Bree gave me a stern look and stuck her hand out, making a 'gimme' motion. “Phone.”
I took my phone out of my breast pocket and placed it in her palm. She held it up, took a picture of me, and then showed me the screen.
All around one of my eyes was swollen and bright red, and on my other cheek I had a big white gauze pad that the doctor had taped to my face to cover the stitches. There was blood all over the collar on that side, and you could still see blood caked around the corners of my nose and eyes and places I hadn't managed to clean properly in the dark toilets at the casino. Actually, I looked a lot worse than I felt. I looked like I'd been well and truly beaten up.
“I see what you mean,” I told Bree, who then started to play with my phone. “I feel fine, though.”
“I don't care,” she said. “This is all my fault, and if you go home and die I will never forgive myself, so you're going to get all the test things that the doctor says. The reception in here is terrible.” She'd already moved on from telling me to stay put and was holding my phone up in various directions looking at the signal strength icon. She then turned and lay on her back on the bench with her head on my thigh, engrossed in whatever she'd needed data reception for.
I surveyed the waiting room. No one looked particularly appalled by the fact she'd decided to make herself comfortable on me. While looking around, I made eye-contact with a guy probably about my age on the other side of the room; his girlfriend was inclined towards him, showing him something on her phone. She'd been talking the whole time we'd been in here, and he was trying really hard to look interested.
I saw his eyes dart down to Bree and then up to me, and he grinned a bit. I shook my head very slightly and shrugged. I saw him roll his eyes in solidarity with me, and then go back to listening to his girlfriend. That made me feel unexpectedly really good. I'd just bonded with some guy over the things we had to do as boyfriends.
Bree's hair was spread out across my thighs, so while she was busy, I played with it. She normally would have loved it and commented that she loved it, but right then she didn't seem to notice because she was deeply engrossed in my phone.
“Are you okay?” I asked her quietly. “What are you doing?”
“Torturing myself,” she said cryptically. When I gave her a quizzical look, she held my phone up so I could see what was on it. It was Courtney’s Facebook, and there was a picture of her in a long dress asking people’s opinions of it. I wasn’t sure what Bree was trying to show me.
She explained. “Every day I check her Facebook just in case. But it’s always like her life is great and oh my god exams are coming up and the formal’s coming up... It's always happy normal stuff and it makes me feel like shit. And then I feel like an idiot for Facebook-stalking her and swear that I’ll never do it again. And then I do it again.” She looked down at the screen once more and then made a face and passed the phone to me. “Here.”
I put it back in my pocket, and then went back to playing with her curls. “If you guys were best friends I doubt she's just gotten over you that quickly, even with Andrej involved.”
Bree lay there for a minute or so with her fingers laced across her stomach, thinking. “I don't know, though,” she said. “Because usually, like, it's always me who tries to be friends with people, but she came to me this time. It was so amazing that this fun person wanted to be friends with me, because I've always had friends but I never had a real best friend, you know? But, like, looking back...” She shook her head. “Whenever I went over to her place, she's like, 'Bring Andrej, my brother's home too'. And then after she hooked up with Andrej she started spending heaps of time with him and she would take ages to reply to my messages and then it would just be like 'OK' or 'Yeah lol', or something... and then she stopped inviting me over completely. She stopped commenting on my Facebook posts, she didn't even like them. So, yeah, I can blame Andrej, I guess, and he probably had a part in it...” She sighed. “But I think maybe I was just so happy to finally have a best friend that I didn't even notice it was never me she was interested in, after all.”
I wasn't buying that. They'd seemed very close when they'd ambushed me outside my work. “I wouldn't put much value on what you read on Facebook. She's probably putting on that 'I don't care' front because she's so hurt and she wants to hurt you, too.” I felt like Henry, being all psychoanalytical. I winced; Henry.
