most likely perceived as a high-stakes game of cloak-and-dagger with the press. Let him have his fun. All Dana cared about was getting the hell out of this hospital bed.
Besides, Dana knew for a fact that she’d need Spinks’s help in getting out of the hospital undetected. So what in the hell did she care if he went home and told his wife all about his interesting day? Still, she knew that the good doctor should probably be a little more careful about what he wished for. He just might get it.
Just like Dana had when she’d joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
CHAPTER 11
It had taken about a hundred days for Nicholas’s wound to heal fully. More than three months of walking bowlegged around the house and feeling like an overworked cowboy who’d spent a long day of busting broncos on his isolated ranch out in Wyoming with no one else around to lend a helping hand. More than three months of not daring to step so much as a high-heeled foot outside the confines of his and Annabeth Preston’s oh-so-peculiar domestic living arrangements. More than three months of having his mother clean his private parts with a solution of rubbing alcohol mixed with water while he sat on the toilet in front of her with his legs splayed wide.
The burning sensation Nicholas had felt when the rough cotton cloth made first contact with his horribly blistered skin had been intense – no debating that simple fact – but it had been absolutely nothing compared to the searing gratitude he’d felt inside for the kindly woman who’d been kneeling before him.
A concerned look of concentration had coloured in Annabeth Preston’s gorgeous face as she’d lovingly tended to his injury. God, how Nicholas adored her. She was his own personal angel of mercy; had showed him unimaginable generosity by giving him life for a second time. Because, cheesy as it might sound – and even Nicholas knew it sounded terribly cheesy – he’d truly been born again, only this time as a woman. And thank the heavens above for that. Lord almighty, thank the heavens above! Finally, his outside matched the way he’d always felt deep down on the inside, down in that special place between his legs where he’d never felt especially comfortable before. Finally, he’d found the warmth on the outside of his body that he could never seem to find there when he’d been eight years old, no matter how hard he’d looked.
Things weren’t all good for him as a woman, though. Far from it, actually. Through a lot of trial and error on his part, he’d found out the hard way that women didn’t bitch just to bitch, after all. And there were plenty of obstacles for him to overcome after the system-shocking transition. As with all newborns – and not so much different from people who’d been temporarily paralysed in horrific car crashes, Nicholas supposed – he’d needed to learn how to do everything again for the first time. Needed to master control of his strange new shell. Silly little things like learning how to pee while sitting down and getting used to the uneven trickle that sprinkled forth from between his legs now as opposed to the steady flow of urine that had come from his penis. Silly little things like learning how to mop up the excess moisture with toilet paper as opposed to the way he’d done it before with a few quick shakes of his sinful, dangling appendage.
Silly little things that – added altogether – had transformed Nicholas into a living, breathing lady.
Home schooling had been the answer to hiding his physical transformation from the school authorities. Over countless cups of tea, Nicholas and his mother had passed long afternoons learning the same information they taught the other children – the so-called ‘normal’ children – in the public schools.
Annabeth Preston had tutored him extensively in English and math; chemistry and engineering; history and philosophy. In addition to that, they’d also learned about such famous castrati as Farinelli, the stage name of Carlo Maria Broschi, an Italian man who’d become one of the most popular singers of the 18 century despite – or rather because of – his unusual deformity. Nicholas and his mother had also learned about how revered musical geniuses such as Handel, Gluck, Mozart and Beethoven had each composed masterpieces specifically designed for people like Farinelli and him: girls, for all intents and purposes, who’d been born as men.