How do you fix a doctor who uses his medical knowledge to take advantage of his dates?
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The story you are about to read is true. Thus locations are kept vague and, of course, names have been changed to protect the innocent. None of us remember who made the suggestion that led to establishment of the clinic, but we remember when it occurred. It was ten years after the Towers fell. We were celebrating Jenny winning the lottery. She didn’t win a record amount, but she had the only winning ticket for the $200 some million jackpot. Unfortunately we were also mourning the fact that Dr. Jerkyl (as we called him) had been acquitted of rape. Well, actually the vote was 11 to 1 for acquittal, but the DA decided to just drop the case. We found out later that the juror who voted guilty had been one of Jerkyl’s early victims. She didn’t recognize him at first because he had shaved the beard and mustache he had worn then. She had forgotten his name. She probably should have told the judge, but she didn’t want him to get away with it. She told us about it in confidence later. Dr. Jerkyl wasn’t a violent man. He was a date rapist who used his medical knowledge to “persuade” his victims to agree to his “requests”. He had partly slipped up with his last victim, or perhaps the drug didn’t affect her the same as it affected the rest of us.. At least this time the DA was willing to prosecute the case even if the prosecution wasn’t successful. Most of us weren’t even sure we’d been raped until we started comparing notes about the dates we didn’t really remember that much about. The bad doctor used the most recent date rape drug that caused the victim to be very open to suggestions without any real conscious memory of what she had done. The drug was metabolized quickly and left no trace by the next morning when the victim woke up at home. One side effect of the drug was that the victim might remember parts of the experience in dreams later, but the dream would be combined with other memories, often movie scenes. The dreams tended to be very realistic as if the event had really happened. A particular problem was that the man in the dream was always someone else. The man in my dream was...well let’s just say he was a popular actor. When we started talking about our dreams we realized they were too similar to be a coincidence. We might not have figured it out if it weren’t for the fact most of us were also employed in the medical profession. We had a couple of doctors along with nurses and even a couple of secretaries like myself. Several in our group knew what the drug could do. It was Mother, our shrink, who finally put all the pieces together. She had gotten involved in rape counseling after her daughter was raped several years earlier. She explained to us that the drug caused the woman to think she was having a sexual fantasy when the event was actually happening. The bad doctor convinced us we were dreaming about having sex with some celebrity when we really having sex with him. Mother suggested he probably had to imagine he was a celebrity to have sex because he felt sexually inadequate. Like I said Dr. Jerkyl used his medical knowledge to help him get away with his crimes. We found out later that not only did he use the latest drug on his victim, he also used a condom to avoid leaving any evidence. He used the latest male contraceptive himself just in case there was a problem with the condom. He gave his victim a contraceptive to further insure a little bundle of evidence didn’t pop out nine months later. He had us take a shower afterwards in his shower to wash away any evidence. We discovered this last bit of information when we found the DVD’s he had made of us with the concealed camera in the shower. He had recorded all of his rapes and his preparations, but the DVD’s had been well hidden and encrypted. If the police had discovered them the following events might not have occurred. But, let’s get back to the party. We had been drinking champagne and were getting a little bit giddy. After a while we started throwing out suggestions for ways to deal with Jerkyl. “We ought to shoot him.” “No, that would be too merciful.” “Not where I would shoot him.” “Good one!!” “How about hanging him up by his ding-a-ling?” “His ‘ding-a-ling’???” “You mean like in that song?” “Well, that part of a man’s anatomy often makes them act like ding-a-lings.” “I’d like to give him a sex change operation.” “I heard one time that Viet Cong women used to put a razor blade in a strategic spot before having sex with GI’s.” “Hey that would be great.” “Are you sure about that razor blade story?” “My aunt heard about it when she was a nurse in Vietnam, but she didn’t treat anyone for it.” “My mom is Vietnamese and she said she had heard about that too.” “HEY THAT’S A GREAT IDEA!” Jenny shouted. “You mean about the razor blade?” “No, no, no,” Jenny continued. “Let’s give the doctor a sex change operation.” “No hospital would go along with that unless he consented.” “We could drug him like he drugged us.” “No, they would detect the drugs.” “My hospital would give him the operation for free,” Jenny said. “Your hospital!” several said at once. “Yes, my hospital,” Jenny said. “I could set up my own clinic and give him the operation.” “Set up a clinic for just one patient?” “No, I’d accept other sex change patients, too,” Jenny answered. “I’d just make sure he was the first patient.” “I know a building you might be able to buy,” I said. “The clinic where I used to work is being sold because the doctors