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Title: Uniforming (Made to Seem) (5/5)
Part four.
Cameron knew she wouldn’t be doing this if she’d stayed in Princeton. She probably wouldn’t be doing this if she’d stayed on the East Coast or settled anywhere near Chicago. Being out this far West gave her permission to do this.
She walked into the hotel and stopped at the front desk, suddenly not sure what to do next. After a moment, the clerk turned to look at her. “Can I help you?”
“Uh, yes, um, I’m here for the convention?”
If saying its name fazed him, he didn’t give it away. “Right through the atrium, the first doors in the back on the left.”
“Thank you.” Right past the fountain, she looked at the brochure she’d printed out and read dozens of times already. Right now there weren’t any panels or discussions, just a meet and greet, and there was the little table with name badges for registration and she could leave right now if she wanted.
She could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks even though she didn’t have a reason to be embarrassed about being here. Deep down there was still some fear about getting caught, and by coming to this she was leaving herself open to everything.
She walked up to the little table. “Hi.”
The young man’s badge said his – her name was Claire. “Hi, are you here for the convention?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, we’ll need your attendance fee.” Cameron handed over the cash; she counted it out and put it away, then turned back to her. “What would you like on your nametag?”
“Allison. Two Ls.”
“Okay, one moment.” One whirring portable print job later and she was fully registered as a guest, and a few moments of quiet panic and she was through the door. She hadn’t tried to imagine anything, knowing it wouldn’t be what she’d expect, but it was still surprising, mostly in how ordinary it all looked. Fifty, maybe sixty men from their teens to their seventies and all races and walks of life just hanging around the room and chatting, getting drinks and snacks from a little buffet table in the back, and it could’ve been a bunch of zookeepers or accountants for how regular it all was. She’d definitely overdressed.
Even from here, the buffet table looked pretty tempting, and when she got the courage to walk across the room she loaded up a small plate with cheese cubes and a few out-of-season berries. She scanned the room, saw a table without any plates or cups, and went over to put her food down before going back to get some tea. A few minutes after she sat down with that, someone sat down next to her, also somewhat overdressed. His nametag said she should call him Nick. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“It’s good to see you here.”
“Do I know you?”
“I’m the Nick from the contact page.”
“Oh! Sorry. It’s good to meet you. In person, I mean.”
He smiled. “I understand. A lot of us didn’t meet in person until we set this up.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Someone knew someone else, who knew this other guy who had a sister, and it kept going like that until Tim suggested we all get together somewhere.” He looked around the room. “It’s a step up from six of us in a restaurant booth.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Eight years,” he said after a pause that Cameron knew he didn’t need to figure out how long it’d been. “It keeps getting bigger. There’s a bunch of people from Portland that might make it next time.”
“Wow.”
“The more people that hear about it, the more know to come. So how’d you find out about this? You didn’t tell me before.”
“Just – poking around the Internet, I guess.” He waited, she shrugged, “You’re looking for one thing, and then you get a link to another page for something else, and then suddenly I’m at the homepage for this convention.”
“Well, I’m glad you found us. You live in the city, right?”
“Yeah, in Wallingford.”
“Cool. Some people are staying in the hotel, and you didn’t pre-register, so I just wanted to check.”
“Do you know everyone here tonight?”
“I do now.” It was an utterly cheesy line, but his smile was real. She knew just what he was doing, trying to make her comfortable with this sort of relaxing conversation, and right now – even though she wasn’t sure about how it worked into the meet-and-greet idea – she was glad she didn’t have to pretend or pay attention to how she held herself, and she was glad she was sitting down when she realized that because she felt her knees go soft.
After covering what they did to earn a living, how long they’d each lived in the city, which neighborhoods, and how boorish the tourists could get in summer, Nick leaned in. “Anyway, I’m leading a couple of the panels tomorrow, the ones on teenage shifting and media presence. They’re both before lunch, so – you will be here tomorrow, right?”
“How does this work?”
“There’s six panels before lunch and eight after, and we’ve booked the conference rooms on the ground level so we’ve got them to ourselves. You just go to a room, sit down, listen, and if you want to say something, you can go ahead.” She nodded and he went on, “I know there’s one on workplace politics after lunch, I think Vincent’s got that – it sounds like something you’d be interested in.”
“Is lunch in the hotel?”
“We usually go to local places. There’s this one café near here – you wouldn’t believe their pesto. It’s like they put drugs in it.”
“Really.” She smiled. “Sounds good.”
“Here you are!” They both turned to look at someone named Gary who clapped Nick on the shoulder. “Misha and I’ve been looking for you. Oh, hello.”
“Hi.”
He gave a little wave.“Gary, good to meet you.”
She nodded slightly, respectfully. “Allison.”
“Anyway, it’s that there’s a problem with the front desk people, and you should probably –” Nick nodded, held up a hand.
“Gotcha.” He looked at Cameron and shook his head. “It never goes smoothly. You just have to sort out the problems as people have them. I’ll be back in a bit.”
Gary sat down next to his vacated seat. “So is this your first convention?”
“It shows, doesn’t it?”
He just shrugged. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Trust me, it’s – I know how coming here can be a big step.”
“So how many…”
“This is my fifth.”
She leaned in, resting her arm on the table, “How’d you hear about this?”
“A while after I moved here, I met someone who already knew Tim,” he pointed to someone on the far side of the room, “who got me in touch with him when I told her about me.”
A couple of minutes later, Misha stopped by, and a few after that, Nick came back. As it turned out, there’d been a mix-up over which conference rooms were for them and which were for the other convention this weekend because big hotels meant group rates and the potential for this sort of problem. They kept talking casually until her stomach muttered at her; cheese and berries were tasty but didn’t make up a full dinner, and there were still some little sandwiches at the buffet. When she filled her plate up and went back to the table, someone else had joined the conversation.
She blinked, shook her head, did a double-take and stared to make sure it was who she thought it was.
“Oh, Allison!” Nick waved for her to sit down. “Matt, this is Allison, Allison, this is Matt.”
“Good to meet you.”
She nodded, swallowed, and said, “You too,” trying to cut back on the urge to smile – he really did look great in person, even without make-up. She’d cleaned up puke and shit from some genuinely important people – then she reminded herself he pretended to be other people for a living and to calm down because he wasn’t doing what made him famous to begin with. Here he was just someone else. She couldn’t stop herself smiling at that. “Can I ask – are you staying at the hotel?”
“Yes, I am.”
“You’re not here as ‘Mister Damon’, right? I mean, in the hotel.”
“No.” He looked pleased with the question. “I usually just get a name out of a phone book for something like this. It helps keeps the tabloids away.”
