Chapter 13

	Robert David Rodgers had been on the program for 3 months.  He was
past the rough part and was feeling much better.  Caroline was always
around seeing to her father and visiting with her mother.  They had heard
all the rumors about the "Doctor in Drag".  So one day, Caroline and her
father were sitting in his room in the hotel when he asked if her and Allen
were getting along.  "Sure we are.  What makes you think that we might not
be?"
	"Well we are hearing the rumors about your husband and my doctor.
Is he a Queen?"  "No, dad, he is a transvestite.  There is a difference.
Yes they wear women's clothing but he just does it to escape the crowds and
hide from the press.  Its now more a theatrical thing now.  Believe me, he
is safe."
	"I am more concerned with how you deal with it."
	"Dad, it doesn't bother me.  He told me up front about how it
happened and I don't have a problem with what he is wearing.  But the
social ramifications are the problem."
	"I have a feeling that will not be a problem any more.  For the
record, I don't care either.  I just don't want it to damage everything you
have worked for and he has worked for."
	"Thanks for your help dad.  I feel a bit better now that I know you
are cool about it."
	"Honey, I have to be cool.  I am going to be wearing dresses very
soon myself."  They both laughed.
	The conference that Dr. Gurber needed to have with the staff and
inner circle of the hotel went very well.  Everyone had guessed what was
going on, but no one was really sure except those who had seen him.  He had
decided to be more open about Alice.  It would make some of the patients
feel much better about having to wear a dress.  But some patients had a
problem with it.  So Dr. Gurber played it cool while on duty.  But off
duty, Alice would run around.  Very few people actually knew it was
Dr. Gurber.  He didn't make a point of introducing himself to anyone
either.  You just had to know Alice.  The press didn't know what to make of
it either.  They just thought it was some kind of publicity ploy to gain
attention to the program and the plight of the patients on the drug.
	Research on the drug was now world wide.  There had been major
breakthroughs in AIDS and other nasty things that had to do with the immune
system.  Seems that if anything that looked like a cancer would react to
the drug.  A team of researchers had found the link between the two
problems as a direct of the mutation of the genetic makeup of both the AIDS
affected cells and cancer cells.  The results of the initial experimental
trials were "most hopeful."  What they would not tell the general public
was that they had gained the same effect of eliminating the Aids virus with
the same effect as cancer, a chemical sex change.  The big problem was the
pain involved.  Pain was markedly increased with the Aids virus.  They
still didn't know why.  The patient involved eventually died.  A Patient
could not tolerate the pain the drug induced and the drug was always
addictive.
	The research community felt that this was a great achievement.  But
the patient died.  Dr.  Gurber didn't feel very good about this.  The
patient died.  If he had lived, then maybe, yes.  But death was death.

...............................................................................................................................................
                                                       Chapter 13
Continued.
                                                             Loose Ends

	The New Orleans city policeman who had come in a few days before
the press conference was doing amazingly well.  It had been touch and go
for several days.  But the HOTEL had a special facility in it for the very
ill patients.  The doctors who manned the clinic could do almost anything
that an emergency room could do.  We also still had one of the finest
private labs in the country.  As the hotel director, I had the job of
welcoming the new patients and trying to meet their personal needs as well
as could be expected.  Ben Carter was your typical New Orleans city
policeman.  He was very much a Macho type.  He was 5' 9" and average build.
I was shocked to find out that the referring doctor had not fully explained
to him what was going to happen .  The first thing that I had to do was
call the resident shrink and inform him of the situation.  Then I called
Dr. Gurber and Billie.  They would not be happy at this news.  I had the
honors of telling the man what the program was and what was about to happen
to him.  (I once was a cop and could relate.)
	"Hello Ben, I am Leslie."
	"Please tell me what the hell is going on."
	"Do you know where you are?"
	"I think this is the place where you turn people into the opposite
sex."
	"Well, that is Somewhat correct, and We only do what we do for
people who are dying of cancer.  You were brought because you were dying.
You have been administered the drug."
	"I didn't consent to this treatment."
