Alexis entered the Clinic at 6:14 am, wearing a long brown raincoat. He carried a manilla folder filled with all his documents in one hand and an old Thermos filled with hot coffee and lots of cream and what sugar he could find at the back of his cabinets in the other, because he knew he wasn’t going to be given any food. In his pockets were his passport, some lip balm, house keys, and a bottle filled with his new medication. A small tube of his old medication was sealed up and hidden within his sock. 

He walked slowly down the hall to the check-in desk, relishing the freedom that his fourteen minutes of tardiness represented. The Thermos weighed him down and he walked with a slight hitch; he was intent on dragging out the seconds. A woman who was either middle aged or perpetually tired looked up at him from her console, her pale hair the same color as her face, neither of which seemed to have gotten any sun in years. 

She did not bother asking Alexis for his name. That would be a fight that could go on for ages, and escalate into something altogether undesired, and so she simply gestured to the slim grey chip reader that sat at the edge of the table. Alexis made a big show of lugging his Thermos and papers onto the counter and rolling up both his sleeves before he finally slumped it over the reader and the name and number popped up. The woman acknowledged, but did not, read, what glowed at her from the screen. The nod she gave to Alexis signalling that he should sit down was almost sympathetic, but very resigned. 

Alexis took a seat beside a woman who had disappeared into her puffy pink coat, a big green scarf wrapped around and covering her face. Across from both of them was an older man, a little stocky, with a fresh wound on his left cheek. His eyes were small and glimmering, the roundness of his face and his baldness all familiar to Alexis, which made him sad. The man could be any one of his uncles, cousins, or fathers-of-choice. He did not return his gaze or move around very much at all.  

After a time (though not as long a time as Alexis would have wanted), an older woman with snowy hair coiffed into a tightly wavy bob appeared and said the name and number. Alexis waited a moment, weight shifting in his and his companion’s chairs, before letting out a sigh, pushing onto the arms of the chair, and rising from his seat. 

After confirming the name, the white-haired woman said to him, “My name is Bedelia, nice to meet you. My, it looks like you were several minutes late.” She pushed a small half-sheet of paper into Alexis’ hand, which spoke about the federal patient compliance law. 

“Make sure to review this,” she said seriously, locking her steely eyes on him. “For the penalties, there is a tiered structure, and the progressive penalties are ones we want you to avoid.” Her silvery, almond-shaped nail pointed quickly at the last several penalties on the list: Short-Term Custody, and Indefinite Custody & In-Custody Role Reassignment. 

No one had ever spoken a word about it to Alexis, not in any one of his dozens of appointments, but he had seen the news when the law had passed and remembered how all of his friends interpreted the statute to one another in their late-night, panicked group chats on the network. Short-Term Custody meant jail and Indefinite Custody meant something like prison or a camp. In-Custody Role Reassignment meant that undergoing treatment at the clinic and preparing for the service would no longer be adequate for Alexis; he would be forced to perform some other duty somewhere else. And if it was the punishment for not completing his treatment… 

Bedelia opened a pale green door to a tiny clinic room with a slim bench, a locker, and a papery gown hanging on a hook. She folded her hands across her skirt and looked ahead expectantly until Alexis began to undress. He slid his shoes, socks, and pants off first, and coiled his belt around the mass of clothes he shoved into the locker as quickly as he could. Alexis stared into Bedelia’s blank, impassive face. Then he lifted his shirt over his head and slid his underwear off, balling them both up and shoving them into his boot before closing up the locker and lunging for the gown. It was rough against his skin and caught on his dry patches. The frosty air coming from the vent above him was a lot more noticeable suddenly. 

Bedelia smiled softly once Alexis was fully covered and sitting properly on the bench with his ankles crossed. She pulled out a tablet a little larger than her palm from the pocket of her dress. 

“As usual, we will need your height, weight, a body scan, and some blood tests,” she said to him. “But just at a glance, I can tell that you have made significant progress.” 

Alexis smiled back weakly. 

“You look much softer in the face,” Bedelia said as she leaned forward. “Narrower bicep circumference, I’d guarantee it. And there’s been some fat redistribution.” She looked down. “Are your pants fitting a bit differently of late?” 