A little after that, Misha brought up TV shows and when she mentioned she’d just finished watching Brimstone, Matt spun around to her with bright interest; as it turned out, he’d been a fan of the show and wanted to get a part on there before it ended but didn’t get the chance. When Nick got up to get another cup of tea, she followed a moment later and caught up with him at the last remnants of the buffet.
“I, I’m just curious, how long has he –”
“It’s his third.” Nick blew over the lid of the cup, not looking at her. “And if it makes you feel any better, he’s still nervous about coming here.”
“Yeah. Yeah, he’d have to be.” She looked back at him, the idea of such a private fact about yourself getting out for everyone to know to look at you differently – she didn’t shudder, just shook her head sharply and let out a small hiss.
Nick sighed. “We all are, but, I guess some of us have less privacy to go back to, is all.”
She wasn’t thirsty, but got a cup to cover why she’d left the table, and after a few minutes found herself sharing her own opinions on pissing sitting down and doing it standing up. “Okay, on one hand it’s just urination, but there’s something nice about sitting down and relaxing instead of just pissing off.”
When she finally left, she was still riding the high of all the conversation and the liberty to not worry about how to make proper eye contact, and couldn’t get to sleep for the longest time. When she got back to the hotel the next morning a good hour before the panels started without any breakfast in her stomach, Nick waylaid her from across the atrium, jogging over to say hello and then snagged a couple of croissants for her.
“Do they make these fresh?” She didn’t wait for an answer before tearing into one.
“They say they do, but put enough butter on them and you don’t care.” She laughed around the pastry.
The panel on media portrayals was pretty good – everyone agreed stomping around wasn’t a substitute for decent body language – but it was the one after that, on dealing with parents, that made her want to contribute to the discussion. She knew she’d shifted late, and had her own life independent of the rest of her family, but she hadn’t considered that if she’d shifted earlier she might’ve had her name changed. Laurel had gone so far as to change hers back from ‘Edwin’ when she’d turned eighteen.
“Massachusetts state law’s just like that,” Matt cut in. “Pretty much all of them are, where parents can just come in and change it for you.”
“Did they ask you what you wanted?” Aaron asked.
“No, but they let me keep it as my middle name – like that’d make it better. I mean, it helped a bit, but still.”
Now or never: she stood up, looked around, and opened her mouth. “Hi. Uhm, I’m Allison, this, right, I haven’t changed it and I don’t think I will. I just go by my last name at work, everybody does, but still, it’s a way for me to stay anonymous and not have to come out if I don’t want to.” She sat right back down, face hot, and heard the general consensus and murmured agreement spread out like a wave.
When everyone broke for lunch, Gary and Misha invited her out to a little Italian place nearby that had private booths and more than enough people there already to let them talk pretty loudly about navigating dating someone. She couldn’t get over it: the awareness that she could go ahead and say these things without having to stop to think if the other people she was talking to would understand, because of course they did. They didn’t have the same pasts, or the same set of circumstances, but they all knew, just the same. The mussel soup was pretty good, too.
At the news Misha had hit six months in his current relationship, she slapped him on the arm the way she’d always slapped her friends in high school, nothing masculine about it at all. “So what’s her name?”
“Victoria.”
“Is it getting serious?”
“She’s talking about me moving in with her.” Gary whistled at that. “Her apartment’s nicer than mine, so I might go for it.”
“There’s worse reasons to move in with someone,” Cameron said.
“Yeah, I’ve probably used some of them by now.” He smiled and sighed. “She’s great, really, but it’s going to be a bit of a cluster when I tell her.”
“You haven’t told her yet?”
He shrugged. “After a while, it gets awkward to try. ‘Honey, before we move in together, there’s something I need to discuss.’”
“Just sit her down with some breakfast. ‘Have you ever wondered why I don’t care about make-up or cooking? I’m glad you asked…’”
By now, there was finally enough distance between then and now for her to laugh over how she’d ended up telling Rita, and plenty of empathy for Gary and Misha to laugh too. When they’d caught their breath, she went ahead and asked, “Have you ever dated men?”
“Does fucking in college count?”
“Everyone fucks in college. I mean dating.”
“A couple.” Gary flicked some crumbs away. “They didn’t really work out.”
When Cameron looked at him, Misha just shrugged. She thought about Miles’ hands running down her back, listened to what everyone wasn’t saying, and changed the subject back to the food, which everyone was happy to switch to.
After lunch she went to the one on workplace performance and then to the ones on social coping strategies and nonverbal communication patterns, talking more each time. Soon she was throwing comments back and forth from across the room about always going to the bathroom before going out even if she didn’t have to because then she wouldn’t be in such a rush she wouldn’t think to check, and why she made sure to look at all of a person’s body language. And yeah, she had to admit it felt pretty good when everyone started asking her more about how she could tell if people were lying, even if all she could say was, “Practice.”
After the evening break – Gavin from the nonverbal communication panel knew about a hidden teriyaki joint just two blocks away which had sauce to die for – everyone reconvened back in the main room for another session of breezy networking, and even though she didn’t push herself forward she didn’t hug the wall either. And again, Nick came over to talk to her, sitting down and starting up another conversation. This time, it cumulated with them exchanging e-mail addresses and the promise to keep in touch; something she repeated a few more times before she finally went back to her apartment, still giddy and worn-out at the same time, and had to go for a run at one in the morning to be able to fall asleep.
-
She didn’t feel any different – not substantially, not after a fairly regular Sunday of errands and chores – but Farkas shot her a look as soon as she came in on Monday. “Can I help you with something?”
“No.” Her expression shifted to a faint smile. “You look good.”
“Thank you.” She wanted to say ‘Oh, I happened to meet a movie star this weekend,’ but decided, for a change, it was good to keep something private that was also fun.
Three weeks after that, she was out on a ferry eating a very squished sandwich and waiting to get far enough out from land to get to a good spot for whales. Nick had suggested this adventure and was munching on a sandwich of his own, salami on whole wheat to her tuna on pumpernickel.
“Pretty big sight,” he mused.
She nodded, not sure exactly how to respond to that, or to anything else here for that matter. “I didn’t see an ocean until I was twenty-seven,” she finally said as he flicked crumbs off his lap.
“No kidding?”
“I grew up in the Midwest. I did my internship in New Jersey, and managed to get out to New York one week, and –” Trying to express the bigness of her first sight of the Atlantic and failing, she waved her hand out towards the water. “Lake Michegan’s big, but it’s not much next to the Atlantic.”
“Which isn’t much to the Pacific. You know, two oceans is more than what most people get. You’re really lucky.”
She snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, lucky me.”
“Yeah. Lucky you.” There was something to his tone that made her look at him, at the firm lines suddenly set into his face, and she knew he didn’t mean it in jest at all.
There were whales that day, a whole pod of them, and sea lions and scores of birds, and everyone kept shouting and pointing when a whale came up to breathe and ran to the side of the boat to see it go under. When they got back to land, it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, which somehow led to Nick suggesting, and Cameron accepting, spending the time hanging around his apartment and ordering take-out later.