	"We know.  Your treatment was ordered by a local judge.  The
admitting doctor could not find a relative and you were going under.  In
the condition you were in, he couldn't let you go.  This treatment was your
only hope. We normally request that the paperwork be done before we admit a
new patient to the program.  You came in, in such bad condition that no one
questioned the admitting doctors court order.  It is now too late.  You are
now on the drug and it is either this or death.  I cannot allow you to kill
yourself in this clinic.  You do know that you were dying and are the first
patient to recover from such an advanced cancer condition?"
	"How long do I have before I am one of those freaks?"
	"Gee thanks buddy, I am one of "Those Freaks" too."
	"Naaaa, I don't believe it.  You?"
	"Yes, I was a man at one time.  By the way, I also once was a
policeman too."
	"No kidding?"
	"No kidding!"
	"Look, Leslie, I need to know if there is any way to escape this
shit."
	"No, it is too late.  Once the process has started, it is too late.
Your body is even now changing.  You do feel better now don't you?"
	"Well, I feel much better.  I can't believe that my doctor did this
to me."
	"Settle in and we will take very good care of you.  You are in the
French quarter and on your own turf.."
	I went to Dr. Gurber and reported Ben's attitude.  I felt that he
would eventually accept the situation.  But I could bet you a banana that
he was going to try to sue someone.  Hopefully not us.  After all, the
admitting doctor had a court order.
	Dr. Gurber had been checking on the new patient on a regular basis.
He was the closest to death any of the patients had ever come and survived.
His case would be a record.  But after hearing about his problem with being
on the program, Dr. Gurber decided to go and see him.  After all, the
clinic was operating with a doctors referral.  Dr. Gurber would try to
defuse the anger the man must hold within himself.  It had to be there.  He
could not fault the Doctor in question for sending the patient to the
clinic.  He would surely have died without the drug therapy.
	Ben was having a good day.  He was sitting up in the bed, reading
the literature on the history of the clinic.(Sanitized version) The clinic
nurse was taking samples of blood and body fluids when Dr. Gurber came in.
	"You must be the head guy around here."
	"That is what I am told.  This place just runs itself now."
	"I have meet Leslie when I came to.  I hope you have more like her
around."
	"Unfortunately, she is one of a kind."
	"Too Bad, hey Doc, I don't want to be on this program."
	"I know.  But it is now too late.  To discontinue this drug will
kill you very painfully in two or three days."
	"I don't want to be a girl."
	"I can only tell you that surgery to reduce the breasts can be
done, but you will still be female when its all over."
	"No way out now huh?"
	"No, I am very sorry."
	"Well, I am contemplating legal proceedings against my doctor.  I
think that I would have chanced dying before choosing this option."
	"Well, you are here now and there is nothing I can do except
continue the drug and help you make the decisions you need to make.  We
make no judgments here."
	"I am glad to hear it.  I am also a level headed person.  So I am
not going to jump up and down and yell over something I can do nothing
about."
	"Good, I think we can help you.  You do know that the son of the
President is on the program now too."
	"That is fine for him, but I still don't like it."
	"I understand."
	"By the way, can you send Leslie back up to see me.  I would like
to talk to her again.  I think I can relate to her a little better than
most.  She told me that she was once a cop."
	"Yes, she once was.  I will see if she can come visit."
	"Thank you."
	Our new guest was going to be a tough one, Allen thought to
himself.
	The world was changing right before our eyes.  One of the obvious
changes was the unsexing of toilets all over the country.  There were
thousands of "Gems" now and socially, there were a lot of threatened
people.  Before a person would go out with a blind date, the first question
was "Are you a GEM?"
	We were starting to hear of several cases of pregnancy and
childbirth's with a Gem.  The first couple of patients who had the honor
were our original first large group.  The longer the patient was on the
program, the greater, we hoped, the chance that they would not have a
complication with childbirth.  There were unusual characteristics of a Gem
baby.  The child was almost always born a Klinshmitt syndrome baby.
