Bears Know Best

Chapter 20: Surgery

"TAYLOR IT'S TIME to wake up," I heard Dad say and felt my shoulder shaken.

"Huh?" I said and blinked sleepily up at my dad. A different nurse stood next to him.

"Hi Taylor, I'm Karen," she told me with a smile. "I'm going to take care of getting you ready and down to surgery this morning."

"Oh," I said suddenly wanting to shake.

"Here is the hospital gown I need to get you changed into." She said with as disarming of a smile as she could manage, "Why don't you go to the bathroom, put it on, and we'll get you down there."

I held back the tears that my fear seemed to want me to give into. "Oh... Okay," I stammered out. As I rolled out of the bed Dad gave me a hand to get off. I was grateful for the pair of socks I had on with the cold floor below my feet. As I sat down to go to the bathroom, I was almost tempted to stand one last time, but I really wasn't going to miss the misshapen appendage. When I was sure I had everything out from my bladder, I put on the gown and looked in the mirror.

'I'm so scared,' I thought to myself as I stared at myself. I had no doubt that I was a girl from seeing myself in the mirror, but I wish I didn't have to have the corrective surgery. 'Why couldn't I have been born with a normal vagina?'

Out in the room Dad was waiting, along with Mom and Rachel now, and they gave me big hugs. I could feel a breeze from the back of the gown, and Mom gave me a hand with tying it as much as it could be tied. "This is so embarrassing," I whispered to her.

Karen stepped up then and said, "Well in the best of doctor wisdom, after depriving you of liquids all night, I have to start this IV now so you'll be well hydrated!" While everyone else laughed nervously, she hung the bag on a stand and inserted the needle in my wrist. As I looked on in terror at it, Karen added, "It's just saline, Taylor, along with a very mild sedative to help calm you down." She looked around the room and said, "Okay, I'll step out in the hall for a minute so you can give her a pep talk!"

Mom kissed the top of my head and hugged me again. "Do you want me to braid your hair really quick before they come back to get you?"

I nodded, I didn't know what today was going to be like, but any extra time that Mom would spend on me sounded good. It took her all of two minutes to brush my hair and braid it. "I'd think you had been doing this for her all of her life," Rachel commented. She had a small smile on her face that still looked like it was just for show to me.

"I wish we had..." Mom answered sadly.

"I guess we should get her going towards the surgical ward?" Dad asked Karen, who had reentered the room. I could hear he was almost as nervous as I was about all of this.

"If you're ready Taylor?" Karen asked me.

"As ready as I'll ever be." I answered.

"Okay then, hop into this wheelchair and we'll take you down," she told me.

"Oh goody, a wheelchair..." I told her wryly. My three parental type units followed us down the hallway.

Karen pushed me to a room that they were going to put me out in before taking me to the operating room. "Just lay down here Taylor," she told me.

Doctor Canter, Doctor Jacobson, and Doctor Gafford came in as a group as I lay down. "How are you doing Taylor?" Doctor Jacobson said.

"Scared," I told her honestly.

"It'll be okay, trust me," She told me with a smile.

"Are you helping with the surgery?" I asked, confused.