Bree looked up at me. “You think?” she asked, distracting me from feeling guilty. I nodded. She thought for a little while. “I fucking hate Andrej,” she said, but it sounded like a question. “I hate him for trying to fuck everything up for me. And what he did to you, I hate him for fucking everything up for you, too.”
I shrugged. “Everything was already fucked up for me.”
“But you were so happy for once and he ruined your day, and I'm really sorry that—”
“My day isn't ruined, not really. I did several things that I never would have been able to bring myself to do a few months ago, and it feels...” I thought about how to describe it. “Just remembering them... Waltzing into that pitch like I owned the place, and walking right up to your brother, standing up for something. It feels amazing.” As I smiled broadly, though, it pushed on the stitches in my cheek and I flinched. “You know, apart from the fact I'm horribly disfigured now and I have the world's worst headache.”
She giggled. “Nothing those painkillers you have won't fix, right?”
I made a face. “Yeah...” I said hesitantly.
She noticed. “Don't you use them for super terrible hangovers? I'm sure they'll work.”
“I'm sure they would.”
“But...?” She watched me.
She was being nosy. “But I don't have any left, so...”
Bree frowned at me. “Didn't you have heaps before? There was a full little container thing in the bathroom. Why are they all gone already?”
“I just don't have them anymore, I got rid of them,” I replied in a tone that said, 'we've finished this conversation'.
She ignored my tone. “You normally treat them like gold.”
I stopped trying to explain myself. “Bree,” I warned her.
She turned her head against my thigh to look around us. There probably wasn't anyone who could hear, so I didn't really mind that much when she probed. She was very gentle about it when she quietly asked me, “You were going to take them all, weren't you?”
I froze. I never expected her to get there so easily.
At my silence, she guessed what the answer was, and she looked absolutely aghast. “Min...”
I pulled myself together, knowing exactly what she was thinking. “It's not your fault.”
She scrunched up her nose in silent disagreement with me. She had been thinking that, apparently. After she'd done that, though, her eyes glazed as she was lost in thought. I watched wrinkles grow across her forehead.
“It isn't your fault,” I repeated, in case she still didn't believe me.
She shook her head dismissively, and I realised she was probably thinking about something different now. But if she was thinking about what I'd just said and she wasn't worrying that it was her fault, what was she worrying about? I watched her for a little while, reflecting on what I'd told her. It occurred to me how fucking quickly she'd jumped to the right conclusion. That was too quickly for it to be a coincidence, wasn't it?
“Lucky guess about the pills?” I softly asked her. She shrugged, eyes glazed. There seemed to be more she wanted to say, but I didn't really want to push her in the waiting room of a medical clinic. “You don't need to tell me in here if you—”
“I took the rest of my anti-depressants in one go once. Heaps of them.”
That was a lot of information to take in at once. Bree took anti-depressants?
“You tried to kill yourself?” I asked quietly, probably sounding every bit as shocked as I was.
She shook her head. “No...” she said. “I was just tired of being miserable all the time. I thought taking that many woul
d make me really happy for a bit, you know? But it like literally didn't do anything. Like, I felt a tiny bit sick but that was all. And then I needed to pretend I'd lost them and ask Mum for some money to get some new ones because I couldn't just say I'd taken them all in one go, could I? Mum got really angry and then Andrej went on this tirade about how I didn't respect people's money...”
“Wow,” I said, and took one of her hands, holding it tightly in mine. “Wow.” I thought about that. “You're on anti-depressants?”
“Not anymore,” she said. “They're like $40 a month. I'd rather eat.”
“I just never would have picked you for someone who'd be on them,” I said, and then reconsidered when I thought about the last couple of weeks. “Well, at first, anyway. I know you have some seriously awful stuff going on for you, but you always seem quite cheerful.”
“Yeah, because who wants to hang around with someone who's whinging all the time? No one.”
Ouch. I wanted to give her a big, warm hug, but I couldn't in the middle of this waiting room. “I wished you'd told me all of this much earlier,” I said quietly to her, squeezing her hand. “I would have paid for them for you. I would have been there for you.”