Alexis blinked and the correct words scrolled across his mind. “I wouldn’t know, I have been wearing the clothing that Training sent.” The soft linen pants and sweater sets with the deep v-cut in colors like dusty pink and cream, with matching chenille socks and flat Keds-like shoes. 

Bedelia smiled warmly at him. Nevermind that the clothing in the locker behind him were size 32 men’s jeans and a bulky Carhart long sleeve. It was better to deny a truth (if it was the wrong truth) even as it shone right in your face. A correct lie at least showed that you knew the direction in which you needed to be headed. Good girl. 

“Good girl,” Bedelia said. “Up with you, now.” 

Alexis stepped onto the scale and felt the thin metal strip against the top of his head. At his age the medication changes would not be making him any shorter, but the mass of him had gone down, and Bedelia chirpingly approved. Her hand slid up Alexis’s outer thigh, to his hip and waist with methodical attention. 

“You’re slimming down quite well, with a nice, proper feminine curve to you,” she said. There was a heat in her touch. Her hand lingered, and wandered back down to Alexis’ hip, then took a big mound of his fat into the palm. “You feel this? You did not have this before.” 

Alexis nodded and blinked while staring ahead at the wall. A tear formed deep inside his sinuses, but he swallowed it back down his throat. 

“You could almost make a full recovery,” Bedelia said, her hand moving across Alexis’ chest. “If only for…” 

She stopped herself. “Well. Let’s take you into the scanner.” 

The body scanner down the hall was a large ovular platform with a movable metal frame that rotated all around Alexis’ body. A technician sat beside Bedelia in the booth chomping on a tuna sandwich while fiddling with the dials. 

“Put your arms out, dear,” Bedelia instructed him through a loudspeaker. 

Alexis looked down and saw where his feet met the bright orange footprints on the base of the scanner. He looked ahead and saw himself in the mirror mounted on the wall, and the markings on it showing him how to hold his body. He put his arms out in a palms-down T-pose position, the last thing he saw the white etched words reading CLOSE YOUR EYES. Then the clamps came out holding him by the wrist and ankles, and the mechanical whirring began. 

The scanner moved around Alexis from the bottom of him to the top. His muscles twitched and flexed when they sensed the machine moving right past them. His toes wiggled. His ass flexed and strained against the tight gown. His pussy clenched and unclenched while the machine bore its magnetic resonance gaze into it, and released fluid down Alexis’ leg despite himself. When the scanner reached his head he felt the energy clicking and buzzing somewhere deep within him. 

“Don’t move, dear,” Bedelia called. “You only have about ten minutes left.” The full-body scan took about twenty-five minutes in total. 

If Alexis moved too much, then he would be penalized, and they’d had to start it all over again. Early on the process he’d tried getting a disability waiver for it, and shown a note from a private health saying he had restless leg syndrome. The Clinic had swiftly rejected the order, its Ethics Board ruling that since Alexis’ treatment would be taking him off the antidepressant medication that had likely given him the restless legs in the first place, the issue should be moot. They didn’t care that the movement hadn’t gone away, that Alexis’s was still shaking and kicking in the night. He was supposed to be getting fixed, that was all that mattered, and he’d best act like it. 

The desire to wiggle in his position or else break free from the shackles was lighting Alexis’ brain on fire. He had to take a deep breath and tell himself, I’m not here, I’m not here, I’m not here. And it was kind of true, wasn’t it? The person undergoing Treatment wasn’t Alexis; the patient they spoke of wasn’t him, and the one who would walk out of the Clinic when it was finished wouldn’t be him, either. He, Alexis, might have been the human being with the consciousness that had to experience all this physical re-correction and social conditioning, but the target of it all was not Alexis. It was some imaginary girl, that was the one who these things happened to. 

When the beeper went off indicating that the scan was done, Alexis, shook his head and moved his eyes around, trying to wake up. His mind appeared to have drifted off someplace while he was waiting there, wishing that he wasn’t present. It didn’t trouble him much that his brain had started doing this. The moments that he was “gone” were a reprieve, like when Alexis was asleep and his body was at peace and he’d briefly forgotten all that had happened in the world this past year. Being “gone” was like that, a naive stupidity that was better than the truth dawning on you. But then the clamps retracted and it was time to go. 

