CHAPTER TWELVE: DOCTOR GIRLFRIENDS

"Honey, we have to do something about all these flowers," Elle's mom said, handing her another bible-thick stack of get-well cards.

There were an awful lot of flowers. Roses, peonies, wildflowers, and even a potted azalea. There were dozens of them. They covered all of the shelf space in Elle's room, spilled out into the hallway, and more were waiting on the front porch. And more kept coming. Dozens upon dozens of flowers from across the country and even abroad flooded in by the hour. There were, Elle supposed, some downsides to having a sizable and enthusiastic social media following. Hot girl problems. She held in her hand the card that Miranda Cuthbert had sent with her vase of lilac and violet carnations.

'We've rescheduled the panel for next week. I really want you on the show, Elle! Get better soon!'

Elle had mixed feelings on that. She was glad, really glad, that people cared about her and were rooting for her speedy recovery. She really liked and respected Miranda. But she just wasn't sure she could hold up her end on a panel discussion. Was she even smart anymore? She felt about normal - but she'd never exactly been a brainiac. Smart-ish, sure, but even normal Elias hadn't been great. Was she even that anymore?

Interviews she could still manage, she figured. She had dozens of requests, and she turned them all down unless they could be done in five minutes over the phone. She turned them all down except Royce Boyle's request - Royce Boyle from 'New Herald' and 'The Boston Mariner'. He was AHS himself and had written on the topic with a lot of insight and nuance. She really wanted to meet him in person and, if he was willing to fly out to make it happen, Elle was game.

Elle padded over to the wall mirror and the bathroom scale, moving the potted azalea off so she could weigh herself. It was time to assess the day's damage... not that there was much 'damage'. The AHS changes had slowed, slowed, and finally crawled to a near-stop. Just a shade under 4'10 and just a shade under 90 pounds. 89...88...89... the scale couldn't make up its mind. She was big for an HF-05 girl in all the ways that counted. Elle shifted her chest back and forth, watching the plump protrusions sway in her night shirt. She didn't have Melanie-caliber boobs, thank god. Those would have toppled her right over. But these were at least as large on her petite frame. If they'd grown more overnight, though, they'd been subtle about it.

"More packages!" Elle's mom said, tapping on the door. "Are you decent?"

"Reasonably so," she said, rumpling her shirt to hide that she was nipping out. It didn't quite work.

"These ones aren't flowers," mom said pointedly, placing the stack inside the door.

At least she didn't want for fitting clothes anymore. She had only to post her measurements and items would come flooding in, as if by some arcane incantation of Internet summoning. Most of them were too risqué to wear outside of her more risqué posts with Melanie. Many of them were too risqué for even that. But a bare few of them were fit for public consumption. She was still committed to her clothes and accessories invitational with mom and Melanie, though. She needed to occasionally look respectable. Melanie had even made an itinerary for it:
<Saturday: Drive to LA and shop! Dinner @Cuzios (have $250 gift card).
<Sunday: Spa day (have $500 gift card)! And more shopping!
<Monday: Mandatory Makeover Monday @Pygmalion (have $600 gift card)! Accessorize!
<Tuesday: Elle's interview with Miranda Cuthbert!

It was only a five-minute interview. The other 45 minutes were a free speech panel discussion that Elle had barely started research for. How many gift cards did Melanie have, anyway? Elle was willing to bet that this wasn't half of them. One of Elle's get-well cards had a $50 gift card to Red Lobster. That was nice.

Elle padded downstairs in her fluffy robe and helped herself to avocado toast and some kombucha from the refrigerator.

Her mother did not seem satisfied with that meager selection - not with three more courses to go through. "Is that all you're eating? You'll be nothing but skin and bones!"

Elle laughed. "Can I ever win with you?"

"I'm your mother, so no. You can't."

"Today's my last day at the community center - I hope," Elle said.

She'd tested 4.15 ppm for the vehicle on Wednesday and had gone in yesterday just to test again, as she wanted to get her assessment battery done as soon as possible, just to get that monkey off her back. She'd tested a 2.95 - the highest measurable value below the 3.00 ppm AHS vehicle threshold, but below it nonetheless. If Elle's guess was right, she'd be around 2.6 ppm today and would stay close to that for a few months until the AHS vehicle eventually bottomed out around 2. For as long as she was alive, it would never completely disappear.