Like hers, his was a one-bedroom place, but one with more amenities for potential visitors of all types – her prefab dining room set had come with four chairs, but she still didn’t have a couch. There wasn’t much reason to get one when a big easy chair worked just as well. Although she had to admit being able to stretch her legs out flat might make it worth the investment to start shopping for one. It felt so good to sit down after so much standing and rocking on the boat she let out a long, deep groan when she finally laid her feet up.
Nick grinned from the doorway. “Anything I can get for you?”
“Mmm, I’ll take a pillow, and black in the biggest mug you’ve got, with plenty of honey.” He grabbed a pillow from the easy chair and threw it at her, hitting her right in the face and prompting a round of giggling. “And it’d better be looseleaf!”
“Smoky, savory, spiced, sweet?”
She arranged the pillow under her neck, rolling her head around to get it just right. “Smoky.” He moved off past her line of sight, she closed her eyes, and the shrill cry of the kettle shocked her out of the doze. A bit more sensibly, Nick had a mug of jasmine green. Pushing herself up into enough of a sitting position to blow on the tea without spilling it, she watched him lower himself into the chair, also with a bit of grunting and a very relieved sigh once he was down, cradling the mug right up against his chest.
“Good trip.”
“You go on those a lot?”
“A few times a year, if I can.” He sighed and leaned back, and then leaned forward. “Can I ask you something personal?”
“Sure, I guess.”
“When did it happen for you?”
As surprising as it was, she didn’t have to think about the answer. “Almost three years ago. Why?”
He shrugged. “Just wanted to know.”
She swung her legs down to a sitting position. “And you?”
Rubbing a hand over his face, “It happened to me when I was fourteen.”
“Oh.”
“I’m mostly…I was going through puberty already, and I’d started getting breasts – they were okay – and when it happened, it was like the process just shifted.” He tipped his head back, then turned to look at her. “And I’m just, I guess kind of curious.” She nodded for him to go on. “I’ve been talking to people about when they shifted and how it went.” They both knew Cameron was on the far end of the age spectrum for it, and he shook his head and kept talking, “I’d like to do something with what I’m getting, if I could. But I’m –”
“You’re curious for yourself,” she shook her head, the pieces fitting in. “You grew up as a girl but didn’t get to mature as a female but you almost got there, and because of that you want to know what being a woman was like. And because I shifted so late, you want to talk to me about that.” As she talked, the words falling out of her mouth like she was describing a fungal infection, he looked more and more upset. Not sad or pained like she might have expected.
“Yeah, and so? I like you, I like talking to you. And I want to know that, but so what? I’ll still want to talk to you after you tell me.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that, I was just thinking out loud, I don’t mind that you want to know. What do you want to know?”
Nick blinked, nodded, her apology setting in gradually; she knew she’d have to be honest about what he asked to make it up. He licked his lips. “What was menstruation like?”
“It was…it was something to deal with, most of the time. It hurt, and it was messy, but it wasn’t as bad as most movies make it look. I’d take some painkillers and exercise and maybe have a beer, and keep changing my pads. ”
“How did it feel to stop?”
She took a sip of her tea, now cool enough to drink. “When I realized that I’d had my last, it, I felt like I’d lost a lot of how it was to be female. My mother made sure that me and, that I understood how female a thing menses is. And suddenly I realized it wasn’t something I’d ever do anymore. And it’s not that stopping it made me not a woman – it doesn’t stop everyone who goes through menopause. It’s that…” She stared down at the dust at the bottom of the mug, suspended in the honey, and swirled the cup around to make it move. “I still feel like a woman. Every day. I never feel like a man, even when I’m fucking a woman. Especially when I’m fucking a woman. And I still think of myself as a woman. But I can’t do what women do anymore, and there’s nothing I’ll ever be able to do for another woman to recognize me, and I can’t…”
“I always wanted to.” He had the same firm expression he had earlier when he’d said she was lucky. “I knew it’d hurt, but it was something I’d do and then become a woman. When I was eight I knew that’s how it worked: menstruate and you were a woman.”
“Being a woman takes years of hard work and social conditioning. You can’t just have it happen with a menses overnight.”
“I know.” This time, he sounded more sad than angry. Wistful, even.
“And it’s not, it’s not just with women – men know because I don’t do it right, I can’t be a man enough, and no matter what I do for men or women it’s not correct, and I don’t know how to fix it –”
“It’s not being correct.” He was still cradling his tea by his chest. “It’s not about being one or the other. I mean, we’re – we can’t be. It’s about pretending, and pretending good enough to fool people.” He smiled, very faintly. “It’s about playing the boy.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not so much convincing yourself you’re not a girl. It’s about knowing there’s nothing wrong with you, no matter how much you fuck up a conversation because you don’t know how to make eye contact, and being able to play at being the boy.” She looked back down at her tea, then down at the floor, over to Nick’s gentle expression, then slowly felt herself smile. “Do you understand?”
She nodded. “I think I do.”
-
“Doctor Cameron?” She looked up from her computer to look at Paik, the newest department fellow, poking her head in her office. “Could you come here for a minute?”
“Sure.” Paik led her on to Tenopir’s office. “What’s the trouble?”
“We’ve got a patient, and, Tenopir wants you to talk to her.” She handed Cameron the file, who thumbed it on and scanned through the display down to the relevant charting and end diagnosis.
“The treatment’s easy. What do you need me for?”
“She’s refusing it.”
“Oh. In that case, I’d better go talk to her.”
Mary Lippitt’s bed was the only full one in the room right now, and she smiled when Cameron pushed the curtain aside. “Hello.”
“Hi there, Mrs. Lippitt. I’m Doctor Cameron from immunology.”
“Good to meet you.”
She pulled a stool over, rested her arms on her legs. “How’s your stay been so far?”
“Not too bad, really.” The way she laughed with her head instead of her face meant she knew just what was going on in her body.
“I’m glad to hear that.”
Suddenly that much more serious, “Is there something you wanted to talk about?”
“I understand you’re refusing treatment.”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask why?”
“From what you’ve told me, it’s just in my ovaries and you can leave the uterus –”
“Mrs. Lippit, that’s not what we’re saying.”
“Or, or you could leave it and wait, and I could get the surgery later.”
“You could, and then put yourself at risk for it metastasizing to another part of your system.”
“Yes, but I think I should wait.”
“Why?”
“My husband and I have been trying to get pregnant for months. We’ve lined up some specialists and they’re ready to go. And if I wait a bit longer, I can finally have a baby.”