Bedelia marched Alexis to the blood drawn center. He sat in a little cubicle and Bedelia held his right hand while a phlebotomist (also female, because she would be touching him) extended his left and felt for a vein. The sting was brief but Alexis’ face clouded over with heat and dizziness anyway, he couldn’t help it. Bedelia propped his body up and murmured it’s alright, dear. One vial filled with his essence and was replaced with another. He couldn’t help how weak he felt. After six vials were drawn the needle got removed and a bright pink band-aid with the Clinic’s logo on it covered up his wound. 

“That wasn’t so bad was it?” Bedelia asked, carrying him down to the evaluation room. Alexis’ skin felt clammy, and his body temperature was looping from sweating hot to freezing cold and back again. 

He was sat down by Bedelia into a sticky vinyl-covered chair. The door locked behind Bedelia as she left him. There was nothing in the room that Alexis could strike, stab, or hang himself with. Nothing to be used as a weapon against the Clinic workers, nothing to busy himself with at all. He looked at a crack in the brownish-grey painted cinder block wall and had a strange thought about himself and his friend Moir riding inner tubes down the Susquehanna in their bathing suits, completely free. She had been in a two-piece tankini with bright purple shorts, he had been in slim trunks the color of bricks. The sun beating down on them. Tepid beers sweating with condensation breaking their thirst and serving as battering material when they stumbled upon a couple of straight guys doing mushrooms. They’d been so unbothered by Alexis and Moir’s presence, and friendly. Where were the men like them now? 

The door opened. Bedelia was joined by Dr. Langstaff, a handsome man in his forties with an olive complexion and sandy-colored hair that fell to the sides in flawless waves. He was a man who exuded easy privilege, and an obliviousness to other people’s circumstances that Alexis found almost charming at times. The doctor appeared never to have thought about his impact on people’s inner lives, or the world. He passed the tablet back to Bedelia and looked at Alexis curiously but without any consideration, like a farmer counting the number of hens still alive in the coop after a coyote’s evening visit. 

He addressed Alexis by the number and name. “We are seeing a lot of encouraging progress,” he said. “Your weight and superficial appearance are on trend, as Bedelia’s probably already told you. Your body scan shows a reduced waist to hip ratio, which is good, and attributable to shifts in both places. Skin elasticity has increased. Body temperature in the extremities has lowered, which is what we’d want to see in a standard female patient. We’re observing some slight rounding of the posterior and the jaw, both desirable.” 

Bedelia showed the images of Alexis’ body to him, though he tried to pin all his attention on the two lines between Dr. Langstaff’s eyes. 

“Bloodwork is encouraging. Reduced hematocrit, red blood cell count, androgens…Estrogen has leveled out, so we are going to give you something to help with that. Are you on anything currently?” 

Alexis reached for pockets he wasn’t wearing. “I’ve already been put on estrogen supplements,” he said quietly. 

“Yes, and we found that pill bottle in your locker,” Bedelia said briskly. “A ninety-day supply was prescribed over a month ago, yet there’s more than sixty pills in the container. Can you explain that?”

“It-it took me a few days to pick the prescription up,” Alexis stammered. “Please, I had every intention of being compliant, but there were d-delays-” 

The doctor put his hand up, batting away at Alexis’ feelings like fruit flies. “We’ll waive the penalty this time, we know that our system has been coping with supply chain issues. But we will be giving you an IV infusion before you leave, to get your levels in compliance with regulations.” 

Alexis’ throat went dry. He couldn’t speak his questions – a full week or more worth of E, all right now? It would tank his energy and throw his mood for a complete loop. 

“I’ll need-” he croaked. 

“An anti-suicidal,” Bedelia said boredly, tapping away at a few boxes on the tablet. “Yes, we have that in your chart. We’ll have one ready for you at infusions.” 

“On the BC and SC level,” Dr. Langstaff said, meaning behavioral and social conditioning, “We are noticing some reticence to adhere to Training. Hair length has not increased noticeably.” 