(Hermorphadite) This could be surgically corrected.  But the gender of the
child was always in question.  There was not enough data yet because these
children were too young to tell.  The research community was going to have
a field day with these cases.  But we were not concerned with anything
except the health of both the baby and mother.  We had done it.  The line
had been crossed.  There were no barriers now for our patients.  There were
questions that had not been answered yet though.  The new child had not
been put on the drug.  There were no side effects as we might have
suspected.  The blood work for the child was consistent.  We didn't want
any surprises.
	Robert David Rodgers was at the magic 6 month period.  We had
dropped the requirement of changing dress.  But, Caroline and David's wife
felt that it was time for him to have an alter ego.  He had the usual large
breasts.  They were always large for the Gem patients.  His were "D's" and
he was having some back problems as a result.  But we had come up with an
unusual solution for the large breast problem.  It was a corset of unusual
construction.  It was high backed and boned so that the weight of the
breasts were distributed over the whole surface area of the back.  It was
my design.  (I had been wearing something similar to it as long as I could
remember.)  It was smooth on the outside so that you didn't see the ridges
of its boning.  It took a little while for the person to get used to it
because it would cause some gastric problems.  Before I became fully
female, it had some attachments were I could attach the Gaff.  But I didn't
need it now.  Also, my figure was almost just like Dolly Pardon's.  I was
just a little taller than her.  But that was my figure type.
	The corset helped many of the new 6 month patients.  In fact, there
were all kinds of little tricks we had come up with for the Gem.  Some of
us would get together and brainstorm over some coffee and up with new
idea's.
	The topic of this morning's discussion was the recent admittance of
Ben Carter with out his permission.  It would be impossible to keep that
from happening again.  After all, if you have a new patient on your
doorstep barley alive and going quickly, you are going to do something.
The doctor had a court order.  It was obvious to all that he felt that this
program was his only hope and had convinced a judge of that.  You have to
have a certain level of trust of a doctor who sent the patient.  We all
knew that there would be some kind of lawsuit against the doctor and
probably us.  Care first and legalities later.  If you deny care, then you
can be in more trouble than if you give care and start a Ben Carter.
	One of the very unusual things about the Hotel was the clinic was
becoming more and more public.  Word was out that we would help any one who
truly needed medical assistance.  We would stabilize a patient and send
them to the next available facility.  We could not admit them to the hotel.
	Several of the ambulance companies were transporting to our clinic,
anyone who looked like a GEM.  That usually included transsexuals and
transvestites.  Gunshot wounds and knife wounds were common.  We even were
giving some drugs to help with certain social diseases.  But we could not
help the AIDS community.  We didn't even stock any of the known drugs for
the decease.  We could not afford the cost of some of these drugs.
	Dr. Gurber and Billie were now actively looking for finical support
to open the clinic to the community and help out.  Money was out there for
that kind of support and if anyone could find it, Billie and Dr. Gurber
would find it.  Tulane had offered to make the clinic an outshoot of their
facility.  But with the conflicts, Dr. Gurber had decided to back off and
find other support.  The interns were good, but Tulane was trying to take
over more and more.
	There were still reported cases of people trying to give themselves
cancer.  Asbestos was one of the better ways found to do it.  But the added
risks of lung problems in addition to the cancer made these people very
pathetic.  Dr. Gurber could think of several ways better and not as risky.
Radiation had to be the better way.  But not many people had that kind of
access to a rad source.  There was an X-ray tech. who had been caught
giving himself a large amount of rads daily.  By law, it was not allowable
to make these exposures to yourself.  He was caught under a spot film
device shooting 1250 ma shots at large times.  In technical talk, over 2000
mas at a time.  (Radiation from X-ray machines is read in MAS, or Milliamps
X Seconds.)  With enough of it, you could get radiation sickness and
develop a cancer if prolonged.  Even though he had been caught, he had
managed to get cancer.  The hospital involved called the insurance provider
and his insurance policy was promptly canceled.  He was also terminated.
The hormone hotel did not do charity cases anymore.  We still don't know
what he did to get the money.  But he did and he did get what he wanted.
It would cost him 100,000.00 over the next three years, Plus the radiation
sickness which I wish on no one.
	The legal battles over the gender issue grew to an intense level.
It seemed that allot of the cases against employers were going against the
employers.  It brought the process of selecting employees to a high art.