there have decided they don’t want to work together any more.” “But, could we really do something like that?” I asked. “Of course,” Jenny replied. “Members of our group have a wide range of medical skills. I once helped perform sex change operations, or to use the politically correct term ‘sex reassignment surgery’.” “I think I could help you attract patients,” Heather said. “When I was at U. Mass I had the opportunity to work with stem cells under the Vicante brothers. I think I could use a patient’s stem cells to develop a functioning uterus.” “Were they working on something like that?” Jenny asked. “They were too busy with more vital projects like hearts and kidneys.,” Heather replied. “But it wouldn’t be any problem. It’s just a matter of applying the techniques used for other organs. I might even be able to give the patient ovaries.” “Would they be fertile?” Jenny asked. “I’m not sure if they’d be fertile or not, but they might allow the patient to experience periods,” Heather replied. “I may need to replace his Y chromosome with an X so the uterus will develop. I’m going to check to see if one of my X’s would fit in without making the cells incompatible with his other ones. I may need to borrow one from one of you.” “In Jerkyl’s case that would almost make me wish doctors hadn’t found a way to eliminate PMS,” Mother remarked. “So we could perform the operation,” Anne said. “What happens afterwards when he, or she, goes to the police?” “I think we can prevent that,” Mandy, a medicationist, said. “We can do the same thing to him he did to us. There’s a new amnesia drug out that could be used to keep him from remembering who he was before the operation. We could even condition ‘her’ to believe she really wanted the operation.” “I’ve heard about that,” Mother said. “Some of my colleagues have been experimenting with it to help patients with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to forget particularly traumatic events. One of the problems is that it sometimes works too well. Patients sometimes forget other personal memories at least temporarily.” “That’s what I’m counting on,” Mandy said. “What about his family?” Ellen asked. “Wouldn’t they notice he was missing?” “He doesn’t really have any family,” Joan said. “I sold him a $2 million life insurance policy and he put a charity down as beneficiary. He has a sister, but hasn’t had contact with her for at least 10 years.” “Why would he want such a large insurance policy without any family?” I asked. “If he survives until retirement, it will provide a very good annuity,” Joan replied. So, Jenny bought the building complete with medical equipment. I was the first full time employee. Buying a medical building greatly simplified obtaining government certification. The fact that sex change operations were considered “cosmetic” or “corrective” surgery meant we faced fewer regulations than if we were dealing with life threatening disorders. Government regulators had to concentrate their efforts on facilities dealing with serious disorders because they were understaffed. A couple of inspectors in other parts of the country had been caught passing along information about new procedures or equipment at research facilities to competitors. We discovered we could discourage questions about some aspects of our proposed operation by suggesting we had filed for a patent. The inspectors didn’t want to risk being accused of passing along secrets. They concentrated on sanitation procedures and whether we had equipment to deal with medical emergencies if they arose. Most of our patients wouldn’t be covered by government or private insurance because they didn’t cover such operations. So we wouldn’t have insurance companies snooping around and discovering our special patient. Sharon, Jenny’s attorney, helped Jenny establish a foundation so she could use more of her winnings for the Clinic. This arrangement meant she could help those who couldn’t afford the operation. Jenny told us, “I’ve decided to name the Clinic Jenny’s Research Foundation.” Sally asked, “why don’t we name it something like Sex Changes Unlimited.” “No, we don’t want anything in the name to indicate we are involved in sex change operations,” Jenny replied. “Some facilities out west have had some problems with opponents of sex change operations. We won’t use the word ‘Clinic’ in the name so we won’t have to worry about people coming in wanting other medical services.” “I heard some of the religious hospitals had stopped doing them,” Mary said. “Even the for profit hospitals have had trouble,” Jenny said. “Why’s that?” I asked. “Many people equate transsexuals with homosexuals,” Mother said. “And homosexuals have been attracting a lot of problems lately.” “I heard about those two homosexual counseling services that were caught recruiting young boys as prostitutes,” Alice said. “I think that was just a catalyst,” Mother said. “People have been getting tired of their in your face attitude with the parades, all the homosexual tv characters and attempts to get employers to give them extra health benefits.” “Those attitudes may work to our advantage,” Sharon remarked. “We can always claim we need to keep patient records and names secret to protect them from the controversy. Most government officials would appreciate our concern for protecting our patients.” “Does that mean we could ‘lose’ Dr. Jerkyl’s records and no one would ask questions?” I asked. “Right,” Sharon answered. “Current administrative regulations allow those who have had sex changes to take all their records. They can also permanently