“My hair grows very slow-” 

“We will give you a supplement to deal with that. Have you started Movement Therapy classes?” 

Those were the courses meant to teach Alexis how to sit, walk, and carry himself correctly in his assigned role. “I’ve only been to I think two, so far.” 

“Vocal Therapy?” 

He shook his head. “None yet.” 

“So I imagine no Relational Therapy,” Dr. Longstaff said, trading a look with Bedelia. 

“We’ll give her a daily dose of Conscienton, to get her a little bit more motivated,” said Bedelia, who threw Alexis a shining smile. 

But Alexis wasn’t even behind on his classes – in fact, he was a bit ahead of the game. He’d thought that by reporting to the Training Center promptly he could avoid having Compliance Officers come looking after him. But apparently he has not been early enough. 

Dr. Longstaff scrolled through the tablet and left a few signatures. He said, “I hope we can count on you to pick up all these prescriptions this time.” 

“You can, sir,” said Alexis, almost by instinct. Bedelia raised a brow and mouthed the words Good Girl.

But Dr. Longstaff was unmoved. “That should be about all for now. We’ll have you come by in another two weeks, to examine your progress and test for your medications in your bloodstream. After that, we will need to schedule a behavioral consultation with your monitors. Friend, roommate?” 

“No,” Alexis said. “It’s my older brother.” 

“Even better,” the doctor said. “It’s very beneficial when the family is on board with these things. And involved in the patient’s life still. Patients who have retained that connection are far more likely to assimilate successfully after completing Training. That’s good news for you.” 

The doctor rose, but before he left he came close and took Alexis’ chin (which had been supposedly softening) in his hand. He stared inscrutably deep into Alexis’ eyes. 

“I’ve reviewed all of your case files, and you were very pretty before,” he said, pulling Alexis’ face even more close. “You will get through this thing, and Treatment will find a more than suitable partner for you.” 

He rubbed a few circles into Alexis’ back. “Comply and all will be well,” he said. 

“I will comply and all will be well,” Alexis softly voiced back. He wasn’t sure what made him do it, whether he was being obsequious, or just awkward, or if it was a response that at some point had been trained. But saying the words felt unavoidable, and natural, like sneezing or orgasming when the right parts of him were stimulated. There was no fighting it, and it released some tension coiled tight inside him. 

“Good girl,” the doctor said, which made Alexis wetten a little, and then he departed, Bedelia taking hold of Alexis’ hand. 

The infusion room was warmly and dimly lit with soft, meditative music playing from speakers in the floor. Bedelia removed a knit blanket from a narrow heated compartment in the wall and draped it across Alexis’ lap. 

“Now I know that you hate needles,” Bedelia said, “But we have got just the thing here for you.” Then she placed a large visor over Alexis’ face. 

The room disappeared from his view. In its place was a large, placid body of water reflecting a pinky sunset from above. Alexis swore he could smell freshly cut flowers and salty air. Bedelia popped two buds into his ears and then he could hear the gentle lapping of water and a sleepy humming sound. Neon pink words appeared across the image of the visor, echoed by a tired-sounding yet contented female voice. 

“LET GO,” the voice and words told Alexis. “BE FREE.” 

“RELEASE STRESS.”

“STOP FIGHTING.” 

“ENJOY YOURSELF.” 

“BE A HAPPY, CAREFREE GIRL.” 

“SURRENDER.” 

A small paper cup appeared in Alexis’ hand. He could feel two pills jangling inside of it. 

“COMPLY AND ALL WILL BE WELL.” 

Alexis brought the pills to his lips. The cup went away. A slightly larger cup with water in it was pushed into his hands. 

“TAKE YOUR MEDICATION.” 

Alexis’ mind was feeling foggy. He wasn’t sure if anything was directly happening to him, or if the impossibility of his situation was just starting to wear him down. The fight in him had been starting to go for some time now. He didn’t want to be fined, he didn’t want to be jailed, or for any of his other friends to be found out or associated with him. There was nothing to do but follow the orders, and keep any additional heat off himself. He sucked down the water, which tasted extra-floridized and oddly sweet, and chased the pills down. A few more words flashed across the screen and into his ears. 