Her eyes swam a bit. “I wanted to be there for you. And you were so stressed out already...”
It was crazy to remember I'd thought she was this vapid, insane, hyperactive teenager when I first met her. And she definitely could be from time to time, I supposed. I don't know why I'd thought that would be all that she was. Of course that wouldn't be the whole story.
I stroked her hair. “No matter how stressed out I seem, you don't have to pretend to be happy around me, okay?”
“I don't pretend anymore,” she said simply, and then gave me a big, warm smile. She looked happy.
Fuck, and she was gorgeous. I wanted to kiss her. I glanced around the waiting room and actually considered doing it despite all of the various people in there. I never got there, though, because I was worrying about whether or not people would notice and find it really inappropriate.
It wasn't long before we were called anyway, but then the imaging-radiologist-person or whatever you called someone who operated the CT equipment couldn't actually find me on the system once he'd shown us into the lab with the machine.
“Are you a new patient?” he asked, and I nodded. He groaned. “Okay, wait here,” he said. “I'll run downstairs and grab your file. They probably didn't put it online yet.”
With that, he ran out and left us alone in the white lab with the CT machine. It was an enormous creepy capsule-looking thing with a long platform poking out of it that I thought I was probably going to end up lying down on. The mattress on it looked quite comfortable and was made up like a hospital bed. It was too narrow for two people to lie side-by-side, though...
Bree had been looking right at it, too, and then we glanced at each other. She had a cheeky grin, and when I looked down at it, my eyes didn't stop there.
Throwing me this coy little glance, she wandered up over to the bed and turned back. “Look,” she commented innocently. “I think sitting up here might make me taller.” Her eyes were twinkling.
“I don't think the CT guy is going to care how tall you are.”
She was giving me eyes. “Good, because it's not him I want to get it on with.”
I glanced back at the door. We'd probably have some time up our sleeves; the reception desk was not close. I took a couple of steps over to her and boosted her to sit up on the bed.
“Just for a couple of seconds, okay?” I breathed across her cheek. “He'll be back soon.”
She was at a better height like this and I could kiss her without hurting my back. Fuck, she was getting so much better at it, too. So much better. We could only do this for a few more seconds, though, because how long had we been here? Just a few more... I'd been focusing on how much I was enjoying having her catch one of my lips when she leant against my freshly-stitched cheek and I flinched and sucked air through my teeth.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said quickly, and then pulled me back in.
My hands were still where they'd been when I'd lifted her: around her rip-cage with my thumbs under her cleavage, and I could feel the pull of fabric under them every time she heaved a breath. My fingertips were so close to her breasts and I couldn't think about anything else as I kissed her. Just a tiny movement upwards and I could run my hands over them and feel them and feel the weight of them in my—
“We have fertility services if you're interested,” a very amused voice said from the doorway. “But they're actually in another part of the medical centre.”
“Oh my god!” Bree said as we pushed away from each other. Then she started giggling.
I must have been blushing, because everything on my face began to throb a lot more powerfully and my vision was narrowing in time with my pulse. It really hurt, but I was too distracted by the fact I'd been caught making out with Bree on a CT machine to pay too much attention to my discomfort. I just stood there awkwardly.
The guy was probably in his thirties and looked entertained rather than disgusted. “So,” he said as he approached me. “Your girlfriend's going to have to wait over there.” He pointed at the chair on the far side of the room. “Unless you are in the wrong room.”
“Sorry,” I just said quietly as Bree hopped down off the machine and went to sit obediently in the corner. She was bright red and bit her lip against more giggling.
He laughed. “That's okay, Mr...” he glanced down at my medical file. “Oh, sh—shoot,” he said, rescuing himself from swearing. “I'm so sorry, Ms Lee.” He winced. “I hope I didn't offend you.”