change their government records, including their birth certificates to indicate their new sex. With the record change there won’t be a way to trace our new woman back to Dr. Jerkyl. The police could trace someone who had committed murder or something, but they would have to convince a judge they enough evidence to arrest the individual.” “But, why do people think transsexuals are the same as homosexuals?” I asked. “People view both as sexual deviants,” Mother replied. “And men like Dr. Jerkyl and Bill Clinton aren’t?” I said. “Please, don’t mention that creep Clinton,” Millie said. “I had my first chance to vote in 1996 and I wasted it on a creep who sexually harassed the women who worked for him.” Several months later we decided we could begin planning how to “persuade” Dr. Jerkyl to check in. We had to find a way to do it that would also explain his sudden disappearance. Candy hadn’t been one of Jerkyl’s victims, but she had joined our group. She had worked her way through medical school as a member of an even older profession. “Considering what you’ve told me,” Candy said. “I’m sure I could persuade him to accompany me for a weekend at an upscale rural no tell motel I know about. Some of their guests are real newlyweds, but a lot of them use the name ‘Smith’ or ‘Jones’. My agent had a permanent lease on two of the rooms there.” “Your agent,” I said. “But I thought you were...” “I was,” she replied. “Her official business was entertainment. It’s just that the ‘audience’ was usually only one person.” “Well they do call it a sex ‘act’,” Mother said. “Much of the time we’re only acting anyway.” “Why do men seem to be satisfied by sex more than we are?” I asked. “It’s because our sex organs ‘want’ different things,” Mother replied. “A man’s external sex organ only wants to have intercourse because that’s all it can do. A woman’s internal sex organ wants to make babies even if the rest of her may not be too enthusiastic about the idea.” We developed a preliminary plan for Jerkyl to go away for the weekend and “marry” Candy. April had grown up in the vicinity of the motel and she occasionally spent the weekends at the family home in a rural area. Her parents were currently living in Chicago. She knew someone (a minister who was the mother of a rape victim) who would say she had performed the ceremony. The “couple” would then decide that with the accusations against Jerkyl that it might be better for them to move to some other city. Of course, what would actually happen would be that we would drug Jerkyl and take him to Jenny’s hospital for the operation. Candy would check into the motel with Erica dressed as Jerkyl. Carmen, our computer expert, had been comparing photos and noticed that Erica with the right make up could look similar enough to Jerkyl that those who didn’t know them wouldn’t notice the difference. More importantly, the basic size of their faces including the distance between their eyes was the same. There was a little difference in the noses, but that could be fixed. Yolanda worked as a make up artist on Broadway. She would make up Erica so she could pass for Jerkyl in the wedding ceremony. That way we could have pictures taken of the happy couple. Erica, as Jerykl, had gone with Candy to get the marriage license. We had no trouble getting blood for his test because our hospital often took blood samples from us for research projects or something. Sometimes we would joke that one of the administrators was a vampire. One thing we had going for us was that Jerkyl rarely talked about his social life. Sharon suggested he didn’t want to risk a situation in which a friend could be called to testify about his comments regarding a woman. One male doctor even remarked that Jerkyl could probably get married and no one would know until afterwards. Candy had been putting off Jerkyl for their weekend together by explaining she had been busy working on a special project. Of course, she had been working – helping Jenny get ready to open her hospital. Finally she told him she would be free the next weekend. Jerkyl’s uterus was coming along nicely. Heather had found an X chromosome that could be added to Jerkyl’s cells without creating a potential problem of rejection by his own immune system cells. The uterus had ovaries, but we wouldn’t know what they would do until after the operation. Jenny had gotten some of Jerkyl’s stem cells through a program at the hospital that encouraged the staff to donate them for research. We started developing an alternative plan after April heard that the weather forecast for the weekend included the potential for very heavy rain. There was a road near the motel that sometimes flooded. It wasn’t the main road, but visitors to the area sometimes took it by mistake. April suggested we might be able to make it look like Jerkyl took that road, got caught in flood waters and drowned. Of course we had no intentions of allowing Jerkyl to drown, but it would be an easy way to explain his disappearance. The night of the big event began with a light rain. Candy and Jerkyl left on time and stopped at a convenience store on the way. Candy offered to drive the remaining distance to the motel because she knew where it was. Fortunately Jerkyl agreed. She bought them both coffee at the store and slipped the drug into his. By the time she pulled up to April’s house he was just sitting in the car staring blankly out the windshield like one of those zombies in old movies. Candy told him to get out and get into the ambulance we had waiting and he obeyed. I drove the ambulance back to the hospital. At