Chapter 2: A Meeting of Minds

Patrick O'Donnell didn't even give me a second glance as I pulled my wheelchair next to his. That pissed me off a bit because I had always looked at every cute girl that crossed my line of sight, and I knew that now I was a good-looking girl.

For a few minutes, I just looked at my former body. I wasn't bad looking in 1974 I realized, but had never noticed it. Over the years, it was the lack of attention to my own health and fitness that landed me in hospital, overweight, short of breath and with a failing heart.

I looked around to make sure nobody was paying attention to us and I whispered, "Pat."

He glanced at me and then deliberately looked away.

"Patrick," I said more urgently.

He just told me to leave him alone. I didn't have time to be playing these games.

"Patricia!" I said, which finally got some attention. He looked at me and told me to fuck off. He probably figured I was yanking his chain over his claims that he was really a girl.

Obviously she didn't recognize her former self, or there was just something about that body that made who ever lived in it a total prick! I checked around again and since nobody was looking, I slapped him, hard, right across the face.

That got his attention.

"Listen you stupid bitch," I said. "I know who you are. I am probably the only person in the world who does, so you better pay attention to me and start behaving yourself."

He was mad, rubbing his cheek which had a red mark on it. I knew I had hit him hard as my own hand was stinging. His eyes narrowed. "You look like..." he started.

"Brilliant deduction Sherlock... I'm you."

I thought he was going to cry. I had to remind myself that there was a girl inside that body, but barring another Divine Act of bad jokes, we were stuck with the bodies we had, and I didn't know how much time we had to swap stories.

"I need to know everything about you," I said, "and in return, I'll tell you everything about who you are now."

"But I don't want to be you," he sobbed.

"Unless you've got some really good connections Pat, I don't see where you got much choice. What's the last thing you remember before waking up in my body?"

He looked at me for a few moments. "You're wearing makeup. Mom didn't let me wear makeup till I was 16."

"Yeah, well things are different this time around in case you hadn't noticed."

"Oh, I noticed. Like this cock between my legs," he said, slapping at his crotch.

"Hey go easy on that!" I said.

"Why should I?" he retorted. "Stupid thing never goes down. All the ones I've ever known went soft all too fast."

"Known many?" I asked with a smirk.

"Quite a few, after that bastard screwed me over," he said. The mind of Patricia Johnson was starting to stir. I could see it in his eyes. I wondered who the bastard was that had screwed her over, then had to remind myself that like me, Pat was older than the body she had been thrown into. "I don't get it," he continued. "I'm not turned on in the least, yet I have a constant hard-on."

"Yeah, teenage hormones. Best thing you can do is beat it and that will give you some relief."

"You mean masturbate?"

I just shook my head. "Listen genius. It's called whacking off, jacking off, or any other term you like, but guys don't call it masturbating."

"That's disgusting," he said.

"Will you stop talking like a girl," I said. "People are going to think you're queer the way you're talking."

"It's 'gay'," he reminded me, "and so what if I am?"

"Pat... It's 1974 for Christ's sake. People haven't accepted gays. If that's the route you want to go, you're going to have to stay in the closet for at least another 15 years." But it made me think. I was in a female body, yet the only sexual thoughts I'd had so far were of the nurses. "Okay, I think I can understand, cause I'm not getting turned on by any of the males either," I said.

We both thought about that for a bit. Finally I said, "Maybe we'll change as we adjust to these bodies. Now tell me what your last thought was."

"I was in another hospital having a hysterectomy because my ovaries had growths on them."

"Another hospital? Are you sure?" I asked.

"I might have changed bodies, but my mind is still mine. I was at University, and when I woke up, I was here at the Old Vic."

I looked around quickly and reminded Pat that the new teaching hospital named for this one hadn't been built yet.

"Damn. Does this mean I've got to live my life all over again?"

"Hey Einstein, have you checked out your body? It ain't your life anymore."

"Then how come I still know who I am?"

"I don't know," I said, but I was slowly starting to see the light, "but I think we just got another chance. You were here for your appendix in 1974 right?"

He nodded.