"You're going in early?"

Elle nodded. "If I test when the infirmary opens at ten, I can have the titre results back and my battery done by my last group meeting at one."

"If you say so, dear."

"Melanie's coming with to get hers done, too. You can come also if you like."

Elle's mother shrugged. Her perfectly perfect and perfectly unenthusiastic smile made it clear that this wasn't a priority for her. "I'll just get it done at the neighborhood screenings next week. They've posted those dreadful fliers all over the neighborhood." She didn't like the olive green color of the CDC fliers and had been complaining about them since they'd been posted on Wednesday.

"Fine, I'll be back by evening."

Before Elle had a chance to head out, Grandma Olsen eased her way down the stairs, curlers still in her hair.

"Sleep well, mom?" Elle's mother asked.

"I never sleep well any more," she said. "But I can't complain. What's this avocado nonsense?"

"I've also got bacon, biscuits - from scratch!, hash browns - home made!, and grapefruit. Take your pick, mom."

"Oh, you know me. I just like to complain." Her grandmother chuckled. "I was praying for you last night, Elle. I think you and your little friend will do fine with the... whatever the test nonsense is."

"Thanks, granny," Elle said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. "I need to go get dressed."

Elle wasn't exactly a believer in the power of prayer, but her grandmother's intentions were good. That was a nice change.

Ten minutes later, Grandma Olsen was still complaining about avocados and Elle was heading out the door.

"You're letting her go out in that?" Grandma Olsen whispered.

"She's nineteen," her mother said, and then pointedly called out: "Stay safe!"

It wasn't an empty or idiomatic comment, either. Only four days ago Elle had been snatched out of the community center parking lot in broad daylight by Ben Loewy and his friend. She might not be in danger of being brain-fried anymore, but that didn't mean there was no danger. But Melanie had given her a gift to put both of their minds at ease. Elle reached into her purse and memorized the feel and location of her stun gun for the umpteenth time. The next person to fuck with her was getting fifty thousand volts to the balls.

- - - - - 

The rotunda in the community center was more crowded than Elle had ever seen it, dozens of people milling about and awaiting their screening results. For wardrobe, she'd settled on little white jean shorts, emphasis on the little, and a baby blue baby tee that showed off her taut midriff and did wonders for her boobs, which honestly didn't need much help. The whole ensemble was courtesy @TH_Darksyde from Oregon, whoever that was. Hopefully, he or she enjoyed the picture she'd posted displaying her patron's largesse in its form-fitting glory. She had a lot of skin showing, all the way down to her strappy size-five sandals. Elle didn't look at all out of place, though: almost everybody in the rotunda was an AHS person, most of them attired to show off what the good vehicle had given them. Melanie must have confused Elle's aroused, voyeuristic squirming for anxiety.

"You'll do fine," Melanie whispered. She rubbed Elle's shoulder and gave her a peck on the cheek. Less chaste encouragement would have to wait until after the assessment.

The CDC technician called out their numbers back to back and the two of them ambled up to the kiosk to get their vehicle titre assessments. Even from a distance, Elle could see that both sheets had green PASS stamps prominently on the headers. She unfolded yesterday's 2.95 ppm PASS sheet from her bag - she'd have to present both of them to the screening personnel to take her post-AHS assessment battery.

"2.45," Melanie said of her own sheet. "That's good, right?"

"Not bad," Elle agreed. "Mine's 2.70... a little higher than I thought."

"But still passing," Melanie observed. "Are you sure you want to do the assessment now? We can hold off until next week... I'll do it with you. Whenever you like, Elle."

"No. I'm doing this now. I need to know."

The screening personnel took their PASS papers and led them each into little cubicles, reciting well-rehearsed directions as they did.

"The Post-AHS Medical and Cognitive Assessment, PAMCAt, is designed to survey physical and mental end points of the AHS. The PAMCAt is mandatory for patients applying for government assistance due to AHS-related side effects but is otherwise not required and not part of clearance screening. By signing this consent form, you agree to let your anonymized PAMCAt results be used for future AHS treatment and research. Moreover, signing the record release form for your PAMCAt results entitles you and your physician access to your complete score readout for your medical records. Do you have any questions at this time?"

"No," Elle said. Her voice sounded very small.

