I was hurrying along the street, late to meet my friend, looking around for him. 

As I did, a woman came out of an office door on the corner in front of me and waved.

“Ms Dickerson! Emily! Over here!”

I went on past, still looking for my friend, not noticing the confused expression on her face…

I got to the end of the road without finding my friend and turned round to walk back. To my amazement, the woman from the office was standing behind me. She was out of breath because she had been hurrying to catch me up.

“Didn’t you hear me calling, Emily? You’re going to miss the interview I set up for you!”, she cried.

“I’m sorry, you must have me confused with someone else”, I said. Then I looked down at myself. What the hell…

My t-shirt, jeans and sneakers had gone. Blouse, skirt, tights and heels met my gaze. My shape was all wrong as well. I was now a woman, but how? I’d been me when I set out to meet up with my friend that morning.

The other woman took my hand and pulled me with her.

“Please, Emily! I’ve worked hard to get you this interview, and you’ve worked hard to be worthy of it. Mr Hudson will love you for the PA position; he’s actually had his eye on you for a while…”

“But I’m not…”

“Not ready! Nonsense! I’ve seen your work, and your CV photo doesn’t do you justice. You’ll do fine…!”

I was trying to say that I wasn’t Emily Dickerson. I was a twenty-year-old man named Matt.

At that point my friend walked past. She didn’t even give me a second look…

“Claire…?”

“I’m sorry, have we met?”, she said. I just stared at her, amazed. I had obviously changed so much I was unrecognisable…

I didn’t know what to do. It was all getting bewildering and too much. Suddenly dizzy, I sagged against a wall, then collapsed to the ground.

Both Claire and the other woman went to help me.

“Emily? Emily!”, the woman cried, as I passed out…

I woke up in hospital, with a nurse standing over me.

“Doctor, she’s coming round”, the nurse called. “Easy, Ms. Dickerson, don’t try to sit up. Just lie there. The doctor will be in in a minute.”

The woman from the office was sitting there next to me, a worried expression on her face.

“Emily, how are you? Do you know where you are?”

“Looks like Riverside Hospital”, I said. “How did I end up here?”

“I brought you in my car”, the woman said. “It’s the least I could do for my sister…”

My eyes went wide.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve never seen you before today in my life”, I said.

“What!?”

“My name’s Sandra. Sandra Dickerson. I’m your older sister.”, the woman said. “You said you wanted a job, as you felt you weren’t pulling your weight. I pulled some strings and got you an interview for the position of Ms Harding’s PA. She was looking forward to meeting you.”

“I still am”, came a strong, cultured voice.

Elise Harding walked into the room. A refined lady of good standing if there ever was one. She also owned the hospital…

“Hello, Emily”, she said, holding out a hand. Wow. A woman that gorgeous, and she wanted to get to know me…

Trying to be on my best behaviour, I somehow instinctively felt what was right.

“A pleasure, ma’am”, I said, taking the offered hand. “Forgive me for not curtseying, but it’s a bit awkward from this position…!”

Elise laughed.

“You’re everything your sister said you were”, she said.

“By the way, that means you’ve got the job as soon as you are well enough…”

I was still tired, dizzy and very confused. I hadn’t got family. I had been an only child, a boy. My parents had died when I was eighteen and left me the flat that I was living in. How the hell was I now a woman with a sister?

Sandra was looking at me, really concerned.

“Are you sure you don’t know me? Come on, sis, you’ve lived with me for years!”

I just looked at her, my vision unfocussed, then passed out again…

The hospital decided to keep me in. That was when they discovered I was pregnant. The first I knew of that was overhearing the doctor talking to Sandra as I half-awoke…

“Should we tell her?”

“Absolutely not! She’s in a fragile enough state as it is. She’s not far enough along for it to matter yet, is she?”

“About eight weeks.”

“No… it’s not possible…!”, I moaned, trying to sit up. “Guys don’t get pregnant…!”

“Damn, she heard us!”, said Sandra. “Doctor, please leave us. I’ll try and calm her down…!”

“Emily, love, sorry but it’s true”, Sandra said. “You’re going to have a baby.”

“Get it out of me!”, I cried. “This is all wrong! Get it out of me, NOW!”

I ended up crying myself out on Sandra’s shoulder. She was crying just as hard, scared about what was happening to her sister…

She didn’t leave me, once. Well, maybe for five minutes to go to the loo. Every time my eyes opened, she was there.

I suddenly realised that Elise was sitting on the other side of me, gently holding my hand.