Jenny’s urging I had become an EMT so I could assist at the hospital if needed. Erica took his coat and got into the car with Candy to carry out the plot. They checked into the motel without incident. Then Jerkyl (Erica) left to get “something”. “Bambi” would say later she wasn’t sure what “he” went out for. Sharon had at one time worked for a government agency which sometimes helped people get false identity. She couldn’t give us any details, but she knew how to get a phony identity for Candy, or Bambi, as she decided to call herself when she became a “bride”. Yolanda developed some make-up for Bambi that would allow her to resemble Erica if the latter were similarly made up. That way Erica could later play the grieving widow. Erica drove to the location where the road was likely to flood. Those involved in pushing in the car were worried about whether they would be able to help her get the car into the water without going in themselves or being seen. April had a couple of local friends who agreed to help us in exchange for us eventually helping them “reform” their own Jerkyl. They would see the car go into the water and claim they thought they saw someone trying to climb out. I was a little worried when I found out one of them was some kind of cop, but April assured us we could trust her. We had cars parked at the nearest intersections. They would call on cell phones if anyone else started approaching the scene. The plan worked perfectly. The downpour started at just the right time so the road didn’t flood too early. They pushed the car into the water and the water immediately began pushing it into the creek bed. The patrol car approached from the other side. Erica had put Jerkyl’s hat and a small weighted laundry bag on top of the car and it fell off just after the patrol car camera was turned on. They had a string attached to the end of the laundry bag and one of them was hiding in the shadows and pulled it in so it wouldn’t be found downstream The camera picked up enough of it so it looked like someone might have just fallen from the car into the water. Erica had put Jerkyl’s coat on the front seat where it was found after the police got the car out. A couple of April’s other friends arranged to be at points downstream where they would at the appropriate time call 911 to say they thought they had seen a body wearing a white shirt floating in the water. When the story of a possible body in the river was published a few other people reported that they had seen something that might have been a body floating in the river. They took Erica back to the motel so she could replace Candy as Bambi. We felt Erica would be better in the role of widow because of her acting experience. She waited two hours before calling 911 to see if there had been any accidents. She told the dispatcher she was worried because her new husband had left two hours earlier and hadn’t come back They sent an officer to talk to her and get a description of Jerkyl and the car. The police already had the report of a vehicle in the water, but had to wait until morning to verify that it was Jerkyl’s. When they retrieved the car the next morning, Jerkyl’s body wasn’t in there, but his coat with his wallet containing money, ID, etc. was. The cops told “Bambi” they would keep looking for Jerkyl, but didn’t hold out much hope for finding him alive. Of course they didn’t find him alive or dead. “Bambi” and Sharon went to see Joan about Jerkyl’s life insurance a couple of weeks later. We had managed to get his beneficiary changed with Joan’s help. Our legal experts said that changing his beneficiary to a wife he didn’t have would allow us to suggest that he actually faked his own death for the insurance money if his new personality later discovered who she really was. Someone would tell any investigator that he had the sex change for the money so he could collect on the insurance.. “I need to know whether I need to keep paying the premium if he may be dead,” Bambi said. “I know I cannot collect unless he is declared legally dead.?” “I’m not really sure about that,” Joan said. “I’ll have to talk to my boss. Do the police say whether they will go ahead and declare him dead?” “I’ve talked to the local police,” Sharon said. “They had a couple of reports of a possible body floating downstream shortly after the car went into the water. They want to wait to see if a body turns up, but they think they’ll go ahead and declare him dead using 9/11 type procedures if they don’t learn one way or another in the next few weeks.” When she came back out she said, “We’ll agree to suspend the premiums for now considering there appears little hope he will turn up.” Meanwhile, Jerkyl had already started becoming a woman. I’m not sure who chose the name, but it was decided she would be called Nicole. I believe one of the reasons for choosing the name was that none of us were named Nicole. Most of us thought it was a very feminine sounding name. Someone told me she thought Jerkyl liked the name, but wasn’t sure. Those of us who weren’t participating in the operation watched from an observation room or on closed circuit tv. I had observed operations before, but I had never seen one in which the surgical team had as much fun. Don’t get me wrong. They were very professional, but they were obviously enjoying themselves at the same time. For example, after Jenny amputated his genitals, Millie, one of the nurses, began singing “I wonder what you’ll be now that you’re not a boy anymore.” Heather continued the song with “She’ll want to be Bobby’s girl...” Later Jenny