There were computer data bases that would look at your entire family
records and determine if you were a candatite for cancer.  The way we found
out about this new wrinkle was a friend of Billie's.  It seemed that he was
a executive who was contacted by an insurance company about a prospective
employee.  "We cannot insure that individual."  Was the answer.  When
pressed as to why, the answer was "He has a history of cancer in his family
and we cannot be held to such a risk."  He told the prospective employee
and the SHIT hit the Fan.  It seemed that the only record of Cancer in his
family was on his mothers side of the family and then it was only a cousin.
When the insurance company was sued, it had to disclose how the search was
done and it was not very happy about it.  The practice had to be abandoned
and if caught, other companies could be sued for improper personal record
searches.
	Congress and the Senate was being bombarded with so many different
kinds of new legislation that you could not get any of them to talk to you
about the subject.  There were even senators who were Gems.  We had a very
distinguished membership in the club.
	The law suits were amazing.  There was a lawsuit over admittance to
a private Lesbian club by a Male to Female Gem who still liked women.
(This was more the rule than the exception.)  She had won.  But it had the
same effect that the Anti discrimination/Gay Marti- Grass ordinance in New
Orleans had.  People just shut down their operation and moved to another
area.  The person involved could move if she wanted to.  But It was
unlikely.
	More lose ends.
	Robert David Rodgers was beautiful as a woman.  He would have no
problems in society.  There were those who didn't look like a genetic
woman.  (And never would.  Marilyn was a good example of size and such.)
Robert David would become Cissy Rodgers.  This was the name She picked.  No
one questioned it.
	Mary had opened her own club.  She was famous as a performer in the
New Orleans area.  No one knew that she was once a he.  And as a Gems
patient, No one could tell.  We frequented the club and enjoyed VIP
treatment.
	Then there were the RG's, or Rough Girls.  This was the Gutter
crew.  These girls went to the roughest places in the quarter and never
questioned as to their sex.  But the risks they took were legendary.  To
become a RG, you had to go to the most outrageous place in town and stay
till it closed.  If you made it home in one piece, you were a RG.  I went
through the ritual and came out with only one or two cuts.  It went like
this.
	One of the leather bars were advertising free food and drinks if
you came attired (I use that word loosely.) in leather and heels.  The
badder (Vixen) the better.  The catch was that you had to handcuff yourself
to a chain over the bar and stay there all night.  I had my own cuff (and
the Key) and some leather gauntlets so that my wrist would not be chaffed
the next day.  The men would come up to you and make passes at you and
pinch you ass.  Some of them would try to make French kisses and grab your
tits.  That is what I meant by "IN ONE PIECE".  I was very smart when I
took a piece of chain and a small padlock and made a little weapon with the
other hand.  I was not as big as some of the other women.  But I had to be
stronger.  The game was that the men would try to see if they could make it
with all the women at the bar.  I must have chained 10 guys that night.  I
got the certificate of "RG to the EXTREME".  If Billie had been here, it
wouldn't have been an even contest.  She would have beat me hands down.  I
still go out to the place.  Everyone knows who I am now.  Seems that
everyone connected with the Hotel and Clinic are famous in the Quarter.
	Cissy Rodgers was beginning to venture out and see the world.  The
French quarter had become home to all the GEMS and we had become a fixture.
We even had some of the locals working in the clubs and bars.  Some even
were working in the strip joints.  They were the single ones who needed the
money and could not go back to their original jobs.  So they danced and no
one was the wiser.  In fact, the club owners were beginning to hire them
over real women because they had unusually large breasts, and they were
bigger (and stronger) than genetic females.  I don't have to tell you that
this caused all kinds of reverse discrimination suits.  I still kinda
enjoyed looking at the strippers.  There was one place that went all the
way.  No latex on the nipples or bottom covers.  They let every thing they
had hang out.
	I had gone in to Mary's club one night dressed very sleazy (and
sexy) just to do something different from the dress for success suits that
I usually wore and was just looking to be entertained.  I knew who the GEMS
were and everyone knew who I was.  But there was always some one from out
of town or a tourist.  This tourist started trying to pick me up.  I
couldn't believe the guy. He wouldn't go away.  I was only 5'8" and small
compared to the other girls.  He just liked me.  He was rich and wanted to
talk.  Why not.