“You poor dear”, she said. “This is all quite bewildering, isn’t it?”

“Take a break for a minute, Sandra”, she said. “I’ll take care of Emily.”

Nodding, Sandra headed off to get some food.

Elise waited for her to leave, then leaned over and kissed me.

“Hi, gorgeous!”, she said, with a smile. “I’ve been waiting to do that for ages.”

I was dumbstruck. A beautiful woman like her, and she was calling me gorgeous?  Also, why was she hitting on me?

“I take it you still like women?”, she said.

“Oh, yeah, especially if they look like you!”, I said, unable to stop myself.

She giggled.

“Good. It means all the work was worth it. You really didn’t look at yourself when you got up this morning, did you? You saw exactly what you expected to see; a twenty-year-old man going out to meet his mate in town.”

I stared at her again.

“You know about me?”

“Of course I do. It was me who arranged it all. By the way, what do you think of your sister? I ‘recruited’ her first, about six months ago. His name was Kyle.”

“You did this to him, too!?”

“Yep. I saw two ‘lost souls’ drifting from place to place, without any plan in life or future. I decided to give them a second chance at life.”

“Sorry you’re getting a rough ride of it at the moment”, she continued, “the hormones aren’t quite balanced, yet. You will be ok, though. No, better than ok; you’ll have a family, as well as a real life to go to.”

“What if I was happy as I was?”, I asked, dejectedly, turning my head away from her.

“I can’t believe that…”

“Get out.”

“What…?”

“There’s the door. Leave. Now. Also, I’m refusing your job offer. I don’t want it.”

“Emily, please…!”

“My name’s not Emily! It’s Daniel! If you’d cared about me at all you’d know that! Get out!”

Sadly, Elise left the room, leaving me sobbing in the bed…

By the time Sandra came back in the room, I was already arranging for an abortion with the doctor, claiming that it was non-consensual. Sandra gasped.

“Sis, why? You were looking forward to being part of a real family! That included having children.”

“Was I fuck!”, I cried. “This was forced on me! You’ve got no right to say anything, either.”

I turned to the doctor.

“I’ve never seen this woman before yesterday; she’s nothing to do with me.”

“What’s Elise done?”, Sandra wailed. “This is all her fault! You were fine until she was left alone with you!”

“Oh, if only you knew…!”, I said. For some reason, I didn’t feel it was right to tell Sandra what Elise had said; she seemed really happy in her role.

“Please; come home with me and think about it?”, Sandra pleaded.

I ignored her like I had Elise, eventually kicking her out of my room as well, instructing the doctor that I wanted no visitors.

Then, while nobody was looking, I carefully got dressed using the clothes in the cupboard by the bed and discharged myself.

I went back to my (Daniel’s) flat, and used the keysafe to let myself in.

I securely locked the door from the inside, curled up on my favourite sofa and watched TV munching snacks until I fell asleep.

At the hospital, Sandra was panic stricken.

“Where’s my sister?”, she shrieked. “What have you done with her?”

“Based on what we have seen on the security cameras, she managed to discharge herself about 11pm last night”, the doctor said. “We can’t keep people in against their will; we can only strongly advise them to stay.”

Frantically, Sandra phoned Elise…

I was awoken by the banging on my front door the next morning.

“Daniel! Open the door! Please!”

Elise was using my real name, at least.

“Sod off!”, I shouted back.

“Daniel, please! Let me in! It’s literally a matter of life and death! Yours, and the baby.”

“Don’t care. My life is over anyway. You saw to that. Now fuck off and leave me alone!”

“Ok”, Elise said, sadly, “but please, see a doctor! Your changeover isn’t finished, yet. You need all sorts of medication.”

“I’ll cope”, I shouted back. “Anything’s better than hooking up with you.”

There was a strangled sob from behind the door, then Elise left.

The next day I suffered a miscarriage…

I’ve never felt pain like that. There was blood everywhere. I’d been going to have an abortion anyway, so I didn’t feel attached to the baby but, even so, I cried my eyes out…

The post-natal depression kicked in almost straight away.

I didn’t leave the flat for two weeks.

The only thing I got out of bed for was food, drink and the toilet. Luckily, I’d done a big shop just before all this started, so I had plenty of food and drink. I’d also paid all the bills in advance for quite some time, as I knew I was going to be spending a lot of time looking for work, so I literally didn’t need to do anything.