“All right.” Cameron took a deep breath and spoke slowly. “You’re putting off surgery which will save your life and keep you from a horrible death because you want to get pregnant.” She looked confused, but nodded. “Because you want to have a baby.” A more definite nod. “I assume you’ve thought this through all the way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know how many babies are born every day here? Or in the state? Or in the country? Having a baby isn’t anything special.”
“Doctor, I’m sorry –”
“What I’m hearing from you, and please correct me if I’m wrong, is that you and your husband want a baby, and you want to make sure you’re going to use your uterus at least once in your life.”
“Why are you saying this?”
“Because what you’re telling me is that you want to give birth to a baby, not raise a child.”
“Of course I want to raise a child!”
“Then why are you so set on birth as your only option? You could adopt, you could have your eggs harvested and hire a surrogate – losing your ovaries and uterus isn’t the end of the world. This isn’t the fifteen hundreds. Having a baby isn’t the only way for a woman to make a contribution to society.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Mrs. Lippitt, if you think I don’t understand –”
“Of course you can’t.”
“If you think I don’t understand,” she repeated more firmly, shaking on the inside, “I assure you I do. I lost my chance to have children, Mrs. Lippitt, and I knew my life wasn’t over.” She whipped her head around to look at Cameron, who went on as best she could, “I’m an androgyne, and I’d appreciate you keeping that in mind when I say that giving birth shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all to your life.”
A half-hour later, she delivered the signed consent form to Tenopir herself. “Here you go.”
“Thanks. I mean, this is a lifesaver.”
“You’re welcome.”
On the way back to her office, she could practically hear House mocking her for replacing ‘my dead husband’ for ‘my lost femininity’ in terms of patient bargaining fodder – to which she argued that if it was a literal lifesaver, and kept someone who’d otherwise be a trophy birth out of the world, it was worth it.
-
Cameron’s reputation had been building steadily, and Lippitt more or less cemented her position as being on-track for the head of Immunology in a few years thanks to her people skills. She told Nick about it one day while wandering through Pike Place Market looking for a birthday gift for Sam, and he laughed: “When you learn things because you have to, sometimes you know them better than the people who didn’t have to.”
“Word to that.”
She re-checked the terms of her lease, talked to her landlord, and began looking around for a pet that could live comfortably in a tank, finally settling on a pair of captive-bred turtles. She made a point to dress as nicely as she could, and perhaps the suits and ties were a bit much, but she’d grown comfortable with them, and liked how they made her feel and keep attention to the performance, but when she went out on a day hike with Farkas one weekend, she surprised her colleague by showing up in a short-sleeved t-shirt. She wrote Christmas cards to everyone back home, her old boss and Cuddy, to Foreman and Chase and after some deliberation, Miller got onto the list too, and she chatted with people in the line at the Post Office about stamps rising to twenty-seven cents.
When, after nearly five years of work, Cameron finally got her own department, much was made of it: the third Diagnostic Medicine department in the country, one of just a handful in the world. Wilson called her to congratulate her and tell her House was bragging with elaborate virus and karate metaphors. She honestly wouldn’t expect anything less of him.
“What do you want on the door?”
“Doctor Allison Cameron, department of diagnostic medicine.”
Panos pursed her lips. “Your full name?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
It turned out to be for the best: when her first interviewee for a fellowship came in the door, she did a double-take, clearly trying to reconcile the name on the door with the person behind the desk. And, thanks to Sam, the framed old photograph on her desk.
“Is that your daughter?” Sampsel asked.
“No, that’s me when I was seventeen.”
Only three of the twelve candidates took that their boss was an androgyne in stride; by now, Cameron knew how to tell if people couldn’t, and also to not bother wasting her time on them, much less attempting to teach them how to look for zebras hidden with all the horses.
-
She scanned down the list of speakers and snorted. Of course there were only three men speaking, not including her. The paper on the ethics of living organ donation looked pretty interesting, and – she snapped back and checked one of the names, and mentally rescheduled her afternoon.
He was a good speaker, and since she’d last spoken to him he’d let his accent come back out again. By now she knew how useful it was to have something that could throw everyone else off, and that right now, in this context, painting himself as the exotic Australian went in his favor. Also, he’d evidently decided to give up on patterns, decked out all in black. She remembered the last time, her first all-nighter since med school, and it was still a good look for him.
She waited for him by the door and, when he came out, tapped him on the arm to get his attention. “Robert?”
“Yes, is…” He did a double-take. “Allison?”
“The one and only.”
Taking a step back, looking her up and down, “This is – wow, you look good.”
“Thanks, you too. I like the tie.”
“It’s great to see you. So are you presenting?”
“Yeah, tomorrow afternoon, it’ll be on innate responses. Listen,” she pushed through her nervousness and realization they were now the same height, “there’s no way you want to eat the food here, and there’s a great little bistro maybe fifteen minutes away – you want to catch up over lunch?”
She’d missed that smile. “I’d love that.”
The crepes were delicious, and knowing that she the ability to relax and just be herself around him – it felt like being back in the conference room, down to the bistro’s huge windows – gave her the strength to pull him into staying off-call and going across the street for a cup of coffee. “Coffee?”
“Yeah, it’s the new food fad. It’s getting big.”
“No, I’ve had coffee before. My dad drank it all the time – it’s not something I’d think would catch on in the States. You like your drinks sweet.”
“You’re one to talk. You always finished the honey back in Princeton.”
“I never said I didn’t.”
Once they got their drinks and sat down in one of the booths, he sighed and pulled out his hairsticks, shaking his head and letting his hair tumble down, scratching his neck.
“Do you ever get it cut anymore?”
“If it needs a trim, sure.”
She ran a hand over her head. “I need a cut. It’s getting pretty scruffy.”
“Ah, long hair always looked good on you.”
“I know.” She thought of her queue, hidden away in a manila envelope at the bottom of a box of papers on the upper shelf of her bedroom closet. “But it don’t think it’d look good on me now.”
“Fair enough. So how have you been?”
“All right, all things considered.” Briefly considering telling him she was thinking about finally getting back onto the dating scene, she went for departmental news instead, talking about her fellows and how they were adjusting, and the recent bizarre case that turned out to be chicken pox caught twenty years later than normal.
“I wouldn’t have hired mine if they weren’t so self-reliant. That’s the thing nobody gets with Diagnostics – there’s always weird stuff, but it doesn’t happen every day.”
“Whole weeks going by with nobody coming in with the Black Death or fetus in fetu.”
“Exactly.” He looked at her, sighed, and smiled. “I’m really glad you caught me – it’s nice to catch up like this.”
“I’m glad I recognized your name to catch you.”
“I would’ve seen you.”
“Well, it’s my name on the paper.”
“Not that. You look the same.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, yeah, but – you do. I mean, your eyebrows, your chin – your face is the same. You’ve got the same eyes.”
“Really? You think so?” He nodded.
She pressed her palm to her cheek, against the now-familiar planes, and looked away and smiled.
