Golden Boy (41 page)

He said that I am being very brave. I couldn’t think of a bigger lie.

The picture had been in the drawer beside my bed but then this morning I just thought I should have it. Why did I think that?

It’s burning over my heart, in my chest pocket. It’s burning but I have to keep thinking why I’m here. I run a movie trailer of terrible reactions in my head: Sylvie’s face, Mum’s anger, Dad not knowing what to say, me feeling like I want to die of embarrassment and shame for the last few months.

I’m sweating and shaking but maybe you can’t tell on the outside.

I feel like I’ve lost my life over the past few weeks. I’ve just reverted to how blank I was the night Hunter came into my room, the night all this started, and got worse and worse. I felt incapable of interrupting, of asking questions of any of the nurses or doctors as they talked to us, as they told me to sign the forms. I feel that my intersexuality is the main part of me, which is exactly what I never wanted growing up. I never wanted to be seen and judged on my inbetweenness alone. But that’s just what I am now. A product of my body, what it does, what it was made for. That’s why we’re here.

But I don’t want that to be why we’re here. That shouldn’t be the reason. I mean, there are other reasons why I shouldn’t have a baby right now, but I’ve been so caught up thinking about being intersex, I haven’t had time to think about them, or come to terms with where I am, what I’m doing today. I’m starting to understand, sat here in this room, that being here because of this reason, because I’m intersex, feels wrong. I wish I had more time to think.

I fiddle with my breast pocket and feel terrified, horrible, nervous.

I wanted to talk to someone earlier, when they did the pre-op pelvic exam, but I felt like asking more questions of the doctors would be impolite, like they’re all looking at me like how dumb and young and stupid is this kid? I’ve interrupted all our lives – Mum’s, Dad’s, Daniel’s, the doctors’, Sylvie’s – and now I’ve just got to nod apologetically and get through the next few hours without passing out in shock, or breaking down.

If only someone knew how the baby came about. Maybe they would give me more time if they just knew. But it’s just me here that knows the truth. And I’m an inconvenience, even to myself, that I don’t want to be. I shut my mouth tightly, feeling dizzy and faint. I shake my foot violently under my seat and press my lips together until they hurt.

The operation is called a surgical termination. Archie told us about it. It’s going to be done under general anaesthetic, so I’ll be asleep. That’s supposed to be in forty-five minutes.

‘Just get rid of it,’ I heard my mum whisper to my dad the other day. ‘We’ll just get rid of it and everything will go back to normal.’

Man, I’ve heard that said so many times in my life.

The tiny black and white picture seems to burn my skin through the fabric of my T-shirt. I look down at my body and hate myself.

When you think about it, all nouns are also definitions. The word ‘it’ and the word ‘normal’ spin around in my mind, like opposite fates.

T
he nurse who comes to collect Max is a different nurse to the one we signed the papers with, and the one who took us to the pelvic exam an hour ago. This one is young, slim, with dark brown hair, and she reminds me of the nurse who took care of me through my labour with Max. I see her walking towards us through the glass, then she slips her head into the waiting room.

‘Max?’ She smiles.

He visibly jumps, but does not move off the chair. She frowns and I stand up and catch her attention.

‘Yes, that’s us,’ I say, as if it could be anyone else.

‘Oh, good,’ she says, looking over to Max again. ‘Are you alright, Max?’

Max bites his bottom lip, before nodding and standing up. He wraps the headphones around his iPhone, looking guilty and nervous. His face is white and clammy.

‘Give me that, Max,’ I murmur, and he hands it over, then follows the nurse, both fists clenched, his fingers digging into his palms.

‘You’ve signed everything, you’re happy with everything?’ she asks quietly.

Max looks at me. I nod and he nods at the nurse.

‘Yes?’ she nods.

Max emits a tiny murmur of agreement from between tight lips. ‘Yup.’

The nurse glances questioningly at me and I make a ‘what can you do, he’s nervous’ face. She nods sympathetically and leads us down the corridor to a small room. We fill it uncomfortably and she gestures to the bed and pats a sealed plastic bag with a hospital gown in it.

‘Don’t worry, we’re not staying in here. If you just want to pop this on, I’ll be back in about ten minutes and then we can get off to theatre, OK? Is Mum coming in?’

Max looks at me.

‘Yes, I’m coming in.’

‘We don’t allow family in the operating room after the patient has gone under, but you can be there until Max falls asleep,’ the nurse explains.

Again, Max looks at me. I nod, and he turns to the nurse and nods.