The little cubicle consisted of two office chairs, one in front of a touchscreen computer displaying a CDC splash screen. Elle touched the screen and was prompted for a password - which, of course, she didn't have. It was perhaps five minutes before the CDC physician came in to take Elle's measurements - height, weight, and other physical dimensions, along with heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, skin conductivity, and a host of other metrics, all of which took no more than fifteen minutes.

"Everything seems to be in order," the physician, a bearded man who towered over Elle in the little cubicle, said with a sympathetic smile. "Are you ready for the cognitive battery?"

"I think so," Elle said. She wasn't. There was no way she was ready... maybe she never would be... but she had to know.

"Dr. Turcott is your physician, isn't she?" the man asked. He tapped a password into the computer: 8675309. Elle almost giggled.

"Yes. She can have my records if that's what you're asking."

"I wasn't," he said. "But I'll be sure to note that. I just wanted to say she's great. Her people have better outcomes than almost anybody else. You'll do fine."

"Thanks."

"She's my wife, so I might be biased," he added with a wink. "But I'm not. You've got forty-five minutes from the time you touch the screen, one minute max per question. You'll do better than fine."

That reassured Elle for a bit. It reassured her for all of about five minutes. She breezed through the first few problems like they were nothing, puzzled her way through one or two more with a bit more deliberation, and then hit a brick wall. The problems were difficult. They were impossible. They didn't make any sense.

'The acreage in old Pa Clampett's wheat field is the age of his daughter Quick Mary. If he works all day, Pa Clampett can harvest an acre and a half a day, but Quick Mary is twice as fast. He gifted that field to her five years ago to this day, so she harvests it now. The year was the product of their current ages. How many days to harvest the field?'

How was that even a question? Elle muddled through it sort-of. Five years ago was 2015, so maybe Quick Mary was 31 and Pa was 65? 31 times 65 was 2015. Could they use fractional years? Was there a better combination? If Mary harvested twice as fast as Pa, that was three acres a day. 31 divided by 3 was 10 1/3, which wasn't even a whole number. That couldn't be right. That wasn't even one of the options. If she even got the age right, was the right answer 10 or 11? Elle picked 10, switched to 11, and swiped for the next question. It was just as hard, or maybe harder.

The battery gave her questions like that, most of them with anywhere between four and ten answer options. Logic, pattern matching, algebra equations, and a few where she had to figure out what made-up words meant. All in less than a minute!

Elle forced herself not to panic. She was on the verge of it, on the verge of a complete breakdown, but she held off. She was going to finish the test and she was going to get her score no matter how bad it was. The tears in her eyes made it hard to see the screen, so Elle forced herself not to cry. She could cry later. At forty-five minutes, the problem blanked out and the screen flashed: BATTERY COMPLETED. It wasn't fair! Elle had been close to finishing that problem!

She stood from the office chair, legs wobbly, eyes bleary, and a bit disoriented to be out in the sunshine of the rotunda again. She spotted Melanie and collapsed into the chair next to hers. Melanie put an arm around Elle and pulled her head to her bosom, stroking her fingers through Elle's soft hair.

"You did it, babe," she said.

"It was really hard," she said. She'd done terribly. She felt so stupid.

"Yeah, lots of geometry problems," Melanie said off-handedly.

"What?" Elle's test had hardly had any. What did that even mean?

Dr. Turcott strutted out from the corridor a minute later, her glance darting about. Beneath her physician's coat she wore a charcoal-gray skirt ensemble that reminded Elle of what she'd worn to her first Miranda Cuthbert interview. She had half a mind to cancel the scheduled second interview, lest she make a fool of herself, but she figured that even that might be valuable. Let people see what two hours in the hands of one asshole (well... two assholes, but Elle mostly blamed Ben) could do to an active-AHS person. Dr. Turcott had their assessment readouts in little manila envelopes for privacy. She looked sad. Was it about Elle's test? It had to be about Elle's test.

"You have the assessment results?" Elle said. "Already?"

Fran nodded. "The computer gives them pretty much instantly. It'll take a little while longer to compile the broader medical report. Would you like to discuss them?"

Melanie squeezed Elle's hand. "We would," she said. Elle nodded. Melanie had better hear this, too.