said, “Ready to insert baby maker.” “One baby maker coming up,” Heather replied. After inserting the uterus, Jenny attached a plastic tube to serve as a scaffold for tissue to grow on for a connection to the vagina. Jenny turned the skin of Jerkyl’s penis inside out and attached it to the vagina end of the tube. Heather had also grown “Nicole” a clitoris complete with nerves. For that matter “she” would have the same nerves as a real woman thanks to Heather and her knowledge of stem cells and Mary’s knowledge of how to connect Nicole’s new nerves to the existing nerves. If it weren’t for Nicole’s bone structure, any doctor examining her would think she had been born a woman. Once the lengthy operation had been completed, Millie started singing another song: “That boy is a woman now... She’ll find out what it’s all about...” As they wheeled “her” out, the entire surgical team was singing what would become The Clinic’s most popular song. We had made a CD with songs like “I Am Woman”, “I Enjoy Being a Girl”, “I’m a Woman, W-O-M-A-N”, etc. that celebrated being female. The CD played softly in the background while Nicole slept to encourage her to think of herself as a woman.. Some of us wanted Nicole to receive breast implants. However, Heather convinced us she could provide Nicole with large enough breasts using stem cells and hormones. Heather said that providing Nicole with natural breasts would mean that if a man squeezed her breasts she would feel the same thing any woman would feel. Implants didn’t have nerves. Jenny did use implants to supplement a fat transplant to the hips. The fat was taken from Nicole’s waist to give her a more female figure. They made some minor changes to Nicole’s face to give her a more feminine appearance. The changes would reduce the chances of someone recognizing Nicole as Jerkyl. Jerkyl didn’t have a very noticeable adam’s apple, but they decided to follow the normal procedure in sex change operations and shave it some anyway. These operations took place after Nicole recovered from the initial operation and the nerves had begun functioning. Jerkyl hadn’t been a very hairy man. He had no chest hair and his beard was relatively light. Scientists attempting to find new treatments for baldness had discovered a way to turn off hair growth in other parts of the body, particularly for women. The medication had eliminated the need to shave our legs. For men’s facial hair it often had to be applied once a week to be effective. That wouldn’t be a problem for Nicole because she no longer had the testosterone source that reduced its effectiveness. Annette was an expert on the sexual pheromones. She developed a treatment that would allow r Nicole to produce the pheromones a woman would normally produce and react to men’s pheromones. We didn’t have any trouble getting government approval for using the “amnesia drug” to help our patients forget a past that had been unenjoyable. They felt the idea of creating artificial memories of a past as a member of their new anatomical sex was a promising therapy for the “transgendered”. One of the individuals responsible for the approval told us in confidence that she had had such an operation years earlier, but the people she worked with didn’t know about it. She said she wished the drug had been available for her. When Nicole woke up we told her that the sex change operation she requested had been a success. We also discussed how she had requested the new psychological conditioning which would provide her with memories of personal experiences as a female including her first period, first kiss, her prom and (for some patients including Nicole) her first sexual experience. We told her that she had had unpleasant experiences as a male and she had wanted to forget them. She would however remember her professional training if she eventually wanted to resume the practice of medicine. We wanted Nicole to be sexually active so we gave her several very enjoyable memories of sexual experiences. I was in charge of providing her with the knowledge of clothes, hair, make-up, etc. that women normally have. I didn’t realize how many different terms for clothing and shoes we had until I started making up the list. I taught her how to discuss such things with other women and of course I taught her how women viewed and talked about men. Nicole learned to keep track of social relationships by watching soap operas. She became especially fond of “The Young and the Restless” and “All My Children”. She had a thing for Ryan on the latter show. I would ask her about the shows afterwards and she would summarize them. I noticed that she was particularly interested in the story lines about women seducing male characters on the different shows. Some of us had tapes or DVD’s of our favorite soaps dating back many years. We used them to set up a library of soaps for Nicole and our other patients. Millie brought in DVD’s of earlier episodes of “All My Children” in which Greenlee and Kendall were vying for Ryan’s attention. She had forgotten that those episodes also contained a story line in which Bianca shot the man who raped her. Fortunately, Nicole only felt sorry for Bianca and the idea of rape didn’t trigger any memories of her previous life. Nicole and I would watch romantic movies and I would help her understand them from a woman’s point of view. She liked James Bond movies, especially with Roger Moore, and learned to identify with the “Bond girls”. Our second operation occurred a week after Nicole’s. Jenny chose the first patients based in part on their inability to afford