‘Alright then, these are some scrubs for mum.’ She opens a wardrobe and pulls out some blue overalls, laying them on the bed. ‘Put the shoe covers on too, please.’ With this she smiles and leaves the room.

Max sits on the bed and puts his head in his arms.

‘Come on, now,’ I say as sunnily as is appropriate. ‘You have to get changed, OK?’

He nods, but doesn’t move.

‘One step at a time, Max.’

I
’m on the bed. I’m on the bed in the operating theatre and all I can hear is myself breathing. The cannula – the plastic tube the anaesthetic is supposed to go down – feels weird in my arm. The anaesthetist is going to put the drugs in me through the tube in a few minutes. He’ll tell me when. Then I’ll have a minute before I fall asleep.

How did we get here? How did this become my life? How did we get to this terrible place that’s tearing apart my family?

‘Max, don’t,’ Mum mutters, pulling my hand away from my tiny bump. I didn’t even notice I was touching it.

I think about this potential for life inside me, the fact that my body can make life. I feel like I’m burning up. I feel so scared. It’s not my fault that I’m intersex and it’s not the baby’s fault how it came to be. It’s just different. Just like me. It just came to be in a different way and now it’s here, and I just . . . I feel like all choices have been taken away from me. I feel like I’m being stripped of all the things I am. I don’t want to be a parent but I don’t want to be here today either, and I feel so frustrated and weird and angry that Hunter made that choice for me, that I was robbed of it, that because of the way my body works, I no longer have a say in something so important. I feel like I’m crazy, or even if I’m not, I feel like this decision is about to do something so against what I want that it’s paralysing me. I never thought I would have to make a choice like this. How can I know I’m making the right choice? In the end, how am I, or Daniel, or kook Sylvie, or this ill-conceived baby, or anyone any different from a ‘normal’ person? If you love someone, you love them. It doesn’t matter where they came from or if they’re a boy or a girl, or if you fight, or if they’re weird, or if they find it difficult to communicate with you, you just fucking love them.

Oh shit. Oh my god. I can’t do this. I need more time to think.

Oh fuck.

I have to say something. I have to say something.

T
he blue scrubs are uncomfortable, but the facemask is worse. My breath is hot and I’m overwhelmed by the heat of the room. I stand on Max’s left side. There is the doctor, the anaesthetist, the surgeon observing for the corrective surgery next week, and two nurses in the room, all readying themselves for the op.

I look everywhere but at Max. There are a number of frightening-looking metal implements on the doctor’s tray and I’m thankful Max is lying down and can’t look at them.

Before we went in, and while Max was changing in the bathroom, I thought about calling Steve. I checked my phone. Two missed calls, both from Steve, and a text message: ‘I feel like I should be there.’

Frankly, I didn’t know what to say. Yes? Perhaps.

Max came out, carrying his clothes. He looked at the phone as I typed a reply.

‘Who is it?’

‘Just Dad.’

‘Oh.’

He looked at me, then looked away again. Max seems so much smaller than I was at that age. Small and soft-skinned and blond, like only toddlers and chicks should be. He looks like some of the girls I saw waiting in the other waiting room we passed; much too young to be dealing with this.

I pressed ‘send’ on my message. I had written, ‘None of us should.’

Max sat next to me on the bed and I stroked his hair and neck.

The nurse called us in to a side room next to theatre and they put the cannula in Max’s arm.

Now we’re here, and soon it’ll be done, and we can go back. We can go back to our lives.

They will remove the uterus in a second operation next week. Max has signed the consent form, even though Steve frowned and argued with me about it. I would have liked Max to have children. He’s such a kind, sweet, happy little person. It would have been nice, in the future, to have had grandchildren, but not like this. Now it’s happening, I realise this is the only way Max could have had children. I had tried not to think about it before. But we should have had these operations a long time ago. It wasn’t right to wait this long. It’s upsetting us, everyone, Max.

‘My poor babe,’ I murmur, stroking his hair, as he lies on the operating table. ‘It’ll be over soon.’

‘OK,’ says the anaesthetist. ‘I’m sending you off now. You’ll feel drowsy and in just under a minute I expect you to be asleep.’ He smiles at Max, and Max looks panicked.

‘He’s just nervous,’ I say quietly.

S
ixty seconds. That’s all I have. Sixty seconds to say what I have to say. About not doing this. Not right now. I just need some more time to think about it. To be ready.

My eyes dart around the room. My mouth opens. I swallow.

Who do I tell? How do I say it? What can I say to make this stop?

There’s the doctor, but he’s not looking at me, not at my head, at least. There’s the nurses, but they are looking at the doctor.