?”

  I didn’t know and asked Leigh. Twenty-ninth of December. I stored that for future reference and gave the NHS advisor the rest of the info they asked for, including the address of the café, helpfully supplied by our eavesdropping waiter.

  “What’s going on with Leigh today?” the advisor asked.

  “We’re on holiday in Newquay, and—”

  “Steroid dependent,” Leigh interjected.

  “—Leigh is steroid dependent. They got stung by a jellyfish about three-quarters of an hour ago?” I looked to Leigh for confirmation; they nodded. “They became shivery afterwards, and they’re a bit lethargic. They wear a MedicAlert bracelet because they’re at risk of going into adrenal crisis.”

  “How is Leigh doing now?” the advisor asked. I repeated the question to Leigh.

  “Just cold.”

  I gestured to their hot chocolate. Leigh picked it up and drank some.

  “Responsive,” I confirmed for the advisor. “Conscious, breathing normally.” I was so out of my depth.

  “But lethargic and shivering?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK, Jesse. I’m going to send an ambulance, to be on the safe side. They should be with you within fifteen minutes.”

  “Thank you.” The call ended. “I’m sorry,” I said. Leigh shrugged miserably, and I felt awful, but I’d take that over the alternative every time.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirty

  We arrived back a little after five p.m. Leigh stormed ahead through the camper van, past Noah and Matty, who were sitting at a table we didn’t have that morning, straight to our bed, forcefully sliding the door shut behind them. Noah’s gaze met mine, eyebrows raised.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said, which was true, regardless of how it looked. I’d kept them posted on how Leigh was doing—they’d wanted to follow us to the hospital, but there would’ve been no point. “How’s your day been?”

  “All right. We didn’t stay at the beach much longer after you left.”

  “Yeah, we’ve been…chilling,” Matty confirmed. The contrast between his cheeks and his hair gave me a good idea what kind of ‘chilling’ they’d been doing.

  “What’s…” Noah gestured towards the closed door.

  “Hospital staff.”

  “Were they awful?”

  “A bit like British weather. Mostly pleasant with spells of downright nastiness.” Leigh was livid, and rightly so. I was struggling to keep a lid on it myself. “We heard the doctor on the phone to the consultant—‘I have a young person here with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, suspected adrenal insufficiency, gender dysphoria’—”

  The door slid open and banged against the wall. “Which I haven’t,” Leigh snapped.

  Matty sprang out of his seat—the driver’s seat, but swivelled to face the opposite direction—and went straight over to give Leigh a hug. It wasn’t that I was persona non grata, but the second we’d boarded the ambulance, I sensed the change in Leigh’s demeanour—the putting up of the invisible barrier that warned ‘don’t touch me’. I didn’t know how or why, but I understood and respected it. Apparently, it didn’t apply to Matty, and I was OK with that, even if I had taken the brunt of Leigh’s frustration all afternoon.

  “Where’d they get that from?” Matty asked.

  Dramatically, Leigh shielded their eyes, looked up towards the sky—camper van roof—and in a thick Hollywood accent, said, “Is it a girl? Is it a boy? No, it’s Super-confused!”

  Matty eased back on the hug but stayed at Leigh’s side.

  “Booking-in questions,” I complained to Noah. “Name, age, gender…male or female.”

  “That’s not on.”

  “No, but it’s not their fault, you know? It’s the system.”

  “Fuck the system,” Leigh hissed.

  “Too right,” Matty comforted.

  The whole situation had been embarrassing and infuriating—for Leigh, first and foremost, but it got to me by proxy. The paramedics had been on the ball—as had the A&E staff, to be fair. As soon as Leigh arrived, a nurse hooked them up to monitors—blood pressure, oxygen levels, heart rate—and checked their blood sugar, while a doctor took down Leigh’s details—

  ‘Gender?’

  ‘Other.’

  ‘Male or female?’

  ‘Other.’

  ‘What’s on your birth certificate?’


  ‘Male.’

  —followed by questions. And more questions. It turned out the doctor had never dealt with CAH before, and his ‘professional’ curiosity went into overdrive. At first, Leigh was patient and polite, but the questions got more and more personal—and irrelevant—and eventually, Leigh lost it, told the doctor if he wanted to know anything else ‘to call the fucking endocrinologist’, and thrust their emergency card in his face.

