Since the accident, Jim had been unusually distant. He avoided everyone.

Dana was worried about him. 

She had tried to visit; Jim hadn’t even answered the door to her. She did think she’d glanced him out, once, but he disappeared before she could get close.

As he was ignoring her calls as well, she tried to visit him at work, only to find out that, as far as his works were concerned, he’d died in the accident. Now she was really worried…

Going back to his flat, she knocked again, hearing someone inside.

“Talk to me, damn it! I’m not leaving until we do!”

There were sounds from the flat, then the door opened a crack.

Before the figure inside could stop her, Dana pushed her way in.

The flat was a mess. Clothes strewn everywhere, crockery smashed, even a table was lying in a pile of broken wood…

Dana gasped.

Jim had always been so tidy, almost compulsively so…

“What the fuck do you want from me?”, a quiet voice hissed. Like Jim’s, but different…

“I was worried about you!”, Dana cried, trying to see who was talking in the gloom. “I care about you.”

“Not any more you won’t”, Jim said. “I want you to forget about me. It’s for the best. Who do you think I am, anyway?”

“You’re Jim, my friend! I can’t forget about you.”, said Dana, still trying to see Jim. “Friends don’t just forget about friends.”

“Ok”, Jim said. “I did try to warn you…”

He stepped into the light.

“Jim…?”, Dana said, shakily…

Jim was standing in front of her. He looked alright, but also so terribly wrong…

For one thing, ‘he’ was about a foot shorter than he used to be. He was now also definitely a ‘she’…

“Jim died that night”, she said, sadly. “I’m Jemima…”

Dana just stood and stared…

“I guess you’ve a right to know what happened”, said Jemima. “I owe you that, we’ve been friends for long enough.”

“It is you”, she said. “But… how?”

“It was the accident”, Jemima said. “My PA, Fiona and I were travelling up north to visit the new facility. A truck mounted the central reservation and hit us head on…”

Jemima paused. The accident was still fresh in her brain. Reflexively, Dana reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. Jemima didn’t pull away…

Swallowing, she continued.

“Fiona was hit in the head. Her brain was damaged; her body was ok, but the head injury meant she would never wake up. I, however… my torso was completely crushed. Somehow, my circulatory system was still working, so my head was ok, but my body was failing rapidly.”

“A cosmetic surgeon, also qualified as a GP, who lived nearby was the first on the scene. He did what he could for Fiona but could tell it was no use. Then he looked at me…”

“He managed to get us both out of the wrecked car. To try and keep my head working, he connected it to Fiona’s body. I don’t know why, but he did a very good job of it, too. When I woke up, days later, I couldn’t even see the join…”

She did a twirl in front of Dana.

“This is me, now. Jemima. My original body was just junk, destroyed. Fiona had no more use for hers, she was effectively dead and an organ donor anyway, so, here I am. Trouble is, I can’t stop thinking about Fiona…”

Jemima stopped and started sobbing, quietly.

“Everywhere I look I see her body…!”

Dana just held her as she cried…

Dana stayed with Jemima.

She became her support system, her rock and, eventually, her lover.

Neither Jim or Fiona had any immediate family; the incident was a tragic accident, with both Jim and Fiona being marked down as having been killed instantly in the crash, as well as the truck driver. There had been enough DNA evidence in the car from both of them to convince the police that they had both died, as the car conveniently had ‘blown up’ with all the unused parts of Jim and Fiona back in it, before anyone else had got to the scene of the accident. There had also been no sign that the other doctor had ever been there…

Jim’s flat and belongings were left to a long undiscovered ‘twin sister’, Jemima.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Jemima got over the trauma of the accident. Every so often, however, she caught herself staring at her hands, remembering that they weren’t the ones she had been born with…