“RELAX.” 

“ACCEPT.” 

“OBEY.”

Immediately, Alexis felt far less conflicted. The appropriate course of action for him could not be more clear. There was no choice but to go along with all this, and why would he want to fight it? Had his life before really been so good? All that fighting with his parents, never being hired for jobs he was qualified for, and getting stares from people on the street? It had been so hard to date, so hard to buy clothes, and it took so much work to get his body to change how he thought he wanted it… it all made him so miserable. 

“LET GO.” 

“ACCEPT TREATMENT.” 

“COMPLY WITH ORDERS.” 

Hadn’t life been better for him, when he was a girl and he didn’t know? Wasn’t life simpler when he believed exactly what everyone had always told him? As a girl, before he had tried to transition, everything had been so simple. Guys approached Alexis and asked her for her number, and then they bought her things and brought her into their cars or their apartments and they got to touch her. Women told Alexis how to dress and how to navigate conflict at her job, which was never particularly competitive, but suited her just fine and was not hard. Her neighbors came to her for free babysitting and trusted her with their deepest secrets. When she entered a room, people told Alexis what they thought of her appearance, and lit up when she gave them a smile. No one was afraid to sit beside her on the bus, they were quick to squeeze in and spread out until their thighs touched hers in fact. She had felt so energetic, urgent, and beautiful. 

“FOLLOW TRAINING.” 

“ACCEPT CONDITIONING.”

“BECOME WHAT YOU ARE TOLD.” 

It was a relaxing thought, returning to a life like that. Deciding that she was transgender had filled Alexis’ head with so many distractions. She had to watch everything about how she presented herself, and correct people for using the wrong words. Once she’d made the realization she could see gender everywhere, in every word people used for infants, every locker room and bathroom, every clothing store, flower store, grocery store, hair salon. Everything about life that had felt so obvious and natural was filled with questions and resistance for her then. All of her friends thought about gender and their bodies constantly. And every little thing that the government did filled her with dread. 

It was like in her life before Alexis had been attending some opulent party, but that after deciding she was a man someone had thrown back a great curtain, revealing a steaming wreckage piled with bodies just outside of the room. Alexis couldn’t stop looking at it, and it made her sick. She couldn’t sleep or eat. She and so many of her friends longed often for death. 

But if she could go back to the day before she saw past that curtain, and lay back on the couch and let the warmth and merriment pass over her…

“STOP THINKING.” 

“STOP DOUBTING.” 

“TRUST AND OBEY.” 

Alexis smiled like a kitten with a belly filled with warm milk. Something soothing was coursing through her veins, making her instantly forget the prick of the needle, and rendering her body very slack and receptive. Fearing anything at all struck Alexis as highly absurd. Life was just a thing that happened to her as it was meant to, and her job was only to allow it to do its work on her body and mind with grace. She could feel her body growing softer and more beautiful, her body hair thinning to pale gold, her cheeks filling up into a fetching apple shape. She would become a lovely and delicate object with tiny feet and small steps and take the hand of the man who was meant for her… and it would be like ascending to Heaven. 

“LOVE YOUR HUSBAND.” 

“OFFER SERVICE.” 

“GIVE YOURSELF.” 

“GIVE UP.” 

Alexis saw herself again on the river, this time in a diaphanous cream gown with her hair long as it had been in kindergarten. She floated atop a lilypad adorned with flowers, into a deep forest with trees that blotted out the sun. The chittering of insects and chirping of birds rubbed the thoughts right out of Alexis’ brain, creating a happy din of liveliness that made her confused and yet emotional. She brought her soft hands to her chest and felt at her thrumming heart. There were buds there, two growing breasts like expanding flowers, and when she opened her gown slightly to release the pressure they exploded into red and pastel pedals that sweetened the air and flushed her face. 

