Chapter 29

Washington Hospital Center

Washington DC

"I highly object to this!"

"Noted. That's why it's called checking out against medical advice."

"You have a mild concussion. You need to be under observation."

"Some friends are going to stay with us, we'll be fine."

"Your wife is clearly in shock. She needs to be sedated."

"My wife is autistic and her nervous system is seriously over stimulated right now. She needs a calm, quiet, familiar environment with as little stimulation as possible. A hospital is exactly the opposite of that."

"We cannot be responsible for what happens if you just leave."

"I'm not asking that. I'm asking you to get the hell out of my way. I am taking my wife home."

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Old Peterson House

Fredericksburg, VA

Spencer quietly shut, and then locked the kitchen door behind him. He'd asked Morgan and Garcia to please, just give them a few minutes alone. Please. How about just picking up their bakery order and then coming right back? Please. Eddy's bakery would be closing any minute after all.

It had been a very long day.

There was a reason, of course. In the dim light coming from above the kitchen sink he stripped Gwen down by the washing machine, leaving the tattered remains of her clothing in a pile to be discarded later. Then he followed it up with most of his own clothes. In the dark he guided her upstairs and into their bathroom. Once comfortable, quietly alone he started the shower and lit a few candles, and when it was hot enough, guided her in.

He settled her on the bench on one wall, and then there was nothing but heat, the rush of the running water, the dimness of the flickering lights. He pulled out the strong, deodorant soap he used after the gym and soaped and rinsed and soaped and rinsed until he got all the filth off her skin. As he was working on her hair her heard her sigh, felt her shift against him. "He…he was r…right you k…know."

"Who was, love?"

"V…Vallejo. This really isn't my body anymore."

"Shhhh." Spencer went back to scrubbing quietly. This was a disturbing new development. "Vallejo was just trying to control you."

"I don't like this body anymore, Spencer. I don't want it anymore."

"Shhh." He pulled her in close, all warmth and soap between them. "You will again, I promise. It will get better in time."

"I'm tired, Spencer, I'm tired of fighting." She sighed and leaned against him.

"Then let me take care of you. Let me fight for you, until you're ready to take over again. Please?"

Gwen closed her eyes and nodded. I always could trust him, she thought, the only man intelligent enough to trust.

Spencer rinsed her off, washed himself quickly, then shut off the water. He left her in the steamy enclosure, and went to fill up the tub. Rose scented bubbled, rose oil, the room was filling up with fragrant steam. He passed her one of the water bottles he'd picked up in the kitchen. "Drink." He watched her obediently take a sip. "Nope, all of it, you need to stay hydrated." Once she had about half the bottle down and the tub was two-thirds full he picked her up and settled her in. Only then did he hear a sound from the bedroom. "Stay there, I'll be right back." He found the sweats he wore to bed behind the door, pulled them on, and headed out to see what was going on.

"What are you doing?" Spencer asked, noting too late that that was an obvious question. He looked over at Morgan, who was using a staple gun to hang the spare sheets over the windows. He peeled off the rubber glove he was wearing to protect his bandaged thumb, cracked open his own bottle and made his way to the vanity chair. "Other than ruining my paint job."

"Vallejo said that he saw what you two were up to the other night. I'm making sure no other freaks are looking in." I said I would protect you and I didn't, Morgan thought as he stapled up another length of sheet. Now I'm doing what I can. "I'll help you touch up the paint tomorrow."

"That was down on the ground floor, you know." Spencer sighed. "We should have stayed home and painted the library today. I think it's going to be some kind of green."

"I don't care. Tomorrow we're going shopping for blinds or something." Morgan looked over at him. "There's an ice pack there for you. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Vallejo has a lighter grip than the average high school football player." Spencer reached over and cracked open the bathroom door, "Are you okay?" The answering murmur sounded pleased enough so he shut the door to keep the heat in and then winced as he shoved the ice pack down his pants.

"Is she talking yet?" Morgan wanted to know.

"Yes, thankfully. Granted this had lead to either a breakthrough or a break-down or something. She said she doesn't feel like her body is hers anymore."

"Disassociation? Depsonalization?"

"I don't know yet. She might just be reacting to the ongoing cycle of abuse and medical treatments. She's still underweight, she's still carrying scars. I have no doubt that what she sees in the mirror does not match what she sees in her head. And to top it all, we see a doctor or therapist nearly every day, so she's always being poked or prodded or something."

"So what are you going to do about it?"

"At the moment, nothing, anything I try to do is going to be undone on the trip to Colorado, so we might as well get it over with as soon as possible."

Morgan finished the sheets and sat down in the wing chair where Spencer sometimes sat up reading while he watched Gwen sleep. "What exactly are you having done out there that they can't do here?"

Spencer took a deep breath. "There's a doctor out there who's extremely well known and successful in the gender reassignment field."

"Gender reassignment. Sex change?" Now Morgan really was curious.

"Yeah. It turns out the same technique used to turn a clitoris into a small penis can be used to recreate a clitoris after it's been damaged through female genital mutilation or torture. The clitoral body actually extends several centimeters below the surface, only the tip of it is what you usually see. For a female-to-male transition they pull up several centimeters and build a shaft out of the surrounding tissue. For a re-build they remove the scar tissue, pull up a small amount of nerve tissue, and re-cover it with the nearest healthy tissue. In addition she needs some scars from friction burns removed, probably including a labiaplasty, scars from some badly healed fistulas removed so she can handle penetration without pain and scar tissue at the top of the vault from that hysterectomy removed and a silicone implant put in to mimic a cervix."

Morgan just blinked at him in shock for a long moment. "I didn't realize it was that bad."

Spencer nodded. "All that in addition to being a good twenty percent underweight, having electrical burn scars on her breasts, ligature scars around her wrists and ankles and that blasted brand. And she's already developing arthritis in her wrists." He looked down at his bandaged thumb. "Tell me again why I didn't get narcotics for this."

"Because they wouldn't help in the long run. No wonder she doesn't feel like her body is her own anymore. Hell, I wouldn't either. They won't do any of that here?"

"Not the clitoral rebuild. Finding a doctor comfortable with the technique is extremely difficult. The idea of a female-to-male transition is even more taboo than male-to-female, so there are fewer doctors who have enough background, and then the doctors who do work with FGM survivors tend to get death threats from extremists in the Muslim community. The French doctor who pioneered the technique tried to set up a free clinic in Nigeria to do repairs, but had to close it after it was firebombed twice. At the moment there's only the one doctor commonly performing the surgery in the US."

"Damm. You know, I am going to worry about her now until you tell me everything is okay."

"You're going to be worrying for a while. It takes six months for the nerves to fully heal from the trauma of the surgery."

"Six months. So you two aren't going to do anything until October?"

Spencer shrugged. "It'll give her a chance to heal psychologically."

Morgan was quiet a moment. "So, if she's still so bad off, how did you two…"

"I talked her through it."

"Talked?" Morgan chuckled as Spencer nodded, looking like a cat with a mouthful of feathers. "Only you, man, only you." He paused a long moment. "You know, maybe you should get her to dye her hair back."

"She wanted it that way. She wanted an obvious symbol of things being changed. Of her being changed"

"Yeah, well, maybe now she needs an obvious symbol of her getting control again."

The doorbell downstairs rang just as Gwen came out, clean and warm and wrapped in her favorite flannel nightgown. Morgan smiled at her. "Hey, this chair is comfortable. Want to just do Chaplan and dinner up here?" He headed down for the pizza as they both nodded. "Good, that way I don't have to worry about getting pizza on the couch. I'm sleeping there tonight and you're out of clean sheets."