Cameron knew she wouldn’t be doing this if she’d stayed in Princeton. She probably wouldn’t be doing this if she’d stayed on the East Coast or settled anywhere near Chicago. Being out this far West gave her permission to do this.
She walked into the hotel and stopped at the front desk, suddenly not sure what to do next. After a moment, the clerk turned to look at her. “Can I help you?”
“Uh, yes, um, I’m here for the convention?”
If saying its name fazed him, he didn’t give it away. “Right through the atrium, the first doors in the back on the left.”
“Thank you.” Right past the fountain, she looked at the brochure she’d printed out and read dozens of times already. Right now there weren’t any panels or discussions, just a meet and greet, and there was the little table with name badges for registration and she could leave right now if she wanted.
She could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks even though she didn’t have a reason to be embarrassed about being here. Deep down there was still some fear about getting caught, and by coming to this she was leaving herself open to everything.
She walked up to the little table. “Hi.”
The young man’s badge said his – her name was Claire. “Hi, are you here for the convention?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, we’ll need your attendance fee.” Cameron handed over the cash; she counted it out and put it away, then turned back to her. “What would you like on your nametag?”
“Allison. Two Ls.”
“Okay, one moment.” One whirring portable print job later and she was fully registered as a guest, and a few moments of quiet panic and she was through the door. She hadn’t tried to imagine anything, knowing it wouldn’t be what she’d expect, but it was still surprising, mostly in how ordinary it all looked. Fifty, maybe sixty men from their teens to their seventies and all races and walks of life just hanging around the room and chatting, getting drinks and snacks from a little buffet table in the back, and it could’ve been a bunch of zookeepers or accountants for how regular it all was. She’d definitely overdressed.
Even from here, the buffet table looked pretty tempting, and when she got the courage to walk across the room she loaded up a small plate with cheese cubes and a few out-of-season berries. She scanned the room, saw a table without any plates or cups, and went over to put her food down before going back to get some tea. A few minutes after she sat down with that, someone sat down next to her, also somewhat overdressed. His nametag said she should call him Nick. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“It’s good to see you here.”
“Do I know you?”
“I’m the Nick from the contact page.”
“Oh! Sorry. It’s good to meet you. In person, I mean.”
He smiled. “I understand. A lot of us didn’t meet in person until we set this up.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Someone knew someone else, who knew this other guy who had a sister, and it kept going like that until Tim suggested we all get together somewhere.” He looked around the room. “It’s a step up from six of us in a restaurant booth.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Eight years,” he said after a pause that Cameron knew he didn’t need to figure out how long it’d been. “It keeps getting bigger. There’s a bunch of people from Portland that might make it next time.”
“Wow.”
“The more people that hear about it, the more know to come. So how’d you find out about this? You didn’t tell me before.”
“Just – poking around the Internet, I guess.” He waited, she shrugged, “You’re looking for one thing, and then you get a link to another page for something else, and then suddenly I’m at the homepage for this convention.”
“Well, I’m glad you found us. You live in the city, right?”
“Yeah, in Wallingford.”
“Cool. Some people are staying in the hotel, and you didn’t pre-register, so I just wanted to check.”
“Do you know everyone here tonight?”
“I do now.” It was an utterly cheesy line, but his smile was real. She knew just what he was doing, trying to make her comfortable with this sort of relaxing conversation, and right now – even though she wasn’t sure about how it worked into the meet-and-greet idea – she was glad she didn’t have to pretend or pay attention to how she held herself, and she was glad she was sitting down when she realized that because she felt her knees go soft.
After covering what they did to earn a living, how long they’d each lived in the city, which neighborhoods, and how boorish the tourists could get in summer, Nick leaned in. “Anyway, I’m leading a couple of the panels tomorrow, the ones on teenage shifting and media presence. They’re both before lunch, so – you will be here tomorrow, right?”
“How does this work?”
“There’s six panels before lunch and eight after, and we’ve booked the conference rooms on the ground level so we’ve got them to ourselves. You just go to a room, sit down, listen, and if you want to say something, you can go ahead.” She nodded and he went on, “I know there’s one on workplace politics after lunch, I think Vincent’s got that – it sounds like something you’d be interested in.”
“Is lunch in the hotel?”
“We usually go to local places. There’s this one café near here – you wouldn’t believe their pesto. It’s like they put drugs in it.”
“Really.” She smiled. “Sounds good.”
“Here you are!” They both turned to look at someone named Gary who clapped Nick on the shoulder. “Misha and I’ve been looking for you. Oh, hello.”
“Hi.”
He gave a little wave.“Gary, good to meet you.”
She nodded slightly, respectfully. “Allison.”
“Anyway, it’s that there’s a problem with the front desk people, and you should probably –” Nick nodded, held up a hand.
“Gotcha.” He looked at Cameron and shook his head. “It never goes smoothly. You just have to sort out the problems as people have them. I’ll be back in a bit.”
Gary sat down next to his vacated seat. “So is this your first convention?”
“It shows, doesn’t it?”
He just shrugged. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Trust me, it’s – I know how coming here can be a big step.”
“So how many…”
“This is my fifth.”
She leaned in, resting her arm on the table, “How’d you hear about this?”
“A while after I moved here, I met someone who already knew Tim,” he pointed to someone on the far side of the room, “who got me in touch with him when I told her about me.”
A couple of minutes later, Misha stopped by, and a few after that, Nick came back. As it turned out, there’d been a mix-up over which conference rooms were for them and which were for the other convention this weekend because big hotels meant group rates and the potential for this sort of problem. They kept talking casually until her stomach muttered at her; cheese and berries were tasty but didn’t make up a full dinner, and there were still some little sandwiches at the buffet. When she filled her plate up and went back to the table, someone else had joined the conversation.
She blinked, shook her head, did a double-take and stared to make sure it was who she thought it was.
“Oh, Allison!” Nick waved for her to sit down. “Matt, this is Allison, Allison, this is Matt.”
“Good to meet you.”
She nodded, swallowed, and said, “You too,” trying to cut back on the urge to smile – he really did look great in person, even without make-up. She’d cleaned up puke and shit from some genuinely important people – then she reminded herself he pretended to be other people for a living and to calm down because he wasn’t doing what made him famous to begin with. Here he was just someone else. She couldn’t stop herself smiling at that. “Can I ask – are you staying at the hotel?”
“Yes, I am.”
“You’re not here as ‘Mister Damon’, right? I mean, in the hotel.”
“No.” He looked pleased with the question. “I usually just get a name out of a phone book for something like this. It helps keeps the tabloids away.”
A little after that, Misha brought up TV shows and when she mentioned she’d just finished watching Brimstone, Matt spun around to her with bright interest; as it turned out, he’d been a fan of the show and wanted to get a part on there before it ended but didn’t get the chance. When Nick got up to get another cup of tea, she followed a moment later and caught up with him at the last remnants of the buffet.