  We—and everyone else in A&E—heard every word of the phone consultation, or the doctor’s side of it. Leigh was going to walk out. Correction. They had walked out, but I’d talked them into going back in so they could be discharged officially. Slightly low blood sugar—we hadn’t eaten since breakfast—everything else normal. Now we were ‘home’, and soon, hopefully, we could go back to enjoying our holiday. Did what I’d witnessed mean I’d do it differently next time? No. What else could I do?

  ***

  Hazel and Stuart made us another awesome and totally unhealthy dinner: creamy chicken curry with naan breads and pilau rice. We’d planned to go to the pub afterwards, but it was raining, and we were all knackered.

  “It’ll be the sea air,” Stuart joked, and maybe it was; people always said that about how tired us landlubbers got when visiting the coast. More likely, it was the total wind-down of being away from the pressures of home.

  So there was that, plus we were all too full of food to move, never mind walk. Instead, we accepted Hazel and Stu’s suggestion we watch a movie—Finding Nemo, Matty’s choice—and enjoy some of Stu’s homebrew cider, which tasted like sweetened vinegar for the first half a pint, thereafter becoming the finest beverage to ever pass our lips.

  Matty’s grandad was a really funny guy who told awful jokes but messed up the punchlines, which was pure comic genius. He was very well-spoken, insisted on calling Matty ‘Matthew’, and said ‘Nice having a houseful, eh, Haze?’ at least once every half an hour. After the movie, he invited me to help him water the garden, and I accepted, although I wondered why we were watering the garden when it was chucking it down.

  Irrespective of how wet I was getting, the garden was more magical than ever. Tiny rainbows hovered in speckled beams of light, and the koi darted to the surface, following our progress as we traversed the crazed footpath up and down the many levels of this tiny pixieland.

  Stuart chattered at me all the while, and through the alcohol-hotchpotch of stories, I discovered he was the one with roots in Norfolk. He and Hazel had met…somewhere, when Hazel was training to be a…something, and decided to move to Cornwall after Shelly got married. I guessed she was Matty’s mum—I was a bit hazy on the details but didn’t like to ask. I’d definitely, definitely had too much scrumpy.

  “You’re the sensible one,” Stu asserted—arguable, but I was in no fit state to contradict him. There again, I’d heard it before, so maybe it was true? Was anything true in the realm of the pixies? Piskies. At the top of the waterfall, partly concealed by the rockery, was a tiny, carved stone door, about a foot tall and leading to the ‘piskie cave’, according to Stu.

  “I want you to do something for me,” he said. I nodded; the world wobbled. “If Matthew’s father ever goes anywhere near him again, you tell me, all right? He took our daughter from us. He’s not taking our grandson, too. Do I have your word?”

  “Um, of course,” I agreed out loud, though in my head I was saying oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Thank God we were four hundred miles from Norwich, because the look in Stuart’s eyes left me in no doubt what he planned to do if he ever got his hands on Matty’s dad.

  ***

  Six a.m., I came round from the alcoholic unconsciousness that had stolen my sleep and groaned at the pain rings around my eyes. I didn’t mind beer, or vodka, or even homemade cider, but the calorific content ensured I wasn’t big on drinking—pun intended—and a hangover was a fairly novel experience to me. Not one I was in any hurry to repeat.

  “Are you awake?” Leigh asked, their voice thick and slurred.

  “Sadly, yes.”

  “I wanna go surfing.”

  Sleeptalking? There was no follow-up, so it seemed likely. I rolled onto my side, facing Leigh’s back, and draped my arm over them. They turned over and mirrored my position.

  “I was dreaming about it,” they said.

  “Hmm?”

  “Can’t wear a wetsuit, though.”

  “Why not?”

  If they’d answered, I hadn’t heard them, but I remembered the conversation when I woke up a couple of hours later, feeling a lot better, though still hungover. Leigh was not in the bed.

  We hadn’t talked really, since the hospital. We were OK, but we’d not been on our own, and then we’d been too drunk and sleepy to talk. Well, apart from the surfing randomness at six a.m. If they’d been conscious…

  “Good morning, shipmate!” Leigh sidled up the bed beside me, hair wet, filling the space with the scent of shower gel and citrus. They were back to their usual cheery self, thank goodness.

  “Good morning,” I replied and clamped my lips tight shut. Post-cider morning breath could probably incinerate the camper van.

