room. Some vacation this was.
“Get me home,” I beg. I am ready to get out of here. My body feels broken, but I’m good enough to walk. Slowly.
“Soon, sweetie. The doctor needs to talk to you before we leave. I’ll go sign you out, and Dad is waiting in the car.”
Of course he couldn’t even come back in here. Couldn’t face his failure child. I’m out of that house the day I turn eighteen and never looking back. I’ll miss my mom, but I can’t do this anymore.
Georgia does a quick stretch. “I’m going to hit the bathroom before we leave,” she says, following my mom out.
And then it’s just me.
GEORGIA, 4:22 P.M.
I walk outside the hospital and immediately spot Pony’s dad inside their green van. He’s reading a newspaper that’s resting on the steering wheel. I knock on the window and startle the shit out of him. This is nuts. What am I even doing? He rolls down the window. With great hesitation.
“Hi,” I say, hoping to fully acknowledge the weirdness in this moment in one word.
“Hi,” he says. His eyes light up. “Oh, I know you from last night. You’re Sarah’s friend.”
And there it is: Pony’s deadname. Why did I want to know it? That name has nothing to do with him anymore.
“Pony’s friend,” I correct him, frustrated that he can’t get his name right. “Actually, I’m his girlfriend.”
“Oh,” he says, shocked. Pony would be equally shocked. We haven’t really had time to discuss labels.
“Can we talk for a minute, sir?”
He unlocks the door. “Sure,” he says cautiously.
I hop in the passenger seat and take a breath. Old me would start spinning a tale right now. I fight against it.
“Did you know,” I ask, “that forty percent of transgender teenagers attempt suicide?”
“No,” he says.
“Did you know that Pony thinks about it?” I ask. I am breaking Pony’s confidence by telling him that, but he needs to know.
“No,” he repeats, gripping the steering wheel.
“In the military, you break someone down, so they can grow stronger?”
He grunts. “Something like that.”
“Well, that’s not what Pony needs from you. He can’t grow strong with you breaking him down. He needs your support. And love. He needs you to accept him. And he needs you to use his correct name and pronouns.”
He grunts again and takes off his reading glasses. “It’s hard for me to change. I keep forgetting. We named her Sarah. We had a girl named Sarah.”
“Well, now you have a son named Pony, and if you don’t accept that, you will lose him. Maybe we all will.”
He shakes his head slowly, staring out the window. It’s unclear if any of this is getting through to him. I borrow his phone and pull my article up.
“Read this?” I ask, handing him the phone.
PONY, 4:24 P.M.
I wiggle my body to test out the pain. It’s there all right, a throbbing pressure along my sides, but better than last night. When it gets too quiet in this sterile white room, I can hear the crack of my ribs from the kicks. Over and over, I hear that awful cracking sound.
I kind of thought that Max would have come to visit. He writes petitions and disrupts school board meetings for queer kids he has never met, but he can’t even come by the hospital and see me? It’s crystal clear: Max must be done with me.
“Knock, knock,” Dr. Sanders says, standing in the doorway.
“Come in,” I say. I don’t really have a choice.
“Time to break you out of here, Pony,” he says, flipping through papers on a clipboard. “OK, everything looks good. A couple days in bed, and you’ll be feeling better.”
“No problem,” I say. I could sleep for a decade.
“But Pony,” he adds, “your ribs need time to heal. Lots of time. I’m going to ask you to stop wearing chest-compression binders.”
“For how long?” I ask.
“A year, at least.”
That felt like another kick to my side. “No,” I say. “You don’t understand. I need to wear them.”
“Pony, you could cause permanent damage to your body.”
I’m about to explain why this is impossible when Mom returns with a nurse. Dr. Sanders gives my mom instructions on medicine and care as the nurse helps me change into jeans, shirt, and hoodie. They fold me into a wheelchair, and my mom pushes me out.
“Where’s Georgia?” I ask as we head out the door.
“She’s out in the car with Dad.”
“Mom, why do you stay with Dad? He’s a bully,” I say.
She stops wheeling me and puts a