the operation. She explained to them that the operation was experimental and the Clinic needed some patients who were willing to take the risk of experimental surgery. She had told them the exact date of the operation would depend on how well the first operations went. Because of the time needed to put the female organs in place, we could only perform one operation a day although we wouldn’t attempt them that frequently until much later. After the first couple of operations, we began inviting doctors from other facilities to learn how to perform the new operation. The other facilities in the New York area paid us to develop female organs for their patients. Only a few patients wanted to completely forget their past in a different body, but they all wanted the artificial memories of life as a girl and young woman. The patients would sit around and talk about their new memories which helped them believe the events had actually happened. Patients from other hospitals began coming in to participate in these therapy sessions. The larger number of patients allowed them to meet in different small groups each day so they could share their new past experiences with a different group of women each day. Carmen used her computer knowledge to create pictures of what Nicole and our other patients might have looked like when they were younger to help them think they had always been considered female. We had pictures of them in their prom dresses. Most of them wanted their teenage photos to include pictures of them in bikinis. Some of them even wanted a few pictures of them in the nude because they thought they would have allowed their boyfriends to take such photos when they were in their late teens or early twenties. They even had names for the boyfriends who supposedly took the pictures. Nicole was the first to request such photos that were taken by a guy named Bob and another named Arnold. We didn’t prompt her to ask for such photos. She thought someone who had been as sexually active as she had been would have had such photos taken. When Nicole left she thought she had wanted a sex change operation for years and was happy to be a woman. She was aware she had been born male but had forgotten what life as a man had been like. She only remembered the female memories we had provided her and had started believing they had actually happened. By that time Dr. Jerkyl’s estate had been probated. Nicole left with the whole amount including the insurance. We told her she had won the money in the lottery and had used part of it to pay for her operation. Sharon arranged a new identity for her including college transcripts and diplomas in her new name in case she wanted to resume a medical practice. Mother arranged with various psychiatrists around the country to help Nicole if she had subsequent problems. Nicole believed they were simply ordinary shrinks who handled patients like her. In the event that Nicole remembered her previous life as a male and wanted to find out more about it, they would tell her they would check. The psychiatrist Nicole asked would then tell Nicole that the man with the name she remembered had apparently died and his wife had collected his life insurance, but an insurance investigator who checked the case later was suspicious that this doctor had faked his death to collect the insurance while disguised as his own wife. The investigator had arrived about three months after Nicole left. He asked to see Jenny and I sat in as a witness. “Dr. Madison, I’m Barry McGraw,” he said. “I’m investigating a claim about [Dr. Jerkyl]. The body was never discovered, and I suspect he may have faked his death to collect on the insurance.” “How could I help you?” Jenny asked. “I read about the accident in the papers, but don’t know anything else about it. I didn’t really know him very well. In fact, I don’t know anyone who knew him very well.” “I’ve checked the pictures of him and the woman who filed for his insurance,” Barry remarked. “A computer analysis indicates they could be the same person. I was wondering if he had a sex change operation before filing for the insurance. I believe you had begun performing such operations at about that time. He likely would have been aware of it. He had some legal problems and might have wanted to make a new start some place else with a nice nest egg.” He showed us the dates of the accident and the filing for insurance. Barry wasn’t aware we were among Jerkyl’s victims because we hadn’t had enough on him to file a complaint and we certainly hadn’t told anyone outside our group. The insurance company had taken “Bambi’s” picture, but hadn‘t made a copy of the wedding photo. We had since destroyed that photo. “I don’t think you understand that a sex change operation is major surgery, especially the type of experimental operations we are performing,” Jenny replied. “I can see from the pictures why you think the two might be the same person. I recall that he seemed to be a very secretive person. He might have been uncomfortable with his anatomical sex and kept to himself so people wouldn’t know. I remember after his trial, that some of the male doctors said they didn’t know he even dated women. “If such an operation had been performed just after his apparent death, he wouldn’t have been able to file for insurance until much later. If he had faked his death, he probably would have simply dressed as a woman to get the insurance and then have gone somewhere else for the operation. You might check in Thailand. They perform a lot of operations there and he wouldn’t be likely to meet someone