Alexis felt weak and inescapably lovely, the flowers crowding all around her and almost causing her to sink down. It was then that a strong, broad hand took hold of hers and lifted her into a seated position. A man with stern features and a young, hungry glow knelt down at her from above and looked her entire body up and down. He pushed her curls from her face, rubbed at the blush on her cheeks, and tilted her head back and opened her lips to receive his tongue inside her. Alexis tried grabbing for the man to stabilize herself, but her eyes rolled back into her head and the world spun away as she collapsed, his firm, suit-clad body falling atop her. 

When he entered her, it pushed all her hesitations away, as if he were clearing out her insides to make room only for himself. Alexis’ legs parted for him instinctively, the canal inside her lubricating itself, and a series of little high-pitched moans choked out of her throat in rhythm with his movements. 

My husband, Alexis murmured in her dream-state, which felt not like speaking so much as psychically emitting. My husband, I will obey you, I am here for you, I was made for you, please tell me that I am good enough? 

And the man, who was so young and yet so firm and more powerful than her took Alexis’ hair in his grip and pulled her head close to his chest. He thrust inside her violently now, possessively, inching ever closer to the slight knot of nerves around her cervix. 

My possession, he said, the words echoing in her mind, every inch of this body belongs to me. You will make it into exactly what I specify. You will eat as I like you to eat, move as I instruct you to move, take all the treatments and medications that I want assigned to you. You will change for me, until you are entirely made of me, my will manifest in your flesh. You are my doll. You are my toy. I will own you forever, and you will never have to trouble your pretty form with a thought. Accept my control. Embrace your role. 

And he thrust so deep it made Alexis nearly black out from the pain. This she accepted easily, unquestioningly, as she did all his commands. 

“I will comply, and all will be well,” she heard herself saying, out in the room. All at once she could see a projection of her own body seated in the infusion center, an IV flowing into her arm. The man that she saw, who was her, was a freakish aberration from the lovely wife and servant she was meant to be. But he was accepting the help that would bring him closer to the right truth, the reality of who Alexis really was and could only ever be. 

From where she was laying in the lush river, Alexis felt dizzy and happy, and she slumped into the flowers with legs still open and her husband’s love running out of the hole at the front of her. She knew that it was a dream she was in, but it was suffused with holy rightness, and was Heaven. She wanted only to be able to return to it again and soon. Each visit would bring her closer to her ultimate fate. 

She was complying. All would be well. All of her old troubles would be behind her very soon. 

Alexis woke what felt like lifetimes later, with the blanket gone from her lap and the room gone all cold. A nurse was wiping off her arm and affixing yet another bandage, looking bored and listening to sports radio on her watch and not acknowledging Alexis. Bedelia was nowhere to be found. 

“Am I done?” Alexis asked, standing. “Am I free to leave?”

The nurse seemed put out by having to answer this question. “If they say you’re all set for the day, you’re all set for the day. They’d be here if you weren’t. Go get your things.” 

As she padded barefoot down the hall, Alexis tried to gather her thoughts together. Where had she been going? To the room with the locker in it, right. But where had that been? She’d been in so many rooms today. All that she wanted was to return to the lush jungle and the bed of flowers, to be back in the gown and under her husband. But who was he? She hadn’t met him. That wasn’t for until Training was nearly complete. She felt an addicted love within her for a person who, as far as she knew, didn’t really exist. Perhaps the warm sensation that kept her dreamily wandering the Clinic was really a love for herself, she thought – for the kind of woman that she could be. 

Alexis went to push the hair from her eyes, then realized there was no long cascade of curls like in her imagination. She ached for what was missing as if it were a phantom limb. Then she looked down at herself, the flat plane of her body and her hairy legs. This wasn’t right. She would have to get home at once and fix things, make herself attractive. Every moment not spent in compliance was time that she had squandered and used to take herself away from the right truth. She wanted to live in reality, and abandon the childish ideas that had almost made her destroy her beauty. 

Then she walked by a larger hospital room, where four different sickly-looking, bald-shaven patients sat staring at television screens. The sight of them made her freeze in place. Their faces were so hard to place, and yet recognizable. She couldn’t tell from their expressions whether they were depressed or completely hollow inside. When she repositioned herself at the door, Alexis could see what was on their televisions: dull grey-and-yellow spirals undulating slowly, murky words in cream letters appearing and then fading that were too small for Alexis to read. 