I wasn't sure why he thought I'd be offended, I thought it was pretty obvious that 'Mr' was the look I was going for.
Bree opened her mouth to correct him and I just raised my hand a little and shook my head. I really didn't want to enter into a discussion about it. “It's okay,” I told him, and gestured at the bed. “I'm supposed to lie here, right?”
He nodded. “Head facing that way,” he said, pointing towards the machine. He reviewed my notes as I climbed onto it. “'Head trauma, check for intracranial haemorrhage',” he read aloud. “That explains the glorious shiner you have on one side of your face. Got a glorious story to go with it?” he asked, and then went and put my file down.
“My brother did it,” Bree volunteered from the end of the room.
The guy looked from her to me with his eyebrows up. “Right,” he said. “That does sound like quite a story. And you must have quite a headache.”
I deadpanned. “Yeah, and you know what they say cures headaches...”
He paused for a second and then laughed. It was such a sudden sound that it actually hurt my ears, especially after that punch. He made a few notes on my file and then said, “You two are a riot. Most people come in here and just repeatedly ask me if the CT is going to hurt them.”
He then gave me some instructions on what I was supposed to do with the machine and then explained what he was going to do. Then, as he was heading behind the glass shield and I was lying flat on the bed, his eyes passed over the crotch of my pants and lingered there for a second. He didn't say anything about what he saw there, though, he just went and sat down at the computer to operate the CT. Trying not to feel awkward about that, I relaxed and lay still while he took the images and then came back into the room to discuss them with me.
“I'm not really supposed to interpret the images, your doctor is,” he said after he'd had an opportunity to look at them. “But to be honest, we mainly tell the doctors what they're looking for, anyway. I don't see any evidence of bleeding. But it might be too minor to see yet, so go straight to hospital if anything changes.” He looked uncomfortable, his eyes dipping down to the packer again. “Look, sorry about the fertility comment before.”
“It's fine,” I said, hoping that would end the conversation.
It didn't. “Although, I guess our services are available to lesbian coup
les, too, so I suppose if you two were ever interested in starting a family, you could—”
I cringed. “It's fine,” I repeated, and then tried to wind everything up. “Thanks for your help.”
Bree was trying not to laugh the whole way out, but as soon as we were walking up Harrington, she blurted out, “We're a lesbian couple,” and then dissolved into giggles.
I was busy trying to walk slowly and smoothly so I didn't jar my pounding head, and I didn't answer fast enough.
She read too much into my silence, and looked alarmed. “Shit, Min, I didn't mean that you're a—” She pulled on my arm, which hurt my head. “It's just that you let him 'she' you, so I thought that you wouldn't mind me joking about it!” She paused. “Did it bother you, though?”
“What, being called 'she'?” Bree nodded, and I made a face. “It probably wouldn't if I wasn't wearing the packer.”
She stopped us. “So, wait, you didn't just transition? Because I thought this whole change thing,” she gestured at me, “was like a final fuck you to being a woman.”
“It is,” I said, turning around to face her. “I think.”
“But you don't mind being called 'she'? Trans guys don't usually take female pronouns.”
'Usually' wasn't something I traded much in. Trans guys probably didn't usually want to have bodies like a Ken doll, either.
Honestly, I got that pronouns were incredibly important to a lot of people, but for me they kind of felt like an afterthought. After all the changes I'd made and was going to make to myself and to every single aspect of my life, whether or not someone called me 'she' or 'he' was like... well, whatever? As long as they didn't see me as the old Min, the passive, shy, feminine Min, and never treated me like that or brought her back in any way, it was okay, maybe.
…Maybe. I thought twice as soon as I had decided that, though. Did calling me 'she' kind of do that, in a way...? Remind me of all that complete bullshit I'd been though as Ms Min Lee? Or was it actually fine as long as I could be like I was now and free of all that pressure? I expected to know the answer to that, but I didn't.
Under My Skin Page 71
