I’d gone out for a walk, trying to cheer myself up.

My girlfriend, Becky, had just walked out on me; I wasn’t an ‘achiever’, she said, and she wanted more out of life. The truth hurts, doesn’t it…

The flat felt really empty and depressing; some of her things were still there, but she said she was going to pick them up later. That’s why I went out for a while, as it was a nice day, to cheer myself up.

I found the phone lying in the grass near the path, sort of tucked under a bush. It was a little damp but still seemed to be running; it was even unlocked. I looked around, but there didn’t seem to be anyone near it. For some reason, I picked it up; telling myself I was trying to find its owner, I went into settings and found the name…

My girlfriends name jumped out at me. This was her phone…

Now more worried than curious, I started searching. Don’t tell me she’d gone and done something stupid. I had known that she had a little bit of a self-destructive personality, that’s why it had hurt so much when she told me what she had. She thought I was worse than her.

My searching found her studded purse, a little further up the path. Now I was really worrying. Using my own phone, I called the police. Even as I did, I saw the shoe sticking out from under another bush. With horror, I realised that the shoe was still attached to a leg…

I raced over, and pulled the body out from under the bush, rolled it over, and froze in shock…

My own face stared sightlessly up at me…

I sagged to my knees, convinced I was losing it. I started sobbing and was still doing that as the police arrived.

They took both of us away in ambulances; the body to the morgue, and me to hospital under sedation, as they were worried I was going to hurt myself…

I woke up in a bed in a women’s ward and immediately tried to get up.

“Becky, please!”, the woman next to me said. “Calm down!”

“Who the hell are you, and who are you calling Becky?”, I exclaimed. “My names Todd. Becky’s my girlfriend, or she was…”

The woman just stared at me in shock.

“Becky, what are you talking about?”, she said, worried. “It’s me, Stella, your mother. You must be in shock…”

“My parents died years ago”, I said. “Who are you, and what the hell is going on?”

Stella just cried, then called for a nurse…

The nurse came quickly and had two patients to deal with, Stella, crying hysterically, and me getting angrier and angrier. In between sobs, Stella told her what I had said…

“She thinks she’s Todd! She says she doesn’t know me!”, Stella wailed. At the same time, my paper gown had sagged, and I caught the first look at my chest since I had been in the woods…

The shriek could be heard right out in the corridor.

“I’ve got breasts! Where the fuck did they come from? What the hell…!”

All the time, my sense of ‘self’ had been blocking the evidence around me; my higher pitched voice, my thinner hands, the feel of my hair against my back. I couldn’t ignore the breasts, however. At the same time, I was still absolutely certain I was Todd, and all my memories were, too. How had I ended up in Becky’s body…?

Stella hugged me as I cried and gripped my hands tightly.

“Becky, he’s gone…”, she said, “Todd’s gone. The police found you standing over his body, hysterical. You’d gone out to find him after he walked out on you…”

“No, that’s not right…”, I said. “She walked out on me. She said I was holding her back…”

Nothing anyone could say would convince me otherwise. The doctors were convinced I was having a psychotic break, as well as a danger to myself, so they put me on suicide watch. Even so, Stella stayed with me throughout all this; she was joined by another girl, in a nurses uniform; a redhead.

“Hi, peanut”, said Stella, obviously happy to see the girl. “Becky’s not well, but I think we could both do with the company.”

The girl sat down in the other chair next to me, holding my hand. “Hi, Sis”, she said.

I just laid back on the bed and shut my eyes, trying to close out the supposed reality that I refused to believe…

A few days later, I was taken to another hospital, a psychiatric one.

There were still concerns that I might harm myself, or worse; I was still Todd, not Becky, no matter what the evidence and my senses showed. I had no idea about women’s problems, or how to take care of them; I’m sorry to admit that I screamed like a girl when I found blood on the sheets one morning.

The readheaded nurse, Alex, had got herself transferred with me, to look after me. Normally, the hospital didn’t allow family helping family, for various reasons; in this case, however, they felt that it would be a help for me, to try and give me a sense of ‘grounding’. The trouble was she was so caring, it was turning me on…

Still in ‘Todd’ mode, I couldn’t help it. I kissed her. I knew I’d crossed a line as soon as I did it.

Alex jerked and pulled away. “What the fuck…? That didn’t feel like a ‘sisterly’ kiss at all!”

“That’s what I keep telling you”, I said. “I’m Todd, not Becky! You must remember; we went out for a while, before you came out to me as a lesbian. At the same time, you had seen how Becky was looking at me and steered her toward me.”

“I never told anyone that but Todd…”, said Alex. “Nobody else knows I’m that way, except one of the girls I was with for a while at medical school. I only came out to Todd…”

She stared closely at me. I smiled back. Alex was now convinced I was Todd, but she was mystified as to how…

“We need to find out what’s caused this”, she said, finally. “At the same time, I can teach you all you need to know about Becky to get by, including about ‘women’s problems’ and other things. At the same time… how do you feel about getting back together? I know you fancy me, that kiss proved that, and I’ll have a girlfriend…”

Alex now had a wicked expression on her face. This was going in ways that I really hadn’t expected.

“How long have you wanted to sleep with your sister…?”, I asked, curiously.

Alex just smiled…

Alex still worked at the hospital, but she also became my carer.

Thanks to her teaching, I gradually learned more about Becky, my new life. Stella was overjoyed that she was getting her daughter back and praised Alex for all the work she was doing.

“Family first”, said Alex, simply, as if that explained everything.

I moved in with Alex, at her flat; ostensibly for her to carry on with my ‘care’. No complaints from me on the way I was ‘taken care of’…!