"And I was in at the same time for that popped knee you have now. I think we died last Monday, and by some strange twist of fate, we're now in each other's body."

"Why couldn't I have come back to my own body?" he asked.

"I'm going to take a wild stab here," I said, "but I'm willing to bet you weren't very happy with the life you had."

"How'd you know?"

"Because I wasn't happy in my life," I said.

"Well you hit that one on the nose. I wasted my life, and I had such a promising start."

"Yeah, I figured you had it pretty good at this point. I've met your parents, they seem like really nice people. What went wrong?"

For the next two hours Patricia and I swapped our sorry tales.

Patricia had been a shy girl. She was a good student and loved her family as much as they loved her, but she was not a social person. She had felt awkward and gangly and tended to avoid her peers. But she had been an excellent student and had finished grade 8 with honors and was hoping High School would be better. It turned out that High School was just more of the same. She was taller than any of her classmates - including the boys - and flat chested to boot when the trend for the perfect female was just over 5 foot with lots of curves.

Her Mom had stuck fast to the rule about not dating till she was 16 and then nobody asked her. Finally, just before her 17^th birthday, one of the school jocks had asked her out for a date. She had immediately accepted - and lived to regret it. Instead of a romantic time at the movies, he had taken her straight to lover's lane and put the moves on her. She was amazed and excited that he wanted to get physical with her and despite early protests, he soon won her over and they had ended up in the back seat of his dad's Impala.

He hadn't worn a rubber, and of course she wasn't on the pill, He had promised to pull out, but she was still a virgin and so tight that he came within a few minutes, injecting his fertile sperm deep into her as she trembled and bled beneath him.

He had told her not to worry since it was her first time and you couldn't get pregnant the first time. Needless to say, she'd gotten pregnant. He denied it was his, but her father had gone to his father and because pregnant girls in the 70's couldn't go to school, she had dropped out. There was a shotgun wedding, them apprehensive; their parents grim but determined that their children would do the 'right thing'. He had to leave school as well and ended up apprenticing as a welder.

She had the baby, a beautiful daughter they named Catherine, after Patti's one remaining friend. Then came the blow. Catherine was deaf. Their relationship, always shaky, nearly foundered but they made it through. Times were hard and they were barely making ends meet, Paul working long hours while she nursed their daughter and attempted to make them a home. They were estranged from their families, both bitterly resenting their parents for forcing them into this loveless marriage. The only thing holding them together was that both idolized young Cathy.

A couple of years later, Paul got to the legal drinking age, and things really started to go to pieces. He never came home after work any more, spending his time and their money in bars and strip clubs, becoming abusive and violent, slapping her around more than once. However, his love for his daughter never wavered, and she hid his abuse, thinking that Children's Services would take her daughter if she reported it. She had already seen it happen to others in the trailer park where they lived.

Then the nightmare of the beginning of the rest of her life. A moment's inattention on her part, and...

The scene was indelibly etched into her memory - her daughter, her most precious Cathy, her blonde hair glowing in the random beams of sunlight shining through overhead trees, looking up smiling at her from where she hunkered down to examine the flat toad on the road. Then her expression slowly changing as she took in the look of horror on her mother's face as Patti ran toward her, her head turning toward the motion she caught from the corner of her eye...

Then the eighteen wheeler, its wheels locked, went over her like a thresher, turning her into a shattered thing of pink denim and red, red blood.

He blamed her, she cried, he left, and she fell into a depression, never to recover. By the time she hit her forties; she was living on borrowed money, and borrowed time. She didn't know it and usually was too drunk to care, but she was growing cysts on her ovaries. When the pain got too bad, she finally had to see a doctor and was immediately scheduled for a total hysterectomy.

Pat started to cry. "I wasted my life in a single night, and I haven't really lived since."

Her story shook me. I felt her pain, and awkwardly put my arm over her shoulders. "Pat, you have to stop crying. You're a guy now, and guys don't cry. The sensitive male won't make an appearance for another 20 years."

"But I don't want to be a boy!"

"Yeah, well I didn't want to be a girl either, but it looks like we're getting a second chance and I don't intend to blow it!"