“I, I’m just curious, how long has he –”
“It’s his third.” Nick blew over the lid of the cup, not looking at her. “And if it makes you feel any better, he’s still nervous about coming here.”
“Yeah. Yeah, he’d have to be.” She looked back at him, the idea of such a private fact about yourself getting out for everyone to know to look at you differently – she didn’t shudder, just shook her head sharply and let out a small hiss.
Nick sighed. “We all are, but, I guess some of us have less privacy to go back to, is all.”
She wasn’t thirsty, but got a cup to cover why she’d left the table, and after a few minutes found herself sharing her own opinions on pissing sitting down and doing it standing up. “Okay, on one hand it’s just urination, but there’s something nice about sitting down and relaxing instead of just pissing off.”
When she finally left, she was still riding the high of all the conversation and the liberty to not worry about how to make proper eye contact, and couldn’t get to sleep for the longest time. When she got back to the hotel the next morning a good hour before the panels started without any breakfast in her stomach, Nick waylaid her from across the atrium, jogging over to say hello and then snagged a couple of croissants for her.
“Do they make these fresh?” She didn’t wait for an answer before tearing into one.
“They say they do, but put enough butter on them and you don’t care.” She laughed around the pastry.
The panel on media portrayals was pretty good – everyone agreed stomping around wasn’t a substitute for decent body language – but it was the one after that, on dealing with parents, that made her want to contribute to the discussion. She knew she’d shifted late, and had her own life independent of the rest of her family, but she hadn’t considered that if she’d shifted earlier she might’ve had her name changed. Laurel had gone so far as to change hers back from ‘Edwin’ when she’d turned eighteen.
“Massachusetts state law’s just like that,” Matt cut in. “Pretty much all of them are, where parents can just come in and change it for you.”
“Did they ask you what you wanted?” Aaron asked.
“No, but they let me keep it as my middle name – like that’d make it better. I mean, it helped a bit, but still.”
Now or never: she stood up, looked around, and opened her mouth. “Hi. Uhm, I’m Allison, this, right, I haven’t changed it and I don’t think I will. I just go by my last name at work, everybody does, but still, it’s a way for me to stay anonymous and not have to come out if I don’t want to.” She sat right back down, face hot, and heard the general consensus and murmured agreement spread out like a wave.
When everyone broke for lunch, Gary and Misha invited her out to a little Italian place nearby that had private booths and more than enough people there already to let them talk pretty loudly about navigating dating someone. She couldn’t get over it: the awareness that she could go ahead and say these things without having to stop to think if the other people she was talking to would understand, because of course they did. They didn’t have the same pasts, or the same set of circumstances, but they all knew, just the same. The mussel soup was pretty good, too.
At the news Misha had hit six months in his current relationship, she slapped him on the arm the way she’d always slapped her friends in high school, nothing masculine about it at all. “So what’s her name?”
“Victoria.”
“Is it getting serious?”
“She’s talking about me moving in with her.” Gary whistled at that. “Her apartment’s nicer than mine, so I might go for it.”
“There’s worse reasons to move in with someone,” Cameron said.
“Yeah, I’ve probably used some of them by now.” He smiled and sighed. “She’s great, really, but it’s going to be a bit of a cluster when I tell her.”
“You haven’t told her yet?”
He shrugged. “After a while, it gets awkward to try. ‘Honey, before we move in together, there’s something I need to discuss.’”
“Just sit her down with some breakfast. ‘Have you ever wondered why I don’t care about make-up or cooking? I’m glad you asked…’”
By now, there was finally enough distance between then and now for her to laugh over how she’d ended up telling Rita, and plenty of empathy for Gary and Misha to laugh too. When they’d caught their breath, she went ahead and asked, “Have you ever dated men?”
“Does fucking in college count?”
“Everyone fucks in college. I mean dating.”
“A couple.” Gary flicked some crumbs away. “They didn’t really work out.”
When Cameron looked at him, Misha just shrugged. She thought about Miles’ hands running down her back, listened to what everyone wasn’t saying, and changed the subject back to the food, which everyone was happy to switch to.
After lunch she went to the one on workplace performance and then to the ones on social coping strategies and nonverbal communication patterns, talking more each time. Soon she was throwing comments back and forth from across the room about always going to the bathroom before going out even if she didn’t have to because then she wouldn’t be in such a rush she wouldn’t think to check, and why she made sure to look at all of a person’s body language. And yeah, she had to admit it felt pretty good when everyone started asking her more about how she could tell if people were lying, even if all she could say was, “Practice.”
After the evening break – Gavin from the nonverbal communication panel knew about a hidden teriyaki joint just two blocks away which had sauce to die for – everyone reconvened back in the main room for another session of breezy networking, and even though she didn’t push herself forward she didn’t hug the wall either. And again, Nick came over to talk to her, sitting down and starting up another conversation. This time, it cumulated with them exchanging e-mail addresses and the promise to keep in touch; something she repeated a few more times before she finally went back to her apartment, still giddy and worn-out at the same time, and had to go for a run at one in the morning to be able to fall asleep.
-
She didn’t feel any different – not substantially, not after a fairly regular Sunday of errands and chores – but Farkas shot her a look as soon as she came in on Monday. “Can I help you with something?”
“No.” Her expression shifted to a faint smile. “You look good.”
“Thank you.” She wanted to say ‘Oh, I happened to meet a movie star this weekend,’ but decided, for a change, it was good to keep something private that was also fun.
Three weeks after that, she was out on a ferry eating a very squished sandwich and waiting to get far enough out from land to get to a good spot for whales. Nick had suggested this adventure and was munching on a sandwich of his own, salami on whole wheat to her tuna on pumpernickel.
“Pretty big sight,” he mused.
She nodded, not sure exactly how to respond to that, or to anything else here for that matter. “I didn’t see an ocean until I was twenty-seven,” she finally said as he flicked crumbs off his lap.
“No kidding?”
“I grew up in the Midwest. I did my internship in New Jersey, and managed to get out to New York one week, and –” Trying to express the bigness of her first sight of the Atlantic and failing, she waved her hand out towards the water. “Lake Michegan’s big, but it’s not much next to the Atlantic.”
“Which isn’t much to the Pacific. You know, two oceans is more than what most people get. You’re really lucky.”
She snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, lucky me.”
“Yeah. Lucky you.” There was something to his tone that made her look at him, at the firm lines suddenly set into his face, and she knew he didn’t mean it in jest at all.
There were whales that day, a whole pod of them, and sea lions and scores of birds, and everyone kept shouting and pointing when a whale came up to breathe and ran to the side of the boat to see it go under. When they got back to land, it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, which somehow led to Nick suggesting, and Cameron accepting, spending the time hanging around his apartment and ordering take-out later.
