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From: "Night Hawk" <nighthawk2000@sympatico.ca>
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Subject: {ASSM} Once More With Feelings - Chapter02 {Night Hawk} (ff rom SciFi)
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Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 06:10:04 -0500
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If you want to read this chapter as it was written, it is
available in both PDF and DOC files at:
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Night_Hawk/www/
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Night_Hawk
or look for "The Night Hawk" at http://storiesonline.net/


"Once More With Feelings"
====================

A new story by (the) Night Hawk
Copyright 2004 by Night Hawk

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 17th
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!"

 ~~~~~ // ~~~~~

The nurses were coming around checking on the kids in the ward. 
Temperatures were being taken, some kids moved back to their rooms
to have dressings and such replaced and it would be supper before
too long.

"Listen up," I said.  "You don't know it yet, but you're in a shit
pile of trouble.  Have my folks shown up at all?"

"Nobody has been here to see me except the doctors."

"Okay, then that part hasn't changed.  Unless we can straighten up
this mess, you won't see them until the day you get discharged. 
That gives us time to set things right.  Ann was here this morning,
so I don't think I'll see your folks again until tomorrow.  As of
right now, stop pouting and be extra polite with the nurses.  They
think your whole memory loss is just a tactic to save your ass from
the mess I put you in.  Stop acting up and try to meet me here
after supper."

He looked at me with a glimmer of hope.

"By the time the night is over, we'll get you caught up to date on
your new life and find a way out of what happened to me next.  But
I can't keep on calling you Patti or Patricia.  One slipup and
it'll just cause more trouble if anybody overhears it.  We need
code names; you know, nick names to call each other."

"Why?"

"Because we don't know each other, Einstein!" I said.  "Ann made
it pretty clear that I could use makeup if I went real easy with
it, but stuck to her guns about the dating rule you mentioned.  I
shouldn't even be talking to you, much less know all that I do
about you.  She'd shit and I'd probably get locked away until I
turn 16."

"Yeah, okay, that makes sense.  We'll be getting out of here,
hopefully sooner than later, and you'll want to know if you get a
message that it's from me."

"Exactly!  I think I'll just keep calling you Einstein."

"Why do you keep calling me names like that?  First you called me
Sherlock and now you seem stuck on Einstein."  The girl in him was
coming out again.

"Because you're such a fucking genius," I said.

"Yeah," he snapped at me.  "Obviously I was smarter than you.  I
didn't get here courtesy of the cops!"

Ouch. that stung!

"And, knowing what I know about the future, maybe I can do
something good with this life."

Hmmm. I hadn't thought of that.

A nurse was walking in our direction, so we pulled apart and I
said, "Catch you later Einstein!"

They checked my stitches, changed the dressing, and then I got my
first real solid meal.

My breakfast that morning had been something that they called
scrambled eggs.  No toast, no coffee, and no bacon.  But there were
the two cartons of milk and some kind of juice.  They were starting
me out easy.  Lunch had been just slightly better.  A limp salad
with what I think was French dressing, and more milk.  I looked
forward to supper.

It was by far the worst hamburger I had ever eaten, and it was the
best.  After three days of milk and juice and Jell-O, at least this
was something that needed chewing power.  Not much though, just a
single bland rubbery patty and a scoop of instant mashed potatoes
and some thoroughly limp green beans.  To say they added gravy to
the mix would be an insult to gravy everywhere, but I ate it all
anyway, watching the news as I chewed.  I really needed to
rediscover this time period.  The history books covering this era
hadn't been written yet.

Then it struck me.  If the history books hadn't been written yet,
then neither had the books on Patrick O'Donnell or Patricia
Johnson.  I had a chance to change the rest of my former life.  I
explained it all to Einstein after the trays were removed from our
rooms and we were allowed out again.  The youngest kids were kept
in their rooms, and the older ones were watching "Happy Days" on
the TV in the common room.

Einstein and me wheeled ourselves to an empty card table and
pretended to be playing two-handed euchre.

"First of all," I started, "your full name is now and from here on
in will be Patrick Charles O'Donnell.  Your middle name was your
mother's father.  Her maiden name is Morgan, her first name is
Henrietta, but everyone calls her Rita.  Your father's name is Tom."

Einstein repeated this information, memorizing it.  I continued
filling in the details, my birthday, aunts and uncles and surviving
grandparents and as much family history as I could fill in.

"You weren't a bad kid, just not very motivated.  Actually you
were a bit of a lazy slob but your mother kept hoping you'd grow up
and take responsibility.  Your Dad's a machinist, and you and him