  Leigh kissed my cheek. “How are you today? I feel amazing.”

  I hummed, hoping it sounded positive enough, decided it was too ambiguous, and cupped my hand around my mouth to say, “I’m good.”

  “Thank you for yesterday. I was horrible, and you were very patient.”

  “It’s OK.” I knew it wasn’t directed at me.

  “So, what do you want to do today?”

  “I…want to ask you about what you said earlier.”

  “Oh! The surfing? Wishful thinking. We’re being ditched, anyway. Matty and Noah are going to some waterski club, and this evening, they’re going to visit Matty’s great aunty. We’ve been invited, too, but…” Leigh chewed on their lip stud.

  “You don’t fancy it?”

  “Not really. Matty’s never met her before, and it’ll all be very emotional, and we’ll feel like we’re in the way even if we’re not.”

  “OK. Have you had breakfast yet?”

  “Nope. I was waiting for you.”

  “I need to shower and brush my teeth. Then we should eat breakfast together and plan a day for us. Maybe catch the bus to Newquay and have a look around the town. What d’you think?”

  “I think…I love you.”

  I’d just discovered the instant cure for a hangover.

  ***

  Noah and Matty were heading out with Hazel straight after breakfast. Her sister—Matty’s great aunt—lived near the waterski club. Without Leigh and me to worry about, they could spend the whole day there. Matty promised to text, to warn us when they were on their way back, which made both of us blush. As soon as they left the house, Leigh blew air and flopped back on their stool.

  “That was…” They laughed. “Oh my god. I know he means well, but does he have to be so blatant?”

  “Yep. He’s Matty.” I could see Leigh watching me, but I was still watching the kitchen doorway, where Matty had been a moment ago. Slowly, Leigh slid off their stool and stepped in front of me, arms around my neck. I looped my arms around their waist, and we kissed, short, light touches, each a tiny spark racing after the one before.

  “I like his thinking, though,” Leigh murmured.

  “Me, too.” Almost enough to ditch our tentative plan to go out, but not quite. “Can we wait till it’s dark?”

  Leigh leaned back and frowned. I wanted to say ‘forget it’ and be brave, but already the fear of Leigh seeing me naked had taken its toll on my arousal.

  Leigh’s frown faded. “Yes, we can wait. So…we’ve got about eight hours of daylight to fill. Let’s go and have some fun.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “What about your snakebite? You could get the other side done.” We’d walked around the town, down to the beach and back up to the town, had lunch in a pub, admired the Halloween display in the card shop, walked so
me more, and come to a stop outside a piercing parlour.

  Leigh’s nose wrinkled in thought, and they wiggled the stud in their lip with their tongue. “Nah,” they said. “It’ll get in the way.”

  “In the way of what?” I asked. I knew full well, but even if I hadn’t, Leigh’s grin answered my question. I studied the price list again, wondering how mad my mum would be. She hadn’t mentioned Leigh’s piercings at all, which implied she didn’t approve, but she didn’t disapprove, either. “Should I get my eyebrow pierced?”

  Leigh gasped and nodded rapidly. “Oh, yeah. That would be so cool.”

  “Do you think so? It won’t look like I’m trying to be something I’m not?”

  “You’ll look like you, except with an eyebrow piercing. What are you gonna get? A ring or a bar?”

  I laughed at the questions.

  “What?” Leigh said with a not even slightly innocent smirk. “Why is that funny?”

  “I love how we went from ‘should I?’ to ‘what are you gonna get?’”

  “I think you should do it.”

  “Yeah. I figured as much. What do you think I should get?”

  “A bar. You brush your hair back a lot, and you might catch your finger in a ring.”

  That made me cringe. But it didn’t deter me. “OK. Shall we have a walk around, see if there’s anywhere else?”

  “What’s wrong with this place?”

  I ducked my head to see past the sign. There was a glass counter, much like a jeweller’s shop, and illuminated glass cabinets on the walls. It looked clean and professional. “Nothing,” I mumbled. My hands were getting sweaty.

  “Right? Are we going in?”

  “Hmm-hmm. Yeah.” I stayed put. Leigh tilted their head towards the door and waited for me to move. It was now, or…

  Hiding my nervousness with a smile, I nudged their shoulder—“What are you waiting for?”—assertively pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  ***

  Be home about 8. Nan says there’s pizzas in the fridge need eating. x