Like hers, his was a one-bedroom place, but one with more amenities for potential visitors of all types – her prefab dining room set had come with four chairs, but she still didn’t have a couch. There wasn’t much reason to get one when a big easy chair worked just as well. Although she had to admit being able to stretch her legs out flat might make it worth the investment to start shopping for one. It felt so good to sit down after so much standing and rocking on the boat she let out a long, deep groan when she finally laid her feet up.
Nick grinned from the doorway. “Anything I can get for you?”
“Mmm, I’ll take a pillow, and black in the biggest mug you’ve got, with plenty of honey.” He grabbed a pillow from the easy chair and threw it at her, hitting her right in the face and prompting a round of giggling. “And it’d better be looseleaf!”
“Smoky, savory, spiced, sweet?”
She arranged the pillow under her neck, rolling her head around to get it just right. “Smoky.” He moved off past her line of sight, she closed her eyes, and the shrill cry of the kettle shocked her out of the doze. A bit more sensibly, Nick had a mug of jasmine green. Pushing herself up into enough of a sitting position to blow on the tea without spilling it, she watched him lower himself into the chair, also with a bit of grunting and a very relieved sigh once he was down, cradling the mug right up against his chest.
“Good trip.”
“You go on those a lot?”
“A few times a year, if I can.” He sighed and leaned back, and then leaned forward. “Can I ask you something personal?”
“Sure, I guess.”
“When did it happen for you?”
As surprising as it was, she didn’t have to think about the answer. “Almost three years ago. Why?”
He shrugged. “Just wanted to know.”
She swung her legs down to a sitting position. “And you?”
Rubbing a hand over his face, “It happened to me when I was fourteen.”
“Oh.”
“I’m mostly…I was going through puberty already, and I’d started getting breasts – they were okay – and when it happened, it was like the process just shifted.” He tipped his head back, then turned to look at her. “And I’m just, I guess kind of curious.” She nodded for him to go on. “I’ve been talking to people about when they shifted and how it went.” They both knew Cameron was on the far end of the age spectrum for it, and he shook his head and kept talking, “I’d like to do something with what I’m getting, if I could. But I’m –”
“You’re curious for yourself,” she shook her head, the pieces fitting in. “You grew up as a girl but didn’t get to mature as a female but you almost got there, and because of that you want to know what being a woman was like. And because I shifted so late, you want to talk to me about that.” As she talked, the words falling out of her mouth like she was describing a fungal infection, he looked more and more upset. Not sad or pained like she might have expected.
“Yeah, and so? I like you, I like talking to you. And I want to know that, but so what? I’ll still want to talk to you after you tell me.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that, I was just thinking out loud, I don’t mind that you want to know. What do you want to know?”
Nick blinked, nodded, her apology setting in gradually; she knew she’d have to be honest about what he asked to make it up. He licked his lips. “What was menstruation like?”
“It was…it was something to deal with, most of the time. It hurt, and it was messy, but it wasn’t as bad as most movies make it look. I’d take some painkillers and exercise and maybe have a beer, and keep changing my pads. ”
“How did it feel to stop?”
She took a sip of her tea, now cool enough to drink. “When I realized that I’d had my last, it, I felt like I’d lost a lot of how it was to be female. My mother made sure that me and, that I understood how female a thing menses is. And suddenly I realized it wasn’t something I’d ever do anymore. And it’s not that stopping it made me not a woman – it doesn’t stop everyone who goes through menopause. It’s that…” She stared down at the dust at the bottom of the mug, suspended in the honey, and swirled the cup around to make it move. “I still feel like a woman. Every day. I never feel like a man, even when I’m fucking a woman. Especially when I’m fucking a woman. And I still think of myself as a woman. But I can’t do what women do anymore, and there’s nothing I’ll ever be able to do for another woman to recognize me, and I can’t…”
“I always wanted to.” He had the same firm expression he had earlier when he’d said she was lucky. “I knew it’d hurt, but it was something I’d do and then become a woman. When I was eight I knew that’s how it worked: menstruate and you were a woman.”
“Being a woman takes years of hard work and social conditioning. You can’t just have it happen with a menses overnight.”
“I know.” This time, he sounded more sad than angry. Wistful, even.
“And it’s not, it’s not just with women – men know because I don’t do it right, I can’t be a man enough, and no matter what I do for men or women it’s not correct, and I don’t know how to fix it –”
“It’s not being correct.” He was still cradling his tea by his chest. “It’s not about being one or the other. I mean, we’re – we can’t be. It’s about pretending, and pretending good enough to fool people.” He smiled, very faintly. “It’s about playing the boy.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not so much convincing yourself you’re not a girl. It’s about knowing there’s nothing wrong with you, no matter how much you fuck up a conversation because you don’t know how to make eye contact, and being able to play at being the boy.” She looked back down at her tea, then down at the floor, over to Nick’s gentle expression, then slowly felt herself smile. “Do you understand?”
She nodded. “I think I do.”
-
“Doctor Cameron?” She looked up from her computer to look at Paik, the newest department fellow, poking her head in her office. “Could you come here for a minute?”
“Sure.” Paik led her on to Tenopir’s office. “What’s the trouble?”
“We’ve got a patient, and, Tenopir wants you to talk to her.” She handed Cameron the file, who thumbed it on and scanned through the display down to the relevant charting and end diagnosis.
“The treatment’s easy. What do you need me for?”
“She’s refusing it.”
“Oh. In that case, I’d better go talk to her.”
Mary Lippitt’s bed was the only full one in the room right now, and she smiled when Cameron pushed the curtain aside. “Hello.”
“Hi there, Mrs. Lippitt. I’m Doctor Cameron from immunology.”
“Good to meet you.”
She pulled a stool over, rested her arms on her legs. “How’s your stay been so far?”
“Not too bad, really.” The way she laughed with her head instead of her face meant she knew just what was going on in her body.
“I’m glad to hear that.”
Suddenly that much more serious, “Is there something you wanted to talk about?”
“I understand you’re refusing treatment.”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask why?”
“From what you’ve told me, it’s just in my ovaries and you can leave the uterus –”
“Mrs. Lippit, that’s not what we’re saying.”
“Or, or you could leave it and wait, and I could get the surgery later.”
“You could, and then put yourself at risk for it metastasizing to another part of your system.”
“Yes, but I think I should wait.”
“Why?”
“My husband and I have been trying to get pregnant for months. We’ve lined up some specialists and they’re ready to go. And if I wait a bit longer, I can finally have a baby.”
“All right.” Cameron took a deep breath and spoke slowly. “You’re putting off surgery which will save your life and keep you from a horrible death because you want to get pregnant.” She looked confused, but nodded. “Because you want to have a baby.” A more definite nod. “I assume you’ve thought this through all the way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know how many babies are born every day here? Or in the state? Or in the country? Having a baby isn’t anything special.”