	The conversation went something like this.  "Honey, you look hot."
	"Well thanks."
	"You must be from out of town.  You do know your in the bad part of
town?"
	"I was bored and just wanted to see what was going on."
	"You cruising for a girl?"
	"No, not really, I just wanted to talk and spend time with
someone."
	"Good, I am not a hooker."
	"I didn't care if you were.  I just wanted to talk."
	"Married?"
	"Yes.  I hardly ever see her though.  I travel so much.  I am one
of those traveling service types who get shipped all over the country."
	"Why in the hell are you hanging around the Strip joints if you
don't want to get turned on?"
	"I don't know.  I guess I didn't have anything else to do.  What do
you do?"
	"I run a Hotel."
	"Fancy that.  Which one?"
	"Down in the French Quarter."
	"I might try to get a room there.  I like the scenery."
	"We don't except any one but patients in the Tulane cancer clinic."
	"You run the sex change cancer clinic!?"
	"No, I run the hotel.  Other folks run that."
	"Boy, I bet that is a strange place to work.  I could not imagine
having to change sex."
	"Well, I can."
	"Oh no, Not you?"
	"Yes."
	"Well, Well, you know, it might be an opportune thing that I bumped
into you.  I have been needing to talk to someone about my
wife................"
	His wife was on Kemo and was sinking fast.  I explained that yes,
she would get better and be able to live a normal life but, forget going
back to life as you once knew it.  It was not an easy road.  Could he deal
with having someone you have known all your life, changed into a different
person.  Now I know why he was down in the French quarter.
	This was a very regular occurrence.  People with problems would
usually go to the quarter in hopes of finding someone like me.  Those of us
who did go out in the quarter were warned about this and how to deal with
someone like this gentleman that I just ran into.  I mean totally out of
the blue.  People would just come up to you.  I was happy to do it though.
They just couldn't be seen down at the clinic.  They had to find someone
who was going through the process or knew people who did.
	We carried business cards for the purpose of referring these people
to the clinic and we had an info line set up so people with questions could
call and ask.  This was where I sent this poor lonely gentleman with a
problem.  I of course answered as many questions as he could ask.  The
night was short and he turned out to be good company.
	The wife was mid forties and the stay-at-home kind.  He traveled
and worked on the road.  But with her sick and him on the road, it was a
tough life.  No wonder he wanted to talk.  He wouldn't admit it.  I
normally pay my own way.  But tonight, he insisted that he pay for dinner
and my coffee.  (I never drank anything alcoholic.)  I had to work the next
day and had to call it a short day.  But I know he felt a little better.
Poor guy, I do know how he felt.  He would save his wife's life and lose
her anyway.  She would become a man before his eyes.  There was no other
way to save her.  Life was cruel.
	We still had the usual people coming through the Hotel.  The new
people on the program had to be taught makeup and body language.  We had
for a long time employed the first group of patients as counselors and
teachers.  It worked well.  Seemed that we were always full up.  People
were knocking down the doors to get in.  Yes, there were other clinics
around the country.  But we were in the French Quarter.  One of the few
places where these people could be themselves and not be embarrassed if
they didn't act like they looked.
	Marilyn was famous.  It was going to be a very difficult job
keeping her employed at the hotel and clinic.  She was getting offers from
some of the other clinics around the country and even some abortion
clinics.  But I had talked to her and she had made up her mind that she
liked where she worked and was not going to move.  That was good.
	Up until now, we were very shy about giving the drug to
children. It was difficult enough to give the drug to an adult and change
their lives.  But giving the drug to a child was a whole different thing.
They had no idea what changing sex meant.  Especially a 12 year old boy or
girl.  It was the cruelest of our cases.  We didn't even know how to
administer to their needs.  They were unable to know what sex was all about
and had not reached puberty.  How do you teach a 12 year old boy to be a
girl.  How would other children act with these poor kids.  If you didn't
know, these kids can be vicious in nature and would emotionally tear the
GEMS kids up.  Not the best situation.