used to be pretty close, fishing trips and stuff like that but your
preference for TV ended all that by the time you were ten.  He
tolerates you, but doesn't really think that you'll ever amount to
much.  It's going to be hard, but you're going to have to convince
him that you've really changed.  Your Mom doesn't work and has the
most hope for you.  That's all going to change because of what you
did on the weekend."

"What did YOU do?" Einstein asked reminding me it was my fault.

"I busted some windows at my former grade school," I explained. 
"That's how come you've got a busted knee.  Don't worry though.  It
heals just fine.  It popped when you. I jumped off a garage roof
trying to outrun the cops."

"So that's why the cops keep checking in on me," he said.  "Why'd
you do it?"

"Christ, I don't know.  Just generally pissed off with life I
think.  I was just getting to that stage where I thought it was
cool to be a rebel."

"But you got caught."

"Yeah, the cops brought me in here.  They didn't catch me at the
scene but saw me running when they pulled in to the parking lot and
they gave chase.  When I did it, I was just plain stupid, but then
I copped an attitude and even Mom gave up on me.  I could tell you
all the horrible stuff I did after that, but it hasn't happened
yet, so you get to start fresh."

"Gee, thanks.  No clean slate for me I guess," Einstein said.

"Hey, quit bitching.  It's not that big a deal.  It wasn't really
bad until later.  Right now is the point where my life started
going downhill.  You have a chance to make things better."

"And how do I get out of this mess?"

Then I explained my plan.  First of all, Patrick had to ask to
talk to a doctor.  He would explain that he had been upset because
he was starting High School and the kids he had grown up with,
well, most of them were going to other schools.  Patrick was going
to a school for those less academically qualified.  He was to say
he hated himself for having passed up the opportunity when it was
available and was out one night and just lost it.  This was
something that would be acceptable in 1974.  Then the hard part;
Patrick had to tell the doctor that he had been playing stupid
since that night because he didn't know how to explain to his
parents how sorry he was that he had blown it.  He was really to
play up the fact that he knew he could do better but that he had
disappointed his mother and father and now he might go to jail and
he just didn't know what to do.  He really wanted to prove to his
dad that he could make something of himself if given a second
chance.  He'd do anything for a second chance.

"This time you can really cry," I added.

Einstein seemed to think about it for a while.  "Yeah, I think
that would work.  But what school are you supposed to be going to?"

I filled Patricia in on all the details of where I had lived, the
name of the school I had just finished and tried my best to
remember all the details of my room and life back then.

"It's going to be hard to pull off," he said.

"Just keep your head down as if really ashamed and that way, if
you stumble over things, you'll be able to recover."

"No brothers or sisters?"

"Nope, Mom couldn't have any more after me."

"I was an only child as well," Einstein said, and then went on to
tell me about my new life.

It was 9:30 when we had finished swapping information and I
thought my brain had fried.  But I was pretty sure that I could
convince Mike and Ann and, more importantly, the doctor, that I had
recovered most of my memory.  And I found out that I had a best
friend, someone who I had been close to since we started
kindergarten: Cathy. 

Regretfully, there was no one I had been close to that Patricia
could rely on to help her adjust to being me.  Maybe that was just
as well.  The fewer people who knew the new Patrick O'Donnell, the
fewer questions there would be.

It seemed that only a twist of fate had sent Cathy to a different
High School than Patricia, which is why she had felt so alone and
abandoned after the first few months of starting the next step in
her education.  Cathy had been allowed to date at an earlier age
and by the time this year was over, Cathy and Patricia would have
gone their separate ways, Cathy being more 'in love' with her
flavor of the month while Patti ended up alone.  The rude and nasty
comments about her lack of bust and her height had just made her
more withdrawn.

"So, you ask the head nurse tonight if you can see a counselor," I
said.  "That will get the ball rolling.  But how are we going to
keep in touch?  I don't know how much longer they will keep me here
once I've 'recovered' my memory."

"If things work out, and you're not here when I get discharged,
I'll know where to find you," Patrick said.  "Remember, I know more
about you than you do!"

"Yeah, and I also know more about you.  If we need each other, I'm
sure we'll find a way to get together."

We laughed at that and cussed the fact that cell phones weren't
invented yet.  Patricia had hoped to see her real parents one more
time before she or I had to leave the hospital, but who ever was
pulling the strings on this game wasn't going to let that happen.

As we parted for the night, she said to me, "I hope you remember
something about Catholics.  Mom and Dad still go to church every
Sunday."

Fuck!  Just what I don't need.

To be continued.

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