"Let's get a little privacy," the doctor said, leading them into Elle's former digs in A-wing. The Team Gender-Bender lounge was gone, but someone had moved their little cushion circle into there. They settled down around it. Fran continued, "Before I go into the results, I should mention that these aren't IQ scores. It's a general cognitive assessment based on population standard deviations. You can roughly convert the scores by multiplying by sixteen and adding to one hundred, but - this is just my opinion..." she gestured vaguely. "There's too much baggage associated with IQ. We're just trying to get an assessment of where our AHS patients... people our AHS people wind up relative to population norms..."

"You're stalling," Melanie said. "Are you going to let us see the reports or not?"

"Oh! Of course," Fran said, her laugh slightly nervous. "I'm just waiting for Luci to finish hers... I'll be frank with you, I'm a bit anxious about it."

Melanie took the envelope with her score and nodded thoughtfully. "Plus 2.22? That's good?"

"Very good!" Dr. Turcott said. "That's in the top two percent. Almost the top one percent!"

"I can be a doctor! I can be a doctor, Elle!" Melanie threw her arms around Elle's shoulders and kissed her full on the cheek. Elle felt glad for her.

Fran nudged Elle with her foot. "Aren't you going to open yours?"

Elle shrugged. She'd been the one who wanted to get the assessment done, so she ought to woman up to the results. She slid the paper out. She frowned. 3.0? The readout said 3.0 very prominently. Minus three? She wasn't that dumb. Elle was smart enough to know that. But there wasn't a minus in front of the number. There was a plus. "Plus three?" she asked.

"Officially, the scale only goes up to three. In developing the battery, we were mostly concerned with the minus range because of the cognitive deficits. But if you want your nominal score," Dr. Turcott said. She tapped a bit further down on the sheet. "It's there."

Elle's eyes bugged at the small script: 3.56. "I don't understand," Elle said. She flipped the sheet to the other side to see if the real results might be there. It was blank. "The test was really hard."

"It's adaptive. The questions come in difficulty clusters." Dr. Turcott put her hand at waist level and then raised it in increments of about six inches. "We start in the middle and work up or down, depending on how well you do. You blasted through the middle tiers and went right up to the really tough ones." Her hand was at shoulder-level. "Some of the smartest people in the country came up with those, Elle."

"There's no way I'm that smart," Elle said. "That's almost the top percent of a percent. I'm maybe the top quarter."

"You were maybe in the top quarter, Elle. Almost everyone who knows you has noticed this... you aren't just a little bit smart. Not anymore. There's nothing usual about your case, right down to your plus three point five-six. It's real," the doctor said. "So... thoughts?"

Elle looked at Melanie. She looked at Dr. Turcott. She smiled. "I'm going to be a doctor and help AHS people."

"We're gonna be doctors!" Melanie screamed.

"Doctors!" Elle laughed. Melanie lifted her up and spun her around and she didn't even mind.

"I'll be your first letter of recommendation!" Dr. Turcott hugged them both.

- - - - - 

The final meeting of Dr. Turcott's A-wing group was equal parts bittersweet and anticlimactic. Bittersweet because it was the final note of an important chapter, certainly of Elle's life and, she suspected, of all the others. Anticlimactic because all of Team Gender-Bender... well, all except for Malcolm, who'd only ever attended one meeting... were pretty close. They would be seeing more of one another, she was sure. And probably doing a lot more than seeing. Melanie joined them in their little cushion circle with the enthusiastic consent of all concerned - without her, it was quite possible that Dr. Frances Turcott would be the only one in attendance that day.

"I'm required to hand these out," Fran said. They were booklets containing the CDC's guidelines on post-AHS care. They was about as thick as Elle's thumb (not thick as thumbs went, but still a pretty thick booklet) and about half of it was dense legalese.

She flipped through it, catching a few of the bullet-point highlights. "I'm required to notify three days in advance if I'm planning to travel?" Elle pouted.

"Interstate, yes," Fran said. "For international travel, it's two weeks, and some countries don't take post-AHS people at all."

"Good thing we live in a big state," Melanie said. "Imagine living in Rhode Island!"

"Or DC," Elle said.

"That's enforced for air travel, of course." Fran said. She glanced to the door to make sure nobody was listening in - they were in the multipurpose room that had once served as their lounge - their usual meeting place in the rotunda was still crowded with people getting titre screening and assessments. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "But for driving? Just don't get pulled over. The first time you get caught, it's a $250 fine."