“Doctor, I’m sorry –”
“What I’m hearing from you, and please correct me if I’m wrong, is that you and your husband want a baby, and you want to make sure you’re going to use your uterus at least once in your life.”
“Why are you saying this?”
“Because what you’re telling me is that you want to give birth to a baby, not raise a child.”
“Of course I want to raise a child!”
“Then why are you so set on birth as your only option? You could adopt, you could have your eggs harvested and hire a surrogate – losing your ovaries and uterus isn’t the end of the world. This isn’t the fifteen hundreds. Having a baby isn’t the only way for a woman to make a contribution to society.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Mrs. Lippitt, if you think I don’t understand –”
“Of course you can’t.”
“If you think I don’t understand,” she repeated more firmly, shaking on the inside, “I assure you I do. I lost my chance to have children, Mrs. Lippitt, and I knew my life wasn’t over.” She whipped her head around to look at Cameron, who went on as best she could, “I’m an androgyne, and I’d appreciate you keeping that in mind when I say that giving birth shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all to your life.”
A half-hour later, she delivered the signed consent form to Tenopir herself. “Here you go.”
“Thanks. I mean, this is a lifesaver.”
“You’re welcome.”
On the way back to her office, she could practically hear House mocking her for replacing ‘my dead husband’ for ‘my lost femininity’ in terms of patient bargaining fodder – to which she argued that if it was a literal lifesaver, and kept someone who’d otherwise be a trophy birth out of the world, it was worth it.
-
Cameron’s reputation had been building steadily, and Lippitt more or less cemented her position as being on-track for the head of Immunology in a few years thanks to her people skills. She told Nick about it one day while wandering through Pike Place Market looking for a birthday gift for Sam, and he laughed: “When you learn things because you have to, sometimes you know them better than the people who didn’t have to.”
“Word to that.”
She re-checked the terms of her lease, talked to her landlord, and began looking around for a pet that could live comfortably in a tank, finally settling on a pair of captive-bred turtles. She made a point to dress as nicely as she could, and perhaps the suits and ties were a bit much, but she’d grown comfortable with them, and liked how they made her feel and keep attention to the performance, but when she went out on a day hike with Farkas one weekend, she surprised her colleague by showing up in a short-sleeved t-shirt. She wrote Christmas cards to everyone back home, her old boss and Cuddy, to Foreman and Chase and after some deliberation, Miller got onto the list too, and she chatted with people in the line at the Post Office about stamps rising to twenty-seven cents.
When, after nearly five years of work, Cameron finally got her own department, much was made of it: the third Diagnostic Medicine department in the country, one of just a handful in the world. Wilson called her to congratulate her and tell her House was bragging with elaborate virus and karate metaphors. She honestly wouldn’t expect anything less of him.
“What do you want on the door?”
“Doctor Allison Cameron, department of diagnostic medicine.”
Panos pursed her lips. “Your full name?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
It turned out to be for the best: when her first interviewee for a fellowship came in the door, she did a double-take, clearly trying to reconcile the name on the door with the person behind the desk. And, thanks to Sam, the framed old photograph on her desk.
“Is that your daughter?” Sampsel asked.
“No, that’s me when I was seventeen.”
Only three of the twelve candidates took that their boss was an androgyne in stride; by now, Cameron knew how to tell if people couldn’t, and also to not bother wasting her time on them, much less attempting to teach them how to look for zebras hidden with all the horses.
-
She scanned down the list of speakers and snorted. Of course there were only three men speaking, not including her. The paper on the ethics of living organ donation looked pretty interesting, and – she snapped back and checked one of the names, and mentally rescheduled her afternoon.
He was a good speaker, and since she’d last spoken to him he’d let his accent come back out again. By now she knew how useful it was to have something that could throw everyone else off, and that right now, in this context, painting himself as the exotic Australian went in his favor. Also, he’d evidently decided to give up on patterns, decked out all in black. She remembered the last time, her first all-nighter since med school, and it was still a good look for him.
She waited for him by the door and, when he came out, tapped him on the arm to get his attention. “Robert?”
“Yes, is…” He did a double-take. “Allison?”
“The one and only.”
Taking a step back, looking her up and down, “This is – wow, you look good.”
“Thanks, you too. I like the tie.”
“It’s great to see you. So are you presenting?”
“Yeah, tomorrow afternoon, it’ll be on innate responses. Listen,” she pushed through her nervousness and realization they were now the same height, “there’s no way you want to eat the food here, and there’s a great little bistro maybe fifteen minutes away – you want to catch up over lunch?”
She’d missed that smile. “I’d love that.”
The crepes were delicious, and knowing that she the ability to relax and just be herself around him – it felt like being back in the conference room, down to the bistro’s huge windows – gave her the strength to pull him into staying off-call and going across the street for a cup of coffee. “Coffee?”
“Yeah, it’s the new food fad. It’s getting big.”
“No, I’ve had coffee before. My dad drank it all the time – it’s not something I’d think would catch on in the States. You like your drinks sweet.”
“You’re one to talk. You always finished the honey back in Princeton.”
“I never said I didn’t.”
Once they got their drinks and sat down in one of the booths, he sighed and pulled out his hairsticks, shaking his head and letting his hair tumble down, scratching his neck.
“Do you ever get it cut anymore?”
“If it needs a trim, sure.”
She ran a hand over her head. “I need a cut. It’s getting pretty scruffy.”
“Ah, long hair always looked good on you.”
“I know.” She thought of her queue, hidden away in a manila envelope at the bottom of a box of papers on the upper shelf of her bedroom closet. “But it don’t think it’d look good on me now.”
“Fair enough. So how have you been?”
“All right, all things considered.” Briefly considering telling him she was thinking about finally getting back onto the dating scene, she went for departmental news instead, talking about her fellows and how they were adjusting, and the recent bizarre case that turned out to be chicken pox caught twenty years later than normal.
“I wouldn’t have hired mine if they weren’t so self-reliant. That’s the thing nobody gets with Diagnostics – there’s always weird stuff, but it doesn’t happen every day.”
“Whole weeks going by with nobody coming in with the Black Death or fetus in fetu.”
“Exactly.” He looked at her, sighed, and smiled. “I’m really glad you caught me – it’s nice to catch up like this.”
“I’m glad I recognized your name to catch you.”
“I would’ve seen you.”
“Well, it’s my name on the paper.”
“Not that. You look the same.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, yeah, but – you do. I mean, your eyebrows, your chin – your face is the same. You’ve got the same eyes.”
“Really? You think so?” He nodded.
She pressed her palm to her cheek, against the now-familiar planes, and looked away and smiled.