Gender Confusion #GC

| Chapter XLI |

I'm surprised to see I'm getting a call from Alex. I quickly answer the call with bated breath. “Alex? Alex, are you okay?” My voice sounds urgent because I haven’t heard from him since then.

“I’m fine.” He says and I sigh. Thank God. “I’m being released from the hospital today, the police already talked to me and shit and it’s done. It’s finally over. I know you guys are coming to pick me up but can you come alone before them. I need you.”

My eyes widen and my lips part slightly. He needs me? “Um okay, I’m on my way right now.”

…

The hallway of the hospital Alex is in has as much personality as the rest of the place. The floor is a slate grey and the walls white. The ceiling is made from the polystyrene squares laid on a grid-like frame. There are commercial prints on the wall, tasteful in the dull kind of way.

Then I see Alex.

He's lying in the curtained cubical examining the polystyrene tiled ceiling. It's probably because there's nothing else to look at or because he's trying to ignore the groans of pain coming from behind the other curtains.

When he sees me, he grins but my feet remain grounded. Why isn’t he wearing his outfit and wig? I've become so used to it, it's almost weird.

Slowly, I find myself smiling back, walking further into the curtained cubical. I reach him and hug him before he gets the chance to say anything else. I stand there hugging him while he hugs me back before I pull away.

“Are you okay?” I ask worriedly.

“Yeah it was nothing; you should see the other guy.” He makes a joke out of it and I find the edges of my mouth curling up before I roll my eyes instead.

“How did you even manage to do it?” I ask, genuinely curious. I mean looking at Alex, he didn’t have as much as a chance as us.

“When you’re fighting for something you care about, you’ll do anything to win,” Alex says and my heart stops. Coughing to somehow ease away the tension he adds, “But honestly, I don’t even remember, I remember breaking a chair on him though.”

I laugh. “What did the doctors say about your get-up,” I ask, referring to Alexandra. She is basically a whole other person in my opinion.

“That’s why I called you here before them. The doctors don’t mind, they think it’s some weird hobby that I dress up as a girl,” he shrugs and I shake my head at him. He meant crossing- dressing I suppose. He really doesn’t give a shit about anything or anyone's thoughts, that's why it's so easy for him to pull all this off without a care in the world.

“I need you to take me home before they come here, I don’t want them to see me like this,” Alex adds hurriedly, looking at me expectantly.  There's a long pause. “You won’t help me will you.” He doesn’t ask this, he states this.

Of course, I don’t want to help him. I want them to find out the truth this way, to finally end this.

But I surprise myself with the next words that come out of my mouth.

“Alex, you saved my life. This Alexandra shit, I don’t care about it anymore. If you want to keep it up for whatever reasons, that’s up to you but it doesn’t affect me as much as it did before.” I tell him through a shrug, surprising myself with my new found confidence.

“You really did change,” Alex says but, by the way he smiles my way, I know he doesn’t mean it in a bad way. “Let’s get the hell out of here; we have a lot to talk about on the way home.”