I still avoided mirrors as much as possible, disgusted about the fact I was now a woman. That made the time I looked into one in the bathroom by mistake a real shocker…

Elise had been right. I was really gorgeous, albeit looking a bit threadbare because I wasn’t taking care of myself.

I was dressing down as much as I could; baggy t-shirts and jumpers, as well as tatty jeans that I loved. Somehow, it made me look sexier than ever…?

Still very confused, I snuggled back into bed, hugging a pillow for comfort…

I must have passed out again, I really don’t remember.

The first thing I really heard was the crash as Elise kicked the door in…

She was frantic.

“Daniel, where are you? Talk to me…!”

“Fuck off…!”, I said weakly, from the bed.

“Come here, you crazy idiot…!”, she said, gathering me up in her arms…

I weakly tried to struggle free, but she was having none of it.

She carted me down in the lift and drove me back to hospital…

I was in hospital for weeks.

I was too far along in the transition that Elise had started to go back to being a male, so they stabilised me as a female. They also found out about the miscarriage…

Elise cried when she heard that.

“She’s gone through all that on her own?”, she wailed. “Why…?”

She refused to leave my side in hospital. She was really concerned for my safety.

So was the doctor. She said that if Elise hadn’t been there, she’d have had to put me on suicide watch, due to the depression after the miscarriage.

I was so angry when I found out they’d completed my transition, even though it was the only way to save my life, I checked myself out again as soon as nobody was looking.

I couldn’t go back to the flat; the door was still smashed.

In the end, I went to the only person I thought I could trust.

I knocked on the door of my friends flat.

“Hi. Can we talk?”

My friend Ian was amazed.

“Do we know each other?”

“You could say that, CyberForce9901”, I said.

Ian went white.

“Only my mate Daniel knows that code”, he said. “And he’s been missing for ages…”

“Not anymore”, I said, with a smile. “Striker2201 at your service.”

To give him credit, Ian was prepared to listen.

He even then put me up in his spare room and behaved like the perfect gentleman.

I still caught him glancing at me a few times. He just couldn’t believe the curves that I now had…

I gradually recovered in his spare room; the hospital’s latest treatments had balanced me up beautifully.

Back at hospital, however, Elise and Sandra were beside themselves with worry.

“Now where’s my sister!”, cried Sandra.

“I’ve no idea, but rest assured I won’t stop looking for her”, said Elise.

She was furious.

“How did you manage to lose Emily again!?”, she shrieked.

“Like I said, we can’t hold someone here against their will”, the doctor said. “Also, I thought you were watching her.”

Elise just glared at the doctor…

I gradually got back on my feet.

By shopping at odd hours and not going to any of my usual ‘haunts’ I managed to stay away from Sandra and Elise. I didn’t blame Sandra but avoiding one meant avoiding the other.

I hated Elise with a passion. I didn’t think I’d ever forgive her for what she had done to me.

At the same time, I was going to follow the procedures for a woman in transition to get my own ID and open a bank account. For some reason, I’ve no idea why, I ran the search in the system for Emily Dickerson.

As soon as the record card came up on the computer, I knew it was me. Elise had set me up online, completely.

I contacted the department responsible.

“Hi, my name is Emily Dickerson”, I said. “I’m trying to arrange some replacement ID, but I can’t have my address made public as I am hiding from an abusive family (sorry, Sandra). How can I do this without alerting them to where I am staying?”

“Once you have passed all the checks, including a visual ID recognition, you can arrange to come into your nearest Council offices and collect the ID from there. You’ll have to pass another visual scan there, then you can take the ID.”

I booked an appointment, went in and collected ‘my’ cards. It seemed I really was Emily now…

Once I had done that, I went to a women’s shelter that still dealt with transgender clients.

“You don’t need to worry”, they said. “You are a natural woman. Especially if you can bear children.”

“I wasn’t born one”, I said. “I’ve just been very professionally converted into one. I need a home…”

“Haven’t you got any family?”

“The only family I’m now related to is the people that converted me against my will”, I said. “I don’t know why I kept the name, I really don’t…!”

The group let me stay for a few weeks, then managed to find me a flat that I could afford out of town.

Elise never did find me; my name wasn’t in any of the databases online, and all the flat bills were paid for in cash, which had been arranged by the women’s support group for safety reasons.

Sandra, also, was devastated.

I hated hurting her feelings; after all, she was in the same boat as I was, only a few months further down the line.

I’ve gradually pulled my life back together; I’ve got another job interview next week. I’m vetting the firms as much as they vet me before going…!