who knew him.” “Thanks for the help,” Barry said. “I hadn’t been aware of what was being said about him. I’ll check in Thailand.” Nicole and I began corresponding soon after she left. She decided to initially move around the country until she found a place she wanted to live. She had also decided to have fun with men in the process. She had a series of affairs everywhere she went. Her letters contained accounts of how she had seduced this man or that one. She favored men who were wealthy or among the social elite. She adopted a procedure of moving into a hotel in a new city until she found a man to live with for awhile. She saved money on housing that way. She even persuaded a few wealthy married men to pay her room and board and keep her supplied with new clothes during her affairs with them. Nicole was a regular customer of Frederick’s of Hollywood, Victoria’s Secret and similar stores and could dance while wearing 5 inch heels. We were a little concerned when she wrote that she allowed her boyfriends to take nude pictures of her. She thought some of them posted pictures on the Internet. We were worried that the insurance investigator would see them and recognize her. Millie tried to reassure us by saying, “Relax, men who look at nude pictures seldom notice the face.” To be on the safe side, Carmen found Nicole’s pictures and posted some modified versions of them with a face that looked more like her face before the operation and indicated they had been posted somewhere else than where Nicole was living. I wouldn’t have wanted Nicole’s lifestyle, but she really was enjoying being a “girl”. Mother explained that Nicole was playing the role of seductress. The role gave her a feeling of power over men and helped her feel more feminine. I had thought that a woman like that was being used by men. Mother told me that a seductress didn’t view the situation that way. Mother said, “She chooses the man she wants and gets him to do what she wants.” Mother reminded me that serial rapists want to feel they have power over women. “A seductress feels a need for the same type of power over men. She thinks they cannot resist her charms, and in many cases she is right. She may have doubts about her attractiveness and wants reassurance that men find her attractive.: “As a man Dr. Jerkyl had thought of women as sex objects,” Mother added. “Nicole as a woman apparently wants to be a sex object.” We decided to adjust our therapy to discourage development of this attitude, at least in our regular patients. We didn’t discourage patients from inventing sexual experiences, but tried to tone them done a little. After a couple of years of affairs, Nicole wrote that she had decided to get involved in bondage. Her boyfriend at the time had persuaded her to let him tie her up after she had had a few drinks. She decided it was exciting, or maybe she had just gotten bored with endless affairs. Nicole even sometimes tied her boyfriends up although she avoided what she considered “kinky” activities like wearing diapers. She sent me a picture of her wearing 5-inch spike heels, a corset and holding a small whip. We were concerned about Nicole’s statement in one email that some of her boyfriends had made videos of her. This last phase lasted about a year before Nicole began looking for something more meaningful. She was between boyfriends living in Los Angeles when she drove by a church where a wedding was just ending. She noticed that everyone was very happy. Dr. Jerkyl was raised as a Catholic although he apparently hadn’t attended any church for years before the operation. We had changed Nicole’s memories so that she remembered growing up as a girl in a Catholic church. She returned to the church after the wedding and asked the priest to hear her confession. He told her that she needed something meaningful in her life and suggested she return to medical work. She decided to get back into medicine in L.A. by taking a job in a sex change clinic that was affiliated with ours. Nicole stopped living with men, but continued to date occasionally. The L.A. clinic was located in a suburban area in a former small college. Later Nicole wrote that she had started having very vivid dreams involving sex with James Bond (i.e., Roger Moore). I encouraged her to talk to a psychiatrist because she had probably been raped. I informed her I had had the same experience, but didn’t identify my rapist. At one time I would have been happy about the news, but I had become so accustomed to thinking of Nicole as just another woman and friend that I actually felt sorry for her. Mother explained to me that my new attitude was to be expected because of my regular contact with Nicole. She told me even those who take people hostages sometimes develop a bond with them. About a year after Nicole’s operation, Jenny found a new site in the country for The Clinic. Part of the site had once been a finishing school for young women. The site also included a couple of mansions. A developer offered Jenny much more for our original building than Jenny had paid for it. The new site allowed us to start providing female to male operations. Heather’s stem cell expertise provided patients with everything they needed to have sex, although she couldn’t guarantee that their sperm would be viable. The male and female operations were performed in separate buildings. The new site provided a more relaxed atmosphere for our patients’ recovery from their operations. We had privacy that an urban site couldn’t provide. By offering both male and female operations, we were able to offer therapy