"What about the second time?" Petra asked.

"Don't get caught a second time. It's not so bad, really, is it? Who does air travel on less than three days' notice?"

Elle cleared her throat. "I might. I have a lot of interview requests. And Melanie's a jet-setter now. I bet she's got more followers than the rest of us combined."

Petra raised an eyebrow at that. "For what? The basic white girl army? Ya girl Petra has a hundred and fifty thousand, puta."

Melanie laughed and showed Petra her account numbers, leaving the bigger woman suitably chastened. Melanie most definitely had more followers than the rest of them combined and Petra didn't put much of a dent in the balance.

Fran cleared her throat. "You can get an overnight expedited exemption. That's what I had to use to fly out here," she said. She tapped at her tablet and showed them a digitized copy of her form. "If you don't work for the federal government, that's $2500. Otherwise? Sorry folks, but those are the rules. They might not be fair. You don't have to like them. But your Uncle Sam is afraid of the little buggers in your blood and doesn't want you taking them across state lines or abroad without his permission."

"Hey, what's up with Luci?" Ash said.

The last time Elle had seen Luci and she wasn't wearing borderline fetishwear or naked was almost a week ago. Now, she was decked out in fashionably-torn jeans and a Sea World long sleeve that approximated modesty - with her figure, it would have taken a bit more to satisfy somebody with the sensibilities of (for instance) Grandma Olsen. On her, in a women's size small, the dolphins were really popping. Her fiery hair was tied in a loose ponytail that obscured most of the popping sea lions. She had an earbud in one ear and was only half-listening to the group but perked at the mention of her name.

"Huh?"

"Are you okay? We were all worried about you after... you know," Ash said.

"Luci's staying with Daniel and me for a few days," Dr. Turcott said, adding: "Daniel, my husband."

"I thought her parents were flying in from Vegas," Ash said.

"No-shows, I'm afraid."

"That's sad," Elle said. Who didn't show up after their daughter was kidnapped and brutally assaulted? By their own son, no less?

"Doctor Turcott's got a great hotel room," Luci said. "I got to use the hot tub. It has water jets. I can use them to..."

"Are you taking her back to Atlanta?" Elle asked.

Fran shrugged. "We'll see. Luci's battery was sort-of good news, but... let's just say it might have been better if she'd missed another question or two."

"I totally passed!" Luci said. She opened her manila envelope for everybody to see. Prominently displayed near the top was -1.75 and a red NOT ELIGIBLE stamp. Nobody bothered to stamp your form if you got a +3.56. Elle recalled reading that the threshold for AHS disability compensation was a -2.0.

"We'll get it on appeal," Fran said. "Our work probably saved her from a minus two point seven five. Those people... well, there's a reason you don't hear much about them. But Luci can live a normal life with a little help."

"With a little help from my friends," Luci sang, and her singing voice was beautiful. Elle recognized the song playing out of her ear buds now - the Beatles! Luci's normally-beatific face scowled. "Thanks for saving me from Ben, guys. Him and Gray are real assholes. I heard he got like thirty stitches... serves him right."

Ben deserved a lot worse than thirty stitches, and the hope was that the court system would provide that. At least half of those stitches had been Elle's doing - she'd cut him pretty good with the splintered chair leg before he concussed her. Or maybe she'd already been concussed... the problem with concussions was that hindsight wasn't 20-20. But she also felt a little bad for him. If somebody had been there for Ben, it might never have come to thirty stitches, a serious ass-beating, and five to ten years behind bars.

Fran cleared her throat. "Well, I'm about to close the case file on all of my favorite patients..."

"We're your favorite patients?" Elle asked.

"All of my patients are my favorite patients," the doctor said diplomatically. "Some are just more favored than others. Is there anything you'd like to add before I seal the casque?"

"Yeah," Petra said seriously. "This is important." She handed each of them a colorful laminated @Petra-fied invitation card. "Some friends and I are holding a fuck-all big post-AHS party, read: orgy, at the Marchioness tonight and y'all are invited and I'm waiving the cover charge for y'all. Shit's gonna get lit! Uh - you can also just use that card as, like, a bookmark otherwise."

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