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Chapter 3 - I’m not a boy I’m a girl!!!

I gasped and sucked in some water, immediately going into a coughing fit. The spasm ripped at my belly like fire, and my body tried to curl around the pain as the nurse held me, tears running down my cheeks. Eventually the fire died to a fierce throbbing in time to my heartbeat as I regained my breath.

"Are you okay, Sweetie?" she asked.

I nodded mutely, still gasping a little.

"What... what happened?" I managed to get out.

"You've just had your appendix out," she replied.

Has the world gone crazy?

Another nurse popped her head through the curtain. "It's the O'Donnell boy again. I called the doctor, but he doesn't want us to give him anything. He figures it might be a reaction to the morphine."

The O'Donnell BOY???

"Can we move him to isolation?" asked the one beside my bed. "He's disturbing the whole ward."

"I'll check," she replied, disappearing back through the curtain.

Her attention returned to me. "Are you feeling better now, Sweetie?"

"What happened to me?" I asked. My voice! I even sounded like a little girl!

"You were quite a sick girl for a little while, Sweetie. Your appendix burst, and you were rushed in to get it out, but you're going to be okay."

"My appendix?"

My appendix!!?? Girl???

"Yes, but you're going to be okay now. Now, let me check your dressing."

As the nurse checked the dressing on the lower part of my stomach, I looked at her closely. She couldn't have been more than 25, but her uniform was all wrong, and she was wearing one of those silly white starched caps with a black line around it. Toto... we ain't in Kansas anymore, I thought to myself as my head started spinning. I felt that familiar feeling that used to come after too many drinks. I was going to puke.

"Nurse," I whispered, shocked by the feminine voice that came out of my mouth, "Can I get something for my stomach? I feel really nauseated."

"Sure Sweetie. I can get you some Gravol. Do you need anything for the pain?"

"Not if it will do to me what it's doing to that kid down the hall," I said.

She laughed. "The O'Donnell boy? I think it's all an act. The police are waiting to talk to him about some broken school windows. Maybe he figures that acting crazy is going to get him off the hook." With that she turned and left.

I remembered that I hadn't gotten off the hook, as a matter of fact; it had been my attitude in court that got me a juvenile record. I tried hard to remember how long I had been in the hospital back then. I was pretty sure it was six days. I was going to have to try and talk to this kid and make sure he straightened up his act. And then I giggled.

I was going to talk to myself back in 1974? Yeah, right! And the moon really is made out of cheese.

I don't know what kind of painkillers they had pumped into me, but this was a trip like no other I had ever been on! I knew I wasn't dreaming - the pain was too real for that, but for a minute there I actually believed that I was a girl gone back in time. Maybe this was the afterlife and I was in hell? Or, like I heard the Catholics believed, I was going to have to watch all my sins unfold before me.

Shit. This was going to be a long show...

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