by providing patients with experience dealing with members of the new opposite sex. By this time two of our early patients were pregnant. They had used in vitro fertilization, but they were pregnant. The babies had to be delivered by C-section. We began providing replacement sex organs to patients who had lost theirs to injury or disease. Cancer patients could have their breasts replaced with breasts that didn’t contain defective genes. Some women who had defective genes had their breasts replaced rather than take a chance on getting cancer. We also have performed corrective surgery for women who have an “X” and “Y” chromosome instead of two “X’s”. A defect on the “X” chromosome prevents the developing fetus from reacting properly to testosterone production. As a result they develop female genitals instead of male genitals. Such women usually lack a connection between the uterus and the vagina. The procedure can allow them to have successful pregnancies using one of the procedures The Clinic developed. Jenny performed the first transplant of a uterus with a fetus inside between identical twins. The donor had suffered potentially fatal injuries in a traffic accident. Doctors were able to keep her body alive temporarily, although they weren’t sure they could keep her alive long enough for the baby to reach an age where it could survive outside the womb. Her identical twin sister had suffered damage to her uterus a few years earlier. Jenny successfully moved the uterus and the fetus from the injured woman to her sister. Jenny and the other doctors then developed techniques for moving a fetus from one woman to another. They developed a type of small machine that would move the fetus between the women through a tube that connected their vaginas. The machine would detach the fetus from the pregnant woman then provide oxygen and nutrients while moving it to the recipient. The difficult part was connecting the fetus to the recipient. Pregnant women who developed disorders that could interfere with a successful pregnancy had another option if they wanted their babies to have a chance to survive. The operations were conducted at hospitals with facilities to handle pregnancies rather than at The Clinic. The operations were only practical in the first five months of a pregnancy. We had developed a new type of biological “incubator” for these older babies called an artificial womb. The internal part of the artificial womb is biological and filled with fluid like a real womb. External mechanical equipment provides oxygen and nutrients to the developing baby. Special sensors allow medical personnel to monitor the baby’s condition without having to light the interior. The Clinic is working on a research project dealing with determining the actual sex of babies born with confusing genitalia so that these individuals won’t have sexual identity problems later The Clinic has received approval to perform experimental “sex correction” surgery on juveniles for similar reasons. We took occasional special patients like Jerkyl, although we had begun phasing them out. We set several conditions for acceptance. Only date rapists were considered. We didn’t want to try to deal with violent men because they might have serious psychological problems. Special patients couldn’t have family members who would be likely to launch an investigation if they disappeared. It wasn’t a requirement, but it was helpful if they could disappear at the same time as a large amount of money so that the authorities would believe they wanted to disappear without a trace to avoid prosecution. The money also would allow them to relocate without having to seek a job that would require a background check. Epilogue It’s been seven years since Jenny started the Clinic. I took advantage of a new nursing training program that emphasizes on the job training to become a Registered Nurse. Most of us have gotten married. My husband was one of our patients who used to have a woman’s body. Jenny married a doctor who performs the female to male surgery. Many of our sex change patients have had successful pregnancies, although none have become pregnant naturally yet. Of course the babies were all delivered by C-sections. The various procedures developed by Clinic staff have been patented and licensed for use by other medical facilities such as the one where Nicole now worked. The Clinic no longer takes special patients. The possibility of discovery poses too much of a threat to the patients we are helping. However, I occasionally see notes on web sites accessible to rape victims about suspected date rapists who mysteriously disappear, often at the same time as a large amount of money. Nicole even emailed me that she and some of the other women who had been raped by the same man provided him with a sex change operation. They discovered he had embezzled a large some of money and was about the flee the country. The night before he was going to leave, he decided to have one last date that didn’t end the way he planned. In a lucky break, a woman stole his car and drove it off the road into a deep ravine. When the police found the car she had been dead for a few days. He wasn’t around, but there were mountain lion tracks near the car. The police decided he had probably become some big cat’s dinner. The windshield had broken in the accident and the police believed a couple of heavy rains in the area would have washed away any signs of blood or a body being dragged. The woman’s body had been pinned in the car and the cats couldn’t get at it. Is there a Clinic where you live? |