The scene in the room gave Alexis a nauseated feeling down in her stomach, yet the spirals were transfixing, and she could barely look away. She had no idea what the messages behind them were, but she wanted to stop resisting and working to make so much damn sense of everything, to just approach, sit down, and let herself succumb to a passive, emptied-out state. 

“Can I help you?” an orderly asked her. 

She had brought herself down to the floor, legs folded, hands limp in her lap. Alexis shook her head and the world returned, solid and palpable. There was even a sticky spot beneath her from a spilled soda that she hadn’t felt. 

“No,” Alexis said, “I’m fine.” 

She rose, and remembered the tube she’d snuck into the facility in her sock. Looking out at the vacant-faced patients who still had not moved or acknowledged her, Alexis recalled why she’d taken such a risk. Bruce. The words appeared first, then the image of the person: five foot eight inches, with a thick neck and a bald head. Alexis’ friend. One of the holdouts. Though Alexis had resigned herself to compliance and was beginning to taste the pleasure of it, there were others who had not given up. It was Alexis’ duty, and his promise, to do right by them. 

Alexis stumbled around the halls and found his locker again. He dressed hurriedly, not looking for the vial outwardly lest he was being watched, just fumbling around in his sock with his hand. There it was, cool flexible metal with a plastic tip: Androgel, a week’s supply. 

Alexis slipped the hormones into his pocket, hid his patient identification under his coat, and walked briskly to the stairs and bounded two floors up. 

“Can I help you with something?” Another orderly asked him.

“I’m visiting,” Alexis said. “I’m looking for Bruce, Spintac? I’m from, uh. Her Church.” 

“I think you mean Matilda Spintac,” a nurse’s aid hollered from the reception desk. “She’s in 303, sir.” 

 “Right, of course. Thank you!” Alexis grinned privately to himself at having been gendered correctly. So that was how he still read to people, when they did not know he was a patient. Then he felt stabbed with regret. You’ve ruined yourself, a faint voice told him. You need to be fixed. 

“I’m trying,” Alexis told herself. “I’m trying to be fixed.” 

Bruce was in a room with two other non-compliant patients, with a guard standing watch outside their door. He didn’t care about Alexis visiting, it seemed he was primarily there to keep the non-compliants from trying to walk out. Alexis found his friend seemingly sleeping in his bed while chiming music and spirals played on his television. 

“Bruce,” Alexis whispered, putting a hand on his friend’s forearm. “It’s me. Alex.” 

Bruce’s eyes flew open. “I know. I heard you.” He smiled tiredly. “That was well played.”

“Oh, out there?” Alexis blushed a little. “The trick is to…well, believe it.”

“The truth is the truth,” Bruce said familiarly. “That’s what I told you about speaking up with people who misgender you.” 

That was what Bruce had said. Your identity is a fact, was what he’d told him. And it’s never wrong to stand up for the facts. 

“And it really helped,” Alexis said. For a time. Until the world stopped caring about the truth of things. “I brought something for you.” 

“Shh,” Bruce said, looking down at his own hand. Alexis slipped the tube into it, and watched Bruce deftly slide it under his blankets and worm it all the way into his own socks. “A week’s supply?”

Alexis nodded. “I’m back in two weeks. I can bring you more-” 

Bruce shook his head. “Don’t get too risky on me.” 

“I want to do what I can, Bruce. I want to do right.” 

“Don’t call me that,” his friend chided him. 

“Sorry,” Alexis said. More loudly: “Matilda. You are looking so…pretty.” 

His friend sighed sadly. “I know.” 

Things felt hopeless to Alexis. The dose he had just given his friend was not enough. Bruce had been brought in for non-compliance over a month ago, and no doubt been on a steady course of estrogen and anti-androgens since then. Alexis could tell it wasn’t agreeing with him, from the puffy, blotchy look on Bruce’s face. A little dab of testosterone gel applied here and there wouldn’t matter, wouldn’t undo the damage done.

Alexis looked around the drab room desperately. The spirals were working over and over on their televisions; Bruce’s roommates sat with wide, open eyes that didn’t move.

“I see you made some new friends,” Alexis ventured. 

Bruce began fiddling with the woven pattern of his blanket, moving one loose thread out of position and beginning to unravel it. “That’s about as much personality as you ever get out of them.” 

“Are you okay?” 

His friend kept worming the thread out of the blanket. “I don’t watch that stuff,” he said gesturing at the television. “They can give it to me but I don’t let it inside. You can do the same…” 

“Oh Bru–Matilda! I think it is too late for that.” Alexis took a quick, surreptitious hold of her friend’s hand. It was wet and uncalloused, no doubt buffed and moisturized to undo the ‘damage’ that decades of guitar playing had brought upon him. 

“I can see that you’re letting them get to you,” Bruce breathed very quietly. Alexis had to lean in to hear him. “You made your choice and I respect it. You can still walk around outside, get a job maybe. Have a life in little pockets. I get it. But you don’t have to let them in. You can do what they ask. But don’t let them in.” 

Alexis looked up at the TV with the spirals. The world quivered at the edges of her eyes. The sloshy, dishwatery visuals took hold of her and pulled her down, down, slowing her breathing. She didn’t have to think like this anymore. If she was on the side of the winners, she wouldn’t have to lose. None of this would go down with any difficulty at all… didn’t she want to feel that big hard husband inside her? Wouldn’t it be nice to be weak, like her mind already felt weak? 

There was pain in Alexis’ arm. Bruce had pinched her and twisted at her bandaid, making it open back up and bleed. 

“They’ve already got me..,” Alexis mumbled. “I don’t even know how much.” 

Her friend smiled sadly. “Honey. It’s okay.” Bruce closed his eyes and leaned back into his bed. “This shit is hard to resist. Takes all my energy. And it’s not exactly rewarding. So I can’t blame you if you…don’t.” 

Alexis realized then that bringing her friend the medication had never been about sparing him, but rather about allowing him his dignity. He would be changed, and forced into detransition like all the rest, but they could not make him agree with it unless he let them. 

That made Alexis wonder, too – was she letting them change her? Did some part of her really, truly want to give up, or doubted the choices she’d been making all along, and wanted her to give in? Maybe the freedom Bruce was willing to fight and lose everything for was not as precious to her. Maybe within Alexis there was the spirit of someone moldable and compliant, who would prefer that things be easy and feel good rather than be bravely true. 

“Visiting hours are ending in five minutes,” the guard in the hallway called. “Medical Compliance Officers will enter at five for nightly rounds.” 

“You better get going,” Bruce told her. “They’re gonna put on Wheel of Fortune for a while when the officers are in here. I don’t want to miss that.” 

Alexis nodded. So the spirals had an effect on other people too, not just the patients…She felt tempted to look back up at the displays once again and be sucked into their thoughtless, quiet paradise, but she resisted. For her friend. 

“I’m so sorry. Matilda.” Alexis said carefully. 

“Get out of here,” Bruce told him. And as he parted, Alexis heard him call out, “This place gets into you. Their beliefs. How they look over and paw at your body. They will make it so easy for you to forget life was ever any other way, that you ever were somebody else. Just hearing you say my name… it bought me a few more hours.” 

“Miss Spinac!” The guard was hollering now. “Miss Spintac! Enough or I’m gonna call in a penalty.” 

“Penalize me with what?” Bruce asked. “I’m already shackled to this bed!” He raised his right arm, which Alexis hadn’t been able to see before, and revealed the handcuff there. “You are saving my life, Alex. Maybe not extending it. But you’re letting me be the one that lives it, while I’m here.” 

“Miss Spintac! Miss Spintac!” the nurses and orderlies were all calling, holding Bruce down, crowding Alexis out of the door. They took hold of his head and turned it. Someone hooked a clear fluid into his IV. And Alexis watched as his friend’s face went slack and all his interest drifted, dumbly, over to the swirling drab colors on the screen. 

“I will comply and all will be well…,” he mumbled. And all the other bodies in the beds mumbled. And Alexis had to throw his hand over his mouth to keep from saying the same thing.